EVERY month in Ireland at least one adult male is raped. Most at risk are men in their late teens and 20s but even men in their 40s have been raped. Big, strong men can and have been raped by smaller men armed with knives or syringes. On occasion victims outnumber but are overpowered by an armed attacker.
Gang rapes of men occur in Ireland. Men are raped by complete strangers, acquaintances, relatives, family friends, lodgers, prison inmates, ministers of religion and even employers.
Women are attuned from an early age to the dangers of rape. The only men likely to be aware of the threat are those who've already suffered it. Men hitching lifts or walking by night generally consider themselves invincible to sexual assault. If and when men hear of male rape many tend to react with incredulity. Some disparage the manliness of victims for not having beaten off the attacker - "I would've punched his lights out" - and presume by twisted logic that the victim must be homosexual. With crass arrogance and the self knowledge of an amoeba they are unaware of the vulnerability and abject powerlessness they'd discover within themselves should they ever be raped and forced to swallow their scorn with every pelvic thrust.
The veneer of the machismo pose was brilliantly exposed as so much hot air in John Boorman's cult film Deliverance in 1972 and, more recently, in Quentin Tarantino's brilliant cinematic achievement, Pulp fiction. In both a strong adult male is attacked, a male whose physical and mental strength cannot prevent the rape.
Audiences question neither the manliness nor the sexuality of either character. Yet the message is slow to get through not only to the tiresome single celled aquatic protozoan but even to many male rape victims themselves that the crime bestows no shame on them - but only on the depraved actions of their rapists. It seems many have seen the films but missed the meaning.
"Men have difficulties presenting as victims of rape," says Dr Maud McKee of the Sexual Assault Unit at the Rotunda Hospital in Dublin, who believes that the worst effect is an increased confusion about role and gender. "Apart from the invasion and the trauma, men are uncomfortable with the sense of being overpowered. They feel threatened by that. Control has been removed from them. Some fear people will think they're gay. There are taboos about men coming forward."
Dr K believes that male rape is more an act of violence than a homosexual act. "It's an abuse of power and a victimisation." Her views are echoed by Dorothy Morrissey, a counsellor at the Limerick Rape Crisis Centre, who believes that most perpetrators of male rape are most likely to present in their ordinary life as heterosexuals.
Dr Art O'Connor, forensic psychiatrist at the Central Mental Hospital in Dublin, believes that some homosexual men only express their homosexuality aggressively, perhaps after drinking. Most likely candidates are those who "in their everyday lives are anti gay and are trying to cover it up from society".
Dr O'Connor has also come across cases of young men being raped regularly by someone in authority over them in the workplace. "The victim is often very afraid for his job. Not everyone has the luxury of being able to move. They can see no way out. It's easy for a stranger to say he'd walk away."
Olive Braiden, director of the Dublin Rape Crisis Centre, says that even when a young man tells his family, he is sometimes met with incredulity "How in the name of goodness could you have let him do that?"
According to Braiden, as well as the feelings of shame and degradation experienced by women victims, men also have to handle the questions that arise about their own sexuality. The greater hurt can be to a man's sexual identity.
Eileen Calder, a counsellor at the Belfast Rape Crisis Centre, recognises that rape emasculates a man. "What they want is their sense of masculinity back. In some ways men tend to blame themselves more than women. They've the whole issue of whether they should've been able to fight them off." She adds that some gay men are in relationships that are abusive but they rarely ring the centre to say they were raped by their partner.
Male rape can suggest to the most strident feminist the need to reconstruct her view of men and masculinity strong men also suffer at the hands of depraved and violent males who would attempt to dehumanise them for their own pleasure. The view that you can't rape a man who doesn't want it is as contemptible and base as the obscenity that women who are raped asked for it.