Is male rape considered rape or not?

Rajvi Upadhyay, a student of Institute of law, Nirma University has authored a blog on "Is male rape considered rape or not?"

When we come across a rape story, we always consider the victim to be a women. The issue of male being the victim is not considered significant by the society. Minimal recognition is devoted to crimes against males or the disadvantages they confront in society. It is believed that the word ‘man’ indicate power, they have less emotion than women and are not vulnerable, thus, they cannot go through any crimes. "It is absurd to ever claim that a rape victim was not seriously injured, but it may be easy to say the same when it comes to man, because we are taught that men cannot be victims," Morris Hoffer said.

In India, we have laws which only protect the women from any kind of sexual violence such as rape or sexual harassment but, there is no legislation or statutes which governs violence against men except for ‘sodomy’ which is covered under Section 377 of IPC. Rape, according to S. 375 of the IPC, is a crime committed by a man against a woman wherein there is an act of insertion of male genital or any foreign material into the female genital without the consent of the woman or the girl . This indicates that people are of the opinion that a women cannot rape a male. They think that male always want sex thus enjoy any sexual activity.

I believe that laws all around the world must be made gender-neutral. In India, the 172nd law commission suggested to not discriminate rape laws on the basis of gender, in order to protect male victims as well but, the administration did not take any action to put the recommendations into action. Later on, in the year 2017, a PIL was filed in the Delhi High Court by Adv. Sanjiv Kumar challenging the legality of the rape legislation under IPC . He stated, "Gender equality is a simple identification of reality, and men sometimes fall victim to it or very similar acts as women.…Male rape is far too prevalent to be termed as an anomaly or a freak incident. By not having gender-neutral rape laws, we are denying a lot more men justice than is commonly thought.”

On the same premise, in July 2019, KTS Tulsi, a distinguished lawyer and Rajya Sabha Parliamentarian, introduced a gender-neutral bill ("Criminal Law Amendment Bill, 2019") in front of the parliament to make India's rape laws gender-neutral . According to him, Law needs to be balanced. The balance has been disturbed. All sexual offences should be gender-neutral. Men, women, and other genders can be perpetrators and also victims of these offences. Men, women and others need to be protected. ”

The cases wherein men suffer, that is they are the victims to the crime are increasing day by day. Most of the time such cases are given minimal punishment or go unreported because they feel that their reputation will be harmed or no one will take them seriously. Recently, there were so many male rape incidents in news, but people did not pay much heed. For instance, a gang rape occurred of a twelve-year-old boy. Also, 4 women kidnapped a man and rapped him in a car in Punjab. Such incidents indicate that Indian legal system must also include ‘men’ in the definition of rape and must not be restricted to women.

We have experienced that the laws around us keep on changing with the change in needs and requirements. Over the years many amendments have been made to our Constitution as well as other statutes thus, I think that we should consider for legal recognition and labelling the crime as rape whether the victim is a male or a female. People all around the world want gender equality in all the fields, so why should we be biased when it comes to crime or punishment of such crimes.

Happy Reading!