The U.S. Justice Department says one in every 10 rape victims is male. According to a national study, about three percent of American men (2.78 million) have been the victim of an attempted or completed rape. Around 60 percent of these men identify as gay or bisexual.
Despite the sobering figures, the Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network says male victims are less likely to file a crime report. Much of this has to do with the myths attached to male-on-male rape.
These fictions are commonly used to re-assign blame (getting an erection proves a man wants it), downplay the crime’s severity (it’s not as bad for a man as it is for a woman) and outright deny the existence of male same-sex rape.
For instance, North Carolina law does not recognize that a man can rape another man. Therefore, when both parties are male, cases that would be considered rapes elsewhere are prosecuted as sexual assaults in North Carolina. When they are prosecuted, that is.
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