While I am revolted by some of the responses on this thread, I’m not surprised. Most people just don’t want to believe it’s possible for a woman to rape or otherwise sexually abuse a man.
I have a friend who several years ago (he’d just turned 18) made the “mistake” of falling asleep while watching a movie with a group of friends at one of those friend’s houses. He woke up to find that everyone but the hostess had gone home, and the hostess had unzipped his pants and was in the process of giving him oral sex. He was horrified, as he had no such interest in this “friend” and had already told her so. Apparently she thought she could change his mind by showing him how good she was at giving head. He pushed her away and immediately left her house. He was embarrassed and ashamed and disgusted. He felt stupid, like somehow he should have had the foresight not to allow himself to be put in such a situation, although he never in a million years would have expected she might do something like that, so how could he have foreseen the danger? I mean, after all, women don’t take sexual advantage of men, right???
To compound the situation, the next day the girl was mad at HIM, saying he had been rude and inconsiderate of HER feelings by rejecting her sexual advance. And all their friends sided with HER, leaving him to deal with his embarrassment and shame all by himself.
Now, this situation does not rise to the level of rape, but it qualifies as a sexual assault. If the genders of the parties were reversed, there is no question how others would have looked at this situation – all hearers would have been appalled and would have rightly villified the perpetrator. But since a girl forced oral sex on a sleeping guy, my friend was sure that if he told authorities, no one would think it was wrong, or they’d say “gee, I wish *I* had that kind of problem!”
Regardless of the genders of the people involved, waking up to find yourself involved in unwelcome sexual activity feels like, and IS, a violation. If it would be wrong for a man to remove a sleeping girl’s pants and perform oral sex on her, it is equally wrong for a woman to remove a sleeping man’s pants and perform oral sex on him. If it happened to a girl, she’d be encouraged by her outraged friends and family to go to the police, despite her shame.
In contrast, the other friends of this young man I know either thought his situation was nothing to complain about, or thought HE had been in the wrong for rejecting the girl. Disgusting!
This episode cost him his friends, because the perpetrator cast herself as the wronged party, and forced their mutual friends to choose between them. All their female mutual friends sided with the girl, and their male mutual friends didn’t want to “make trouble” and by their refusal to take a stand, by default sided with the girl. All of them have been so well taught that sexual assaults are only done by men to women, and so none of them appreciated that my friend felt just as violated as any woman in his situation would have felt.
I might also add that the shame, the violation and the subsequent abandonment by his friends sent this young man into a downward spiral into depression that he has struggled with for more than 3 years. This encounter seriously damaged his feelings of self-worth and changed him from an upbeat guy with a positive view of his future into an unhappy person who sees his future as a long bleak road of emptiness. It makes me very angry to see how much that idiot girl hurt him, and I know she’ll never be punished for it like she deserves to be. It was a sexual assault, no two ways about it.
/sarc
But I guess he just needs to “get over it” and man up, right? After all, he’s a man, and men don’t have feelings. Besides, what 18 year old would turn down oral sex? So his story must be bogus. Just another masturbatory fantasy. /sarc
