When a Man is the Victim: A Second Study in Rape Apology
by Guest Contributor Cara Kulwicki, originally published at The Curvature
I’ve previously done an in depth analysis of victim-blaming and rape denial, and how it varies and how it stays the same, in a case of rape where a man was the victim of a female assailant. After seeing this video at Sociological Images, along with the questions Lisa poses about the attitudes towards sexual violence it reveals, I’m compelled to do a second one. The results are a bit long and wandering.
Below, rapper Lil’ Wayne appears on Jimmy Kimmel Live and (starting at about 2:40) is asked by the host whether or not it’s true that he “lost his virginity” at 11. After looking shocked and attempting to laugh it off, Lil’ Wayne tells his story, and it may be triggering to some of you.
I do not know what Lil’ Wayne would call his own experience, but though he does not use the word, the admittedly few details he provides do indeed portray this quite clearly as rape, for reasons that I hope are obvious to most readers here, and which will be delved into in more detail below. Lil’ Wayne seems to me to be uncomfortable with the line of questioning, and yet Jimmy Kimmel and the other man on the show continue to laugh and joke around about it, even after Lil’ Wayne says very clearly that the experience was harmful to him.
It seems like a reasonable question, to ask what the hell is wrong with Jimmy Kimmel. But the problem is, while not excusing his actions for a single second, that he has a whole culture (and audience) backing him up.
In the majority of sexual assault cases, where a woman is the victim of a man’s violence, rape apology is rooted primarily not in the denial that male violence exists, but in the denial that male violence means something and needs to be stopped. Conversely, in cases where a man is the victim of a woman’s violence, rape apologism is strongly rooted in the denial that women’s actions can count as violence at all — and especially that their actions can count as sexual violence against men, who are routinely construed as incapable of being victims.
In cases of both of these two types of sexual violence (though hardly the only two that exist), the victim is accused of “wanting it.” But while the female victim is also, when that reasoning fails, accused of deserving it, this seems to not be the case with men. No, they just always wanted it. (Again, talking only about male victims of women — gay male victims of other men are routinely portrayed as “deserving” it as well as “wanting” it.) There are no sneers about what he should and shouldn’t have been doing. Just jokes about how awesome the assault must have been for him. Like we see Jimmy Kimmel engaging in above.
Over at Sociological Images, the assertion is made that if Lil’ Wayne was a white female, what was done to him would be seen as rape or sexual assault. Seemingly, this assertion is made with certainty.
While I absolutely agree that if Lil’ Wayne were a white woman, Jimmy Kimmel would not be joking around on national television about the experience — because it wouldn’t be seen as “cool” — I remain unconvinced that it would necessarily be called rape by the majority of the viewing public. As argued partially above, the tactics of rape apologism shift as need be — but with only a few extreme and/or notable exceptions, the intensity varies little.
I am unconvinced that many people who do not see Lil’ Wayne as a victim would see a woman with his same circumstances as one, because the fact that he was assaulted does not rely on age — which, while still subject to rape apologism, is one of the cases where you most commonly see sympathy for female victims. While 14 is significantly older than 11 (since age differences matter more the younger you are), I’m not sure that the majority of people would be comfortable outright calling it rape based on that age difference.
If we were talking an 11-year-old girl and a 24-year-old man? Most people, though of course certainly not all, would probably call that rape. And I know for a fact that significantly fewer people would call it rape when we reverse those genders.
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