Surviving Female On Male Rape
My Story
My Story
By: C.W. Roden
There are some dates that I will never forget, for better or for worse. The evening of Friday, March 21, 1997 is one that I will never forget, even after all these years. That was the night when I was sexually assaulted following a party by a older female during what started out as consensual sex. Its a night that changed me forever. I was only 20 years old at the time.
Well there it is folks, something that -- until now -- I've never personally shared with more than about four people in the nearly 23 years since it happened. In fact, until I shared that statement with y'all, I'd only ever told that to one other member of my family. It was only recently (maybe a couple months ago) that I'd told this to my own sister, who happens to be my closest sibling.
Believe me when I say that sharing this particular detail isn't easy for me. Its not easy for anyone, no matter their gender, to admit to being sexually assaulted. Certainly it is much harder for me as a male to admit it.
There are many reasons why I've never told anyone this story, save for the three people I knew who wouldn't laugh at the story, or accuse me of belittling "real" assault victims. While I certainly won't claim that what happened to me comes anywhere close to the terrible stories of violent beatings and forced penetration done to most women and young children, or the violent gang rapes of men by sex offenders in prison; I will challenge anyone to tell me that the long-term mental and emotional trauma I've personally experienced as a result counts for any less than those of any other sexual assault victims.
Normally I would just push the incident in the darkest parts of the back of my mind and try to move forward, as always. Once I've actually managed to go whole months without thinking about it once; that is until some sound, smell, or situation allows the memory to jump right out of the darkness -- often times at the worst possible times.
Perhaps the biggest reason I'm choosing to tell this to all of y'all now is a desire on my part to finally drop a huge bag of rocks that I've been carrying around for over half my life. A kind-of therapy, of sorts.
A close female friend that I told this story to a few years back actually suggested that writing the story down and publishing it anonymously on Reddit, or some similar confession site, might help me learn to move on from it. I knew she meant well at the time, but one thing I've learned from my own experience and from reading other stories of sexual abuse, is that telling the victim to just move on, while well meaning, isn't always the best thing to do.
I did take her advise and write an anonymous post there, and the feedback I got was rather surprising and shocking to me. I learned that I was far from alone. I did further research and learned that this sort of thing actually happens far more frequently than many people know. It is only in recent years that any serious study has been done on the topic of male sexual assault by female perpetrators, but the results of such studies are shocking to say the least. I will be posting more about this topic and will include those statistics and links to the studies in a future blog post.
So I resolved to share this story with y'all because I feel it is time to bring this out into the open. I'm certainly not writing this because I want to be viewed as a victim. Quite the opposite in fact. The emotional trauma I suffered as a result of being raped does not control, nor define, who I am today.
I'm not a victim, I am a survivor.
My Story
About a month earlier, in late February of 1997, I arrived at Lackland Airforce Base in San Antonio, Texas, after having graduated the week before from basic training at the U.S. Naval Station Great Lakes in Chicago, Illinois.
I was there to attend training for what would have been my military service job had things gone according to plan. After spending just over two months in Illinois freezing my tail off in the winter by Lake Michigan, the much milder winter and early spring in Texas was a godsend for this Southern boy.
Life at the Naval barracks at Lackland AFB was far different from the more rigid setting at Great Lakes. For one thing we had television access, as well as weekend liberty (off base leave).
In truth, aside from one trip to visit the Alamo and nearby Riverwalk Mall, I had very little interest in going anywhere outside of the base. I spent most of my time going to the local malls and collecting a wide variety of VHS tapes which I played in the barracks TV room on the big screen, which earned me the title of "Movie Man" with my fellow shipmates.
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| Yours truly at 20 years old serving as a U.S. Naval recruit at Great Lakes Naval Station near Chicago, Illinois, USA. Photo taken sometime in mid-January, 1997. (Photo courtesy of the author's collection) |
All the same, despite my usual introverted behavior, I was actually having a good time and enjoying the company of my fellow shipmates -- although almost every evening, or so, I did tend to go outside and take walks around the nearby running track alone to recharge my batteries after dealing with my noisy peers.
Still I was looking to try something new.
I was 20 years old at the time, a skinny, socially-awkward young man who was enjoying his first real time away from home and from the small, Southern town I grew up in.
Well, in truth I was also somewhat homesick at the time, and had been for awhile. I missed my small, rural Southern hometown, my friends I went to high school with, and my family terribly.
All the same, I was now an E-3 Seaman 1st Class in the U.S. Navy. I was planning to spend at least 4 years enjoying my life serving my country -- maybe more if I ended up liking military service once I got out into the world. I was young and looking for adventure.
So when one of my shipmates invited me to come with him and a few others to a nearby party one fateful evening, I accepted.
Now prior to this, I'd never been what one would call the wild party type. Aside from a few school functions, I'd never been in a social gathering of more than around 20 of my close friends and their families. Certainly never been to a large, noisy house party. Being a introvert and an aspie who is sensitive to loud noise, I tended to avoid these sorts of things.
Despite this, and probably because I was looking to do something new and let loose, for whatever reason I accepted the invite -- I've wished countless times since that day that I hadn't.
The party was everything that I thought it would be. It was in a large two-story house that I think was just off the base. It was crowded and noisy with a large group of half-drunk, rowdy guys watching a basketball game on a large screen television in the living room. The rest of the people were gathered in smaller groups around the first floor of the house and out back where a patio and an above ground swimming pool full of people sat next to a full working Jacuzzi hot tub where what looked like about a dozen men and women were crammed in quite closely.
There was loud music inside, more music outside, and for the life of me I still don't get why the nearest neighbors didn't call the cops for a noise complaint. Open beer and alcohol containers lay all around, as well as whole coolers full of more beer and other alcoholic beverages. Fortunately there was some plain soda in the kitchen -- which was being mixed with hard alcohol -- and I was able to get a cup of something I could drink.
In a couple of downstairs rooms there were people playing card games (one room had a pool table) and smoking weed and uh, other substances. The smells of these and the usual tobacco products produced a choking miasma in the air.
It was about half-an-hour into this that I realized I made a huge mistake. My social anxieties were not doing too well, and between the loud music and overlapping loud conversations, the noise inside the house was unbearable to me. I spent most of my time outside where the noise -- while still loud -- wasn't nearly as bad. I moved as far as I could away from the party on the deck near the swimming pool.
I remember leaning against the railing watching the idiots in the pool splashing around and thinking that water must have been cold as hell. I mean sure the temperature during the daytime in late March was around the upper 70s and mid-80s in southern Texas, but it was still early in the year and that water had to be pretty cold and I was pretty sure the pool wasn't heated. A couple of idiots actually jumped across from the wooden patio railing into the pool, which was probably about a legitimate 8 feet. That all of them managed to do this without breaking a leg, or landing on one of the people in the water was sheer dumb luck.
I tried to shut out all the noise and center my mind. I was also trying to think of a way out of this situation. I had no idea where my shipmates had gone, and had no idea where this place was and how to get back to the Naval barracks. I was seriously thinking about trying to call a taxi, or find the nearest bus station when someone touched my shoulder.
I don't remember what she said her name was because of all the noise -- and in the long run that's probably for the best -- but I can remember that she was an older woman (probably in her mid-or-late 20s) about 5'9 and slightly chubby, but not exactly fat. Blonde with short straight hair -- not military short, but not shoulder length either. She wore a pair of faded jeans and a dark red top that showed off and inch or two of her belly. It was also tight enough that I could also tell that she wasn't wearing a bra.
Apparently she'd been watching me for awhile with a friend of hers that she'd come to the party with. She told me that she'd noticed that I seemed a bit off and then asked me if I was okay. I introduced myself and explained about my anxieties. She seemed very sympathetic and told me she wasn't big on loud parties either, but was there with several friends.
We stayed slightly away from the party and talked for awhile. She kept drinking something from a plastic cup and then offered to get me a refill. I told her soda. She went and then came back with two cups handing me one. As soon as I took a deep drink, I knew it had alcohol in it and nearly coughed it up.
"Are you okay?" She asked, suddenly concerned. Then she took a sip of her own and laughed. "Sorry, honey, think I gave you mine by mistake." I didn't want to sound like a pussy, so I nodded that it was okay and kept drinking from the cup. The soda tasted weird, but then again it was probably the fact my mouth and stomach were still burning from the Vodka-laced Mountain Dew, so I didn't think too much more on it.
We continued to have small-talk and she was moving closer to me. Believe me, I wasn't disliking the attention. Looking back I didn't think about it at the time, but she'd taken a couple of drinks. I finished mine, which still tasted slightly funky, but I didn't complain. I also didn't ask for another one, although she went back at least one more time for a refill.
The idea that she might have done something with the drink she gave me didn't even occur to me until much later. I still don't know for certain if it was something other than alcohol, but I do remember feeling a big looser after awhile.
I don't exactly remember when it started, but at some point we began to get much closer and then she kissed me and slid her hand up the front of my shirt. I responded to her attentions even though I felt a bit light-headed at the time. Then she asked me if I wanted to go somewhere more private? Despite feeling a bit off, I very foolishly agreed. Partly because I wanted to get away from the noise of the party, and also because I did enjoy the attention and actually wanted to hook up with her.
Okay, before I go on, let me explain something about my past with the opposite sex. By the time I was 20 my sexual experience consisted of one summer romance with an amazing girl almost four years my senior who took my virginity at age 17 and only a few one-night-stands and a couple of quickies with two other girls.
While I wasn't exactly inexperienced, in just about all of those cases involved the other person making the first move. This is actually quite common when it comes to relationships with Aspies. Folks like us don't always pick up on subtle clues, and you have to be a bit more direct.
Since all of my previous sexual encounters also involved people that I'd known for awhile and fully trusted (with the exception of the last one, who was a sweet person), and because I was tired of the noise and wanted to go someplace quiet badly, I didn't think anything was wrong. I didn't suspect, or even conceive at the time, that a woman could be a sexual predator, or be abusively violent to an unwilling partner.
I also foolishly trusted her because she was older and seemed to be in control of herself, while I was dealing with my social anxieties. So I let her take charge in the moment.
We took her car to another house somewhere. I don't remember how far away it was, but the ride only took about ten minutes, I think. The whole time I was drinking another (thankfully alcohol free) soda I picked up on the way out while she drove with one hand and fondled my leg with the other. She talked to me, but I don't remember what she said because I was trying to focus my thoughts after finally being away from the party noise. I remember that I mostly just smiled and nodded.
When we arrived there it didn't take long before we were both undressed and I was opening a condom wrapper -- I'd always kept at least one on me -- and we were on her bed. She was a very sexually aggressive woman, but that didn't bother me, or make me uncomfortable at all. I'd had some experience before this with an older girl who liked to take charge. When she mounted me, I also didn't have a problem with it. In fact, I remember feeling thankful at the time that she was on top, because I was still feeling the slight effects of the alcohol, but not so badly that I wasn't enjoying myself.
The sex was actually pretty good at first and she was really into it. So was I. There was no noise in the bedroom except for the sounds we were making. Even though it wasn't something that I planned to do that evening I was seriously enjoying the moment....right up until the condom broke.
I felt it happen while she rode me roughly and told her to stop. She didn't at first, but then when I repeated myself she did and looked down at me asking, "What's wrong?" I told her I thought the condom broke. She just laughed, brushed her hair back and said, "Don't worry about it, baby. This is too good." The she started moving again.
"No stop, please," I remember clearly saying. "I think I have another one." I was worried about the idea of getting her pregnant and I'd never had unprotected sex before. Back then the fear of getting AIDS or some other serious STD was also a huge fear on my part.
She just put her hands on my shoulders, pinning me down and said, "Just forget it." She kept moving on top of me getting back into her stride. I kept telling her to stop, but she ignored me. That's when I completely panicked and tried to move out from under her. Again I told her, begged her to please stop. I put my hands on her hips and tried to physically pull her off me.
That's when this woman suddenly became very angry and then reached down and put a hand around my throat -- around my Adam's apple! I was having a panic attack and was struggling to breathe. She roughly continued to ride me, strangling me with one hand the whole time. That was when she said something to me in a laughing, sarcastic sorta voice; words that I will never forget: "Oh come on, aren't guys suppose to like stuff like this?"
I wish that I could say here that I did something, anything, to stop what was happening. Aside from the fact that I was no longer taking part -- which no longer seemed to matter to this woman -- my body sorta just froze up on me. I didn't realize it at the time, but I was experiencing rape paralysis. With her hand at my throat threatening to squeeze harder, I felt like couldn't breathe, and I began to see spots in my vision.
I don't really know how to describe the next moments very well. It was almost like I was outside of my own body -- like I've heard of "out-of-body" experiences, but never really thought about what they would be like. It wasn't exactly like I could see the whole thing from a third-person point of view, more like I was there, but not really. I vague remember that she did release her hand from my throat and used both to brace herself with the headboard of the bed while she continued to move on top of me forcefully. I couldn't move, and I felt like I was going to have trouble breathing.
The worst part was, in spite of everything happening and no longer being a willing participant, my penis remained erect for reasons that I didn't understand at the time. My mind blacked out during the rest and I remember vaguely hearing her groaning and saying things, but I don't remember what they were.
When I regained consciousness (it couldn't have been more than a few minutes after everything ended), she was gone. I could hear a shower running in the bathroom next door. I coughed and sat up in the bed. One image I will never forget was the sight of a torn condom still attached to me, and my penis covered in spent semen and female vaginal fluids. After that, I threw up. I didn't really get out of bed, just puked on the floor on the other side away from my discarded clothes. I was shaking as I stood up and began to numbly put my clothes back on.
I never saw her again, although she would go on to be a part of several night terrors for a couple of years afterwards. The memory of her using me would stay with me for a very long time.
Aftermath & Acceptance
Afterwards, I don't really remember much, except leaving the house and walking back towards the base. I was in a fog most of the time and really had no idea where I was, or how to get back. After what felt like an hour, I was able to find the local bus station and got a ride back to more familiar surroundings and walk back from there.
The first thing I did when I got inside was go to the head (bathroom), discarded my clothes, and stepped into the shower. The warm water helped me out of my fog....and I lowered my head into the stream and cried. I don't know how long I was there, but after I got out I realized that I didn't have a towel with me. For some reason I began to laugh at this; I think maybe as a moment of hysteria going from one extreme to another. It still doesn't make sense to me now either. I just remember being emotionally erratic for awhile.
While I waited for my skin to dry, I looked into a mirror at the person looking back at me. Strangely, I didn't look different, or ashamed of myself. I checked for scratches, or marks on my throat. I was almost certain there would be bruising of some kind. My throat was a little red, but otherwise I appeared normal. I would have a couple of small bruises and small scratches just below my jawline, but inside of a week they would be gone. Nobody else noticed them.
How I felt inside was a whole different story. The best way I can describe it was the feeling that my body no longer really felt like it was mine. In spite of all the scrubbing I did, I could still feel her on top of me, squeezing my throat. I even felt like I could still smell her on me.
That night I cried again in my bed. One of my mates at the time later asked me about why I left the party. I told him that I just wasn't really into parties and needed to get out of there. I didn't tell him what actually happened to me. I didn't tell anyone what happened to me. Not for years.
In truth, at the time I was still trying to work out exactly what happened to me. I wasn't ready to admit that I was raped -- it would actually be a couple of years after the fact before I fully accepted the attack for what it was. It was the late 90s and rape by females on men wasn't really talked about much in those days.
Several things bothered me about it: the fact that it started out as consensual sex, and the fact that I had an erection the whole time. Obviously since it started out as consensual sex, I'd wanted to be there, and I did enjoy myself at first before the condom broke and I panicked.
As far as having an erection, even while I was being attacked, that part always made me feel completely at a loss for a very long time. I've always heard guys say to other men, "You can't rape the willing." So I must have been willing if I kept an erection during the rough stuff, right?
While I know more now than I knew then about sexual assault -- more than I admit I ever wanted to know -- these facts were the two main sticking points in my denial over what happened to me, and would remain so for years.
A few nights later, I had a vivid nightmare of the experience. Then about a week after that, I ended up being sent to the psyche ward on the base for clinical depression. I think I said something about self-harm, although I don't specifically remember it, and the NCO at the time took me to the hospital. Even though I was under three days of observation, I didn't tell any of the staff what happened. I told them about being homesick (which I was) and about being depressed. I never mentioned the assault at all.
Ultimately it was recommended that I be given a medical/honorable discharge from the Navy based on my depression. While that was a bit of a blow for me since being a U.S. service person was my life's goal up till then, I actually was homesick and had already kinda decided that the military wasn't the career I really desired. By the first of May, I was back at home with my family with half-a-country of distance between me and that nightmare.
I still have a great deal of respect for the military and the fine men and women who volunteer to serve their country. I also do not blame the U.S. Navy, or the military for what happened to me. I don't blame my shipmates for suggesting that I get out of the barracks and go to a wild party.
I did blame myself for a very long time though. After all, I was the one who wanted to go out and try something I haven't done before. I was the one who agreed to an offered hook-up with a complete stranger. I was the one who let myself get put in a situation where I was alone with someone that I realize now was probably under the influence of alcohol enough to be dangerous and abusive and probably tried to get me wasted. Those were all on me. Right?
Did that mean that I somehow deserved to be raped?
Every time I replayed that night and those moments in my mind, I am struck by how completely stupid I'd been. Worse were the thoughts that I probably couldn't have done anything different without the outcome being much different for me.
For instance, if I had found the strength to shove her off me, and likely off the bed, and left any mark on her; then she could have falsely accused me of assaulting her. And what would my defense have been? That she was attacking me after I told her no in the middle of sex? Sure she was an older woman, but still female and, in the eyes of most of society, always the potential victim. Especially a woman who'd had a couple of drinks while the man -- even a then skinny, non-athletic man -- didn't have more than a little alcohol in his system.
I also knew then that nobody would have believed my story then. I'm also certain that there would have been some people -- mostly men -- who'd claim it would have been their wildest fantasy to have a woman jump their bones, condom or no condom. I'd probably also be accused of being less than heterosexual, or at least less of a "man's man" for wanting to get out of that situation.
"Oh come on, aren't guys suppose to like stuff like this?"
Yeah, I'm fairly certain that back in 1997 the outcome of such a defense would have ended 99 times out of 100 not in my favor. I could have ended up in military prison on a false rape conviction -- which would have had terrible consequences for me in both the short and the long-term of my life.
Certainly the thought of contracting a life-long venereal disease like herpes, or HIV/AIDS, was a huge worry for me for a very long time. Thankfully when I went to the doctor months later and had a blood test done there was no sign of anything wrong.
As scary as those thought were, there was another outcome that would also have been life-altering, as well as completely screwed up. Suppose that woman got pregnant from the experience? Suppose she choose to keep the baby, which would have been biologically mine despite the circumstances of conception. The way our laws are set up, I could have been sued for child support and forced by law to pay my rapist for the better part of the next two decades of my life.
These thoughts cost me more than a few nights of sleep for the first year, or two, since the incident. That and the vivid memories of the rape itself playing out in night terrors where I would wake up disoriented and afraid until I remembered I was safe at home in my own bed.
It would be a long time before I understood that my rape also resulted in me suffering from PTSD. I never went to a psychologist, or explained what happened to me to anyone for a very long time.
For men there were few sympathetic ears back in those decades and I was forced to live with my anxieties as a constant companion. This caused me to retreat inwardly into myself, caused me to become more irritable to my friends and family. I know that I often pushed boundaries and became very unpleasant to people at times. There were times where even the hint that someone didn't believe me about any sort of issue pushed me to become verbally aggressive and hurtful to everyone, particularly friends and close family. This is something that I regret to this day.
I strongly urge anyone reading this to understand that survivors of sexual assault need support and love. If it has ever happened to you, or to a loved one, please don't hesitate to get help or ask for it. For male abuse victims there are few resources, but thankfully that oversight is slowly changing thanks to organizations like 1in6, RAINN, and the Avalon Center.
Surviving & Moving Forward
It would be a few years before I was able to go past a certain point in intimacy with the opposite sex. This caused some awkward moments with several potential lovers. While I never experienced erectile dysfunction thankfully, I became uncertain and unsure of myself. I just felt completely emotionally empty inside at times.
The best way I can describe it would be a mixed feeling of claustrophobia and drowning, but not like in water. Like the air in my lungs was sucked out and I can't breathe.
One time a woman rolled me over to pin me down playfully and I panicked and nearly threw her off me and almost off the bed. She asked me if I was crazy and I apologized as she grabbed her clothes and left. The first time I was able to make love to another woman -- about a little under four years after the rape -- I actually cried a little afterwards, though thankfully my partner was already asleep when it happened.
One young woman in particular that I would come to respect wanted to do light bondage stuff; specifically she wanted to leather-cuff my wrists to the bedpost above my head. I almost had another panic attack the first time we tried and practically screamed the safeword we'd agreed to. At first I was afraid to tell her what happened, believing that she would never accept my story. When I finally broke down and told her why, she looked at me stricken and told me, "Honey, that wasn't right, she raped you." She'd also been a sexual assault survivor. We cried holding each other and I was just happy that someone understood and believed me -- and if you're reading this, thank you, Sandy.
Thankfully I've had a few sexual partners like her since then who were willing to be patient with me and let me trust them. Without them I fear I never would have regained the confidence to take back comfort in my sexuality. I was eventually able to explore, and even push the boundaries of my sex comfort zone to help free myself of the lingering anxiety that I still carried around. I'll always be very grateful to them for that.
I will also always be grateful to my support group, including my friends who are fellow members of a certain cartoon fandom that helped me find a distraction from my inner turmoil in those first few years after the assault. I'm going to talk more about that in a future blog post.
There is a saying that time heals all wounds. I have come to accept that this is also true here. Its been over two decades and I haven't had nightmares about the assault for a long time. Time and other sexual experiences and encounters have certainly helped me to partly retake what was stolen from me that night over two decades ago.
Am I the same person that I was before I was raped? No. That, unfortunately, cannot be completely taken back. My Christian faith tells me to forgive those who have wronged you. I confess that I still struggle with this and while I don't believe I can ever truly forgive my rapist for what she did, I have moved on and found peace with my life now. The nightmares have stopped. Time and distance does make things better for some people eventually.
Probably the most messed up thing is that sometimes I find myself wondering if my rapist even truly understood that what she did to me was rape. For that matter I wonder how many people reading this story believe what I went through counts as rape either.
"Oh come on, aren't guys suppose to like stuff like this?"
I'm thankful to say that, despite that terrible experience, I've never resented women in general as a result. I have a great deal of respect for them and what they go through. I know that, as a male, I don't have all the answers, and some things might always be beyond my understanding when it comes to the experiences of females, but I'm willing to always listen.
Now what I will admit resenting are what I view as the horrible societal double-standards that apply when it comes to male victims and victimization, and believe that equal protections should apply to all survivors of domestic abuse and sexual assault. I also believe strongly that acknowledging the abuse and rape of men and boys does not take away from the experiences of women and girls, who are statistically still more likely to suffer sexual abuse.
Also, while I certainly believe that all victims should be heard, I also know that false accusations of abuse and assault against someone are wrong and can be every bit as devastating to the victim of such allegations. They can also have far-lasting consequences to real assault victims as a whole as well. As a society we must respect everyone and see all points of view to ensure justice is served respectively.
When it comes to my story, I have no physical proof that it happened to me. I have no physical scar on my body I can point to, those have long since healed. Do I expect you to believe my story? Truthfully, I know that some of y'all won't accept that this happened to me, or to anyone else like me. I also know that some of y'all will probably believe my story, or maybe even have your own story of a similar situation.
As I said before, this experience does not define who I am. I'm a survivor, and I will continue to thrive move forward. That's who I am.
Thank you for taking the time to read my story and God Bless Y'all!
https://www.avaloncentertn.org/male-victims-survivors
https://www.rainn.org/articles/sexual-assault-men-and-boys
https://1in6.org/get-information/myths/
http://wp.lancs.ac.uk/forced-to-penetrate-cases/files/2016/11/Project-Report-Final.pdf
Professional help is available if you are the victim of sexual violence. You can contact the National Sexual Assault Hotline at: 1-800-656-4673 (HOPE), or visit the RAINN online hotline at: https://hotline.rainn.org/online.
