ABSTRACT
This chapter considers how the #MeToo movement provides men a platform to challenge widely held myths of their immunity from sexual harassment and abuse. The authors argue that cultural misnomers about sexual assault reinforce hegemonic codes of masculinity, leaving men unaware that they too can be sexual objects and unprepared to contend with the trauma sexual assault elicits. The chapter explores film and television portrayals of male rape that construct and reinforce false tropes about the circumstances in which sexual assault takes place and how men must respond in order to maintain their masculinity. Recent media coverage of sexual exploitation of men challenges popular mindset that men cannot be violated, and this increasing awareness and visibility is forcing men to become literate in a new shared response to sexual transgression, one that forces a contest of power dynamics, disputes men’s bodily autonomy as immune/free from sexual penetration and violation, and positions sexual abuse as an experience which many share, grapple with understanding, and must develop language and practices to address.
