Representations — Knowing Victimhood

Abstract

For the purpose of this chapter the ‘violence which we do to things’ will be examined in reference to instances of discursive regularity around the construct of the male rape victim as depicted in the media, via bias, tropes and framing, both within and across several different mediated forms. These will be informed initially through reference to established male rape myths¹ and established ‘truths’ discerned from my own review of the academic literature. Through Foucault, one should understand any such instances as ‘violence’ because of their role in the production and indeed the delimitation of the ‘truth’ of male rape, a ‘truth’ through which the subject comes to know himself and others, and indeed through which he is known as a subject.