I’m a cishet white male feminist and proud ally… And it took me years to process my own sexual assault as an assault. I was supposed to be happy that it happened and I got to fuck a pretty girl, right? So my confusing feelings about it must have been stupid and out of place, even though I was drunk and having an emotional breakdown when it happened. Even later on, I considered it a “bad decision” until a woman I was with challenged me to reverse the genders. She said something like “Imagine I’m drunk, having an emotional breakdown, abandoned by my friends and end up at the apartment of a man I barely know because they left without me and no one made sure I got home OK. This man starts kissing me, undresses me, lays me in his bed, starts going down on me and then puts his penis in me… with NO protection or discussion. He never asks if I’m OK with it, never asks if I want to, he just does this to me. What just happened to me??” And I was like “Oh yeah! That IS what happened to me!”

But NOW I frame it as a way toxic masculinity / patriarchy is bad /harmful to men and when I frame it that way I get ZERO hate. Toxic masculinity told me I was supposed to want that to happen to me, supposed to brag about it to my friends, supposed to collect the memory as a notch on my belt. The patriarchy told me it was my right and privilege to have a woman fuck me and take care of me like that. Toxic masculinity also told HER her behaviour was OK, that OBVIOUSLY a man would be into it, that I was getting lucky and I should be happy and excited a hot girl like her would want to do that to me. I forgave her easily, because I’m SURE she didn’t process it as SA either… for the same bullshit cultural reasons.

Male SA survivors get hate because they they get pedestalized and used by MRA assholes as reasons to “bhut whut about…” at feminism. And THAT is unfortunately real. I don’t think people hate Male SA survivors, I think they hate MRA bullshit and with good reason.