On Being Raped

Such is the shadowed world in which male on male rape occurs that I can imagine a potential reader picking up this book and being momentarily confused and outraged. "On Being Raped"--yet the author is male--Raymond is not a gender ambiguous given name. Oh gods, not another bit of mansplaining, one thinks. It takes a couple of clicks of the neurons and a flip to the inside of the dust cover to realize that this is a book by a man raped by another man. The description of the crime, the struggle, the fear that he would be killed, the decision not to go to the police, the inadequate response by the Church all make for an intensely personal book which also contains insights into male psychology and societal response. I was particularly show more struck by the authors assertion that "There is a conviction that all males over the age of twelve, or nearly all, share: when the chips are truly down, if you are fighting for your life, you will find within you the strength to prevail over anyone who isn't fighting for his." He sees this not as a result of media, but "a core constituent of maleness, our psychic ace in the hole." Wow, that is so the opposite of the core female identity, in which the average woman knows that she is smaller and weaker than the average male, to the extent that vulnerability defines our identities in the world.. Although it occurs to me that the female equivalent may be the belief that they would find adrenalin-fueled strength to save their child.

There is a terribly moving scene late in the book in which the writer describes a flashback to the scene of his assault--lying in bed fully clothed waiting for the person beside him to fall asleep, then striding quickly and quietly to the door, arriving at the other side soaked in sweat. The flashback occurs as he is getting his four-year old daughter asleep for the night, twenty eight years after the assault.

Read this book. Think about how we need to expand our definition and response to rape culture. Consider that only the crassest of would-be comics joke about men raping women, yet the threat of male/male rape can still be used in mainstream drama and comedy (usually in a prison setting, but not always.) It is past time to change this. The cold look and "that's not funny" can kill a comic trope. It has happened on many fronts in my lifetime--female victim rape jokes, race jokes, drunk jokes, etc. are no longer a staple of mainstream comedy.

It is also a problem of institutional self protection. Not just the Church--many institutions start out being for the individual but change to worrying more about image than individuals. Christopher Isherwood wrote of how he abandoned any allegiance to communism when it became clear that homosexuals were being persecuted in the Soviet Union. show less

Rape is hard to write about... power, violence, shame, anger. Any of that, and more. On Being Raped presents Raymond M. Douglas’s experience: the context of his attack, details of the event itself, the immediate aftermath, and the long-term effects he faced.

Specific challenges and complicating factors include: 1) that it was an attack on a younger man, by an older man; 2) that the assault included extreme physical violence, to the point that Douglas feared for his life; 3) the rapist was a clergyman; 4) that, when Douglas went to church authorities to report the assault, his concerns were blatantly ignored and, at one point, he was even ‘forgiven’ for his role in the attack; and 5) when he later suffered a mental and emotional show more breakdown, he ended up being admitted for a brief stay in a mental hospital and treated, again, like he’d been partially to blame for the attack (e.g. perhaps gay, which was then still treated as a mental disease). In short, Douglas’s attack was not a ‘simple’ penis-in-vagina “rape-rape” (62)… indeed, as his case demonstrates, few rapes are that simple. In fact, no rape is simple, whether one ‘survives’ and ‘heals’ or not.

Perhaps the most salient element of the story as told here is Douglas’s indictment of the Catholic Church, as much as one specific rapist priest, for its complicity in his own and subsequent attacks. “I was not his first victim,” he writes. “But I might have been his last. Rather than facilitating that outcome, the Church not only concealed the crime but abetted it […placing] a wolf in a clerical collar back in the midst of an unsuspecting flock, with results that were not so much predictable as inevitable” (92).

Other interesting points: one, Douglas explains that he prefers identifying as a rape victim rather than a survivor – an interesting resistance to the current norms which favor the narrative framing of traumas (rape, cancer, and more) in terms of survivorship. Also, on the topic of identification, it is extremely important that the author has not attempted to maintain anonymity here. His decision not to mask his identity is exceptionally courageous, in that he is a well-known and highly respected university professor. In academia, one’s publications are one’s public persona: a lasting identity both personal and professional. That Douglas has chosen to publish a memoir on such an intensely difficult topic is truly commendable, especially considering the sad lack of academic texts on issues of male-on-male rape. It also enacts a firm denial of rape’s insidious ability to set off social/external and personal/internal chains of reactions that pressure the victim into silence long after the fact, out of shame.

To close, Douglas briefly mentions that years ago, in the aftermath of the attack, the very limited rape counselling services he found were ineffectual for addressing male-on-male rape. He attributes this to their somewhat “American feminist” paradigm for understanding sexual violence (56-59). But, interestingly enough, at the end of his story he too comes to a point raised by countless feminists: that the personal is political. The “privatization” of “the harm of rape” (96) pressures people, regardless of sex, gender, or sexual orientation, to endure the fallout from their experiences in isolation…but this need not remain the case. Sharing our stories openly (a.k.a. consciousness-raising) as victims and survivors is a necessary component of shifting the tides that will eventually bring our legal and social institutions to more inclusive, effective stances on responding to, and hopefully by extension preventing, rape.

Douglas writes, “I wish nothing but the best to those who are following a therapeutic path, and who find hope and healing in it. […] Still, not everyone can be reached by these means. […] Rape victims are not ‘broken’ individuals who need fixing, or sick persons who need healing. They are hurt men and women who need compassion in the face of grievous misfortune” (84-85). This book works to examine the subtle complications of Douglas’s experience (especially the male-on-male and Catholic priest abuse aspects of his case specifically) to ultimately enable true compassion more broadly: a sense of co-feeling, and a shared conviction that our treatment of all rape victims needs more care and nuance, especially when it comes to medical and legal advocacy. show less

Nobody really wants to read this, but everybody should have to. Probably the most globally neglected/marginalized/misunderstood human rights-safety-crime issue humanity faces today. Thank you very much to Raymond Douglas for having the courage and ability to effectively put his story on paper and to the publisher and Early Reviewers for sharing that story with me.

On Being Raped is an autobiographical account of what happens when you experience something so terrible that it changes the foundation of who you are. As someone who has not gone through something so scarring, I can not begin to imagine how horrible Douglas' experience actually was. However, Douglas eloquently recounts his story in an all-immersive insight into what he has experienced - and continues to experience years later. On Being Raped haunts you long after it's 120 pages are over, and begs you to consider how society treats those who have gone through this and find enough strength to tell about it.

While no one is ever happy to read a book on this topic, I can say that I was actually glad that I got to read this story from the male perspective. Rape is terrible no matter how it occurs or who it happens to but we rarely get any perspective from men, especially with such great detail. There is a section of the story where he describes seeking help from a rape crisis center that had finally decided to help males. His experience was something we should all reflect on today as we still see men under-reporting rape for many reasons, some of which he covered while writing about his. I was also glad to see a story that gives a bit of insight into how figures in the Church were and still are, getting away with this.

The writing was well show more done. It was descriptive yet to the point. The story moved right along and kept you wanting to read more. The emotion the author felt was well portrayed also. I could imagine his frame of mind as I was reading along. Sad subject matter but excellent book. Thank you for writing it. show less

Douglas has given us a book that can be written by only a few. A male who was raped by another male, a Catholic Priest. He gives his expereince, how that experience has affected his life, what the Church did about it (almost nothing), and the convluted and wrong headed ways therapy and counseling have sought to help those who have been victims. This is an excellent book, well worth reading and thinking about.

J.Robert Ewbank author "John Wesley, Natural Man, and the Isms" "Wesley's Wars" "To Whom It May Concern" and "Tell Me About the United Methodist Church"

On Being Raped by Raymond M. Douglas is a powerful, important, and very much needed book.

More rape victims need to be able to tell their stories and know that they will be heard and believed. This is true across the board but perhaps even more important in the case of male-on-male rape. Men experience the same sense of helplessness that women do except theirs is coupled with the distorted view of masculinity that might imply the victim is somehow less a man in the victim's own eyes. There are certainly equivalencies in a woman's experience with doubting herself also. I don't want to pretend the differences in any way makes one worse experience than the other, they are horrific no matter.

Douglas' experiences with the Church and with show more therapy highlight many of the problems with how the survivor is helped, or hindered, in making as much of a recovery as possible. This is in addition to all of the judicial and legal problems they also have to negotiate.

This might not be anyone's idea of a fun read but it would help many of us to better understand and hopefully empathize with rape victims, so I would recommend this to everyone.

Reviewed from a copy made available by the publisher via Edelweiss. show less