From Q-Notes, Carolinas’ multimedia LGBT news source (May 31 issue)
Male rape victim shares his story
Part One of this two-part series details the alleged crime
by Matt Comer and David Stout | May 31st, 2008
The U.S. Justice Department says one in every 10 rape victims is male. According to a national study, about three percent of American men (2.78 million) have been the victim of an attempted or completed rape. Around 60 percent of these men identify as gay or bisexual.
Despite the sobering figures, the Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network says male victims are less likely to file a crime report. Much of this has to do with the myths attached to male-on-male rape.
These fictions are commonly used to re-assign blame (getting an erection proves a man wants it), downplay the crime’s severity (it’s not as bad for a man as it is for a woman) and outright deny the existence of male same-sex rape.
For instance, North Carolina law does not recognize that a man can rape another man. Therefore, when both parties are male, cases that would be considered rapes elsewhere are prosecuted as sexual assaults in North Carolina. When they are prosecuted, that is.
Regular visitors to Q-Notes Online have already noticed a change in our online presence. A week prior to this current issue, Q-Notes staff rolled out our website’s new design.
WINSTON-SALEM — The Winston-Salem Theatre Alliance’s production of the gay-popular musical “Naked Boys Singing” has been postponed after state officials with the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Arts (SECCA) told the company they could not produce the musical at SECCA’s performance venue.
When pondering North Carolina’s beautiful western mountains, most people will conjure up images of grand rolling hills, breathtaking views and the Blue Ridge Parkway. Almost no one will think of these vistas as places to encounter a rowdy crowd of openly gay teens. But, in the first decade of the 21st century, there they are.
CHAPEL HILL, N.C. — Since 2001, the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender and Straight Alliance (GLBTSA) at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill has drawn hundreds of queer youth and students from across the southeast for their annual Unity Conference, the largest LGBT and allied student gathering of its kind in the South.
N. CHARLESTON, S.C. — News that a gender non-conforming teenager was shot down here more than a month ago has been slow to reach regional and national LGBT media organizations.
WILMINGTON, N.C. — Eighteen years ago, Talana Kreeger was brutally sexually assaulted and murdered in a vicious hate crime here. The painful memory of that tragic event has been held in silence in this Coastal community — until now.
If even the most conservative African-American minister stepped inside the Church of the Holy Spirit Fellowship in Winston-Salem, N.C., he or she would be hard-pressed to deny the presence of God reflected in the members’ joyous worship.
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