Representation of male on male rape in South African press reports

M.A. (Counselling Psychology)Abstract: Male on male rape is surrounded by myths and misconceptions. These misconceptions maintain the invisibility and underreporting of male rape, and they often relate to the masculinity of the male victim. The misconceptions create particular representations, and the media transmits these representations to the public. This qualitative study aimed to explore what was being reported about male rape in South African newspapers. Purposive sampling provided a final sample of 46 press reports from the Sabinet database. The first objective was to describe how male rape was represented within the reportage. Content analysis was used to explore these representations of male rape using a grounded theory approach. Five main representations of male rape were identified. These included male rape being depicted as a social problem surrounded by shame, stigmatization, and trauma. The pressure of hegemonic masculinity contribute to the shame and stigma. Ideologies informed these social representations, and the reports communicated that social constructions prevent disclosure. Nevertheless, male rape was also represented as a serious crime that deserved legal recognition and justice for victims. Thereafter, the second objective of the study was directed at exploring how the sexuality of the victim was being constructed within the reportage. Discourse analysis addressed this objective, applying the analytic of subject positions to representations of male rape victims in the reports. Four main positions were constructed for male victims of rape; these were influenced by discourses of hegemonic masculinity. Specifically, the discourses of what it is to be a man limited disclosure because of privileged gendered positions taken on by victims. Victims in the reports take on positions of compromised masculinity, and therefore become ashamed, stigmatized, and emasculated. The ideological processes that exists within the broader social system maintained these positions. Within the reportage, male rape myths and masculinist ideology were present in the representations and subject positions. However, the reports lacked an activist approach to addressing the social problem of male rape myths. These findings can help media reporting and social interventions by facilitating ideas to address the myths that oppress male victims and maintain the invisibility of male rape. Specifically, misrepresentations that can be addressed include: men cannot be raped, men are unaffected by rape, men should be able to defend against rape, and male rape only occurs in prison