According to the FBI’s definition, female bodies can be raped, but male bodies cannot. Here, sexual consent is defined not only by a person’s will, but by their physical attributes. According to the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting system, forcible rape is “the carnal knowledge of a female forcibly and against her will.” To the FBI, the carnal knowledge of a male forcibly and against his will is considered a different (and lesser) crime: “assault.” The idea that rape is classified based on body parts isn’t just a cultural thing it’s a criminal thing, too.
Because what really seems to be at issue here isn’t just anything that falls under the heading of sex, it’s really more what falls under the heading of “penetration.”īecause I’d bet those same (straight) men who have a hard time seeing/admitting a big problem with them being drunkenly led into having obligation/consequence-free sex would probably immediately see the situation very differently if the “sex” turned out to have involved them being on the penetrated end of a sex act (whether with a woman or a man). To get into even more touchy territory, maybe the word “sex” isn’t specific enough. Commenter Drew noted another cultural barrier to male victims of sexual assault-our tendency to conflate sexual violation with penetration.
Men, according to the Gender Police, are seen as unrapeable-they are constantly expected to pursue sex, and are therefore impossible to violate. In today’s Sexist Beatdown, we discussed the reluctance to accept men as victims of sexual assault.