photo from the New York Times

Men are being raped.

GOMA, Congo — It was around 11 p.m. when armed men burst into Kazungu Ziwa’s hut, put a machete to his throat and yanked down his pants. Mr. Ziwa is a tiny man, about four feet, six inches tall. He tried to fight back, but said he was quickly beaten down.

“Then they raped me,” he said. “It was horrible, physically. I was dizzy. My thoughts just left me.”

For years, the thickly forested hills and clear, deep lakes of eastern Congo have been a reservoir of atrocities. Now, it seems, there is another growing problem: men raping men.

Does this horrify you? Are men being raped by other men somehow more disturbing than the rape of women? This question has knocked around my head for years, ever since an incident in the Seattle area years ago. A young boy was kidnapped, raped and had his penis severed. At virtually the same time, a three-month old baby girl was raped in her crib at a party at her parents' house. The damage to her reproductive track was so severe, surgery was required to reconstruct it. But guess which story garnered more attention, caused more outrage, caused folks to scream out for the maximum punishment for the perpetrator, and caused more people to contribute to a fund-raising drive to aid the victimized child? I don't suppose I have to tell you it was the story of the young boy. 

Please understand. I am not drawing a distinction between the rape of men or the rape of women. Both are crimes of savagery, violence, and the wholescale humiliation of their victims. But I do find myself wondering, sometimes, if somehow the rape of men is more serious than the rape of women. And whether, if we knew that this was going on on a system-wide level in The DRC, just as we have known about the rape of that nation's women, whether we might be more moved to do something. 

 Just so there is no misunderstanding about my motives here, I have been writing about the women of the DRC for a while now, and I do not have any intention of stopping soon.

But the new stories, about men being raped in the DRC, made me pause for just a moment. I am almost afraid to admit this, because it makes me sound callous, but I thought to myself, "well, maybe now the UN will get serious about doing something to stop the atrocities in the Congo."

Sometimes, in my deepest, darkest hours, I find myself believing that as long as women are the sole victims of a mass crime, it will be taken less seriously. Certainly, we oppose genocide. But what do we do when we are faced with femicide? Do we automatically discount it as a less serious crime? Have we ever, as a nation, intervened on a humitarian level because women are being targeted for violence?

After all, one of our closest allies in the Gulf region denies women basic civil rights. We're watching women bear the brunt of the atrocities in Afghanistan, and yet, we're so concerned about getting out of there that to even bring up what's being done to Afghan women elicits a "meh" or "you're just a Western woman trying to impose your imperialist views on another culture." But I cannot think of any culture that condones rape. And I certainly cannot think of a culture that doesn't see the rape of its men as untenable. Tell me, will it be the mass rape of men or of women that finally leads to charges of war crimes against the perpetrators in the DRC?

Again, from the NYT:

The United Nations already considers eastern Congo the rape capital of the world, and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton is expected to hear from survivors on her visit to the country next week. Hundreds of thousands of women have been sexually assaulted by the various warring militias haunting these hills, and right now this area is going through one of its bloodiest periods in years.

The joint military operations that began in January between Rwanda and Congo, David and Goliath neighbors who were recently bitter enemies, were supposed to end the murderous rebel problem along the border and usher in a new epoch of cooperation and peace. Hopes soared after the quick capture of a renegade general who had routed government troops and threatened to march across the country.

But aid organizations say that the military maneuvers have provoked horrific revenge attacks, with more than 500,000 people driven from their homes, dozens of villages burned and hundreds of villagers massacred, including toddlers thrown into open fires.

And it is not just the rebels being blamed. According to human rights groups, soldiers from the Congolese Army are executing civilians, raping women and conscripting villagers to lug their food, ammunition and gear into the jungle. It is often a death march through one of Africa’s lushest, most stunning tropical landscapes, which has also been the scene of a devastatingly complicated war for more than a decade.

The DRC is a humanitarian disaster area. It really is enough to make you throw up your hands in disgust or exhaustion and say, "I've done what I can." 

But how do you do that? I am glad that Secretary of State Clinton is on her way to the Congo to talk to people there. I would like to believe that the letter-writing campaign we organized here--the one where we wrote to First Lady Michelle Obama and President Kabila of DRC, may have led to this moment where our most senior diplomat is on her way to see for herself. 

What then? What then must be done? 

I know that, once again, I will be hosting a teach-in at my college, selling tee-shirts, and trying to raise money for the Panzi Hospital in the Bukavu, which treats the victims of rape. More importantly, it is in the midst of building a safe community in which women may live. 

 Dave Cullen and I have been involved in an interesting discussion about whether it's the media's job to point out when crimes are specifically targeted against one sex or the other. We were talking about the latest mass shooting in the United States, where the victims were women, shot by a man who had a lot of anger inside of him toward females. Is that news-worthy? This discussion was sparked by Jennifer Pozner's excellent blog post on the topic.

With the violent insertion of male rape into the DRC picture, it will be interesting to see what happens now. 

I wish I could say I have an answer.

I don't.

But once again, if you want to write letters, here is where they should go: Ten Things You Can do About the DRC.