The Houston Chronicle’s coverage of an East Harris County serial rapist / robber who targets young men included some interesting, and (to me) surprising information:
About 3 percent of American men have been victims of sexual assault or an attempted sexual assault, according to a 1998 study cited on the National Sexual Assault Hotline Web site. One in 10 rape victims are male, according to the Web site, citing the National Crime Victimization study of 2003.
Many studies say the number of male rape victims is probably widely underreported.
The publicity of the Catholic church’s priestly problems notwithstanding, I’m not even slightly surprised that male rapes are underreported; female sexual assault reporting is low, too. There’s a great deal of embarrassing stigma and social judgment involved, and it’s likely worse for males.
However, a related follow-up article by another Chronicle reporter brought out a much different aspect of this: sex crimes against underage males, by women.
“The general public still does not let boys be victims like they do girls,” said Hobbs, a 23-year veteran of the department. “And I don’t think they hold the offenders as accountable when the offender is a female.”
“A lot of times, it’s their parents that come forward, and, a lot of times, the males are very upset about that,” Lilly said. “(For) 15-, 16-year-old males, that female is a trophy. To them, that is lifelong bragging rights.”
Counselors say societal pressure can keep boys from expressing discomfort. Many times, they may have crushes on an older teacher or neighbor but aren’t ready for the adult sexual relationship that follows, counselors say. It’s only later that they realize the adverse effects.
Shades of Summer of ’42? You bet it is. From Wikipedia:
Summer of ’42 is a 1971 American “coming-of-age” motion picture drama based on the memoirs of screenwriter Herman Raucher. It tells the story of him as a boy in his early teens on his 1942 summer vacation at Nantucket Island on the coast of New England, where he embarked on an ill-fated, one-sided romance with a woman whose husband had gone off to fight in World War II.
Teenage boys are notoriously hyper-focused on “scoring” a trophy, and locker-room bragging rights (very often fantasy), are a boy to man “thing” that didn’t surface recently. Rather, they stem from yet another sociobiological construct: “good girls” are expected to be pure and virginal, but the “real men” who marry them should have experience. (Yes, that’s a generalized simplification, and I’m skating right over the biological freedom boys have to “fool around”; the ability to conceive children has a massive impact on all of this.)
However, in light of recent discussions about the Age of Consent, and my own temporal distance from teenage years, I have a couple of questions / discussion points for you:
— Why does society still have a different standard or expectation for teenage boys than girls? Or do they? Given the “rites of passage”, “bragging rights”, and “trophies” that abound in a pubescent boys’ world, I’m having trouble seeing this any other way — and I’m very uncomfortable with it. Then again, I always have been.
— Should boys and girls have a different age of consent? If not, why not?
My two bits: We often hear about the psychopath whose twisted relationship with his mother sent him over the deep end. They generate enormous publicity, but they’re actually extremely rare.
On the other hand, the social pressure on boys to attain and demonstrate sexual prowess is very common. I believe it underlies much of how men view women later, and I don’t think the age of that first “trophy” matters as much as does the desire to possess it.
Furthermore, there’s a related dissonance for girls. In these modern times, they are not only held to a much different standard (imho), they’re under increasingly irreconcileable pressure. Maturing earlier, and exposed to sexuality on all sides, they must try to resolve the conflicting demands of biology, conservative social pressure, and their own male counterparts — an impossible situation.
No solutions here — just lots of questions.