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Not for men only - a place to discuss men's trauma issues (comments welcomed from all)

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I've written to the organiser just now.
Here's what I wrote. Thanks all for the encouragement/suggestions.
I will let y'all know in November when the new questionnaire comes out if we've been able to facilitate a change. If not, I'll just try again :)

To Dr. Chris Sibley,

My name is bellbird.
I have been a participant of the NZAVS since 2014.

I have a suggestion regarding the following questions that featured in the 2018 questionnaire:

"We should invest more in educating women how to avoid physical/sexual violence from men."
and
"We should invest more in educating men to not be physically/sexually violent toward women."

Sexual assault is a topic that is very close to home for me; I am a woman, with PTSD, that has been primarily caused by sexual assault by a male perpetrator.

Throughout my journey with PTSD over the last year, I have been fortunate enough to develop friendships with men who are sexual assault survivors and who had female perpetrators.

From speaking with them, I have learnt about the huge gender bias in how sexual assault and domestic violence are portrayed, the stigma that they face as male victims, and how their experiences are so often and so cruelly invalidated simply because of their gender.

As a victim of sexual assault myself, I speak from the heart when I say that validation is immensely important.

I strongly feel that the wording of the above two questions from the 2018 questionnaire fuels the stigma that there are only male perpetrators and female victims in sexual assault. Which is completely inaccurate.

The focus should be on educating people to treat other people with respect and not assault them, and on educating people to assess the risk of being assaulted and what might be appropriate responses, irrespective of gender.

I sincerely ask you to address this bias in the 2019 questionnaire. I have seen the ways in which this global bias has impacted the lives of male survivors and how desperately change is needed in how we approach this topic.
I implore you, given the platform that you have of reaching so many New Zealanders, to be a part of that change.

Yours sincerely,
bellbird
 
That´s great Bellbird. I wish there were more people vocal about this.

Not to reopen the discussion had earlier, but I do wonder why it´s sexist to joke that someone is hot. Even in jest there is some level of truth to it (or else why would anybody say it) and finding somebody attractive does not seem like some type of sexist attack.

Just my few cents.

I have a hundred things to say about this topic, haha...

I might mention that I had a conversation with Men´s Right Activists a while ago and they were very pleasant people. They seemed very open-minded to me.

Not saying that there aren´t any rotten apples, but rotten apples can be found in feminism as well. I wish these two groups would understand each other better.

Yes, it is a very toxic place that’s why I’m not there.

I disagree. There are many subreddits where civil conversations can be held. It just depends where you go to. If you go to places like moderate politics, or political philosophy, you would actually see there are very constructive things being said there.

Reddit has a shitty image because generalizing is what people do.

This isn´t personal towards anybody here, sometimes it ticks me off that Reddit has a reputation for being all angry, misogynist neckbeards. I´m not misogynist and I have a normal beard :D
 
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I found that Reddit was the opposite of a bunch of misogynist neckbeards - they are a bunch of misandrist shitheads. During an AMA with RAINN, I introduced myself as a male DV/SA victim of a female perp, and hundreds of people took time out of their days to call me an MRA, a misogynist, and/or a liar and tell me to kill myself.

So it's not just neckbeards. It's that the anonymity of Reddit leads to redditors acting like assholes. Or maybe redditors are assholes in real life, too. No way to know. Regardless, I stand by my assertion that Reddit is a toxic place.
 
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Again, subreddits wildly differ from each other. Judging all the rational subreddits by comparing them to the irrational, unruly bunch isn´t doing the platform any good.

Back to topic.
 
Hello folks. I thought we might re-open this thread and see what happens. The "What are they thinking" thread over in the Supporter area is so good and so useful, and there's no denying that I'm trying to emulate it here.

85% of members of this site - which is a figure I heard someplace or made up myself out of thin air, I can't remember which - are female-identifying. This is a thread to ask questions to the male-identifying members about their own issues. Men with trauma present differently, have different symptoms, and heal differently. We have fewer resources. We are the clear minority in therapy, both as counselors and patients. In some countries just acknowledging our existence is a political football, to be kicked back and forth by different groups with wildly differing goals. So this is a place for questions and discussion of male-oriented PTSD issues. I hope it's helpful and I encourage the all female-identifying people on this site to ask questions and all male-identifiers to answer.

--
I'd like to write in this space about statistics and why they're so important to male survivors. April is Sexual Assault Awareness Month, and the National Sexual Violence Resource Center (NSVRC) is spearheading a bunch of online activities here in the USA around that. However, I and other male survivors feel very strongly that the NSVRC doesn't support male survivors at all and prefers to ignore us entirely in favor of female survivors.

One major reason we feel this way is because the NSVRC loudly proclaims in most of their materials that 1 in 5 women and 1 in 71 men is the victim of a sexual assault rape. But the 1 in 71 statistic is completely and totally bogus - it's just that most people don't know enough about it to question it, and the NSVRC likes it that way. 1 in 71 men reports being penetrated against their will. The CDC defines "rape" as ONLY the act of being penetrated. However, we know that there are many more forms of sexual assault than being penetrated, and in fact if you use ALL forms of sexual assault against adult men, the statistic becomes 1 in 15. So in light of that, why would the NSVRC cite ONLY the LEAST inclusive statistic for victims of male sexual assault?

Because the NSVRC is trying to erase male sexual assault victims. But they can truthfully claim they're reporting on "rapes" against men, as if that makes it OK to erase all men whose sexual assault doesn't involve being penetrated.

I haven't even gotten into the fact that as many as three out of four sexual assaults aren't reported - and for men it's close to four out of four, as men report even less frequently than women. And if you add in child sexual abuse, 1 in three women and 1 in FOUR men is the victim of an unwanted sexual experience across their lifespans.

But most people don't know enough about these statistics to speak out against this kind of statistical cherrypicking, and the NSVRC gets to underserve men. Other groups use this statistic too, like the National Domestic Violence Hotline, and they also underserve men.

Those of us men who know what's going on are angry, and we are currently working with various experts and scholars to get the NSVRC to change. We consider this a real matter of life and death. As a man, "1 in 71" (especially as compared to 1 in 5) means that I'm pretty much alone. Why should I bother talking about it or getting help? 1 in 15 means that maybe I have a fighting chance.
 
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TBH even 1 in 5 for women may be skewed... AFAIK bad methodology in defining 'sexual assault' was involved. And it would mean a nation full of rapists which... really? Lived some wild places but you'd find more thieves close to that rate, rape still got an outcry of whole the village.

So if someone correct defines rape as penetration? Yeah.
It's different figures and not trying to 'erase' someone.

It only doesn't speak to all forms of sexual violence - and it is worthy to mention that fact.

But it's not incorrect reporting nor erasure.

Imo perpetuating bad statistics implying nonsense image of reality - like that 1 in 5 for women altogether - doesn't help vics of any gender, and is useful scare tactics for abusers' employ.
 
And it would mean a nation full of rapists which... really?
Completely untrue as most rapists rape many times.
So if someone correct defines rape as penetration? Yeah.
It's different figures and not trying to 'erase' someone.
Penetration is the most common type of sexual assault against women. It is actually not against men, which is why 1 in 71 is technically correct but completely fails to tell the entire story. A much fairer way to present the stats would be to use sexual assault, not rape, as the baseline. It's also unhelpful as "rape" is left undefined on their materials, which leads to the erasure of men who have been nonpenetratively assaulted.

Please note that both I and the NSVRC are using the terms "rape" and "sexual assault" as they are used by the CDC. These terms have different legal and nonlegal meanings in other jurisdictions, including, confusingly enough, different states in the USA. Many people use the term "rape" to mean any kind of sexual assault, which is not the way I am using the term here.

My opinion, and the opinion of many men, is that this is purposeful on the parts of these government-funded groups. Others may disagree. We'll see if the NSVRC is willing to play ball. If not, I think we'll be able to chalk that up to purposeful erasure.
 
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