Goose for the Gander

When the terms "rape" or "sexual assault" appear in the press these days (the meme that apparently keeps the main-stream media's blood flowing ... witness Bill Cosby's spotlight), the gender that is top of mind is female. This makes a certain amount of cultural sense in that females are generally thought to be weaker and more vulnerable (Lena Dunham being a major exception). However, when I just read that there are more male rapes in the military than female ones (raw numbers, not percentages), I was a little taken aback ... see: Enews Strory. And this then got me to thinking.

With Rolling Stone magazine's apology for its poor reporting in the University of Virginia fraternity gang-rape story, our current obsessive media focus on male sexual predation on females has taken a step backward. However, the huge numbers of males being raped in prisons usually engenders only unsympathetic snickers. And, if a female teacher is revealed as taking sexual advantage of one of her male students, the reaction is generally far more subdued than if the genders are reversed. Why this lopsided set of standards? Have we not been inculcated for the last fifty years that the sexes are equal in all respects? Should not female sports teams be wearing blue shoes in sympathy for the plight of male sexual victims?

In truth, goosing a gander should be just as serious an offense as gandering a goose (or gandering a gander).