Hurt twice: Society questions validity of male sex assault, domestic violence victims

Submitted by Mastodon on Sun, 2015-03-08 23:20

Article here. Excerpt:

'What made the Abigail Simon case stand out was not only the teen-tutor relationship, or that the victim was a boy, but how people reacted to it.

It was online wildfire. Social media was abuzz with locker-room banter about the boy. Some said the relationship should have been the teen's biggest fantasy. Others suggested it wasn't a real crime. The teen wanted it, they insisted.

"He's a boy. Why would you open up this can of worms?" people asked the teen's mother, who brought the allegations to the school and police.

Simon in January was sentenced to eight to 25 years in prison for three counts of first-degree criminal sexual conduct. Sixteen is the age of sexual consent and Michigan law prohibits school employees from engaging in sexual activity with students under age 18.

Now that the trial is behind them, the teen's mother says if the case had involved a female victim, it would have elicited a different response from the community.'

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Comments

This is a well-written article on the subject. Not surprisingly, many of the commenters think a woman being sexual with an underage male is okay. People claim men feel "entitled" to sex. In fact, it's typically the other way around: women believe they are entitled to sex because everyone tells them the boy is "lucky" to have sex with her.

As to DV, someone in the article states:

""There's something about victimization that causes a man to feel weak and unmanly and experience shame," Flood said... "For male victims of domestic violence, they may question their own manhood."

That's true (to a degree) but let's remember the rest of it: a man who is battered is often arrested, especially if he defended himself. Once a man defends himself, he becomes the villain and likely to be arrested. In short, male shame may be involved, but there are also practical legal consequences for reporting abuse.

The writer discusses these consequences later in the article.

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Submitted by el cid on Thu, 2015-03-12 18:26