Men Must Be Informed About The Nature and Prevalence of the Problem

This is a culture which values the independence which men are supposed to exhibit as a ‘natural’ response. Sexist as it is, the notion of a dependent woman and an independent man fits well into the cultural role expectation of many people, though not in the personal experiences of male sexual abuse survivors. Since women are expected to be passive, weaker, powerless beings, there is room for sympathy when they are victimized. This does not mean that female victims have less traumatic aftereffects. There is, however, a particular focus of the problem that is faced only by men. It arises from the fact that our culture provides no room for a man as victim. A “real man” is expected to be able to protect himself in any situation. He is also supposed to be able to solve any problem and recover from any setback. When he experiences victimization, our culture expects him to be able to “deal with it like a man” (Lew, 1990).

Survivors who are traumatized and disoriented by their experiences, and who therefore cannot fulfill their expected social roles are often treated as outcasts and social deviants. Since men “are not supposed to be victims”, abuse (and particularly sexual abuse) becomes a process of demasculinization (or emasculation). If men aren’t to be victims (the equation reads), then victims aren’t men. The victimized male wonders and worries about what the abuse has turned him into. Believing that he is no longer an adequate man, he many see himself as a child, a woman, gay, or less than human - an irreparably damaged freak (Lew, 1990).

All of the current cultural messages about women desiring men who display their emotional vulnerability often does not apply to men who have experienced severe sexual trauma, which has made them victims, in a culture that sees only women  as dependent and potential victims. There are ample reasons for women and men (in traditional cultural settings) to collude by playing up her dependency while they play down his. But there’s something else as well. Since it’s still as someone’s daughter, someone’s wife, someone’s mother that a woman is known and judged in the world, it’s still important for her, as well as for a man, to believe that he’s the stronger one. Consequently, while a woman today will speak easily of wanting to know more of a man’s vulnerabilities, to see more of his dependency, when she sees them, her anxieties about what it means for her own status, even for her very definition of self, may rise high enough so that she becomes acutely ambivalent, if not downright hostile (Rubin, 1983).

The American male sexual abuse survivor is raised in a culture that teaches him to be observant of others’ needs rather than his own. He is constantly admonished that, in the case of danger, women and children must be saved first, with his own physical safety a secondary concern. Even if he as a child at the time the original abuse occurred, he is told, throughout the remainder of his life, that as a man his needs -- and his pain -- are of less value than women’s pain. Further, if he as raped as a child, he views his personal needs and pain, as an individual, as unimportant. The abused child begins to organize his world around his wound. The victim mentality is a view of the self and the world. The world is seen not as safe and predictable, but as dangerous, unpredictable, and uncontrollable (Silver, Boon, Stones, 1983). The victim has learned from being abused that what he does, wants, feels, or thinks makes no difference. Even after the abuse stops, he continues to think of himself as ineffective, powerless, and worthless. Everything that happens is seen through the filter of his victim viewpoint (Hunter, 1990). This, of course, flies in the face of the cultural ethic that sees males as strong and independent and as powerful; and it sets the male survivor up for frightful emotional abuse later in life is he admits that those cultural imperatives are not his personal experience.

Since these men grew up being mistreated, to be in an abusive relationship as adults seems normal to them. They are wracked by shame and are very lonely, because they think of themselves as being unworthy and incapable of having intimate relationships. The isolation and self-hatred that many sexual abuse victims suffer leads many of them to become depressed and suicidal (Hunter, 1990).

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Mariposa Men’s Wellness Institute was founded in 2001

to help men become emotionally healthy.