TOBLERONE AND LUCKY B*****D SYNDROME

Dear Readers,

Switzerland is one of the most unique countries in the world, and has given us a lot. It's given us fondue, cuckoo clocks, some excellent skiing slopes, a Freddie Mercury statue on the shores of Lake Geneva (seen it myself, it's spectacular), the bizarre Vatican Swiss guards, a populace that can fight war with the best of them but never needs to, and a wide range of cheeses. It's also the inventor of milk chocolate (for which I and most people - probably - are eternally grateful). One of the most famous of these is 'Toblerone', the famous nougat chocolate, which comes in a very long...bar I suppose is the best way to describe it, with each segment in triangular shapes.

If you're wondering why I'm bringing the subject of Swiss chocolate up when talking about sexual abuse, I'm going onto the subject of why male survivors - unlike female survivors - are told that we should've wanted it, or that an erection means 'not rape'. This is something that a friend of mine once said to me - I immediately clocked it up to ignorance on his part, rather than a wilful insult.

As for my experience, after consistent and persistent treatment by my abuser, I was enticed by my abuser into a 'physical' response, the sort that's common in most boys hitting puberty. She started telling me that I 'enjoyed' it, and I believed her. I even sought out her abusive and grabbing ways because I thought that I wanted it, I'd been groomed into thinking that I wanted to be groped and grabbed, assuming that this was what women did normally. Hell, I was pretty lonely and isolated by now, easy target for bullying, constantly in trouble with teachers for not doing my work so it seemed, I felt that nothing else was open to me.

Of course, she was strictly off-limits in regards to touching, so it was to be me who she continuously manhandled across the crotch, day in day out, a one way street, nothing mutual about it. This was a big reason why I blamed myself, having heard the derogatory phrase that 'men think with their dicks', for a long time I thought that I was 'thinking with my dick' and that I would never 'make the same mistake again'.

Now back to the Toblerone. Most of you readers have probably enjoyed a Toblerone at some stage in your lives.

How did it feel? Smooth? Rich? Tasty?

If someone gives you a bit of Toblerone, unless you don't like chocolate or have some form of allergy, it's probably a pleasant experience. You break off a triangle, you nibble it, let it melt in your mouth, or if you're like me you scoff it right down, however you like.

Now what if that someone instead takes the whole thing and tries to shove it straight in your mouth? How might that feel? Painful. Stressful? Frightening?

When I was going through therapy for sexual abuse at the age of 25, I talked about how I thought I'd wanted it because I'd been aroused. In response, I and she both assumed that this meant that I 'liked' it. To which my therapist made the above analogy.

There is an attitude that all males are sex-mad fools and that such ape-like fools should be grateful for any sexual advances bestowed upon them by pure women. I once read a male commentator claim that 'a man would have sex with a hole in a tree if he could get away with it' and while I assume that was tongue in cheek, it does reveal a lot about how we as society view male sexuality. As unrelenting, vicious, animalistic, anything will do, no-holes barred.

So what effect does it have on male survivors?

In 2014, according to the American psychological association 43% of boys in the United States between the ages of 14 and 20 had been forced, coerced or manipulated into having sex with women they didn't want to. This is not a tiny minority of numbers recorded, it's over 2/5ths of boys and young men of 2014 were being forced to have sex with someone they didn't want to. What might the response have been?

If you're set off or upset by mocking of abuse victims I'd suggest not watching the following video, because it's stomach-churning. We see a clip from 2014 of Bill Maher openly mocking male sexual assault survivors in the cases in which a female has been the aggressor.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=52&v=EA-Kyo1UU6w

I am aware that Bill Maher has a bit of a track record, but this is the worst he's ever done.

We can easily see why the video has such a high dislike bar on it. Sadly whenever I've seen people who laughably call themselves "progressive" joke about how 'Oh white men who're raped have it soooo bad NOT!' it seems to bear a funny symmetry to this vile little clip, also demonstrating how the rain of arrows seems to come down in male survivors from both sides.

For those so-called "macho" types who like to foolishly claim, 'Oh, you got lucky.' or 'Boo hoo grow a pair' I see you. You are part of the problem. You're at the same level of those horrible creatures who tell women 'I wouldn't even rape you, you're so unattractive.'
How would you feel if someone shoved a whole Toblerone in your mouth? Like you were having a scaffolding pole rammed down your throat. How would you feel if you were being tied up and forcibly mounted by someone who you found physically repulsive?

And what's more, because there is no backlash, Maher and those like him get away with it! All with the line that 'men can't stop wanting sex/need an erection so they can't be raped by women.'

Some women orgasm in the middle of rape. Does that mean that they enjoyed it?

Does a 'nymphomaniac' woman want to be raped?

I don't think so. So why do we treat male survivors as if this is so for them? Because we think that any man would stick his member in anything he wanted if he could?

Enough is enough, so #spreadtheword.


Sincerely,

The Invisible Man.