The Code of Silence

Over the last week, sexual violence in the military received much media attention. This partly came out of two people in charge of handling sexual assault investigations facing their own charges of sexual assault. It also came from President Obama speaking about the issue during a press conference.

Yet one aspect of this scandal remains unspoken: men make up the majority of the victims. Look at the coverage of this topic, and one sees numerous discussions about protecting women, but little mention of protecting men. One hears from women who survived assaults, but not from men. Yes, occasionally someone will remember that “men can be victims too.” Yet that afterthought does not linger long, and soon the conversation goes back to women.

This is not to say that women do not face legitimate risks. It is absurd to think that servicewomen in the field will refrain from eating and drinking at night so they will not need to use the latrine and risk assault. Yet it is equally absurd to think that the majority of the victims of these assaults would go unmentioned because they are male.

Nevertheless:

More military men than women are sexually abused in the ranks each year, a Pentagon survey shows, highlighting the underreporting of male-on-male assaults.

When the Defense Department released the results of its anonymous sexual abuse survey this month and concluded that 26,000 service members were victims in fiscal 2012, which ended Sept. 30, an automatic assumption was that most were women. But roughly 14,000 of the victims were male and 12,000 female, according to a scientific survey sample produced by the Pentagon.

The statistics show that, as Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel begins a campaign to stamp out “unwanted sexual contact,” there are two sets of victims that must be addressed.

“It appears that the DOD has serious problems with male-on-male sexual assaults that men are not reporting and the Pentagon doesn’t want to talk about,” Elaine Donnelly, who heads the Center for Military Readiness.

A Dose of Stupid v89

It happens every day. In fact, it is pretty hard to avoid it. There are some things that can only be understood with a slap on the forehead. Things so mind-boggling that one wonders how humans managed to evolve thumbs while being this mentally inept. Case in point:

This thing about male victims

What happens when one is a radical feminist and reads an article showing that men experience more domestic violence than one assumes? Does one challenge those radical feminist views? Does one rethink her understanding of domestic violence? Or does one try to disprove the statistics by playing semantics?

Karen Ingala Smith decided to go the latter route. She attempted to dismiss the finding of the British Crime Survey, a survey that showed a higher than expected rate of domestic violence against men. She got the ultimate smackdown from one of the professionals cited in the above article, but that did not deter Smith. She chose instead to list her problem with the notion that one in three domestic violence victims is male.

Let us break down her arguments point by point:

Bulletin Board v191

Boy Scouts agree to release ‘perversion files’ — The Boy Scouts of America said Thursday it will release to attorneys 10 years of confidential files it uses to keep pedophile suspects from becoming troop leaders or volunteers. The decision comes after the 4th Court of Appeals in San Antonio denied an appeal from the BSA to keep the files sealed. “Youth protection is of paramount importance to the Boy Scouts of America,” BSA spokesman Deron Smith said in an email. “We are thankful the court reviewed this matter and will comply with its order.”

Discrimination against men? — Recent Virgin airlines passenger, John McGirr claims Virgin airlines treated him like a sexual predator on a flight to Sydney. He claims a flight attendant asked him to move saying he was not allowed to sit next to children because he was male. According to Mr McGirr the flight attendant walked up the aisle and tried to find a female to swap seats with him. “By that time, people had looked around and it was like I’d done something wrong, (I felt) defenceless.

Ex-Scout leader admits sexual abuse of boys — Henry Calder, 60, who had been in a position of responsibility in the Scout Association for about 40 years, had taken videos between 1982 and 1991 at camps organised by the movement. He had also been an employee in the finance department at East Dunbartonshire Council until his retirement in 2010. Calder, of Kirkintilloch, was arrested in a raid organised under the auspices of Operation Alba, which targeted people who downloaded child pornography on the internet.

You’re Not Helping v.16

Here is a thought: if you present the concept of “Ask the Feminist” and someone asks said feminist a question, it would make more sense to actually post the person’s question than leave it sitting in moderation.

I do understand that The Good Men Project is a feminist space only interested in non-critical, positive discussions about feminism and feminist theories about masculinity. That will naturally preclude non-feminists from the discussion. However, most men are not feminists. If one wishes to have an open discussion about men and masculinity, one needs to include non-feminist voices.

I do not follow GMP enough to know exactly what goes on there, so I had no idea that GMP started an “Ask the Feminist” thread in which people could pose questions to HeatherN and she would answer them. I happened upon the second set of answers through a Google Alert. I skimmed the original post, but read the comments. There was an exchange between Mike L and Heather that caught my attention:

#killallmen

When feminists ask why people think they hate all men, one need only point them to the recent Twitter hashtag #killallmen.

None of the tweets surprise me. Many feminists have a long history of making nasty, hate-filled comments without any prompt. Just ask the red head from the Toronto men’s rights event.

Likewise, I am not surprised by feminists supporting, excusing, and minimizing the hashtag. After all, this is same mentality that prompted scores of feminists to spend hours flaming the #INeedMasculismBecause hashtag.

The hastag simply shows what many people have seen before: plenty of feminists harbor a deep hatred of men, and despite frequent feminist protests to the contrary, it appears many feminists either turn a blind eye to it or tacitly support it.

Certainly all feminists do not think that way, yet after the hashtag trending, I could not find much feminist criticism of it, despite that so many of them supported it.

Here is a thought: if after fifty years in the mainstream people still think your movement hates another group of people, it is time to consider the very real probability that they are right. That is the only way to explain how a hastag like #killallmen could trend for so long and yet no feminists seems to acknowledge it even happened.

Bulletin Board v190

Boy reveals parental abuse via Facebook — “Hi, my name is S. and I am 14. Since I was 8, my parents beat me regularly. Whenever there was a family argument that I was not connected to and I made eye-contact with my father, he would get angry and punch me hard, sometimes with a belt.” This post, published Friday night by a 14-year-old-boy from Haifa on the police’s Facebook page, raised suspicions of harsh abuse and led to a police investigation and the subsequent arrest of the child’s parents.

Experts see increase in male sexual assault awareness — A California man who, as a child, was sexually molested by his mother, said the trauma he endured has stayed with him well into his adult life and affected his ability to comprehend his emotions and be intimate with women. The 50-year-old, who asked to remain anonymous, said he only came to the realization that his mother’s behavior was inappropriate with him as a boy, within the last few years. “I still battle with a voice that says I’m a baby,” he said, adding that coping is a continuous struggle.

Female rapists abuse soldier for 4 days — A 25-YEAR-OLD soldier was allegedly kidnapped and detained for four days by suspected female rapists, who are said to have sexually abused him several times before releasing him early this week. Police in Mutare have confirmed the incident, saying they were hunting for the suspected culprits. Manicaland assistant police spokesperson Assistant Inspector Muzondiwa Clean told NewsDay yesterday that on April 19 around midnight at Birchenough Bridge business centre, the unsuspecting soldier boarded the women’s vehicle on his way to Mutare.

The Earl Silverman Center

In light of Earl Silverman’s suicide, I thought it was important to make sure some good comes out of it. Kristina Hansen has started the Earl Silverman Center. The goal is to provide support for male victims of domestic violence. The Center is accepting donations:

Men make up almost 50% of all domestic violence victims yet there is not one domestic violence shelter for men in Canada.

Earl Silverman was the first to open a mens shelter for men who had been domestically abused in Calgary, Alberta. The Men’s Alternative Safe house, otherwise known as MASH4077, had never been granted any government funding, even after numerous attempts by Earl to file for funding, because the government refused to recognize that there was a need for such a shelter.

Earl decided to fund MASH4077 by himself with his own finances, as well as meager private donations. He worked on the MASH4077 project from 2003 and ran the shelter for 3 years out of his own home with private rooms and beds which accommodated the men who sought refuge from domestic violence.

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Our first goal is to raise $5000.00 which we will use in order to file for non-profit status, set up a temporary head office, printing materials and other promotional items, and for locating an appropriate property for the center.

We need your help to make Earls dream a reality and to honor his memory. Men need your help so that they can finally get the help they so desperately need.

Please donate if you have the extra money. Also, please spread the word about the Earl Silverman Center.