#MenToo

Are we finally ready to face the sexual abuse of men and boys?

Photo by Zanyar Ibrahim on Unsplash

I have a column out today in the Daily Beast that I hope you’ll read about the particular horrors of the organized rape and sexual abuse of drugged and unconscious women. Stories of men raping limp, non-responsive women and girls are in the news thanks to the absolutely repellent case in France of a husband who drugged his wife and invited dozens of men to rape her over nearly a decade, as well as the Diddy case here in the US, in which the rap mogul stands accused of drugging, abusing, and incapacitating women, men, girls and boys and inviting others to sexually abuse them as well. It’s very dark stuff, and I hope you’ll read the column.

Another similar story also just broke, this one involving Abercrombie & Fitch CEO Mike Jeffries. Jeffries is accused of running a sex trafficking ring and “of using force, fraud and coercion to lure dozens of men to events around the world, where they were sexually exploited by Mr. Jeffries and his romantic partner,” according to the New York Times. Some 15 different people say Jeffries exploited and abused them.

These charges stem from an incredible piece of journalism that I somehow missed when it was published last year: A BBC story in which eight men described the abuse they endured and witnessed at sex events held by Jeffries. A middle man in Jeffries’ employ allegedly procured young men for sex with Jeffries, his partner, the middleman, and their friends. The young men were often enticed with the possibility of modeling for Abercrombie, a company known for its hot male models. It’s a very Harvey Weinstein MO: The young men were allegedly invited to Jeffries’ parties, many of which we held at fairly remote estates, and then pushed to engage in sex acts they didn’t want.

"It was like he was selling fame,” one of the men coerced into sex said. “And the price was compliance.”

Some of the men say they believe they were drugged and raped. Most say they were coerced and manipulated.

The #MeToo movement was a feminist turning point because it put together the relationship between sexual abuse and power. It wasn’t just that bad men had sexually assaulted or harassed women; it’s that the men used their positions to coerce and manipulate women who often felt they had no other professional choice. As more women spoke out about these abuses, others joined in.

A few men spoke up too. But #MeToo was largely made up of women’s voices.

And that was important: Women are the majority of sexual abuse victims. Men are an even larger majority of the abusers. Taking gender out of the equation misses a big part of the power dynamic.

But men are victims of sexual abuse and exploitation too, often by other men. And when men are sexually victimized, there’s a distinct kind of shame and stigma involved. There’s a sense of emasculation; there’s the stigma of homosexuality. For men, talking about being sexually abused means talking about your own vulnerability, which is incredibly difficult in a culture that scorns exactly that. There are a million ways in which sexual abuse devastates women, and purity culture has meant that many women worry about being seen as sullied by abuse, but there isn’t a presumptive undercurrent of defeminization — being abused does not, in the popular consciousness, make a woman less of a woman. For men, sexual abuse — being a sexual victim of another man — is tied up in manhood itself. Manhood is hard to define, but its primary characteristic is being decidedly not female. For men, being associated with the feminine is shameful in a way that women being associated with the male is not. Masculinity means power. It means invulnerability. It means being the actor, not the acted-upon.

If our understanding of sex abuse has men as predators and women the prey, what does that make preyed-upon men?

Speaking out about surviving sexual violence is difficult no matter who you are. But men face a particularly complex landscape, especially when navigating the terrain of power and coercion.

While male survivors have pointed fingers at powerful men, these stories haven’t quite broken through the way that the accusations leveled at Harvey Weinstein, Bill Cosby, and other prominent men have (the men who say they were abused by Kevin Spacey come to mind, but that story wasn’t a particular blockbuster). The Catholic Church sexual abuse scandal made headlines two decades ago, but involved men who were abused as boys — which I don’t say to lessen the importance of that avalanche of truth-telling, just to say that it touches a different cultural nerve than men abused as adults.

I’m glad men are finally coming forward the same way women did, and telling stories not just of sexual abuse, but of how powerful men have used their money and influence to coerce and exploit those they had some leverage over. The #MeToo movement has died down, and even seen a bit of a backlash. I hope the men who are stepping up now find sympathetic ears — and bring about as much of a cultural tsunami as the women who came before them.

xx Jill