Talking About Male Rape
In his new book, “On
Being Raped,” Raymond M. Douglas, a professor of history at Colgate
University, writes publicly for the first time about being brutally
beaten and raped at the age of 18 by a familiar parish priest. The
assault transformed and shaped his life. More than 30 years later, the
trauma of the four-hour-long assault continues to have repercussions,
and Dr. Douglas argues persuasively that rape is an experience that one
can never really relegate to one’s past. Rape, he says, “is always now.”
I recently spoke with
Dr. Douglas about his decision to break his decades-long silence about
the assault, why he prefers the word “victim” to “survivor” when talking
about sexual violence, and his hope of initiating a broader public
conversation about sexual assaults on men and boys. Here’s an edited
excerpt of our conversation.
Q.
You’ve avoided discussing the assault for more than three decades. Why are you breaking your silence now?
A.
There wasn’t a
specific trigger, but advancing age may have had something to do with
it. I have been aware for many years that little has changed for men
since the time of my attack. I am familiar with the women’s anti-rape
movement in the late 1960s and early ’70s, and it was clear to me that
what moved the needle of public perception about rape at that time was
the willingness of victims to speak publicly under their own names about
their experiences. In my mother’s time, rape was very much the “Great
Unspeakable” for women. What changed that was people coming out and
challenging the depictions of their experience. I didn’t see things
changing for men unless they started doing the same thing.
Q.
Talking about the
assault was so traumatic for you that you confided in very few people,
and did not even tell your wife, whom you met many years after the
assault. How did you prepare her for the book?
A.
We did have a
conversation, and I did disclose to her. It didn’t come as a massive
surprise to her, oddly enough. She said that she had suspected something
of the kind for quite a few years, though she always assumed that it
had been something that had happened to me in childhood, rather than
early adulthood. That took her aback to a degree.
Q.
After the assault, you
found out that there had been rumors about this priest for years and
that there had been jokes about him having sexually assaulted other
young men. Was his behavior an open secret?
A.
It certainly wasn’t
[an open secret] to me. My friends knew him as a certain kind of, shall
we say, boundary pusher. I don’t think they had the faintest idea just
how dangerous he was. But I found out — and I was neither the first nor
the last of his victims — that it went further than that. You need to
remember the time and the place this occurred, and especially the time.
It was a period where priests were quite literally gods anointed. They
were the moral exemplars, the arbiters of good and evil, of what is
acceptable conduct and what is not. They were not used to being
contradicted and those who did challenge them were not supported –
especially if you were an 18-year-old kid just out of school.
Q.
One of the most
powerful messages of the book is that the trauma of being raped never
goes away. Why do you think this is the case?
A.
In my opinion the real
damage, the lasting damage, isn’t done by the episode as much as by the
aftermath. Humans encounter trauma not infrequently. What’s different
about sexual trauma is the type of social response one encounters from
both sexes. I’ve spoken to people who have managed quite successfully to
get over what were objectively pretty ghastly episodes of sexual
victimization — much, much worse than anything I experienced. The common
factor I’ve seen in those circumstances is that you find appropriate
reactions on the part of others in the victim’s circle.
When you experience
something as a big deal, and everybody else around you asserts with
great certainty that no, it isn’t, or worse, that it isn’t even a thing,
then trying to bridge that conceptual gap is likely to exacerbate
difficulties with adjustment.
When you’re
encountering denial, impatience, dismissal, contempt – which of course
is something common to victims of both sexes – or when there is not even
a vocabulary with which to describe the events to oneself, much less to
others, the difficulties are increased exponentially.
Q.
In the book you tell
us that you still have an aversion to being touched without permission
and would prefer to sleep with the lights on. You say there is
occasionally a “third person” in the room with you and your wife. Is
your response typical?
A.
People respond to
things like this in different ways. Some engage in a great deal of
sexual activity, often risky sexual activity which can frequently lead
to re-victimization. Another common way out is to withdraw into oneself.
This was, as you know, my first sexual experience. It wasn’t of the
nature to make me look forward to the next one with keen anticipation.
Q.
You talk about language a lot in this book, and say you prefer the word “victim” to “survivor.” Can you explain that?
A.
I strongly believe
people should be able to call themselves whatever they like. But just as
there are problematic overtones bound up with the word “victim,” it
seems to me that there are problematic elements with the term
“survivor.” It takes for granted something that requires demonstration.
For both men and women, the suicide rate is increased very dramatically
when people have undergone experiences of this kind. One can never be
entirely sure that one has survived. I think most people who have had
experiences like this would agree that years and decades afterward it
still has the capacity to surprise them.
Our notion of trauma
is a linear sort of notion: a bad experience, followed by a crisis,
followed by re-normalization when you put it behind you, as the saying
goes. I think most specialists would tell you that’s not really how it
works in real life. Sometimes people are fine in the immediate aftermath
and only have difficulties afterward. A lot of people have problems
when they have children of their own, or when those children reach the
age that they were when they were assaulted. Sometimes they get over
some aspects of the experience and not others. I don’t think it’s ever
safe to say one is ever completely past this kind of thing.
Q.
You say that you have
maintained your Catholic faith, but have lost your trust in the
leadership of the church, which never took action against your
assailant. Is it difficult to walk this fine line?
A.
It’s very difficult,
and that is reinforced every time I go to Mass on Sunday. The record of
the church on this question is atrociously bad. It’s not on the radar
screens of any of the major Christian denominations. This is something
that we have a duty to do for our brothers and sisters, against whom we
are sinning by omission as well as by commission.
Q.
Has any progress been made since your assault?
A.
At the time the very
existence of male rape outside correctional institutions was largely and
explicitly denied. This was a huge stumbling block for me at the time. I
was assured that what I had experienced did not in fact happen.
Q.
You say your book is a first step to drawing attention to male-on-male rape. What must come next?
A.
I think we’re doing an
abominable job of listening to men and boys who have been raped. When
we notice their existence at all — which is a rare thing — we’re
extremely prone to talk over them and to redefine their experience for
them. We need more research that’s victim-centered. Our current
understanding of what that experience involves is obtained from the
crudest possible stereotypes, principally Hollywood films like
“Deliverance” or “The Shawshank Redemption.” It’s not merely because men
and boys are not speaking about it. The question worth asking is: What
needs to be done that would make them feel safe in disclosing their
experience?
Second, we need
somewhere for men and boys to go when this has happened to them. We
don’t have that. If one of my female students came to me on a Monday
morning and said that something terrible happened last Saturday night, I
have a good idea where to send her for support. If one of my male
students came to me, I haven’t a bloody clue where to send him.
Third, we need an
integrated approach to the whole problem of sexual violence. Right now
there are numerous bodies and agencies and victims’ groups, each with
its own particular mission, but in my view this situation is not
advantageous to anybody.
We can talk about the
gendered aspects certainly, but in my view, the fight against sexual
violence in all its aspects is a single fight that ought to unite people
of all genders and sexual orientations. The basic elements are
fundamentally the same.