One in Three Campaign
One in three victims of family violence are male

Men's stories

MEN’S PERSONAL STORIES

If you are a male victim of family violence – intimate partner violence, violence from other family members, child abuse, elder abuse, sexual assault, or other forms of family violence and abuse – this page is available for you to tell your anonymous story. Please click here to tell your own story. If you feel like you need support, please click here. Stories are moderated to prevent the posting of spam, so it might take a little while for your story to appear on this page.

 

Susan's personal story

After looking through the stories on here, I realise that I've got an oddity. I've got that more unusual story, but one that desperately, urgently needs telling.

My current partner is a loving, caring man, he's fantastically sensitive and funny, with a killer smile. He's also a large man, at 6'2" and (at the time) 120kg of muscle from working a physical job. So the story he recounted to me once really sticks with me, since it reminds me so very much of a classic case of abuse that would happen to women.

The story starts, proceeds and ends exactly as your stereotypical female-oriented story would. He had a few too many drinks, and was fooling around with his then-girlfriend. Things began to get intimate, but he realised then that he was making a mistake, and asked to stop. The girl didn't stop. He then asked again, more urgently. She replied that because he had an erection, he was clearly into it and secretly wanted it. He insisted that he didn't and tried to get away. But in his intoxicated state, he wasn't coordinated enough to get away, and was too proud to try and defend himself against her, lest he be painted the assailant. She proceeded to rape him.

After the event, he told nobody for a very long time, and it very much broke his spirit. It has been something that has needed to be carefully rekindled over time. He was terrified of going to the police for fear of being accused as the perpetrator, and didn't tell anybody else for fear of being shamed. This wasn't something that happened to men... was it? And yet, it sounds so beautifully framed as a female rape story that the case would have been completely black-and-white had the genders been reversed.

I'm still fighting for this. The conversation about violence against females is important and I do not wish to belittle it in any way, but the conversation about violence against men isn't even being had. Nobody, regardless of race, age, gender or beliefs, has the right to harm any other person. The arguments to protect victims need to include protection for all victims, which it currently does not.

One in Three Campaign