Sexual Abuse of Men and Boys: Lynne MacDonell’s Talk at U of T (Sam Allouba)

On October 9, 2014, the University of Toronto’s Men’s Issues Awareness Society hosted a talk by Lynne MacDonell, who spoke about sexual abuse of men and boys, in particular abuse of boys within the penal system. The talk was sponsored by the Canadian Association for Equality (CAFE, pronounced café). CAFE is a non-profit charity that seeks to address issues of gender inequality in society, with a focus at this time on issues faced by men and boys. The event went well, despite a couple of setbacks beforehand, such as a police presence being required and a venue change.

MacDonell is mental health practitioner, therapist, and men’s support group leader. She is also part of the team that runs MaleSurvivor.org, which is an online support group dedicated to men who are victims of sexual assault. They offer resources, access to health care professionals, and recovery programs for their patients. MacDonell spoke about her time in the mental health field and how she found that, while working in an addiction treatment centre, the one thing that affected the male patients the most was childhood sexual abuse. She sought to understand why this was the case. She also worked with women in this capacity, but eventually realized that female victims had plenty of places to which they could be referred to for further treatment. As one would expect, there weren’t any available to men.

Some of the facts she provided were unsettling, to say the least. Approximately one out of every six men has been sexually abused in their lifetime. It has been reported that 90% of sexual exploitation incidents within juvenile facilities are perpetrated by female guards against young males, according to Josh Vorhees in the National Post. Or if you prefer something more hard-hitting, have a look at this report from the U.S. Bureau of Justice Studies, published in 2012. Specifically, go to page 23 and see table 14. An estimated 92.4% of youth who reported staff sexual misconduct said they were victimized by female facility staff. This sort of behaviour is wrong on so many levels. These women are in positions of authority and they are abusing that authority while they’re supposed to be ensuring a safe environment for the boys in the penal system. If that isn’t rape, I don’t know what is, despite what certain members of academia would like us to believe.

MacDonell also outlined ways in which men cope with their victimization, such as internalizing their problems or believing that they aren’t true victims because they’re men. She pointed out what happens to men who come forward and seek help. If these men aren’t flat-out denied the help they want, then they are told that sexual assault against men is simply impossible by virtue of their being male, or that the institution they have gone to doesn’t know to how to help them. MacDonell believes that the social atmosphere surrounding male victims will change in time, even if people are only just starting to catch on. After all, nothing lasts forever.

CAFE, of course, is famous (or infamous, depending on who you ask) for the protests that have been known to accompany their events, most notably in November 2012 when Warren Farrell came to the University of Toronto and again in April 2013 when Paul Nathanson and Kathy Young came to the same campus. Thankfully, this event proceeded without incident. There was one attendee who walked in with two of her friends and, based on the way she presented herself, seemed like the sort of person who was going to cause a scene, but they left about 10 minutes into MacDonell’s talk. I must admit that I was disappointed by that. When you see the video footage from the previously mentioned events as much as I have, part of you eventually starts to wonder if it could happen in reality for a third time. I would like to experience it for myself, just for the sake of it, but I think the esteemed VIPs have decided that being recorded singing about crying rivers over male suicide victims isn’t the best idea in the world.

Ultimately, at the end of the talk, the big question I had for myself (and I suppose I should’ve asked MacDonell this in person) is why do we, as a society, have such a hard time admitting to ourselves that men can be victims and women can be criminals? The thing is, we know both of these things are possible. Even the staunchest, most rabid, misandric feminists know this. But even more moderate people who don’t associate with any kind of ideological group have a hard time admitting either of those things without coming up with some kind of excuse. To my original question, well, I don’t have an answer. I wish I did, but I don’t. I only take solace in the knowledge that there are people like Lynne MacDonell out there giving male victims the help they need and that there is a little bit the rest of us can do too. It’s why I took time out of my Thursday evening. I hope more of us decide to do the same in future.

Men’s eating disorders get increased attention By Kristen V. Brown

INDONESIAN SUB

Pria dengan gangguan makan tidak mendapatkan bantuan dan dukungan yang dibutuhkan, karena dianggap ‘mengidap penyakit wanita’, kata peneliti

Menurut kajian di Inggris, walaupun jumlahnya mencapai seperempat dari total kasus, pria dengan penyakit anoreksia dan gangguan makan lainnya kurang mendapatkan perhatian.

Pekerja kesehatan yang ada di lapangan memegang peranan penting mengidentifikasi gangguan makan pada pria, jelas para peneliti menurut laporan pada situs BMJ Open.

Pria ada di bawah tekanan untuk mendapatkan bentuk tubuh yang ideal, papar sebuah badan amal.

Kesimpulan diambil tim peneliti Universitas Oxford dan Universitas Glasgow yang mewawancarai 39 pemuda berumur 16 hingga 25, termasuk 10 pria dewasa mengenai pengalaman diagnosa, perawatan, dan dukungan gangguan makan.

Menurut mereka, pria muda dengan gangguan makan tak terdiagnosa, diabaikan dan luput dari penelitian.

Tidak menyadari

Sebagian dari masalah ini disebabkan karena pria tidak memiliki pengetahuan mengenai gejala yang muncul, di samping menghindari makanan dan penghitungan kalori yang berlebihan.

Penelitian menunjukkan pria cenderung tidak menyadari bahwa mungkin mengalami problem karena menganggap penyakit gangguan makan hanya menyerang wanita, tutur Dr Ulla Raisanen dan Dr Kate Hunt.

Dokter umum dan profesional di bidangnya, seperti guru, punya andil besar mengubah pandangan terhadap gangguan makan terhadap pria.

Menanggapi hasil penelitian, Leanne Thorndyke dari badan amal gangguan makan Beat mengatakan bagian masyarakat yang mengalami tekanan terhadap bentuk tubuh mereka menjadi lebih besar.

“Majalah dengan selebriti dan model pria memberikan pengaruh besar kepada para pria untuk memiliki bentuk tubuh yang ideal,” tambahnya.

ENGLISH SUB- I Don’t Own This Article

Food was cathartic for Max Sala, something that held his life together and at the same time tore it apart.

As a child he ate for comfort, arriving for his freshman year of high school, as he put it, “significantly overweight.”

Then Sala, now 19 and a student at UC Davis, started losing weight and couldn’t stop. Sometimes he would go days without eating. Other days he would ravage his family kitchen in the middle of the night, gorging himself, and then purge. Purging, he said, was “like a breath of fresh air.”

To this day, Sala still struggles with an eating disorder, a subtype of anorexia that includes binging and purging.

Men like Sala account for a far larger portion of eating disorders than clinicians realized even a decade ago. One recent Canadian study suggested as many as one in three cases of anorexia are male, while past estimates have hovered around one in nine. A 2007 Harvard study found nearly a quarter of study participants with anorexia and bulimia were male, around double traditional estimates. In that study, 40 percent of those with binge eating disorder were male.

In the 17th century, one of the first medical descriptions of anorexia included case studies of both a man and a woman, but recent history has largely cast eating disorders as a female affliction.

“If we continue to act as though eating disorders do not occur in men, we are missing a vast population of need,” said Athena Robinson, a Stanford psychologist who studies eating disorders in both sexes.

Not just for women

Most researchers and clinicians generally agree that eating disorders occur at a higher rate among women, but viewing disorders as an exclusively female issue has serious consequences, say those who study male disorders.

Ignoring the prevalence of disorders among men creates a stigma that may prevent them from seeking help and a bias that might prevent clinicians or family members from recognizing a disorder in men, resulting in more of those men slipping under the radar.

Researchers say the societal pressures on men to look a certain way – lean and muscular like the leading men of advertising, cinema and sports – are akin to those on women. But stigma and gender bias makes diagnosing male eating disorders difficult; a guy who spends hours at the gym perfecting his physique, for example, is viewed as normal.

Roots of disorder

“Even males with eating disorders think of anorexia as a female problem in which the main goal is to be thinner,” said Alison Darcy, a psychiatry research associate at Stanford who has been among those leading a charge to gain greater recognition for male disorders.

Sala believes his eating disorder was in part rooted in the teasing he suffered as a boy over his weight. Transitioning to high school was another source of anxiety and stress.

He channeled those feelings into a “disparagement” of his own body, as he put it. Being thin – and purging – became a comforting addiction.As a teen, he was in and out of treatment centers, though it was often difficult to find one that treated men.

At Stanford, Darcy became interested in male eating disorders when she noticed an increasing number of adolescent boys at Stanford’s eating disorder clinic. That interest led to a small, in-depth study of adolescent boys with eating disorders. The study, to be published next year, points to a possible need for different approaches when diagnosing men; many diagnostic standards were developed primarily with women in mind.

“Some of the findings have been quite surprising,” she said. For example, many “boys didn’t endorse a desire to lose weight,” but instead desired to build up lean, muscular figures. They seemed more likely to focus in on specific parts of their body. Of course, for some, like Sala, thinness is a desire, too.

Darcy’s findings indicated that boys are more likely to point to a specific life event as a cause for their disorder, like the beginning of high school for Sala. Bullying and the pressures of athleticism are also major factors.

Focus on females

A major frustration, said Darcy, is that eating disorder research is gender-biased, with many studies still focusing exclusively on women and girls.

“We’re missing a vital opportunity to understand disorders in males,” she said.

Ken McCraney, 63, of San Jose, has been battling an eating disorder for decades. Anorexia set in during his early 20s; he still struggles to explain why. He recalled always having a “fear of fat.” When his wife lost her job, though, that turned not eating into an obsession. He heavily restricted calories, some days not eating anything at all.

“Once I started not eating, it became hard to eat,” he said. “Anorexia is like a narcotic. You just get so caught up in it.”

Still, he said, “I didn’t think I had a problem.”

In his 30s he started seeing a therapist, but it wasn’t until 2010 that he said he really got serious about seeking help. His body was shutting down: he had suffered kidney stones, liver troubles, sleeping issues, seizures and lost his teeth, all due to malnourishment.

At a residential treatment center, though, he often had trouble connecting with other patients. Not only did the treatment seem geared toward young women, he was the sole man in the eating disorder program. Most other patients were young women “barely out of their teens.”

Permanent damage

McCraney’s body is permanently damaged from his disorder. When he does eat – which is still a mental struggle – his body can now only handle eating the blandest of foods.

“It can happen to all kinds of people,” he said. “Not just young women.”

For Sala, help came much earlier in life. His mom recognized there was an issue right away. He was in and out of treatment centers and therapy throughout high school with varying degrees of relapse and success. As a senior in high school, things started to get a little better, but the stress of beginning college made his problem even worse.

He missed part of his freshman year while at a residential treatment center in Wisconsin and he spent the summer in other programs locally.

Now in his second year of college, he hopes to become a psychiatrist and focus on adult eating disorders.

It’s been several months since he binged or purged. It’s still a day-to-day struggle, he said. He sees a therapist regularly, thinks a lot about his body and slowly realized that the disorder wasn’t really fulfilling.

Finally, he said, he understands “food is not the enemy. It’s what we do with it.”

Common eating disorders

Anorexia nervosa: Anorexics attempt to maintain a weight that is far below average for their height or weight. There are two subtypes of the disorder. In the restricting type, the person greatly restricts calories to reach their desired weight. In the binge-purge type, the person regularly binges on large amounts of food and then purges in conjunction with restrictive eating.

Bulimia nervosa: Bulimics regularly engage in excessive overeating, usually in secret, and then later attempt to undo the effects, either through purging or excessive exercise.

Binge eating disorder: Those with binge eating disorder indulge in excessive amounts of food, often with a sense of lost control, but do not regularly attempt to compensate for their binge.

Local resources for men

Alta Bates Summit Medical Center, Center for Anorexia and Bulimia, Berkeley, (510) 204-4405

Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital, Eating Disorders Clinic (children and adolescents), Mountain View, (650) 694-0600

Eating Disorders Resource Center, Los Gatos, (408) 356-1212

UCSF, Adolescent and Young Adult Eating Disorder Program (children and adolescents), San Francisco, (415) 353-2002

Cielo House, Belmont and San Jose, (650) 455-9242

Kristen V. Brown is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. E-mail: kbrown@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @kristenvbrown