Male rape, masculinities, and sexualities : understanding, policing, and overcoming male sexual victimisation

Abstract

This qualitative project critically explores state and voluntary agencies’ attitudes toward, and responses to male rape victims in England. It critically examines the ways in which police officers, male rape counsellors, therapists, and voluntary agency caseworkers (N = 70) think about and deal with male victims of rape. It pays close attention to how notions of gender, sexualities and masculinities affect and shape state and voluntary agencies’ understanding of male rape and their views of men as victims of rape. Police cultures are also examined to understand how male rape is policed in England. The data are grounded in sociological, cultural, and post-structural theoretical frameworks, such as hegemonic masculinity and heteronormativity. The data were collected through in-depth semi-structured interviews and qualitative questionnaires. The qualitative data were analysed with the use of thematic analysis, drawing out important themes and concepts of the ways in which male rape is thought about, responded to, and dealt with by state and voluntary agencies. The research contributes to existing knowledge on male rape by contributing theoretically to discourse on unreported and unacknowledged sexual violence. Research on male rape is lacking in England. The scarce literature on male rape predominately examines male rape from either a clinical or psychological perspective, whereas this project approaches male rape from a sociological, cultural and post-structural perspective to fully understand this phenomenon. Providing state and voluntary agencies’ discourses of male rape is important because they are the first port of call for male rape victims, yet the existing body of knowledge predominantly focuses on the victims’ experiences of rape, although this is important. It is also vital, though, to make sense of the experiences and perspectives of state and voluntary agencies because they work very closely with male rape victims. I argue that cultures, social relations, power and discourses shape how state and voluntary agencies understand and respond to male rape. Through social structures, social practices, and social institutions, state and voluntary agencies consider and respond to male rape inconsistently, which can have serious implications for policy and practice as this project carefully details.