The double standard nobody wants to talk about

Let me say something that will make some people uncomfortable. Something that gets dismissed, laughed off, or drowned out the moment it is raised. Something that our society, and yes, a significant number of women, have collectively decided does not deserve the same outrage, the same hashtags, the same trending topics, or the same tears.

Men are victims too.

And before you roll your eyes, close this tab, or accuse me of trying to derail the conversation about women’s suffering, that is exactly the problem I am writing about.

The Hashtag Test

A girl is abused. Within hours, social media is on fire. Videos are shared. Candles are lit virtually. Hashtags trend. #JusticeForshitowaa. Women march. Men are condemned and harassed. The world, briefly but loudly, pays attention.

A boy is abused. A man is raped. A husband is beaten by his wife.

Silence. Or worse, laughter.

“At least he enjoyed it.” “He’s a man, he should have fought back.” “He’s soft.” “Why is he crying about it?”

This is not a hypothetical. This is the lived reality of male victims across Ghana and across the world, men and boys who suffered, stayed silent, and watched the world pour its compassion everywhere except in their direction.

That is not justice. That is a double standard. And it is long past time we called it what it is.

The need to be the only victim

Here is something we do not say enough, and probably should: a significant number of women have developed a deeply possessive relationship with victimhood. Not all women, but enough that it has shaped how our entire society responds to suffering.

For some, being a victim is not just an experience. It has become an identity. A status. Almost a territory to be defended. And the moment a man steps forward and says, “this happened to me too”, that territory feels threatened. Because if men can also be victims, then victimhood is no longer exclusively theirs. And that, for some, is an unbearable thought.

So what happens? The man is dismissed. Ridiculed. Talked over. Accused of hijacking the conversation. His pain is reframed as an attack on women’s pain. His voice becomes evidence of his privilege rather than his suffering. And he learns, quickly, that the world has no room for him in this particular story.

This is not feminism. This is not solidarity. This is the monopolization of compassion, and it is doing real damage to real people.

A woman who truly understands what it means to suffer should be the first person to recognize suffering in someone else, regardless of their gender. The fact that some do the opposite, that they meet a male victim with skepticism, mockery, or outright hostility, says everything about how far we still have to go.

The numbers nobody quotes

We love statistics when they confirm what we already believe. So let us look at what the data actually says about male victims, because the numbers are far higher than most people are willing to admit.

On sexual violence: 1 out of every 10 rape victims is male. It is estimated that 1 in 4 girls and 1 in 7 boys by age 18 will have been the victim of some form of sexualized violence. Yet when was the last time you saw a viral campaign for the 1 in 7?

On domestic violence: nearly a quarter, 24%, of all domestic violence victims are men. A separate global review found that 20% of men experience physical violence, 44% psychological violence, and 7% sexual violence perpetrated by their partners. Almost half of all men have been psychologically abused by an intimate partner, roughly the same rate as women, yet the shelters, the hotlines, the awareness campaigns, the social media outrage? Overwhelmingly directed one way.

And perhaps most damning of all: 97.2% of men do not report domestic violence to the police, compared to 82.1% of women. Men are suffering in silence at a rate that should disturb all of us. But it doesn’t. Because we have decided, quietly, collectively, that male pain is either funny or irrelevant.

And yet somehow, when these numbers are presented, the response from some quarters is not concern. It is defensiveness. It is “but women have it worse.” As though suffering were a competition. As though the existence of male victims somehow cancels or diminishes female ones. It does not. But the refusal to even acknowledge the numbers tells you everything about who actually wants justice, and who just wants to remain the sole occupant of the victim’s chair.

Women can be predators too

Here is another truth that makes people deeply uncomfortable: women are not only victims. Some women are predators. And the men and boys they harm deserve to be taken just as seriously as any other victim.

When a grown woman has sexual intercourse with a 15-year-old boy, that is rape. It does not matter that he may not have physically resisted. It does not matter that his friends high-five him. It does not matter that some people say “lucky him.” He is a child. She is a predator. And the law, and society, should treat it exactly as they would if the genders were reversed.

But we know they don’t.

If a man touches a 15-year-old girl, the world comes down on him with the full force of its moral outrage, and rightly so. But flip the script, and suddenly people are making jokes. Suddenly, it is not a serious crime. Suddenly, the boy should be grateful.

This is not just hypocrisy. It is a failure to protect children. And it has to stop.

The cruelest trap: speaking up makes it worse

Here is what makes the situation for male victims uniquely painful. It is not just that society ignores their suffering. It is that the moment a man speaks up about it, he is punished for doing so.

He is called soft. He is called weak. People question his masculinity. Women who have loudly championed the idea that victims should always be believed suddenly find reasons to doubt them. And if he dares to point out that men face these issues too, that rape, abuse, sexual coercion, and exploitation happen to men as well, he is immediately accused of trying to silence women. Of justifying what happens to female victims. Of being an apologist for predators.

This reaction is telling. Because a person who is genuinely committed to ending abuse would welcome the expansion of that conversation, not shut it down. The defensiveness, the mockery, the immediate pivot to “you’re just trying to undermine women”, that is not the response of someone who wants justice for all victims. That is the response of someone who wants to remain the only victim in the room.

Let us be absolutely clear: acknowledging that men are victims does not minimize what women go through. It does not justify or excuse any form of abuse against women. It does not mean that the fight for women’s safety is less important. Naming one injustice does not erase another.

The person who points out that male victims exist is not your enemy. They are asking for the same thing you are asking for: that every victim, regardless of gender, be seen, believed, and protected.

Sex for jobs: not just a woman’s issue

We speak often, and rightly, about women being coerced into sexual transactions to secure employment. But let us not pretend it stops there. Men, too have found themselves in positions where sexual favors are demanded or implied in exchange for opportunity. Male interns, young male employees, men in industries with powerful female gatekeepers, they exist. Their stories are rarely told. Not because it doesn’t happen, but because telling it would invite ridicule rather than support.

The trauma of sexual coercion does not discriminate by gender. The shame that follows it does not either. But our willingness to take it seriously? That, apparently, does.

What this is really about

This is not a competition between male and female suffering. Pain is not a sport with a scoreboard. This is about the simple, radical idea that human beings deserve compassion regardless of their gender.

When we tell a man that his rape was not really rape, we are not protecting women. We are just being cruel to men.

When we laugh at a husband who was beaten by his wife, we are not dismantling patriarchy. We are just being cruel to men.

When we silence a male victim because his speaking up feels inconvenient to the dominant narrative, we are not advancing justice. We are just being cruel to men.

And when we treat victimhood as a membership club with a strict gender policy at the door, we are not building a just society. We are just building a more sophisticated version of the same inequality we claim to be fighting.

A selectively cruel society that decides whose pain counts and whose doesn’t based on gender is a society that has not actually learned anything about justice at all.

A final word

This piece is not written to take anything away from women. It is written for the boy who was abused and told to be a man about it. For the husband who was beaten and knew nobody would believe him. For the man who was coerced and stayed silent because speaking would cost him more than the silence already had. For every man who tried to tell his story and was laughed out of the room by the very people who demand to be believed.

You are not soft. You are not weak. What happened to you was wrong. And you deserved, for the world to be as angry on your behalf as it is on everyone else’s.

Double standard? Yes. Stupidity? Absolutely. Inequality? Without question.

Call it what you want. But whatever you call it, it has to end.

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