“I’ve had my a– grabbed by older, powerful men,” …. “I’ve had them corner me in inappropriate sexual conversations when I was much younger…” [James] Van Der Beek continued, showing support for women who delayed their allegations. “I understand the unwarranted shame, powerlessness & inability to blow the whistle,” he said. “There’s a power dynamic that’s impossible to overcome.” (Nyren, 2017, para. 2–3)
This extract is taken from an article published in Variety magazine which reported on a series of tweets posted by Hollywood actor James Van Der Beek in the wake of the Weinstein exposé. I start with Van der Beek’s tweets because he was one of the first men to speak out about their experience of victimisation. Male victims of sexual harassment and violence have received relatively little attention in both popular and academic arenas (Curry, 2019; Lee, 2000; White & Yamawaki, 2009). Given this, the visibility of male victims of sexual harassment and violence was an unprecedented outcome of the public condemnation of Weinstein. Discussion of men’s sexual victimisation has been recognised as a complicated and thorny issue in academic scholarship. This complexity is rooted in the ways in which feminist research has made explicit the need to use gender as a lens through which to make sense of sexual violence. In doing so, it has flagged the disproportionate victimisation of women by men and theorised the cultural conditions which enables this dynamic (Gavey, 2018; Chapter 1). As I have argued in this book, the positioning of women as sexually passive or constrained in relation to sexually agentic men persist in normative understandings of heterosexuality. Reiterations of such representations of men and women in contemporary culture have been theorised as creating possibilities for situating women as vulnerable, and for rendering men as having the capacities for sexual violence (Gavey, 2018; Chapter 1). These gendered positionings are central to the cultural scaffolding that enables sexual violence (Gavey, 2018). The victimisation of men has been used as a counterpoint to illustrate why gendered analysis of sexual violence is not needed. The logic of this argument is that if both men and women can be victimised, it follows that sexual violence is a gender-neutral phenomenon. That debates around these issues are controversial, I would argue, has in part contributed to the marginalisation of the study of men’s victimisation in academic research.
In considering the marginalisation of men’s experiences of sexual violence, Gavey (2018) has argued that research that focuses only on men as perpetrators and women as victims “reifies understandings of women’s sexuality as passive, submissive and vulnerable, and men’s as active, aggressive and dangerous. In doing so it arguably risks contributing to discourses/knowledges that actually perpetuate the very dynamic of rigidly gendered heterosex” (p. 184). I agree with Gavey’s position and it is one that I have taken in writing this chapter on male victimisation. More specifically, in this chapter, I examine how celebrity male victims of sexual harassment and assault were constituted in media reporting. I focus specifically on the reporting of three cases that hit the headlines. These include the victimisation of Anthony Rapp by Kevin Spacey, Jimmy Bennett by Asia Argento and Terry Crews by Adam Venit. I explore how masculinity intersected with other relations of power and how this was constituted in media representations of these cases. I consider the implications of contemporary constructions of male victimisation for destabilising gendered heterosexual dynamics which support sexual harassment and violence.
Men and #MeToo
There are several features of the media reporting of celebrity male victims following the Weinstein exposé that mirror patterns identified in prevalence research on sexual harassment. Firstly, the number of men who recounted their experiences in comparison to women victims in the film industry were relatively few. This pattern is resonant with those documented in prevalence rates on sexual harassment (e.g. ComRes, 2017). For example, the US Merit Systems Protection Board statistics in 2016 indicated that out of 42,046 completed responses to their sexual harassment survey, 18% of women and 6% of men reported being sexually harassed at least once in the preceding 2 years. Secondly, the majority of male actors who came forward reported to have been sexually harassed and abused by a male perpetrator. This pattern is also reflected in survey data that suggests that men are more likely to experience harassment by other men than women (e.g. Russell & Oswald, 2015).
The psychological study of the sexual harassment of men began in the late 1990s but was, and continues to be, a marginal area of study. Research has predominantly focused on women as victims (see Chapters 2 and 3) and this has presented particular methodological difficulties in researching men’s experiences of harassment. For example, Berdahl et al. (1996) argued that existing sexual harassment surveys did not adequately capture men’s experiences because they had been designed around women. This, Berdahl et al. (1996) suggests, represents a significant problem because men and women may differ in what behaviours they find offensive. Given this, Berdahl et al. concluded that such survey data may underrepresent the kind of acts that men define as sexual harassment. To address existing survey limitations, Waldo et al. (1998) developed the Sexual Harassment of Men Scale (SHOM). The SHOM scale was a modification of Fitzgerald et al.’s (1988) Sexual Experiences Questionnaire (SEQ) which had been designed to measure women’s experiences of sexual harassment. The SHOM incorporated items that were intended to be specific to men’s experiences. This included a subscale which reflected the “enforcement of the traditional heterosexual male gender role [e.g., ‘made you feel like you were not a man if you did traditionally female activities (for example, leaving work for child care, doing housework),’ and ‘insulted you by calling you a ‘fag’ or ‘gay’]” (Waldo et al., 1998, p. 66). Alongside this subscale, lewd comments (e.g. “showed, used, or handed out dirty pictures or stories [for example, pornography]”) (p. 76) and negative gender-related remarks about men (e.g. “saying that men have only one thing on their minds”) (p. 77) were intended to measure men’s experiences of gender harassment. A further subscale measured unwanted sexual attention (“tried to stroke your leg or other body part?”) and sexual coercion (e.g. “hinted at a raise or better job if you were sexual with them?”) (p. 77). Waldo et al.’s (1998) SHOM survey research found that men were more likely to be harassed by a male rather than female perpetrator, and that male to male sexual harassment was typified by lewd comments and the enforcement of heterosexual masculine roles and characteristics. Negative gender-related remarks were more frequently associated with the sexual harassment of men by women. Overall, the data suggested that sexual coercion was generally an infrequent display of male victimisation.
In discussing their findings, Waldo et al. (1998) considered the data they had collected on the psychological effects of sexual harassment on male victims. They entitled this section “But was it really sexual harassment?” (p. 74). This question was raised because male respondents overall indicated low levels of emotional distress resulting from their experiences. Waldo et al. (1998) went on to argue that since an experience is commonly only treated as “harassing in a psychological sense… when it is appraised by a target as offensive, threatening, or upsetting, these results call into question the idea of automatically labelling the behaviors identified by the SHOM as sexually harassing for men” (p. 74). This conclusion is interesting given that male respondents had, by virtue of filling in an “organizational assessment on sexual harassment” (p. 65), defined their experiences as such. The question posed in the subtitle effectively erases most instantiations of sexual harassment for men. This erasure seems to be rooted in ideals around victimhood which require victims to demonstrate upset and psychological distress (see Chapter 3). A requirement that, as Waldo et al. (1998) point out, is built into definitions of sexual harassment. For Waldo et al. (1998), the enforcement of heterosexual male gender roles was much more likely to constitute sexual harassment for men because male respondents indicated that they found this experience upsetting. The construction of sexual harassment as about “enforcement” of heterosexual masculinity positions those who experience it as less than masculine or homosexualised—both of these characterisations are associated with the feminisation of the male victim (e.g. Lee 2000; Thomas, 1997). Feminisation can render male victims more intelligible because characterisations of victims of sexual violence are broadly feminised (see Chapter 3; Meger, 2015). However, to be more intelligible does not guarantee social support and empathy. Supportive treatment of victims has been tied to the degree to which they can be positioned within ideals of the blameless victim. This positioning is particularly complex for the male victim of gender policing because of the ways in which they can be held accountable for their violation of normative heterosexual gender roles (e.g. Davis & Rogers, 2006; Meger, 2015).
Both the idea that sexual harassment causes men little distress and that gender role policing characterises the sexual harassment of men have been predominant in this field of research. As Stockdale et al. (1999) argue, “a prevailing reason why a male target is harassed (especially by other men) is because he does not appear to fit a hypermasculine image of maleness…. dominance, superiority, masculinity — either because he is or is perceived to be homosexual or effeminate or in some other way ‘not man enough.’ He is harassed because he threatens male superiority” (p. 636). This understanding formed the basis for Stockdale et al.’s proposition that the sexual harassment of men constitutes unlawful sex discrimination. The development of this argument was based on Stockdale et al.’s problematisation of the widespread legal dismissal of many men’s complaints of same-sex sexual harassment. For example, it has been successfully argued in legal cases that a male victim of lewd comments by other men was not sex discrimination, because the male victim was not debased in the same way as women victims who have experienced similar treatment. This argument was premised on the idea that men and women’s experiences become meaningfully different by virtue of women’s subordination in sexist cultures. Countering this logic, Stockdale et al. argued instead that the sexual harassment of men is discriminatory because: (a) it “reinforces rigid sex-role norms and stereotypes that subjugate all women and men who do not conform to heterosexual norms of masculinity”; and, (b) “the harassment of men by other heterosexual men constitutes sex discrimination because it has the effect of perpetuating hypermasculine and heterosexist standards” (1999, p. 637). The dynamics that Stockdale et al. describe overwhelmingly focuses on heterosexual men as perpetrators of sexual harassment against other men and women. Gay perpetrators are acknowledged in that “it is conceivable that homosexual men can harass other men in order to maintain a hypermasculine ethic (or some other sex-role norm) as opposed to desiring sexual intimacy” (p. 637). Stockdale et al. (1999) also refers to “homosexually driven sexual harassment” which, while not explicitly defined, appears to describe instantiations related to sexual desire. This, together with the harassment of men by women, are described by Stockdale et al. as rare as well as “benign” (1999, p. 658). Interestingly, “benign” is also used to describe the harassment of heterosexual men by heterosexual men because these male victims reported low levels of distress. Stockdale et al. suggest that relatively minor emotional impacts of sexual harassment on men could be explained by the fact that same-sex sexual harassment is an implicit and socially legitimised feature of male socialisation into heterosexual masculinity.
There are three aspects to Stockdale et al.’s (1999) explanation that simultaneously recognise and undermine the sexual harassment of men. Firstly, and resonant with Waldo et al.’s (1998) treatment of the emotional impact of sexual harassment on men, Stockdale et al. takes at face value men’s minimal psychological distress. Stockdale et al. do not explore masculinity as an explanation for low levels of reported negative emotional impact. Emotions, particularly distress and upset, are associated with traditional characterisations of femininity, and have often been seen as reflecting feminine irrationality, fragility and passivity (Weisstein, 1993). These feminine characteristics are in binary opposition to the stoic, rational masculine agent (e.g. O’Neill, 2018; Weisstein, 1993). It is perhaps not surprising then that many men may struggle to articulate themselves using the emotional referents embedded within the language of sexual victimisation. This presents a set of tensions for negotiating a masculine identity once men have been sexually harassed. To call out sexual harassment positions men as feminised because sexual victimisation is predominantly seen as something that happens to women (Boyle, 2019; Lazard, 2009). In addition to this, to be considered a proper victim, men must also demonstrate feminised emotion. Thus, to fulfil expectations around how victims should ideally behave, men are required to become doubly feminised. In this context, it is perhaps easy to see why men would not report extreme emotional upset, because to do so, negates their positioning within particular heterosexual masculine frames.
Secondly, it is significant that Stockdale et al. describe men’s sexual harassment by gay male perpetrators or by women as “benign” and does not explain why it is so. The sexual harassment of heterosexual men by gay men is treated as anodyne presumably because it does not represent an actual threat. Dominant discourses of men and victimisation have centred on men as resistant to sexual violence (Gavey, 2018; Lazard, 2009). This resistance to sexual victimisation has long been associated with men’s physicality which has been central to ideals of normative masculinity. As Weinke (1998) notes, cultural ideals of male embodiment are associated with “having a formidable presence in the world, one that conveys in an instant notions of power, control and invulnerability, not to mention the capacity to exercise violence, when required” (p. 1). Presumably what makes “homosexually driven sexual harassment” benign is that the male recipient could match and repel physical advances. Men’s powerful embodiment within heterosexuality is typically constituted as the lynchpin of men’s active position in heterosexuality and sexual violence—they are constituted as physically capable of forcing sexual attention on women (e.g. McCaughey, 1997). In contrast, women’s bodies are portrayed as lacking force, as vulnerable, and as incapable of challenging male embodied power (e.g. Lazard 2009; Marcus, 2002). McCaughey (1997) suggest that these representations of feminine and masculine embodied sexuality are drawn on in sexual violence prevention programmes which serve to (re)produce and normalise men’s physical power to do sexual violence and women’s vulnerability to this power. A female perpetrator is thus understood as incapable of imposing a physical sexual threat to men.
The final point about Stockdale et al.’s (1999) argument can be situated as a more general issue in this body of research. As I mentioned earlier, Stockdale et al. (1999), in common with others, have highlighted a pattern in which sexual harassment regulates normative heterosexual masculinity and can work to punish those who deviate from it (e.g. Berdahl et al., 1996; Magley et al., 2009). While this pattern is undoubtedly relevant to practices around shoring up a heteronormative masculine social order, I would argue that there is a tendency in the literature to reify and singularise this explanatory account. The danger in this tendency is that it reproduces male victims as a specific kind of man, that is, one who falls short of heterosexual masculine ideals by being weaker than their normative masculine counterparts, (e.g. “effeminate”, gay). That is, sexual harassment is hinged on a specific form of othering. This othering of male victims reinforces normative heterosexual masculinities as invulnerable to sexual victimisation. Thus, rather than disrupting heterosexual politics, such representations of male victims serve to maintain the status quo because “real” men remain agentic and other men and women remain passive or agentically constrained in relation to them. Further, reifying the sexual harassment of men as a specific and narrow manifestation of gender role policing risks skimming over nuances in how the sexual harassment of men becomes displayed, heard and understood. This seems to me to be particularly relevant to the sexual harassment of Hollywood actors in #MeToo who, because of their public presence, visibly move in and between various instantiations of masculinities in their professional lives and are often represented as embodying normative masculinities in their public images.
It is also important to locate celebrity male victims within more recent patterns around both masculinity and the increased visibility of feminism in contemporary culture. With the pervasive mainstreaming of feminism within the last decade (see Chapters 1 and 2), men have also been invited to participate in its popular variants. For example, Elle UK magazine launched a Feminism Issue in 2014 which featured celebrity men and women wearing T-shirts with the slogan ‘this is what a feminist looks like’ (Team Elle, 2014). It is certainly not uncommon now to see men in the entertainment industry wear clothing decorated with feminist aligned catch phrases. In line with this, studies have shown that men are increasingly showing solidarity with feminist movements and engaging with feminist activism (e.g. Cobb, 2015; Silver et al., 2018). The visible linking of men with feminism becomes more complex in the context of the circulation of postfeminist discourses in popular culture.
As I’ve described in preceding chapters, since around the mid-2000s, there has been a steady rise in the visibility of a postfeminist sensibility which broadly characterises gender equality as something that has been achieved; women are now empowered sexual subjects and so feminism is no longer needed (McRobbie, 2007; Gill & Scharff, 2011). Postfeminist rhetoric celebrates the perceived new freedoms of women which include, for example, the pursuit of sexual pleasures, viewing men as sexual objects and reaching one’s full potential at work (e.g. Gill, 2014; Rumens, 2017; see also Chapter 2). Within this context, postfeminist masculinities have emerged in which popular depictions mark postfeminist men as hapless, hopeless, bumbling and losers in the sex wars (Brabon, 2007; Gill, 2014; Macaluso, 2018). Such masculinities, coupled with the greater visibility of men’s participation in popular feminist mainstreaming, can support the postfeminist rhetoric that gender equality has now been achieved and feminism is no longer needed. These cultural developments around celebrity men openly engaging with feminist ideas appear to have laid the ground for their involvement in #MeToo.
The heightened popularity of feminism has co-occurred with other shifts in masculinities. Particularly relevant to celebrity men’s participation in #MeToo is the notion of inclusive masculinities. Anderson (2009) developed inclusive masculinity theory in response to debates that the concept of hegemonic masculinity required revision. The notion of hegemonic masculinity has been hugely influential in masculinities scholarship and has been referred to as a pattern of practice that has allowed the continuation of male dominance over women under patriarchy (Connell & Messerschmidt, 2005). For Kimmel (1997), hegemonic masculinity is that which “defines white, middle class, early middle-aged heterosexual men [and it] is that masculinity that sets the standards for other men, against which other men are judged and, more often than not, found wanting” (Kimmel, 1997, p. 228). In his classic work, Connell (1987) argued that “the most important feature of contemporary hegemonic masculinity is that it is heterosexual, being closely connected with the institution of marriage; and a key form of subordinated masculinity is homosexual” (p. 61). Anderson (2009), in his influential thesis, suggests that hegemonic masculinity is now conceptually redundant in contemporary contexts because particular shifts have produced more inclusive and non-homophobic forms of masculinity. Based on his ethnographic research with predominantly white, middle- to upper-middle-class university-aged men in the US and UK, Anderson argued that more recent social and cultural shifts have been marked by decreasing “homohysteria”, or fear of being perceived as gay, which has enabled “softer”, expressive and tactile masculinities to emerge. Such masculinities eschew “the homophobia, misogyny and aggression attributed to [men and] boys of previous generations” (Morris & Anderson, 2015, p. 1).
Anderson (2009) argued that in contexts where homohysteria is low, traditional masculinities are present but not culturally hegemonic which provides the grounds for the appearance of more inclusive masculinities. Anderson’s thesis is relevant to the sexual victimisation of men because homohysteria and anti-gay sentiment have been identified as key factors in men’s reluctance to label or report their experiences of sexual harassment and violence (Lee, 2000). This is because homohysteria and anti-gay sentiment has characterised men’s experience of secondary victimisation which refers to widespread patterns of negative response that victims experience in the aftermath of sexual violence (White & YamaWaki, 2009; Williams, 1984). The increased legitimisation of inclusive masculinities, coupled with the visibility of men’s participation in feminism mentioned earlier, can be seen as conditions enabling celebrity men to speak publicly about their experiences of sexual harassment and violence.
Scholars have suggested that some caution is needed in assuming that the emergence of inclusive masculinities reflects progressive social change (de Boise, 2014; O’Neill, 2015). In particular, inclusive masculinity theory has been critiqued for its assertation that homophobia and homohysteria are in decline, albeit unevenly, across social contexts. Rumens (2017), for example, points to how inclusive masculinity theory fails to attend to how homophobia has given way to new “gay-friendly” forms of heteronormativity. Such forms allow for some LGBTQIA1 people to be perceptually present as long as they remain consistent with valued forms of heteronormativity within postfeminist frames. For this reason, Rumens (2017) argues that inclusive masculinity theory struggles to theorise the (re)production of the heterosexual/homosexual binary in postfeminist cultures. Since homohysteria and homophobia have been implicated in men’s reluctance to speak out about their experiences of sexual violence, it would seem pertinent to examine the heterosexual/gay binary in relation to high-profile instances of male victimisation. In addition to the heterosexual/gay binary, what is also important is understanding how other particular intersecting power relations become relevant to constructions of male victimisation since not all men are treated equally across different contexts, locations and positions.
It is such complexities around victimhood and masculinities that I examine in the rest of this chapter. I do so by exploring how the victimisation of actors Antony Rapp, Jimmy Bennett and Terry Crews was constituted in the media reportings of their sexual harassment and assault. I focus on these three actors because their stories became particularly prominent, and unlike some other male actors who briefly came forward, did interviews with either television outlets or magazines. My primary interest is to explore how male victimisation became constituted in relation to notions of masculinity and other particular power relationships which were relevant to each case.
The Case of Anthony Rapp
“sort of stood in the doorway, kind of swaying. My impression when he came in the room was that he was drunk.” Rapp doesn’t remember Spacey saying anything to him. Instead, Rapp said, “He picked me up like a groom picks up the bride over the threshold. But I don’t, like, squirm away initially, because I’m like, ‘What’s going on?’ And then he lays down on top of me.” (Vary, 2017, para. 17)
“He was trying to seduce me,” Rapp said. “I don’t know if I would have used that language. But I was aware that he was trying to get with me sexually.”….He said Spacey “was, like, pressing into me,” and that he remembers Spacey “tightening his arms.” But while he can’t recall exactly how long Spacey remained on top of him, Rapp said he was able to “squirm” away after a short period. (Vary, 2017, para. 18–19)
“I was like ‘What is happening?’” … “I saw on the counter next to the sink a picture of him having his arm around a man. So I think on some level I was like, Oh. He’s gay”. (Vary, 2017, para. 21)
The description of Spacey as gay is accompanied by fleeting references to Rapp’s own gay sexuality in adulthood in the Buzzfeed interview. For example, a brief mention of Rapp’s “boyfriend” is written into the scene setting of Rapp’s emotional response of “dread” in watching Spacey on TV while sitting with his partner and friends. Later in the Buzzfeed article, Rapp’s “former boyfriend” is described as able to corroborate Rapp’s story by confirming that Rapp had told him about this experience when they were eighteen years old. Elsewhere I have argued that dominant understandings of gay men’s sexuality in sexual harassment discourses are framed by variants of the male sex drive discourse (Hollway, 1984; O’Neill, 2018), in which all men are positioned as always keen and ready to have sex (Lazard, 2009). Thus, the location of gay men within variants of the male sex drive discourse can work to undermine claims of their sexual victimisation because such discourses constitute sex as always wanted by men (Lazard, 2009). However, Rapp’s age, and his location in child sex abuse discourses, allows for him to be positioned as a victim of sexual deviance. Nevertheless, these fleeting references to Rapp’s gay sexuality, coupled with the framing of this story within a child abuse discourse, may work to subtly consolidate heterosexual (fully developed) normative masculinity as resistant to sexual harassment and violence. In this way, the heterosexual/gay binary is reproduced despite the ways in which the visibility of Rapp’s case, and the public support given to him, has been undoubtedly facilitated by a reduction of homohysteria and legitimisation of some forms of masculine vulnerability (e.g. Anderson, 2009). This provides some support for the argument that new and flexible forms of heteronormative reinscriptions and exclusions are produced in contemporary social milieus which, at the same time, legitimate inclusive masculinities within postfeminist cultures (Rumens, 2017).
The Case of Jimmy Bennett
Discourses of child sex abuse also became interwoven in media constructions of the sexual assault of actor Jimmy Bennett. Much like the reporting of Rapp, articles written about Bennett started with the age difference between Bennett and the accused who were 17 and 37, respectively, at the time of the reported assault. However, unlike Rapp, Bennett’s accusation was directed at a woman—Italian actress and director Asia Argento.
The circumstances around the media interest in Bennett’s sexual assault was also markedly different from Rapp. Bennett did not initially voice his experience publicly. Instead, the assault of Bennett became public after The New York Times printed an exposé of Asia Argento. The exposé centred around a document, which was sent to The New York Times through “encrypted email by an unidentified party” which revealed Bennett’s legal intent to sue (Severson, 2018, para. 4). The primary focus of the article was on the hypocrisy in Argento’s position within the #MeToo movement. This was because she was “a leading figure in the #MeToo movement” and yet had “quietly arranged to pay $380,000 to her own accuser: Jimmy Bennett, a young actor and rock musician who said she had sexually assaulted him in a California hotel room” (Severson, 2018, para. 2). Within the media reporting, concerns were voiced that Argento’s strong tie to the #MeToo movement might “would be used by some to discredit #MeToo” (“Asia Argento”, 2018). As a “#MeToo leader” (Severson, 2018, para. 1), Argento’s position as a perpetrator represents how the behaviour of individual women is used to confirm the failures of feminism and cast feminism as a site of suspicion or stumbling block to progress (Boyle, 2019). Such representations of feminist politics are in line with postfeminist rhetoric in which feminism is taken into account, in this case, by the portrayal of Argento’s central involvement in #MeToo, only to be repudiated by reference to her problematic behaviour.
Bennett first met Argento in 2004 when he was 7 years old, playing the role of her son in her film The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things…he says they stayed friends and kept in touch sporadically over the years. She called him “son” and he called her “mother.” (Anderson, 2018, para. 5)
Bennett said he arrived at the Ritz-Carlton with a chaperone, who he claims left after Argento made him feel unwelcome. “It all happened very fast” after that, he said….“The first thing that happened was her offering me champagne. She had already been drinking. And she went to play music on a record player that she had, and she was smoking cigarettes, talking to me, catching up,” he said. “And she was telling me about this film she had in mind for me….It had started when I first got into the room. There was a lot of kissing and a lot of her grabbing my face and looking at me and kind of inspecting me and saying, ‘Oh my son, I’ve missed you so much.’” (Anderson, 2018, para. 9–11)
The presence of a chaperone serves as a reminder that Bennett is below the legal age of consent in California State and Argento’s efforts to remove the chaperone imply her sexual intentions towards Bennett. There are several things of note about the construction of Argento’s power over Bennett in this excerpt. That Argento is portrayed as actively setting the scene for a seduction locates her in postfeminist discourses of women’s empowerment and new sexual freedoms. Notions of women’s empowerment are also reflected through reference to her professional success in which she has the power as a director to give Bennett a role in a film. This is resonant with constructions of Weinstein and uses of the Hollywood casting couch to exploit the job precarity of working actors and actresses (see Chapter 2). In these descriptions, any notion of Bennett’s power is disclaimed by Argento’s sexual and professional empowerment within postfeminist frames.
Giletti [the interviewer] continued pressing Bennett: “The thing that is hard to understand — I say this with great respect — is that when a man confesses he raped a woman, none of us doubt it, as unfortunately sometimes a woman cannot defend herself. On the other hand, the violence of a woman against a man is technically difficult to comprehend. Do you understand what I mean? A man, even if he is the one undergoing the violence, has to have an active role.”
[Bennett] “Yeah. I think that the main narrative, at least from the comments and stuff I’ve received, is that, ‘Well, why wouldn’t you want to have sex with her? What’s wrong with you?’” (Anderson, 2018, para. 14–15)
The obviously technical difficulty which makes Bennett’s victimisation difficult to understand, according to the excerpt is Bennett’s physical arousal and erection during the incident. In contrast to the reporting of Rapp’s case, whose position in child sex abuse discourses offsets assumptions about men’s need for sex, Bennett’s position as a young adult positions him within the male sex drive discourse which serves to constitute his victimisation as unintelligible. Specifically, in operation here, are long-standing presumptions that not only do men want sex but also that physically penetrative responses constitute men’s consent (Fuchs, 2004). These presumptions negate the possibility that men can be sexually victimised by women and position men as outside of victim ideals because their erection allows them to be blamed for any unwanted sex experienced. Such understandings not only disregard the complexities of physical responses during sexual violence but are also inattentive to other power differentials that become relevant to experiences of sexual victimisation (Fuchs, 2004). The negation of male victimisation here reinstates the idea that men are resistant to sexual violence which in turn reinscribes gender binaries that position women as victims and men as perpetrators.
The Case of Terry Crews
Actor and former NFL linebacker Terry Crews… a 6-foot-2-inch, 240-pound former bodyguard, sent out a series of tweets on Tuesday, explaining that no one is immune from sexual harassment and assault. (Rosenblatt, 2017, para. 3)
“Dude, what are you doing?” The former NFL player says Venit repeated the behavior. “And then he comes back again and he just won’t stop. And then I really got forceful, pushed him back. He bumps into all the other partygoers and he starts giggling and laughing”. (Khatchatourian, 2017, para. 5–6)
contemplated fighting the man, but then “thought twice about how the whole thing would appear”. ‘‘240 lbs. Black Man stomps out Hollywood Honcho’ would be the headline the next day,” Crews predicted. “Only I probably wouldn’t have been able to read it because I WOULD HAVE BEEN IN JAIL. So we [him and his wife] left.” (Rosenblatt, 2017, para. 7)
By the reference to both his wife and fighting, Crews is positioned as a heterosexual man who physically resisted unwanted sexual attention. This wards off any suggestion that he had welcomed “overtly sexual” behaviour from another man and the possibilities for anti-gay sentiment in response to his disclosure. As mentioned earlier, anti-gay sentiment has been a central feature of the secondary victimisation of men. The portrayal of Crews’ masculinity in this extract, however, suggest several tensions around cultural expectations of black men when they are faced with a threat. The idea that Crews “contemplated fighting the man” resonates with cultural expectations of men as capable of aggression, particularly in response to threat. However, what is also clear is that Crews must contain his body because of the deeply entrenched racism which represents black men as, for example, hyperphysical, hypersexual, criminal, violent and sexual predators (e.g. Curry, 2019; Pass et al., 2014; see Chapter 5). In light of this, Crews is described as carefully managing his physical response. He uses his physical strength to forcefully push Venit away but stops short of fighting. Curry (2019) suggests that the Crews case implies that cultural racism may well prevent black men from being able to fully defend themselves against violence. This cultural binding of black men also appears to relate to a broader cultural reluctance to see them as victims, particularly of sexual violence.
Why are you questioning the victim here? Let’s flip it. Let’s talk about what the predator is doing. (Zacharek et al., 2017, para.105)
Crews’ contribution to the article centres on his articulation of problem of secondary victimisation and victim blame. However, this problem is described in generic terms in a way which applies to all victims of sexual violence. What is not captured is how Crews’ own experiences of victimisation were both raced and gendered (Curry, 2019). Relevant to Crews’ portrayal in Time is a post-race sensibility (e.g. Johnson Thorton, 2011). Much like postfeminist sensibility discussed earlier in which feminism is taken into account, only to be repudiated, a post-race sensibility refers to the idea that racial equality has been achieved and racism is now a thing of the past (Beaumont-Centre, 2014; Johnson Thornton, 2011). This can be seen in Crews’ treatment in Time in which black male victimisation is superficially taken into account by the visual display of Crews but is undone by an absence of engagement with race and racism.
I have never felt more emasculated. More objectified. I was horrified. (“Terry Crews details alleged sexual assault”, 2017)
Being “emasculated” frames his experience as an assault on masculinity—his power as a man is taken away which positions him within understandings of feminised sexual vulnerability. The idea that masculinity is taken away by sexual victimisation departs from the theorisation in psychology around male to male sexual harassment discussed earlier. This is because the description of Venit’s actions cannot easily understood as stewarding Crews towards heteronormative masculinities or punishing Crews for deviating from them. There has been little sustained discussion of this aspect of the Crews experience in either popular or academic arenas. This may be due to the problems and dilemmas that are produced conceptually when trying to make sense of male heterosexual harassment and violence in the #MeToo era. How can we make sense of sexual violence and emasculation in relational dynamics between heterosexual men in the heteronormative gender order? This question becomes more complex in the context of post-race rhetoric which brackets considerations of intersectional power relations operating in sexual violence dynamics. This can be seen in a relative absence of discussion of Venit’s complex positioning as a white Jewish American vis-à-vis Crews as a Black African American in the media reporting of the Crews case (e.g. Boyle, 2019; Reeser, 2015).
hey, man, you got to understand the depth of what you did. In front of my wife. I said, you don’t even know how close you got to really being hurt. (“Terry Crews details alleged sexual assault”, 2017)
My wife is right there. He was acting so weird and so strange I put myself between, you know, him and my wife because with his tongue thing I couldn’t understand. (“Terry Crews details alleged sexual assault”, 2017)
By drawing attention to the possibility of his wife being sexually victimised and his ability to protect her from that, Crews and his wife become located within dominant understandings of masculine strength and feminine vulnerability. In doing so, the gendered binary of feminine victimisation and masculine perpetration becomes reinscribed rather than destabilised.
Victimised Masculinities
To what extent do the reports of Hollywood’s male victims destabilise well-ingrained cultural notions of men, particularly heterosexual men, as resistant to victimisation? The discursive framing of the cases discussed here could be read as preserving some traditional notions around masculinities because of the uneasy fit of the positioning of these men with heterosexual masculine ideals. In Rapp’s case, the imperviousness of adult, fully formed, heterosexual masculinity is constituted through child sex abuse discourses as well as the positioning of both perpetrator and victim as gay. For Bennett, his positioning within child sex abuses discourses and his positioning within the male sex drive discourse disavows the idea of adult heterosexual male victimisation at the hands of a woman. Indeed, Bennett’s case illustrates how the sexual passivity of men vis-à-vis the sexual agency of women remains contestable even in postfeminist cultures of women’s assumed empowerment and equality. In the reporting of Crews’ case, there are clear reinscriptions of the idea that masculinity is resistant to sexual violence; that it is men who perpetrate it and it is men who protect women from it. This analysis illustrates the deep persistence of understandings of the gender binary of women as victims and men as perpetrators in contemporary culture. As feminist scholars have noted, the persistence of these understandings of women as vulnerable and men as sexually aggressive create the conditions for the victimisation of women by men (Gavey, 2018; Lazard, 2009; Waldby, 1995; see Chapter 1). By doing so, it constrains how we can recognise and understand the possibilities for male victimisation.
There is, however, something more to be said about the public claim to victimisation by these Hollywood men. The very act of claiming victim status aligns men with repudiated vulnerability within masculinity frames which has long served as a powerful disincentive for male victims to recognise and report their experiences as sexual victimisation. That celebrity men publicly acknowledged their experiences as sexual violence means that masculine vulnerability is not hidden from view as has historically been the case. There may well be potential in harnessing masculine vulnerability as a specific challenge to ideas around masculine resistance to sexual harassment and violence. However, for this potential to be realised, it is necessary to embed this within an intersectional analysis of masculinities. Such an analysis will need to go beyond any assumption that takes at face value that we now live in an equal, more inclusive, society.
Conclusion
In this chapter, I have explored how three celebrity men’s experiences of sexual victimisation were constituted in the media. I argue that the representations of these men work to support predominant notions of heterosexual adult masculinity as resistant to sexual victimisation, and re-scribe notions of women’s vulnerability to male sexual violence. The persistence of these notions in cases of male victimisation demonstrates, not only how well-entrenched these ideas are, but also how they work to undermine or erase men’s experience of sexual victimisation and produce male victims through frames of otherness. In the next chapter, I continue to examine the binary of female victimisation/male perpetration by exploring how male perpetrators have been constituted during #MeToo.
- 1.
Abbreviation for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer and/or questioning, intersex and asexual and/or allies.