ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author explains how she became interested in the issue of sexual violence against men, and then offers her reflections on a series of issues that perturb the author about debates about sexual violence against men. The author initially became interested in the incidence of sexual violence against men through an interest in the hyper-celebrity fuelled attention to sexual violence against women. Women, like men, are capable of perpetrating all kinds of violence; and women do commit all kinds of violence. The complexities also emerge in the atmosphere of incredulity about the veracity of claims that incidences of sexual violence are equally divided by both genders. The sense of Cixous’ comment is more forcefully clarified when we consider some of the ways in which narratives about sexual violence against men mobilise ideas about masculinity and what it means to be ‘a man’.
