Challengers of manliness

“The men who break the silence about the abuse they have experienced are pioneers. Sociologist Aaron Antonovsky would have called them ‘positive deviants’. And the first step in moving forward is to begin to talk about it,” says Andersen.

The message of breaking the silence and giving voice to their experiences runs like a mantra through Andersen’s doctoral dissertation entitled Sårbar og sterk. Menn som har vært utsatt for seksuelle overgrep i oppveksten (“Vulnerable and strong: Men who were sexually abused during childhood”).

Andersen interviewed a total of 15 men who were recruited through newspaper advertisements and posters at incest centres. All the men, ranging in age from 24 to 65, had been sexually abused by male perpetrators when they were young.

Structural abuse

The main conclusion of the dissertation is that the traditional view of manliness in itself functions as structural abuse. This view prevents us from acknowledging that men can in fact be victims of sexual abuse. In turn, this makes it possible for abuse to occur as well as impedes the disclosure of such incidents and hinders the male victims from seeking help, according to Andersen.

“In my research I have chosen to focus on men who have been abused. I believe that the basic, underlying factor that allows abuse to occur is first and foremost power, not gender. In our society women have less power than men and for this reason they are more vulnerable than men to abuse. But by the same token, we know that women can also be perpetrators and that men can be victims, and then the traditional narratives about men and women become problematic.”

Andersen therefore recommends that in the long run we try to arrive at an understanding of abuse as primarily a human rather than a gendered experience, closer to a shared narrative.

“Instead of fighting about who is the victim we should join forces and combat assault, women and men alike.”

Unspoken topic

The researcher and family therapist says he often is met with an uneasy silence when he tells others about his work.

“The passive resistance to talking about the fact that men can also be sexually abused is probably what has surprised me the most in my work. As a result, I understand more and more why victims of abuse remain silent.”

At the heart of this silence lies an understanding of gender in which women are the victims and men are the perpetrators. Men cannot be raped, can they? And if they are raped, are they still men?

“Victor J. Seidler, a researcher in men’s studies, says that if we truly acknowledge these narratives about abuse, we will be forced to expand our own categories. In this case we are talking about gender categories which, in my opinion, we should have discarded a long time ago anyway. This is what makes this topic so threatening. And women are very much a part of maintaining this picture. It is not the men who are sitting and planning what it means to be a man, and then going out and proclaiming it. The construction of manliness is a relational project, between women and men, between men and men, between women and women, and between the individual and society.”

Acknowledging that many men have experienced sexual abuse is a threat to the traditional way we view manliness, according to Andersen. Our response is to make the topic into something exotic, as we see in examples where abuse within religious groups is uncovered or when the perpetrator is portrayed as a suspicious man in a trench coat in a park or a loner who lures children to him with promises of candy.

“Religious groups are often regarded as exotic in themselves. When abuse occurs within these groups, it becomes just one part of the peculiar overall picture. This also reflects how we view sexual abuse against men per se – as something so odd that it only concerns those with a special interest in the topic. However, if we are forced to acknowledge that this type of abuse can take place anywhere, even in one’s own home, then it actually becomes something else.”

The Vampire Syndrome and other myths

The Centre for Sexually Abused Men in Oslo reports that 20 to 30 percent of the men who seek help at the centre have been abused by a female perpetrator.

“It’s hard to say why none of these men contacted me, but it might be that the experience of being abused by a woman is even more difficult to talk about, at least if the man cannot portray it as a conquest that he initiated. In a way it is part of our culture and expectations that a young man is lucky if he gets an introduction to the mysteries of sex from an older woman. Two of the informants actually said that it would have been easier if the abuser had been a woman because, after all, they say that it is what all boys dream about.”

This is because society’s silence surrounding the abuse of boys involves several notions about what can happen to them and what consequences the abuse may have. One such notion is that the boy or man will always want to have sex. Another is that he will “become” gay by having sex – voluntarily or involuntarily – with another man. A third is that the victim himself will become a perpetrator later in life, which is often referred to as the Vampire Syndrome.

“I have spoken to many men who explain how they have to deal with this myth and that it scares them. Quite simply, they are afraid of committing abuse. This myth makes it even harder for men to dare to tell what they have experienced. And it is correct that statistics show that about four of five men who commit abuse have been abused themselves. But at the same time, everything suggests that these figures are reversed when considered the opposite way, that four of five men who have been abused do not become perpetrators. In other words, the Vampire Syndrome is largely inapplicable. It is also interesting that the Vampire Syndrome is only applied to men who have been victims of abuse, but not women.”

Expand the repertoire of manliness

Andersen prefers to use the term “manliness” rather than “masculinity”.

“I feel that I no longer know completely what masculinity means because it has been applied in so many contexts that it encompasses everything and nothing. However, by ‘manliness’ I mean what a man is thought to be at a given point in time and in a given context – that is, a social construction. It is this construction that the men I have interviewed must measure themselves in relation to.”

Men who face their own experiences of abuse are forced to confront themselves in a way that other men do not need to, Andersen believes.

“In this way they expand the repertoire of their own manliness. In order to cope with their experiences of abuse, they must first break their silence and begin to talk. They must allow themselves to be victims, not as a permanent role or situation, but as a starting point for a new narrative.”

Translated by Connie Stultz