1/5 Men's relationship with victimhood especially around violation of sexual consent is HUGELY important and spills into / limits our own reactions as women or woke men. This is an important conversation and frankly yet to be had.

2/5 First sexual encounter/s for men are often coercive and tread a blurry line between exploration and fairly severe abuse. An inability to self identify as victims because of socialization as 'boys', abuse is rarely processed as violation & weighed down further by homophobia.

3/5
A research interlocutor once told me about how 5 older boys - he was 13 at the time- used to forcibly sodomized him. He later went on to do that to several younger children. He remembered the pain and confusion, but he could not articulate what happened to him as violence.

4/5 These early experiences can confound how men experience pleasure, ideas of consent and control over their own bodies and the bodies of others. An inability to empathize with your victimhood can have profound consequences on one's ability to 'see' the pain of others.

5/5
Women that experience coercive sexual encounter face different challenges. For us speaking about violence, a turn to the others- or solidarity as we call it - 'can' be empowering. Men have yet to develop a language that can recognize, own and heal these early transgressions.