How many times have you been made to feel like you needed to apologize for your sex as a rape victim? There are men apologizing for being rape victims on this thread. I'm a male rape victim and I wrote up this post a hundred times trying to apologize for derailing the discussion since I'm a rape victim who happens to be male. I constantly feel like I am hi-jacking a women's issue whenever I try to talk about it. I don't feel like my rape even belongs to me. I don't feel like I am allowed to complain. I don't. I never have. It took me decades to even talk about it. And here I am "mansplaining" or "whataboutering" about my rape. Because I am a man so I am fundamentally not allowed to talk about my rape. And all I'm doing with this post is "proving you right". My personal story, my decades of silence and pain don't matter. Because, at the heart of it, all I am is a representative of "teh menz" trying to prove that I suffer more than women.

No, I'm not any of those things. I recognize that women and girls who are victims of rape need to be treated with respect, and I stand alongside female victims of rape as a fellow victim of rape. I'm not going to let myself be shut down anymore by people saying that my maleness means I can't relate. Don't belittle me with talk of "men's rights" or "as if we ever forget with you mentioning it all the time". Yes, people do forget. All the time. I am never assumed to have potentially been the victim of rape. But I refuse to apologize for it any more.