Launching the BBC, in England and Wales, this is not considered rape. However, a researcher who is studying the phenomenon argues otherwise.
Siobhan Weare, doctor from Lancaster University Law School, started research on forced sex in England in 2016-2017 by collecting information from more than 200 men through online surveys.
His latest research results, just published this week – based on interviews with 30 men from May 2018 to July 2019 – go into greater detail about the context in which forced sex occurred, the consequences that followed, and the reaction of the law enforcement system.
The identities of all study participants were identified, but I will call one of them John.
John says the first sign that something isn’t happening is when their partner starts hurting themselves. After a horrific incident, John takes his girlfriend to the Emergency Room (ER) for treatment. The two spent hours discussing the possible psychological causes behind the incident.
About six months later, instead of hurting herself, her boyfriend took it out on John.
“I was sitting in the living room and he came from the kitchen. He hit me on the nose really hard and ran around laughing,” said John. “From then on, his violence began to occur regularly.”
His girlfriend tried to seek help from his doctor, John said. She had counseling sessions, then she worked with a psychologist – even though she didn’t attend the appointments she had made.
Usually, he comes home from work “and immediately asks to have sex,” she wrote.
“He would play rough, to the point that I was afraid to wait for him to come home from work.”
One time, John woke up with his lover handcuffed to the bed frame with his right hand. He then hit John’s head with a speaker which is usually placed beside the bed, then tied John’s left hand with a rope and tried to force him to have sex.
In violence and pain, John couldn’t comply with her demands – he then punched her again and left her tied up for half an hour, before finally coming back and releasing her. After that, he refused to talk about what had just happened.
Shortly thereafter, she became pregnant and her acts of violence lessened. However, a few months after giving birth, John – yet again – woke up in the middle of the night handcuffed to a bed.
Then, John said, his girlfriend forced him to swallow Viagra and kept his mouth shut.
“I didn’t do anything,” he added.
“Then I went and sat in the bathroom for who knows how long… in the end I went downstairs. The first thing I said to me then was, ‘What are we eating tonight?'”
When John tried to tell other people about it, he admitted that many did not believe it.
“Many have asked why I didn’t just leave the house. What can I do, that was the house I bought for my children. Also from a financial point of view, I was trapped financially in that relationship,” he explained.
“Some still don’t believe it, and ask ‘Then why didn’t you hit him back?’ many times. Of course that is much easier said than done.
“I wish I had left him much earlier.”
Aspects of John’s story recur in the experiences of a number of other men Weare interviewed. One of the findings was that the perpetrators of forced sex (“forced-to-penetrate” or FTP) were often their female partners or former partners (her research focused only on forced sex involving men and women), and that experiences it is usually one element of a wider pattern of domestic violence (domestic violence).
The experience when other people did not believe their story was also experienced by other participants.
“You must have enjoyed it or you should have reported this sooner,” said one study participant, recounting what the police had told him.
Another participant said: “We are afraid to talk about it and feel ashamed, and when we say it, we are not believed, because we are men. How can a man be tortured? Look, he is a man.”
Weare’s other findings include:
Men are often embarrassed to report FTP experiences – they may report cases of domestic violence without experiencing sexual violence at all
The mental health impacts can be severe, including post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), suicidal thoughts and sexual dysfunction
Several men said they had been victims of it several times – some had experienced sexual violence as children, some had received sexual violence from different perpetrators, including men
Many see the police, law enforcement system and regulations very negatively
A myth that Weare’s research debunks is the notion that forced sex should not be performed on men, because men – physically – are stronger than women.
Another myth that was also debunked was about the view that all men consider all sexual opportunities with women as something positive.
The third myth is that if men have an erection, it means they want to have sex. In fact, Weare says, “an erection is purely a psychological response to a stimulus.”
“Men can get and hold erections even when they feel scared, angry, scared, etc,” he says.
“There is also research showing that women may respond sexually when they are raped (eg having an orgasm) because their bodies respond psychologically. This is a problem, for both male and female victims, which is never sufficiently discussed, but there is clear evidence of this.”
A number of participants in Weare’s 2017 study reported experiencing FTP when they were really drunk, and unable to stop what was happening.
One of the men interviewed for the final study described coming home with a woman after partying at a club, only to lose consciousness after consuming what she suspected was the drug the woman had administered.
She said that she was then forced to have sex without her consent.
Another man described being forced to have sex while working at a holiday camp one summer, when he was a student.
A female employee found a letter she had written to her boyfriend, and threatened to expose his gay identity unless he agreed to have sex with her.
The female employee said that if she had sex with him, “it would change my life and I would be ‘normal'”, she said.
Because she hasn’t told anyone – including friends, family or co-workers – about her sexual orientation, she feels she has no choice.
Weare stated that most of her research participants considered their forced sex experiences to be “rape”, and some were outraged that it was not considered rape under the laws of England and Wales.
“Talking about the fact that your ex-spouse got drunk a lot and forced you to have sex with him, or basically raped you, sounds like a lot of guys’ fantasy, doesn’t it?” said one participant.
“Hanging out in the pub, the girl starts getting a little drunk, then she starts getting a little excited, and then you think ‘Yay! Oh that would be amazing! I want to try that!’ No, you don’t want to experience it, definitely not. It’s not like you imagined.”
In one of Weare’s reports – titled “Oh you’re a man, how could you be raped by a woman, that doesn’t make sense” – he pointed out that in some US states, rape is generally defined as sexual intercourse without consent, and that in some states Victoria in Australia, there is a special form of crime called “forced sexual/penetrative rape”.
One of the eight recommendations made in the latest research is that reform of the rape case law which should incorporate the FTP case requires “serious consideration”.
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