“No Marine would react without physical force to someone they didn’t want on them. I don’t buy the “but I was scared she would blackmail me” angle either. Act first, think later.”
Sorry, but if a man, Marine or not, reacts in a “act now, think later” way with civilians, he WILL be accused of assault, and usually aggravated by the fact that he has had military training.
Also, it’s not a micro-chip they add to your brain that somehow, you react in X way 100% of the time with 100% of people, personality be damned. Sure the army wishes to uniformize things, but they can only succeed so well, and at 19 years old, you’re no veteran hardened in the way of military who wakes up at 4 am every day because of force of habit.
I didn’t expect much more positive comments towards male victims personally. I’ve been prepared for the horribleness by the media and by reactions to other cases of harm coming to men. It’s always disbelieved or blamed on the victim, or the perpetrator (if female) is excused on other grounds (that are generally not self-defense, but things such as mentall illness, stress etc – things that never excuse a male perpetrator’s actions).
I’m glad for the few who supported James’s account and coming forward. I also do support it.
To those who say men ought not to be victims, or to speak of feelings, or even to ‘steal’ that victimhood from the ‘real’ victims, I wonder what you’d do were it to happen to you?
I personally have not had it happen to me, but I know what having problems from society means and what empathy means. I also know what it is to have your problems trivilalized, minimized or ignored.
“Sure men can be raped. But your story here dismisses those men truly raped, 99% of the time by other men, and under true physcial force or violence.”
Totally false for your 99% statistic. Even rape shelters don’t go as far as 99%, and they’re still underestimating the issue. The statistical probability of a rape with a male victim is lower than for male on female rape, yes. That’s I’ll happily concede to be true. But it’s not infinitesimally insignificant, it’s about 1/2 to 2/3 the rate of women’s as victims (I’m speaking only of female on male here – not male on male). Male on male occurs in some proportions too, and female on female also does occurs in some proportions, which are not insignificant.
Saying that one group deserves their compassion as victims, and another is undeserving because of being male, black, short, old, fat, wiccan, jew, bald, long-haired, unshaved, Iranian, Japanese, Chinese, etc – is totally stupid and makes no sense. Anyone can be a victim regardless of any characteristic, and they are just as worthy a victim as the next person.
Having any privilege or advantage of any kind (sex, size, height, economic class, fame, etc) can make it happen less often, but it doesn’t make it any less awful for the victim when it does, or any more acceptable to mock, berate, ignore or laugh at him or her.
Even if the male victims represented only 5% of men, versus statistics saying women represent 25% of women – you know, men have 0% of shelters, 0% of compassion towards them, and are the least believed of all – because of sentiments such as expressed in this thread, calling them metrosexual or other terms that are aimed to insult and minimize their harm, while preventing or repairing none of it.
