Male Rape Isn’t a Joke. Too Many Disagree
A recent interview from The Boys showrunner Erik Kripke shows too many view sexual assault against men as a joke. It's very much not.
There are few crimes more heinous than sexual assault and rape. The rapist holds a special, reviled place in the Western psyche and those accused or convicted of the acts are universally despised. That is unless the victim is a man.
Erik Kripke, showrunner for irreverent Amazon Prime series The Boys, recently made headlines when he said that writing a rape scene featuring one of the male characters was “hilarious.”
In an interview with Variety, Kripke was asked what motivated him to write the scene where the character Hughie pretending to be superhero Webweaver is violently raped by his childhood hero, Batman analog Tek Knight, following the death of Hughie’s father.
“Well, that’s a dark way to look at it,” Kripke said, “We view it as hilarious.”
He gleefully continued, “Then we finally had this Webweaver character and the idea of Spider-Man going down to be kink tickled in the Batcave is just too good to pass up. I’m sorry, I just couldn’t leave that on the table.”
The incident was galling given how solemnly Kripke had handled the rape of a female character, Erin Moriarty as superhero Starlight, back in the first season of the show.
Back then, Kripke told ScreenRant
I wanted to get it right. I had a lot of conversations with a lot of women, some of which were very painful. And I did my absolute best to get the fuck out of the way, and just let them speak, and not try to steer it one way or another. And then, ultimately, kind of, y’know, boil it down to Starlight’s experience, both in that moment, and then in the aftermath of that moment. Then when it came time to loop in Erin, and then Chace… we went through that process all over again. Because the actors actually have to live in and play it. And so, I’ll say this: I’ve never worked so hard or stressed so much about a scene in my life before or since. Because if I got that wrong, it’s not just that it would fail as a scene, it would be hurtful. And I felt that pressure and responsibility all throughout.
A far cry from the “hilarious” way that he described the rape of a male character. ScreenRant seemingly agreed that Kripke had done a good job handling the female rape scene, writing “The Boys depicted a sensitive topic with much-needed realism.”
The same could not be said for Variety, which glossed over the rape as “Hughie’s torturous time spent pretending to be Webweaver.”
If it was simply one despicable leftist laughing about sexual assault towards a man, we could simply chalk it up to bad judgement. But Kripke’s comments on the subject are frighteningly common.
Consider how the media will report on stories involving teachers involved in sexual relationships with their students. If the offender is a male and the victim a female, the word “rape” is accurately used to describe an adult taking advantage of a child. But flip the sexes and things suddenly become different.
When female teachers commit the same sex crimes with their male students, all of sudden it’s “had sex.” Sometimes they don’t even face punishment, a clear indication that the act isn’t treated with anywhere near scrutiny as it would be if the victim were a woman.
Sexual assault is a serious crime, regardless of the sex of the victim. Kripke should be ashamed of himself and should be called out on his blatant hypocrisy on rape. It’s no laughing matter, and it shouldn’t be difficult to treat the male victims with a modicum of respect.