When the average person hears the word "rape," they only think of a man attacking a woman. Many people don't know male victims exist. The same goes for the topics of domestic violence and child molestation. One might say, "well that's because men don't speak up."
Oh, men are speaking up. Then they get shut down by laughter, shaming tactics, and accusations of lying for attention. Governments refuse to fund shelters for abused men, police and crisis centers turn them away, and just giving them a voice is somehow considered offensive. Hell, there used to be a Facebook group whose members would laugh and share stories about abusing their men. That group flew under the radar for months, attracting 200,000+ members!
Who came up with the idea to divide these issues by gender to such extreme points?
A recent example of the bias involves Demi Lovato. Everyone knows about her support for victims of sexual abuse. Surely, she would be above joking about male victims, right? Nope. When asked by Twitter what was the funniest prank she had ever pulled, Demi replied:
For those who are thinking "that's not sexual abuse," here is a idea for you. Imagine a male celebrity pays a stranger to walk into his employee's hotel room and grab her breasts. Then that man -- a role model to millions of people and supporter of abuse victims -- laughs about it on Twitter, calling it the funniest prank he'd ever done. Then apologizes after complaining about people being offended. Would that be okay with you, too?
In 2013, Corey Feldman was a guest on The View, where he talked about pedophilia in Hollywood. He said that there are powerful people from his childhood who rape child stars, and are still in Hollywood. Barbara Walters told him to his face, on TV, that he's "damaging an entire industry."
Social media is littered with videos of women attacking their man. Sometimes with weapons, sometimes with their kids watching. A quick look through the comments will show females making excuses for their mental state and asking what he did to piss her off before the camera started recording.
Men pay more taxes, which -- in addition to being left out of the complaints about the mythical wage gap -- makes them the main financial contributors to government-funded women's services. You know, like the 1,910 shelters for battered women, compared to 2 for men. And the countless PSAs that condition society to believe that men can only be perpetrators, but never victims, and women are the only victims that matter.
Between those figures and the empathy gap, men do more than enough to support women's issues, and we still get spit on. Let's start helping each other and ourselves. Let's support campaigns like 1in6, Men Standing Up, Survivors UK, One in Three, and so on. If you choose not to support women-only campaigns, don't let people shame you when those same people won't support men.
Instead of asking why men are "hijacking" awareness campaigns like #metoo and #yesallwomen, we need to be asking why we're so afraid of hearing both male and female stories.
Male victims are tired of being swept under the rug while every other day brings a new campaign just for women who have those same problems. Men are tired of their gender being demonized and expected to apologize on behalf of actual criminals. Men are tired being told to support movements full of people who openly bash them.
Don't get mad when men fight back; get mad at the misandric conditioning that tricks you into believing that only women matter.
