Masculine and Violent Temporalities: Examining the Legacies of Men’s Unwanted Sexual Experiences

Abstract

This article argues that sexual violence ruptures masculine temporalities, revealing the limits of gendered constructions of time and the ways they sustain violence and inequality. We draw upon research that explored the lives of 40 men living in England after incidents of sexual violence. Exploring the relationship between masculinized temporalities and the rupture created by sexual violence, we argue that gendered temporalities enable violence to be maintained and continued, rupturing the everyday life of survivors as they negotiate contradicting temporalities. We highlight three temporal conditions—past/present, waiting, and future imaginations—to demonstrate the ways masculinized temporalities contradict and clash with the ruptured temporalities following incidents of sexual violence.

In this article, we argue that sexual violence ruptures masculine temporalities—linear, future-focused, and estranged from the past—revealing the limits of gendered constructions of time and the ways such temporalities sustain violence and inequality. Heteropatriarchal, racial, and capitalist constructions of time that foreground productivity have historically been used to assert and maintain gendered power over marginal and subordinated groups of people (women, people of color, and queer people); however, these are also detrimental to men. As we show, this is particularly pertinent when men are negotiating life after sexual violence. This study draws on research with 40 men in England, examining their lives after experiences of sexual violence. We interrogate how masculine temporalities intersect with temporalities created by sexual violence. By doing so, we highlight how participants must negotiate the contrasting and competing temporalities to expose how gendered temporalities stretch out and maintain violence. In other words, time is a gendered regime, and sexual violence exposes how masculinized time structures, constrains, and reproduces violence.

We build upon recent feminist and queer critiques of slow violence (Christian and Dowler 2019; Golańska 2022; Jones 2019; Pain and Cahill 2022) to examine how legacies of sexual violence have a range of temporalities (Christian and Dowler 2019). For us, sexual violence is always part of the past, present, and future, creating and shaping different temporal conditions—such as waiting, stuckness, and imagination. We show how these different temporalities emerge as survivors make sense of their experiences. We argue that violence continues to emerge and rupture everyday life as survivors negotiate contradicting temporalities in a world that fails to care for them.

We are interested in the ways gendered temporalities intersect with temporalities created by the impacts of sexual violence. Dominant masculine temporalities and linear notions of time are intimately co-constituted, where men are considered to be estranged from the past and the present. However, the trauma of sexual violence highlights how past, present, and future exist simultaneously, disrupting masculine temporalities. We argue that masculine time can make men’s need for care invisible by denying the ways sexual violence shapes present and future lives.

To do so, we first review literature on gendered temporalities and temporalities of violence, engaging feminist and queer critiques. Second, we provide a methodological overview of the research project. We then move to three temporalities of violence—past/present, waiting, and futures. Focusing on these temporalities, we explore how masculine temporal scripts and the ruptures caused by sexual violence must be negotiated by survivors, as they attempt to stay “on time.”

Temporalities

Gendered Temporalities

Scholars of temporality argue that contemporary society has inherited normative concepts of time shaped by neoliberal, heterosexist, colonial, and masculinist power (Anderson 2017; Halberstam 2005; Muñoz 2009; St. Pierre 2015; Weston 2002). Time itself is thus a patriarchal invention, one that is rooted in capitalist/industrial ideologies of productivity (Freeman 2010; Halberstam 2005; Odih 1999; St. Pierre 2015; Weston 2002). Productive time is therefore masculine time (Odih 1999; St. Pierre 2015). These temporal ideologies privilege linear, stable progression, oriented toward productivity, reproduction, and heteronormative success—such as career advancement and nuclear families (Halberstam 2005). Scholars across disciplines have highlighted how temporality and gender are not separate spheres but co-constituted. Consequently, how we understand and experience time is shaped by gendered norms and vice versa (Odih 1999). Masculinity is typically constructed as disembodied and disconnected from the past or present, instead oriented toward the future, where men are expected to master time itself (Kafer 2013; Longhurst 1997; St. Pierre 2015). Masculine time is productive and fast paced, defined by the imperative to achieve, accumulate, and progress (St. Pierre 2015). Yet this future is never fully attainable—there is always more to produce (Odih 1999). This continuous striving renders masculinity both aspirational and unstable.

Men and women experience time differently, with divergent temporal expectations and logics. Normative time denies this difference, imposing a masculine, linear structure. Feminine time is often othered—framed as cyclical, slow, emotional, or bodily—where femininity involves waiting for futures to unfold (partners, marriage, children, and careers). Femininity is thus positioned relationally to the “rational,” active and future-focused masculine order (Odih 1999). It is not only women who are othered; queer, disabled, racialized, or working-class men who don’t conform to masculine timelines are also seen as “off time,” out of sync with dominant scripts. Freeman (2010) calls this “chrononormativity,” where time is regulated to serve capitalist and heteropatriarchal goals, marginalizing nonlinear, cyclical, or alternative temporalities (Anderson 2017; Halberstam 2005; Muñoz 2009; St. Pierre 2015; Weston 2002). Temporal regimes can therefore be used to control subjects, even as they find ways to resist and subvert such control (Halberstam 2005; Muñoz 2009; Sharma 2022).

This interplay between masculinity and temporality is particularly evident in the literature on how men and boys negotiate the transitions to adulthood (Spector-Mersel 2006). In this work, maturity is a key temporal identity, where men are expected to “spend” their time in materially productive ways. Some scholars draw on the concept of cruel optimism to describe the temporal condition of young men—those who have been promised certain futures (success, stability, respectability) but find themselves endlessly waiting for these promises to materialize (McDowell, Bonner-Thompson, and Harris 2022; Pettit 2019). These men live in suspended time, tethered to futures that remain just out of reach—a continued form of violence. As Rommel (2018) argues, masculinity remains a temporal enigma: It is marked by multiple, often conflicting interpretations and expectations that do not always align with the lived realities of men’s lives.

We examine how gendered constructions of time prevent men from accessing care after sexually violent encounters. We argue that the demand for men to have control over time and be future-focused means rejecting vulnerability, and therefore the need to address trauma. To do this, we explore how sexual violence ruptures these masculine temporalities.

Violent Temporalities

Violence also comes with a range of temporalities, which social scientists have documented. Slow violence, developed to examine ongoing environmental injustice (Nixon 2011), for example, draws attention to acts of violence that may go unnoticed and might not even be understood as violence, enabling an understanding of the relations of violence beyond an abuser–abused relationship (Benwell, Hopkins, and Finlay 2023; Pain 2019; Springer and Le Billon 2016; Twemlow, Turner, and Swaine 2022; Žižek 2008). However, feminist, black, and queer scholars have long written about the ways violence operates over time and space (McKittrick 2011; Pain 1991), with some writers critical of slow violence. They question the idea that slow violence goes “unnoticed”—asking to whom it is invisible (Christian and Dowler 2019; Golańska 2022; Jones 2019; Pain and Cahill 2022). Jones (2019) argues that white, heterosexual, upper/middle-class, able-bodied men remain at the center of conceptualizations of slow violence, and it is those for whom violence is invisible. For those who experience it, however, slow violence is not invisible, making their perspectives essential (Davies 2022; Pain and Cahill 2022).

Christian and Dowler (2019) argue that slow violence creates a binary of slow/fast violence, where anything slow becomes mundane and/or intimate and is separated from the spectacular and political. They argue,

Without a spotlight on the cause of violence that unfolds gradually, the embodied impacts of violence often come to be understood as personal and private matters, in which victims are left responsible for managing the harm inflicted on their bodies. (Christian and Dowler 2019, 1096)

The temporalities of violence are relational—fast and slow, spectacular and mundane forms shape one another. This approach highlights the political nature of slow violence and exposes the structural forces that sustain it while challenging epistemologies that might de-politicize it (Christian and Dowler 2019; Davies 2022). For example, in research with young people of color in New York, USA, Cahill et al. (2019) argue that their continued policing ebbs and flows, anchored in their violent histories.

Such critiques highlight a more complicated set of temporalities that are created through different forms of violence. In this approach, violence can be simultaneously rooted in the past, present, and future, where such temporal conditions as waiting, stuckness, and speed can be conceptualized as products of power relations (Ahmed 2010; Berlant 2011; Bonner-Thompson 2023; Hall 2019). Women who have encountered sexual violence are often made to feel “stuck” or to wait for help and support, as the legitimacy of their experiences is questioned. Their experiences are frequently legitimized through discourses of compulsory heterosexuality, where sexual violence committed by men is normalized (Bartos 2018; Blackstone, Houle, and Uggen 2014; Hlavka 2014). Some scholars argue that sexual violence maintains the spatial and temporal segregation of women, operating as control beyond the incident (Hattery 2022), constraining women’s future imaginations.

The threat of violence may be considered a problem of the future—a violence that has not yet materialized. Twemlow, Turner, and Swaine (2022) conceptualize women’s anticipatory fear as a temporally stretched, ambiguous condition that saturates everyday life yet remains illegible to event-centered legal frameworks. For Twemlow, Turner, and Swaine (2022), anticipating violence is a normative part of women’s everyday lives that constrains the ways women must live—similar to that of a violent encounter. Incident-focused frameworks on violence fail to recognize that the threat of violence is key to shaping the present and future imaginaries (Aitchison 2024; Datta 2020).

To further develop temporalities of violence, some scholars have examined the ways the trauma of violence ruptures linear notions of time (Kafer 2013; Pain 2019, 2021). By engaging in postcolonial thinking (Andermahr 2015), Pain (2021) has urged scholars to think about the multiple temporalities of trauma that result from violence. She argues that the time lag between trauma and violence is not the only temporality; rather, traumas construct a present that is shaped by the past and future, informing one another over time and space (Pratt, Johnston, and Banta 2017). For some men, traumatic lives can (re)produce violence, where people cannot imagine lives without violence. This is especially pertinent for men, because they are often taught to value violence as part of becoming masculine adults (Ellis, Winlow, and Hall 2017). Morrigan (2017), a survivor of childhood sexual abuse, argues that they do not have a straightforward understanding of time—they live in both the past and present simultaneously, while their future becomes anchored into the past, often anticipating violence and trauma.

We build on feminist and queer conceptualizations of time and violence to show how gendered temporalities—particularly masculinized linear time—construct survivors’ experiences. We argue that masculine temporalities shape and structure how survivors make sense of life after sexual violence, and that they must negotiate these gendered temporal expectations and temporal ruptures caused by sexual violence.

Methodology

We used a qualitative research methodology to explore the help-seeking following men’s unwanted sexual experiences. Online semi-structured interviews were conducted with 40 men based in the southeast and northeast England. The project also featured creative methods, but these are not discussed in this article. The study was co-designed with the men’s sexual violence charity, MankindUK, supporting the development of research questions, aims and objectives, interview questions, and recruitment materials. The project also utilized a steering group consisting of male sexual violence victimization experts-by-experience and research partners to guide the data collection and analysis process.

Recruitment

Participants were required to be ages 18 and above, to self-identify as a man, and to have had unwanted sexual experiences, including sexual coercion, harassment, or violence, and were willing to discuss their experiences of seeking support. Recruitment and interviews began in southeast England in June 2021, before focusing on northeast England in 2022. Participants were recruited via convenience sampling, distributing flyers through social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter (now known as X). Variations of our flyers were distributed using different terminology to recognize the different ways men define their experiences. Phrases used included: Have you ever felt pressured, unsafe or afraid to be intimate with someone? Have you experienced non-consensual touching at work or in public? and Did you have difficulties finding support or someone to talk to about this? Flyers contained a link to the project website, where interested participants could fill out a contact form.

Sample

In total, 40 men voluntarily participated in this project, with 20 residing in southeast England and 20 in northeast England. A range of demographic data was collected about the participants, including age, ethnicity, and sexuality, which are outlined in Table 1. To ensure confidentiality and anonymity, pseudonyms are used throughout this article.

Table 1:

Participant Information

Total number of participants	40 (20 SE England, 20 NE England)
Age range (years)	24–64
Ethnicity	33 White, 2 Black, 1 mixed race, 1 British Indian, 1 Latino, 1 British Pakistani, 1 not disclosed
Sexuality	26 heterosexual, 8 gay, 4 bisexual, 2 queer

Data Collection

Participants were given the option of an online interview via Microsoft Teams or through email or an instant message platform. Most of the 40 participants chose to take part in online interviews, which lasted 45–90 minutes and were audio-recorded and later transcribed. Email interviews were conducted at times suitable to the participants, with questions sent in stages, allowing for follow-up questions. Participants were also given the option to select whether they were interviewed by a man or a woman in the research team—most had no preference, with a minority requesting to speak to a woman. In interviews, participants discussed their motivations for taking part and their views on masculinity and sexual violence. They then shared accounts of their experiences and the impacts across their lives. We explored their help-seeking practices, including support used, disclosure experiences, institutional encounters, and reasons for seeking or avoiding help. Interviews concluded with reflections on what ideal support services for men might look like.

Ethics

The project was granted ethical approval from the Cross-School Ethics Committee at the University of Brighton. All participants are kept anonymous, with their data stored securely in University systems. Due to the nature of the project, participants were reminded that they should disclose only experiences they are comfortable discussing and that they could withdraw at any point during the research. Due to the sensitive nature of the conversations, participants were offered support from our partner, MankindUK.

Analysis

The analysis was conducted in two stages: First, interviews were thematically coded by the research team using NVivo, developing a coding framework following initial coding. Second, a timeline was created for each interview, mapping when unwanted sexual experiences occurred and the time between disclosures. In doing so, we attempted to begin a temporal analysis, identifying the time between violent encounters, disclosures, and any support. Following this analysis, initial themes and timelines were presented to the steering group, made up of the project partners and three experts-by-experience. These analysis workshops enabled key stakeholders to check the initial analysis and to refine and revise our interpretations of key themes. We discuss the outcome of this analysis in the following three sections.

Temporalities of Sexual Violence

Past and Present

Gendered constructions of time dictate that masculine time must reject the past, where men should be free from their histories and focused on the future (and productivity). Some participants described sexually violent encounters as something that has happened—a historical experience, where the passing of time is all that is needed to recover. Participants’ efforts to situate sexual violence firmly in the past reflect a masculinized temporal script that equates recovery with linear progression and control over time—but sexual violence exposes the limits of that script by making past, present, and future co-present. For example, Matthew, who was sexually assaulted on public transport at the age of 13 and then raped in his 20s by another man, says,

One of my best friends . . . she always used to say to me, “What’s gone is gone, don’t regret what you’ve done and don’t regret what you haven’t done, just move on and deal with whatever . . .”. And I kind of try and live by that. So, you know, it’s gone, it’s finished, it happened, I don’t think I need any support, in inverted commas. . . . And of course, I know, you know, time is a great healer. (Matthew, 50, gay, White British)

Similarly, Nigel, who was coerced into sexualized activities when he was nine by an older boy, tells us that there was nothing to deal with:

But I haven’t sort of like dealt with it because I actually haven’t really felt it needed dealing with. It’s okay, it’s happened, I’m still here, life goes on. (Nigel, 59, heterosexual, White British)

For Nigel, his life has continued to progress linearly, where his survival illustrates that he has not been impacted. These participants suggest that the passing of clock time means that sexual violence remains in the past. At the same time, Matthew says “and of course I’m angry about it now,” suggesting that these experiences are not necessarily only in the past—something we explore later. These accounts are not simply individual coping mechanisms; they are performances of masculinity’s demand for temporal mastery—to disavow the past and remain future-oriented. Anger functions as an acceptable masculine temporal affect, where vulnerability would mark a failure of masculine time. In this sense, “time is a healer” is a demand of masculinized time. To suggest otherwise might be seen as feminine, queer, or out-of-sync (Halberstam 2005; Muñoz 2009) with masculine temporalities (St. Pierre 2015).

It is not only participants who positioned their experiences as historical; people to whom they disclosed also suggested this. Rhys, who was raped and sexually assaulted by his ex-husband and had not sought any formal support at the time of the interview, told us,

I’ve spoken to my mam about my husband and that, and like nothing’s been said, like, about you know reporting it or anything like that, it’s just kind of like well let it go, you’re not with him anymore. (Rhys, 34, gay, White British)

Being told to “let it go” is not spectacular violence (Christian and Dowler 2019; Nixon 2011), but it is also not necessarily slow; it emerges intensely in these encounters. Such encounters deny the lived experience of the ways the impacts of violence—and trauma—function, where violence can be interwoven into everyday life (Žižek 2008). These discourses are embedded in normative notions of time where life “gets better” (Ahmed 2010; Castree 2009). The conversation between Rhys and his mother happened a short time after the rape. She does not deny that this may have had an impact, but suggests that “letting it go” and “moving on” can happen quickly. Rhys’s mother’s advice to “let it go” reflects a gendered temporal script: Men are expected to disavow the past, look to the future, and recover quickly. Such injunctions do not simply minimize trauma; they enforce a masculine temporality. Participants like Rhys are expected to recover quickly, alone, and linearly, where masculine ideas of speed and vulnerability shape what “recovery” (Kvigne et al. 2014; Seidler et al. 2016; Wilton, DeVerteuil, and Evans 2014) and “letting go” mean.

Though these experiences transcend multiple temporalities and highlight the multifaceted nature of time, they also force participants to feel stuck, as masculinized time argues that they should be able to move and continue a productive life (Odih 1999; St. Pierre 2015). Trevor was sexually harassed as a child and experienced attempted rape in his 20s. He explains that his life is always being shaped by the violent encounter:

It affected my relationship with my family, one of my brothers stopped talking to me for years. I drifted apart from friends. Any mental health issues I had worsened along with my issues with alcohol and drug use. . . . Apart from work I’m basically a recluse. It feels like I died back then and now I’m a ghost. (Trevor, 41, heterosexual, White British)

He is explicit about his past and present, suggesting the “real” or “alive” version of himself is stuck in the past. Whilst he received cognitive behavioral therapy from the National Health Service ¹ in the UK, it was inadequate. Trevor would like help, but he says, “the fact that therapy is only short-term puts me off asking for help.” He also goes on to tell us that “I’m reluctant to talk about it for fear of ridicule.” Trevor has been failed by healthcare provision, but it is temporalities that have shaped how he feels about his perceived inability to recover, as though he failed. At the same time, there is a fear of talking about the unwanted sexual experiences (and their impacts) due to ridicule and shame. Masculinity, therefore, can prevent men from accessing support over long periods, if ever, creating further violence through such temporal structuring. This reflects the power of masculinized temporalities, which equate recovery with progression and resilience; when men remain “stuck,” they are positioned as failing masculinity itself.

In this section, we have highlighted how masculine temporalities have power over how time is experienced, limiting and shaping the ways that men live with the impacts of sexual violence and working to prevent men from accessing care. Sexual violence not only disrupts these temporalities but also highlights their limits. There is an expectation to “recover” quickly and focus on the future. This becomes impossible, as the past and present blur and lives continue to be shaped by sexual violence. This means that patriarchal and capitalist structures create temporalities where men are often forced to feel stuck, unable to “let go” and “move on,” and are denied care and support: Trauma continues to rupture their lives. In the following section, we explore how waiting is a gendered temporal condition.

Waiting

Scholarship on waiting argues that it is an active process (Bishop 2013; William 2009) always shaped by unequal power relations and the subjective meanings applied to it (Bendixsen and Eriksen 2018; Lahad 2019; Pickard 2020; Terzioglu 2023). Keeping people waiting can therefore be a tool of control that is often actively negotiated.

We conceptualize waiting as a gendered temporal condition—men are culturally required to wait stoically (performing self-reliance) while institutions render men’s victimhood illegible, allocating resources through event- and risk-based thresholds that privilege other survivor profiles. At the same time, we highlight how waiting can be simultaneously masculinized—a way of embodying strong and stoic masculinity. The men who participated in our study narrated attempts to “wait out” the impacts of their unwanted sexual experiences in different ways; many found waiting unbearable, whereas others were made to wait by individuals and institutions, experiencing punishment for not waiting “properly.” Participants implied they were waiting for a time when their crisis was over, and they could live a happy life. Yet Ahmed (2010) reminds us that this happy life may not come.

Attempts to “wait it out” (Hage 2009) were entangled with notions of masculinity, Britishness, and stoicism, narrated as brave and resilient self-governance (Lahad 2019), rather than passive or weak inaction. Derek (62, heterosexual, White British), who experienced multiple sexual assaults as a child and sexual harassment as an adult, says “you soldier through, you know stiff upper lip and you keep going . . . you’re a man, pull yourself together.” Similarly, Adam (31, queer, White British), who was raped by a female friend and experienced multiple sexual assaults in nightclubs while working and socializing, suggests that waiting it out is a sign of resilience, especially as the alternative is considered an antithesis to acceptable masculinity: “you just sort of deal with it and get on with it, keep calm and carry on . . . [men] are made to feel weak for going to ask for support.” Masculine discourses that reject men’s vulnerability and construct linear temporalities produce waiting. Masculinized waiting revolves around men’s ability to be self-reliant despite the negative impact on mental well-being (Griffin et al. 2022) and enables men to avoid feeling “weak” despite not feeling fully able to “master” time and leave sexual violence in the past. These narratives enact a masculine script of temporal endurance—to “soldier through” is to remain aligned with straight, productive masculine time. Seeking help is feminized and temporally off-script; men perform waiting-as-competence to stay “on time.”

Masculinized waiting was also narrated by those who positioned themselves and their unwanted sexual experiences relative to women’s everyday experiences of violence. Peter (39, gay, White British), who was sexually assaulted by a male housemate, says: “women have gone through that for years, you’re a man and just man up.” Similarly, Anthony (53, bisexual, White European), who experienced sexual harassment and sexual assault from a male manager and, several years later from a female colleague, suggests “women put up with this thing on a daily basis, a lot of women, and they learn how to deal with it.” Anthony implies that if women can deal with everyday experiences of sexual violence, then men, who he believes experience it less frequently, certainly can too. This locates the true crisis elsewhere, implying that the chivalrous thing to do is to step aside and wait it out. Arguably, by doing so, men can avoid feeling as though they are “jumping the queue” (Hage 2009, 57) and instead choose to wait honorably (Lombard 2013).

Hage reminds us that there is “a politics around who is to wait. There is a politics around what waiting entails. And there is a politics around how to wait and how to organise waiting into a social system” (Hage 2009, 138). Contemporary cultural and political representations of sexual violence frame it exclusively as an issue of male violence toward women and girls, invisibilizing men’s victimization (Widanaralalage et al. 2022). This invisibilization works to deprive male survivors of timely access to the resources needed to pursue a good and happy life (Ahmed 2010; Stasik, Hänsch, and Mains 2020). This creates categories of legitimate victimhood, where men rarely register as urgently in need of care. Effectively, men are held in a position of prolonged “waiting zones” (Bishop 2013), which may generate and exacerbate feelings of shame, frustration, and isolation (Cresswell 2012; Straughan, Bissell, and Gorman-Murray 2020). For some, these “waiting zones” become unbearable (Bishop 2013; Hage 2009), prompting a turn toward, and/or exacerbated use of, problematic coping mechanisms. Adam (31, queer, White British), introduced above, found that using substances concealed his suffering and led others to believe he was coping well:

I used to drink a lot and use a lot of drugs to try and mask it which I think often makes people assume that you know, you’re just having fun and enjoying yourself but it’s obviously often not the case.

Adam insinuates that others’ perception of him reinforced his isolation, prolonging his period of waiting.

There is a scarcity of resources in the UK-based sexual violence sector following the austerity crisis, complicated by inconsistent political will to address the issue. ² Consequently, contemporary sexual violence policy and support services have been designed with acute crisis in mind: Those most at risk of significant harm or death are allocated what limited resources are available, such as support services and criminal legal investigation. Sami (32, heterosexual, British Pakistani) who was abused as a child by two male family members, narrates the response he received when attempting to access support: “you go to the gym . . . you’re doing fine, you don’t meet our threshold. And I would sit there and be like, so you want me to reach rock bottom.” Thresholding and wait lists do more than ration scarce care; they sort survivors through institutional categories of legibility.

Globally, women experiencing violence from men are at the most risk of severe harm and death (World Health Organization 2024); therefore, most services are designed to support women survivors and their children. While this allocation of resources is much needed, often men do not fit the profile of a “victim.” If a male survivor waits inappropriately, perhaps by waiting “too long,” for example, beyond the forensic evidence viability window (Newton 2013), or develops “good” coping mechanisms, they are effectively punished by being denied care or are forced to wait further. In this sorting, the victimhood of men often fails to register as urgent or “real.” While women are often made to wait for support and care, waiting is not always about being recognized as a victim/survivor. For men, waiting is a product of gendered discourses on claims to victimhood, where survivorship is often feminized and made unavailable for men.

Even when participants identified services accessible for men and met the organizations’ threshold for support, the scarcity of resources required that men were put onto wait lists. As Bishop (2013) suggests, these formal waiting zones are technologies which, often unexpectedly, disrupt the flow of support to those in need, enhancing feelings of frustration, as narrated by Adam:

They were telling me to go to rehab, then I received the funding and was waiting for a place, and they just keep pushing it back . . . and then there’s all these other things like I’d have to stay at my property which is above a pub, and I have to stay here otherwise they won’t be able to rehouse me afterwards, and yes I often just think it’s, you don’t, you have all of your freedom taken away from you, and it’s not like it’s a care package that you are able to really choose, it’s just something that’s forced on you, because unless you have the money to pay for yourself it’s just kind of like, well you have to take what you’re given.

Adam’s substance use meant he was eligible for rehabilitation services, but these had repeated delays. Arguably, this is what Berlant (2011) terms cruel optimism in action: Adam is offered opportunities to envision a happier, healthier future, yet the care package on offer is flawed and requires him to wait in a risky environment. Adam’s experience also highlights the capitalist normalcy of multiple crises operating simultaneously: the aftermath of sexual violence, addiction and poor mental health, the scarcity of resources following austerity, the current housing and cost of living crises in England, and so on. As we have shown, this enforced waiting is also a product of and continues to produce categories of victimhood and survivorship, and the gendered discourses that construct them. These men find themselves in challenging situations, forced to wait while masculinized temporalities tell them to be future-productive focused, and attempting to cope through masculinizing narratives and practices. This also limits men’s ability to imagine a future less rooted in their traumatic past—the focus of the next section.

Imagining Futures

As we have argued, masculinity is a future-facing project—production and advancement are always on the horizon. Sexual violence, however, interrupts this chronology, forcing men to recognize the present in relation to new and alternative futures. For many of the men in this study, the trauma of their unwanted sexual experiences can be seen to punctuate and reverberate through perceptions of the past, present, and future (Hall 2019), eschewing the temporal logics of everyday lives and reconfiguring future-oriented masculinities. This can create uncertainty and even fear toward the future, where re-traumatization becomes a very real and tangible possibility. Women’s futures are often shaped by incidents of sexual violence, as they make life choices to avoid being retraumatized or mitigate the risk of a potential threat of future violence (Datta 2020; Twemlow, Turner, and Swaine 2022). This process seeks to maintain the segregation of women (Hattery 2022). For men, however, sexual violence destabilizes the future-facing project of masculinity itself, where masculinities are always demanding a disciplining of the future.

Imaginings of the future can be an important resource for managing and dealing with the aftermath of a traumatic experience. As Womersley (2020, 716) suggests, imagination can be “a process that allows the individual to take distance from the here-and-now of current experience to consider alternative possibilities.” However, when gendered demands are at play, it becomes difficult to imagine a future outside of masculine scripts. Such temporal practices were common among the participants’ discussions of their imagined futures. However, rather than “distancing” themselves from the traumatic event, these imaginings were more “anticipatory,” and utilized in ways to avoid potentially traumatic encounters (Kafer 2013; Morrigan 2017). For example, Rhys (introduced above) described the degree of planning and anticipation that took place when attending social events:

If I’m going anywhere, like I’m thinking about what could happen and like if I walk in somewhere I’ll, like say a bar, I’ll be looking around and I’ll know where I can get in and where I can get out and stuff like that, and that’s not really nice. (Rhys 34, gay, White British)

For Rhys, imaginings of the future involve a significant degree of mapping potential encounters to anticipate situations which may trigger his trauma. To stay “on time,” Rhys engages in a range of strategies, including scanning the environment to devise possible escape routes, in an attempt to take control of time and space. The trauma of the experience with his female friends also reverberates through Rhys’ encounters: He explained that he is “always on . . . guard” and “cannot let meself ³ be meself” in case his female friends interpret this as him showing a sexual interest and “try it on” with him. In seeking to avoid unwanted sexual encounters in the future, Rhys feels he must make sacrifices, never fully investing in his friendships, which reflects a sense of dissociation, derealization, and depersonalization often experienced by survivors of sexual violence (Morrigan 2017). Rhys’s anticipation of violence aligns with that of some women (Twemlow, Turner, and Swaine 2022); however, there is an attempt to remain in control and stay “on time.”

Wayne’s future imaginings were underpinned by complex ideas relating to his sexual identity and desires. As a survivor of childhood sexual abuse by a trusted adult, Wayne was anxious that these experiences might lead him to develop unwanted sexual thoughts or feelings related to minors.

I was scared to go to therapy. . . because I was like what if, what if I become someone that wants to do that and I think that was like a big, a big fear like again more, that was more of an internal fear of not wanting to address the possibility that what if I have urges that I find children attractive or whatever, you know, like I was kind of just, because I was so numb to everything I wasn’t, I was scared of what could come to the surface. (Wayne, 32, heterosexual, White British)

Wayne’s anxieties were amplified because, as he explained, a close friend who also experienced sexual abuse as a child was arrested “because he was planning to do a very similar thing to another child.” Research with men incarcerated for sexual offending (for example, Drury, Elbert, and DeLisi 2019) has highlighted a correlation between experiencing child sexual abuse and future sexual offending, while some masculinities research highlights that men who have survived and then commit violence use masculine scripts to suggest that acts of violence are ways of claiming power (Messerschmidt 1999, 2000). Yet feminist literature on gender-based violence has cautioned against deterministic narratives that equate victimization with future offending, arguing that a range of contextual issues must be considered (Ellis, Winlow, and Hall 2017; Jespersen, Lalumière, and Seto 2009; Lamb 1999). Wayne is, however, concerned about this potential future. To grapple with this, Wayne explained that he felt it was necessary to draw on traditional masculine traits and suppress his emotions in the present, retaining a sense of “numbness” toward his emotions and desires. The present is therefore policed and “contained” so a normative and respectable future can be achieved. Where women often imagine futures constrained by the threat of violence (Twemlow, Turner, and Swaine 2022), Wayne imagines futures constrained by the threat of becoming violent. Masculinity here creates certain expectations (recovery, productivity, heterosexual respectability) while acting as a mechanism of temporal violence, where survivors must engage in self-surveillance to suppress vulnerability and therefore stay “on time.”

Self-surveillance to negotiate gendered and violent temporalities was a key feature of Sami’s (32, heterosexual, British Pakistani) imagined futures. For Sami, his imagined futures were punctuated by fears and anxieties related to the exposure of his sexual abuse and a potential “scandal” among his family and wider community. As he explained, “the whole family’s going to talk,” causing strains and tensions across familial ties and beyond, meaning he created a suitable distance between himself and his family to protect himself. So, while he imagines that he will maintain his familial and community relationships by attending gatherings, such as during Eid festival, he also envisions restrictions on who he will be able to form intimate or romantic relationships with:

I’m never going to get married to someone that’s traditionally Pakistani because . . . she’s going to be from the same community . . . I’m never going to be able to open up to her and tell her why I am the way I am when I have my low moments, why this is going on, because of that fear she will speak, others will know it in the community back at home. (Sami, 32, heterosexual, British Pakistani)

Masculine temporalities discipline this imagination. Cultural hegemonic masculine traditions around family formation and reproduction (Britton 2019) are ruptured in Sami’s imagined future, as he anticipates negotiating periods of emotional vulnerability which, if exposed, risk damaging his masculine status among the family. In curating an imagined future, Sami must renegotiate heteronormative and masculine expectations regarding his romantic relationships as a way to stay “on time.” He imposes restrictions on who he can form intimate relationships with, having to negotiate the complexity of the competing futures. He cannot risk exposure, so he finds ways to be part of the family and community that is respectable. Sami’s self-exclusion from community-normative marriage reveals how heteronormative timelines (courtship–marriage–reproduction) are themselves gendered temporal disciplines, forcing decisions on inclusion in certain practices. Violence creates new temporalities, and masculinity’s demand for respectability metrics certain futures as costly or unavailable.

For women, sexual violence often works to segregate space and possibility, curtailing futures by restricting mobility (Hattery 2022; Twemlow, Turner, and Swaine 2022). For men, however, sexual violence destabilizes the future-facing project of masculinity itself. Survivors are compelled to discipline their futures in line with masculine respectability—by suppressing emotions, maintaining vigilance, or restricting their choices. In this sense, imagined futures are not constrained simply by trauma, but also by the gendered demand that men remain productive, resilient, and self-contained. Masculine futurity becomes another site of temporal violence: It denies men’s needs for care, closes off alternative futures, and renders vulnerability illegible.

Conclusion

We have argued that sexual violence disrupts masculinized temporalities—linear, future-focused, and estranged from the past—revealing time itself as a gendered regime that sustains violence and inequality. Analyzing men’s experiences through temporalities shows how hegemonic masculinity promises control over time (to move on, recover, and remain future-oriented) and how that promise is often unattainable. In doing so, we argue that gendered temporalities are disrupted by violence, while simultaneously sustaining and stretching out violence across time.

We identify three gendered temporal conditions. First, we highlight how “leave it behind” narratives are structured by a masculine demand for temporal mastery and focus on the future, yet the past remains co-present, exposing the limits of such scripts. Second, we demonstrate how waiting operates as a masculinized temporal condition—a performance of stoicism and self-reliance—and as an institutional sorting mechanism that often fails to recognize men as legitimate victims. Third, we focus on the ways sexual violence ruptures masculinized futurity (productivity, respectability, heteronormative family formation), where men must reconfigure the present in relation to feared or unattainable futures to remain respectable and “on time.” Together, these highlight how men’s coping strategies and denial of care are productions of gendered temporal regimes.

In doing so, we contribute to the sociology of gender by theorizing masculinity as a temporal regime—one that structures recovery, waiting, and futurity—and by showing how sexual violence exposes both the contradictions and the violences of that regime. We do this in three ways. First, theorizing masculinity as a temporality enables us to expose how normative understandings of time (Freeman 2010; Halberstam 2005; Odih 1999; St. Pierre 2015) consistently structure how survivors make sense of their lives. Therefore, we do not assume that temporal issues such as stuckness, waiting, and futurity are neutral outcomes of sexual violence, but are already gendered. We argue that gender temporalities are an important framing for examining sexual violence. By examining the gendered temporalities, sociologists can expose how and why survivors are attempting to maintain and adopt normative life trajectories when they have been heavily ruptured.

Second, by using temporalities as a framework (Christian and Dowler 2019; Pain 2021; Twemlow, Turner, and Swaine 2022), we contribute a nuanced understanding of the impacts of sexual violence. Here, we add to growing scholarship that explores the interrelationship among gender, violence, and time (Aitchison 2024; Datta 2020; Twemlow, Turner, and Swaine 2022). We do not assume that the violence occurring in survivors’ lives is only slow or mundane (Christian and Dowler 2019; Nixon 2011; Pain and Cahill 2022), but a range of temporalities that ebb and flow. Such a framework offers a way to understand how certain impacts of sexual violence are created or exacerbated by gendered, masculine, and linear understandings of time. By conceptualizing these contradicting temporalities as violent, we reveal that gender discourses must be addressed, while also providing better care. If we do not disrupt these gendered temporalities, then normative and harmful ideas of recovery, vulnerability, and survivorship may continue to prevail, denying care and sustaining violence.

Third, by focusing on men and masculinity, we contribute to literature on gendered and sexual violence (Blackstone, Houle, and Uggen 2014; Hattery 2022; Hlavka 2014; Twemlow, Turner, and Swaine 2022) and the unique ways that men must negotiate a lack of care. Beyond highlighting how masculinities can maintain and create everyday vioence, we highlight how harmful masculine discourses around vulnerability, strength, futurity, victimhood, and survivorship shape how men’s experiences of sexual violence are constructed, denying care and support.

Our analysis reframes sexual violence as a temporal problem of masculinity: a regime that demands that men disavow the past, hurry recovery, and project productive futures—precisely the capacities that violence ruptures. Gendered time is violent, as it hurries “recovery,” shapes men’s legibility as victims/survivors, and forces respectable futures instead of intimacy and care. This calls for care and policy that interrupt normative temporal scripts—expanding windows of support, de-risking disclosure, and valuing nonlinear recovery—so that survivors are not required to stay “on time” to be supported, cared for, and able to live otherwise.