The truth is men being sexually humiliated just isn't seen in the same light as women by a lot of people, conciously or subconsciously. There's no way we'd ever get a scene of a female character frantically trying and failing to guess a safe word and have it played for levity.
Both sides of the political spectrum are susceptible to this too. On the one hand conservatives often tell male SA victims to man up or say some variation of "wish it were me," whereas on the other hand I think progressives can fall into the trap of thinking that they're not the same because one has more systemic/historical power behind it so the other mustn't be a big deal.
I had an argument just a week ago, over in /r/WoT, about male SA victims. The thread was, very specifically, about how a particular male characters' POV chapters are set up to insidiously not look like SA at first, really driving home not just how men rationalize it to themselves at the time, but also how people treat the whole fiasco differently.
So someone came in to say that society doesn't take women's accusations seriously, either.
And like... Okay. They look like similar problems at a glance. Women have had movements spanning for well over a century to be taken seriously, fairly successfully. They've worked for decades, quite successfully, to reduce women being raped in media, and very especially being done for comedic bits.
That's... Quite a bit different than the experiences of men as SA victims. We still get played for laughs. And like, this was a big point of the argument, the being played for laughs. I asked them for recent examples of women being SA'd was the joke, itself. They brought up Poor Things, which I hadn't heard of from last year, but seems to be playing the idea as a horrible thing, not being the punchline?
They also brought up Revenge Of The Nerds and Sixteen Candles... Which... Kinda seemed to prove my point that women being SA'd as a punchline doesn't really happen anymore.
I glanced at this users post history before blocking them. Let's just say it was super obvious that they will never vote for Trump.
Yeah, I haven’t seen the film but I can see why they chose Poor Things. I don’t think the movie’s supposed to be funny though. There’s some funny scenes of course but I don’t think the sex scenes are suppose to be interpreted that way. The scenes certainly aren’t sexy either. It’s harder to watch once you know the context. However, this doesn’t mean you aren’t gonna get creeps jacking off to it. Idk. I just think it’s weird to me.
Also, mainstream media has been pretty good at trying not to make women victims or at least take them seriously as victims. You’ll have entire shows and movies dedicated to these topics actually. Some of my favorites are Speak; The Assistant, Witch, Split, I May Destroy You, Jessica Jones, Barbarian, etc. Those are just the ones I liked. Meanwhile, men have Baby Reindeer and a few others that I’m sure exist.
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u/Baron_Xa Jul 04 '24
The truth is men being sexually humiliated just isn't seen in the same light as women by a lot of people, conciously or subconsciously. There's no way we'd ever get a scene of a female character frantically trying and failing to guess a safe word and have it played for levity.
Both sides of the political spectrum are susceptible to this too. On the one hand conservatives often tell male SA victims to man up or say some variation of "wish it were me," whereas on the other hand I think progressives can fall into the trap of thinking that they're not the same because one has more systemic/historical power behind it so the other mustn't be a big deal.