Half of men have had unwanted sexual experiences, UK study finds

Authored by theguardian.com and submitted by NightOwlsFire
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About half of men have had an unwanted or non-consensual sexual experience, research suggests, as a leading charity calls for more attention to be paid to sexual abuse survivors who identify as male.

Mankind UK said many men who had such experiences often felt unable to talk about them and often took decades to tell anyone what had happened to them.

“I didn’t want to believe that it had happened. I wanted to deny that it had happened,” said the playwright Patrick Sandford, who for a quarter of a century told no one about the abuse he suffered as a schoolboy.

Sandford told the Guardian he spent decades fearing being stigmatised if he spoke out. “There is this huge thing that if a man admits to having had some kind of sexual victimhood, that is seen as weak.”

He said he feared he would be labelled a potential abuser himself because of a myth that persists that many men who were abused as children go on to perpetuate that abuse.

According to the research, carried out for Mankind and seen by the Guardian, 9% of people identifying as men said they had been raped or assaulted by penetration, 14% had been coerced or pressured into sexual activity and 21% had taken part in sexual activity with an adult while under the legal age of consent. This was revealed in a poll of more than 1,000 people carried out by Savanta ComRes on the charity’s behalf.

Mankind said referrals had increased by 95% since this time last year. “Covid restrictions have meant that people can’t access their usual sources of support and are reaching out for help which local services currently don’t have the capacity to deliver,” the charity said.

The government is consulting on its strategy for dealing with violence against women and girls and Mankind has called for a national sexual crimes strategy that “takes a more inclusive approach to meeting the needs of all victims of unwanted sexual experiences”, its co-chief executive Lucy Hughes said.

Sandford, whose play Groomed is available to watch on Soho Theatre’s website, said he felt more attention and provision needed to be given to male survivors of sexual abuse, though he stressed that should not come at the expense of female survivors, who should also be given greater support.

“I’m not saying it’s worse for men. I’m just saying it’s different. And it’s not a competition. These figures are very shocking. But, if those figures were half as big, it’s still terrible. Any child or man being abused should not happen. And the same is true of women.”

Mankind plans to contribute to the government’s consultation process and hopes to secure funding to continue its research into the prevalence of sexual violence against males. It set up a website, 1in6.uk, in December 2020 to offer male survivors self-help resources and information, as well as a route to access further support. It encouraged anyone affected by the issue to visit the site.

Savanta ComRes interviewed 1,011 UK male adults aged 18 or older online from 5 to 7 February 2021. It said 1,174 men were asked if they were happy to answer the question, with 163 declining and the rest answering. The data was weighted to be representative of population by age, region and social grade.

Nir91 on February 16th, 2021 at 23:27 UTC »

I’m gay and I was raped about 10 years ago and was made to feel stupid and like I was wasting everyone’s time. I had been out with friends, had a few drinks and stupidly decided to pick up a drink that wasn’t mine and drink it. It was only a beer and I wasn’t too drunk up until this point, so I’m confident (but can never prove) I drank a spiked drink. I remember it was a beer that had been sat there for ages and I thought I might as well have it seeing as nobody seems to own it. The fact I can remember almost everything prior to drinking, but almost nothing afterwards, makes me feel there was definitely something in it. After that beer the entire night became a blur, I remember lurching around the place just being a total mess.

Somehow I ended up outside with some fat old guy in an orange t shirt standing over me (I was on my knees). I remember him orally raping me and stealing my phone, and then the next thing I remember is lurching (again) through traffic, crying my eyes out and screaming for help. Obviously it took a while for these memories to come back for me, at the time I had no idea where I was, what was happening, how I got from A > B > C... it was just like a slideshow of random events.

When I somehow made it home I told a friend what I remembered and they called the police. The police came and took my clothes as evidence, took a statement, but the entire time were extremely condescending, rude, and just made me feel like they wanted to be anywhere else. It’s all such a blur now but I distinctly remember being made to feel like ‘oh that’s just the gays being gay, typical sleazy gays’ etc. They then called me up not longer after to basically convince me not to pursue it any further. ‘Oh there’s no evidence, no CCTV, you can’t describe the attacker well enough, no witnesses, your story is unreliable, the details aren’t clear...’

I doubt much has changed since then.

IamCaptainHandsome on February 16th, 2021 at 21:21 UTC »

Former bartender here.

The amount of groping, unwanted advances and shame is staggering. You're made to feel bad if you're uncomfortable with it.

Hen (bachelorette) parties were the absolute fucking worst, whenever they'd come in was a guaranteed dumpster fire evening.

KaidsCousin on February 16th, 2021 at 19:25 UTC »

I’ve worn a kilt on a number of occasions, and there have been women who’ve attempted to lift it to see if I’m wearing nothing underneath. Not sure why they thought this was in any way appropriate. As I’m sure if I lifted the hem of their skirt to see what knickers - if any, they had on; would have been met with anything other than a slap or worse, arrested for sexual misconduct.