Daily Times

Years ago, at my workplace, I knew a ‘tea-boy’, no more than 18 or 19 years old, who looked timid, and at times, traumatised. His immediate boss had been intimidating him for years, and often, he was seen physically beating him, but this boy wouldn’t complain. He looked very embarrassed when I once discovered him crying in a corner. When asked about his boss’ aggressive behaviour towards him, he brushed it off, feeling, perhaps, too humiliated to talk about it, especially with a woman.

Occurrence of rape among males is not surprising. The intensity of abuse for males, is perhaps a lot different than what women have to bear because of strong social values, where a male is not be viewed in an intimidated position. Moreover, males are, in some situations, more easily susceptible to sexual abuse for their lifestyles and vulnerability to aggression.

A classic definition of rape in legal terms is something that happens when actual penetration takes place without the will of the person, and that leaves males completely out of its context. Under the clause 375 of the Pakistan Penal Code, the legal definition of rape pertains to women, and if there is something where males can find redress of their grievance, it comes under the offence of unnatural act clause (376A, Pakistan Penal Code), but so far, there is no reported incident when it has been evoked.

Boys are most common victims in cases of male rape. Needless to say that despite the prevalent incidents of sexual abuse of children, there is no proper mechanism for implementing existing laws in Pakistan meant to protect children from abuse. The culture of ‘bacha baazi’ (sex with children) is very common in some northern areas of Pakistan, especially in some parts of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, but despite the authorities aware of the phenomenon, no serious action had ever been taken against perpetrators, and no precedent has been set to stop this sickening practice. What’s worse, pedophilia as an act is considered a social and cultural norm in some parts of Pakistan.

Instances of male rape occur mostly in homosexual relationships, but because of the criminalisation of homosexual acts — which is liable to punishment of mimimum two years — there is no acknowledgement to differentiate willful relations from coerced relations among men. This in itself is troublesome because no male would come forward with complaint of rape committed by other men for the humiliation of his involvement in an ‘unnatural act’.

Male-on-male rapes are not unheard of; it is not just children who are subjected to abuse, as adults are also vulnerable to sexual abuse. They are more vulnerable in prisons, or when they are involved in illicit vocations like drug dealing and prostitution. They also become easy targets of abuse when caught up in war conflicts, or other instances of distress where they are helpless to defend themselves against their aggressive perpetrators. The abusers are not necessarily only men, as in some instances women too have been involved in such acts. In 2009, three women kidnapped and allegedly sexually assaulted a man in Karachi, who registered a case against his unidentified perpetrators. The incident became a matter of ridicule in media; jokes were made against the victim and the incident was instantly downgraded because for a Pakistani society such a case was the first of its kind where the perpetrators were women.

As per age-old conventions, women are the ones to be sexually subjugated, and not the other way around. While the seriousness of the case had been seriously undermined, the fact that sexual assault is primarily all about power and not just lust remains unaddressed. If one has to understand the dynamics of female-on-male rape, the victims of Abu Gharib prison in Iraq by the marines, both men and women, should be taken into consideration, and that is just one of the many problems one sees during military aggression. Where there is prevailing male dominance, misandrist tendencies are also found in women. Many blame feminism for such violations, while not understanding that the struggle for equal rights for women is not about women having superiority over men, or hating men for that matter. However, misandry is not an integrated social trend as misogyny is, but that does not mean that anyone has the right to aggressively show their dominance over others.

It was only about 30 years ago that statistics of male rape victims began to be recorded, highlighting how neglected the subject of male rapes have remained, and in some countries, there is no recognition of such crimes taking place. Rape, of either male or female, has a direct relationship with the societal expectations of gender, and a victim becomes more vulnerable if he/she is unable to speak about it due to social restrictions. Patriarchy bases its premise on male superiority in a society, and anything that undermines the position of man is ostensibly demeaned. This is one such reason why male victims of sexual abuse do not come forward because of the ‘shame’ that is associated with it. This is different from the case of female victims in which they are threatened of dire consequences if they broke their silence about the abuse, whereas in case of men, the complaint is out rightly denied even if they do come forward to speak up about it.

Reporting rape in itself should be seen in its objectivity of a crime. Ideally, the rape law should not be contingent upon specific gender or age of the victims when the gravity of the act is to be determined. However, the dilemma remains whether excluding specification of gender from rape definitions could, in any way, undermine the rights of women in a society that is already misogynist in character. The question here is not about comparing the impact of sexual violence on men, women and children; it is about the trauma each victim has to go through. The suicide rates among men is higher because instead of acknowledging them as human beings who too can get hurt like women do, society insults and humiliates them when they fail to live up to its patriarchal expectations of ‘manhood’.

The writer is a freelance columnist and can be contacted at zeeba.hashmi@gmail.com or on twitter @zeeahashmi”