Man, I feel like a woman...

MRAs (Men's Rights Assholes) often attempt to denounce any and all feminist claims.  They insist that men have it just as bad, if not worse, than women do.  Men, they would have us believe, are falling victim to a "politically correct" culture that ignores a man's right to insist a woman carry "his child" to term (meaning, control her body); a world that shuns men to the side while giving women better jobs (meaning, actually might treat women as close to equals in the workplace); a world that attacks his freedom of speech in exchange for her comfort (meaning, he cannot verbally assault her); and so on.  One of their common claims MRAs make is that, perhaps, men are as likely, if not more likely, to be victims of sexual assault.  This, of course, is a daunting claim.  It's well known that 20-25% of women will be the victims of sexual assault, and in some demographic categories, Native American women for example, that number may spike even higher.  Therefore, the claim that men are as likely, or even more likely, to be such victims is often shrugged off with easy disregard.

This claim, though, is more complex than that.  And, like when debunking any claim by reactionaries, we should take it seriously.  In this case, the claim is not so much "literally false" as "misleading."  More men than women are raped in the United States of America when one includes incidences of rape in America's prison system.  Arguably, America may have more people in prison than any society or government in the history of humanity (it has surpassed the Gulag's of Russia), and certainly has more than any other nation on earth currently.  Furthermore, a vast majority of these prisoners are men (over 93%).  And, finally, it is no great secret that sexual assault, including rape, is a major problem in these institutions.  The effect of this is that when we include prison rape in the statistics, more men are raped in America than women.

Do I wish to discount this?  Not exactly.  The rapes and other atrocities that take place in prisons (not to mention the atrocity that is the very existence of prisons) are, without a doubt, traumatic to the survivors.  I feel certain that a man raped in a prison feels comparable trauma, fear, insecurity, and so on to that which women feel when assaulted.  I am sure that men in prison, who fear being raped, knowing it's so common, walk out of their cells in fear; that they may eye up fellow prisoners wondering if this is someone who may attack them in such a way.  In fact, this is one of men in America's most significant fears about going to prison.  We often see this represented (sometimes comedically) in television shows and movies with references to "dropping the soap."

And this is the point I really want to make here.  This statistic may be accurate, but here's what it really means: in order for men to feel what women feel every day for the simple act of leaving their homes and going to work, school, or just for a walk or a bike ride, men have to be accused, tried, and convicted of a crime.  Only then, and only in that setting, do men have the possibility of possibly experiencing what women experience everyday simply by existing in patriarchal society.  So no, I do not want to minimize the significance of America's prison rape epidemic.  It's horrific, it's shameful for the nation, and it must be stopped; no one deserves to be raped, no matter what crime they have committed.  But we mustn't claim that this makes the experience of sexual assault for men on the whole comparable to that of women, and the statistic should not be presented without qualification.  For the average cis-man, walking out his front door in the morning is a safe act.  He is unlikely to be sexually assaulted in any way, unlikely to be sexually harassed, and so on.  Only under the very unique condition of being placed in prison in the good ol' USofA does he have a chance of feeling what women feel, fearing what women fear, and experiencing what women experience.  And this does make it different, because eventually that man may leave prison, but women cannot escape patriarchy in this society.  Most imprisoned men can feel confident that they may someday escape the institution in which they are likely to fear rape (which is not to say that the trauma will not persist beyond the walls of the prison); but patriarchy and misogyny are institutions that exist as part of the very basis of this society, and are inescapable without changing society itself.  One cannot simply walk out their doors one day, traumatized but free.

So are more men raped than women?  Perhaps, technically, yes.  But while these incidences may be comparable for the individual (she and he may feel similar trauma afterwards), they are not comparable societally because of their very different context.  Men do not exist everyday for their entire lives in rape culture, their bodies treated as the objects of male gaze and fascination; as the property of men.  It may be the case that in American prisons men experience some of this, something that no one should have to experience ever, but the fact that men have to be placed in a prison to even have that possibility is incredibly telling.  So the next time an MRA brings something like this up, don't just shrug it off, prove it wrong and/or emphasize the context.