Tuesday, April 14, 2009

When A Man is the Victim...

In part procrastination of my own essay-writing but also because this is important to consider and also extremely thoughtfully written, I'm directing everyone to this post about the interlockings of race and gender and other sociological factors in considering sexual violence and rape in general as well as sexual violence against men when it perpetrated by women. It is taken from Racialicious, and was originally posted at the Curvature. I can only hope to write as intellegently and accessibly about such an important issue as Cara does here:

When A Man is the Victim

I never liked that movie 40 Nights (or whatever it was called) with Josh Hartnett because it pretty much played off a rape scene between his character and his ex-girlfriend as something that was supposed to be funny, as well as something that damaged his current relationship with Shannon Sossoman's character not because he was raped by his ex, but rather because it was constitued as him cheatingon his new girlfriend. I read no reviews that brought this up even when they shot down the film, and I only had ONE conversation with someone who also saw this as rape. So I think this article is important, as it rightly points to masculinized norms of sexuality and assault in the downplaying of sexual assault (whether cross-gender or same-sex) towards men, an issue of gender, that crosses race, the normalizations of sexuality and violence and other sociological factors, that feminists and anyone concerned about social justice should think about.

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