Something that I posted on facebook about 10 minutes ago. A major problem that our society has is that it un-shamefully feeds into outdated notions of victimhood, especially pertaining to men who have been subjected to sexual assault. There exists an unspoken of subsection of American -blam!- culture, which is the idea that men are incapable of being -blam!-, especially by women. This stems from the incorrect stereotype that all men are creatures that are perpetually frustrated sexually, and thus willing to have sex with just about anything with a vagina. While men certainly have a higher sex drive than women, a great deal of it derives from patriarchial double-standards that allow for men to be more frank about their sexual desires. Look at this way, men who have lots of sex (like Barney from How I Met Your Mother) are viewed as studs, whereas women that have lots of sex are viewed as sluts. Males are more open about their sexual desires not just because they are inherently more sexually driven than women, but because our society allows them to be open with little negative effects to their social lives. Furthermore, men have historically been viewed as being stronger than woman. Not just in a physical sense, but also psychologically as well. Our society, in my opinion, has always connected physical strength to mental robustness. We don't think of big, tough men as sitting at home with a box of tissues, crying pitifully at some pathetic Lifetime movie. We view them as manly dudes that beat the hell out of bad guys. Culturally, we view men as the primary protectors of our society. -blam!- is a crime that is deeply rooted in power psychology. Most of the time, rapists don't commit -blam!- because of sex, they do it to assert their dominance. As a society, if we admit that men can be -blam!-, then we are also admitting that the gender traditionally charged with protecting our country is no longer capable of do that. It creates a certain fracture within the foundation of our national security establishment. Now, is this silly? Yes, of course it is. Admitting that men are vulnerable to -blam!- shouldn't make us insecure, yet it does. According to the Canadian Children's Rights Council, 86% of victims that are abused by women are not believed. Most of the time, their cases are thrown to gutter, and their cases never make it trial. And this doesn't even take into consideration all the males who fail to report their crimes due to embarrassment. Now, while this study is indicative of the Canadian justice system, I cannot imagine that America is any better. Our society consistently trivializes male victims of -blam!-. I'm sure many people have watched the movie 'Bad Bosses'. In the movie, Vince Vaughn is repeatedly harassed by his boss. The reaction of his friends in the movie? Laughter. The reaction of the audience when he was -blam!-? Even more laughter. While are society is bad about dealing with -blam!- in almost all cases, can you really imagine a situation where people would laugh at a movie making jokes about a girl being -blam!-? Another example, people constantly make jokes about -blam!- in prisons, which results in an apathetic culture to an extremely serious issue. How about Law & Order: SVU, which has never had an episode on female on male -blam!-. For a show that has done so much to bring to light issues of sexual assault, it has further ingrained into our minds the males are never the victims of -blam!-. In any event, I don't intend for this post to be super long, just a little PSA to remind people that -blam!- is an issue that needs to be taken care of in our country. Thanks for reading.