How a practice-based approach can contribute to research about help and support for male victims of rape

Abstract

While there has been an upsurge of research about human services for male victims of rape, methodological advances are still limited, and significant knowledge gaps remain. Until now, empirical studies have focused almost entirely on human service professionals’ gendered attitudes to try to explain outcomes and victims’ experiences of support. In this article, I argue that research approaches that are based on professionals’ attitudes fail to account for important contextual conditions in policing, healthcare and other human services. My overall aim is thus to introduce greater concern about contextual conditions in human services and provide ways for scholars to approach support for raped men so that different practices, as well as their effects, become visible. To demonstrate the contributions of a practice-based approach to research about support for raped men, an empirical case from a study on police investigation into rape will be analysed and discussed. By using a practice-based approach, it is possible to explore relations between practices performed by organisations, professionals and victims, and highlight the outcomes of such relations. In this way, a practice-based approach can help research progress and contribute to improved services for male rape victims.

Keywords

Practice-based approach male rape sexual assault human service organisations police

Introduction and aim

In recent decades, there has been a growth in the amount of research literature about human service organisations’ help and support for male victims of rape. Nonetheless, methodological advances are limited and significant knowledge gaps exist. Until now, studies have focused almost entirely on human service professionals’ gendered attitudes to try to explain outcomes and victims’ experiences of support. In this article, I argue that research approaches based on professionals’ attitudes fail to account for important contextual conditions within the police, healthcare and other human service organisations, and that this can limit opportunities to improve services for male victims.¹

Scholars have commented on the lack of in-depth perspectives in research about support for raped men and urged scholars to be more methodologically driven (Turchik and Edwards, 2012; Turchik et al., 2016). The overall aim in this article is to introduce greater concern for the contextual conditions in human services in order to provide ways for scholars to approach support for raped men so that different practices, as well as their effects, become visible (cf. Ceci et al., 2017). It is a key argument in the article that research approaches that explore human services in context can help progress research and contribute to the improvement of help and support for raped men.

In order to pursue this aim, I will begin with a brief commentary on the current state of research into help and support for male rape victims, along with important developments in scholarly approaches that stress the contextual conditions of human services. Methodological outlines of a practice-based approach to research about support for male victims will then be described. To illustrate how a practice-based approach might be used and what insights research approaches that are sensitive to the contextual conditions of human services can help provide, an explorative analysis of a selected empirical case concerning an ongoing study on police investigation into rape will follow. Lastly, how a practice-based approach could assist in the progression of research about help and support for male victims of rape is discussed.

The current state of research

According to Abdullah-Khan (2008), it is possible to identify at least two paradigms in research about the rape of men. Early research focused mainly on victims and offenders and stemmed from a positivist research tradition where clinical observations and psychiatric models of understanding were fundamental. In addition, Abdullah-Khan (2008) identifies a competing and current research paradigm. This paradigm emerged in the 1980s and was influenced by feminism and social structure ideas, rooted in critical human- and social science. Generally, theories on hegemonic masculinity have been an important part of this critical strand of research. Connell and Messerschmidt (2005) have described the cultural concept of hegemonic masculinity as a heteronormative power relation which acts to subordinate men that do not live up to an idealised position of ‘being a man’. While there are many different ways of being a man, masculinity in general, includes the subordination of femininity, homosexuality, weakness, victimhood and other feats that are not associated with manhood in a cultural sense. In contemporary research, male sexual victimisation is generally described as a transgression of these shared cultural notions and the idea is used as a theoretical and methodological point of departure (e.g. Javaid, 2018, 2019b).

This second wave of research brought with it an increased emphasis on human services help and support for male victims. Still, empirical studies have tended to rely on psychological, criminological and sociological research approaches. In research on the criminal justice system, for example, studies have investigated how cultural notions of gender, sexuality and rape have influenced law and legislation (e.g. Lowe and Rogers, 2017; Mezey and King, 1992; Rumney and Morgan-Taylor, 1997; Turchik and Edwards, 2012). However, ‘gendered attitudes’ among criminal justice professionals like counsellors/counsellors-in-training (e.g. Donnelly and Kenyon, 1996; Kassing and Prieto, 2003; Shechory and Idisis, 2006), criminal justice practitioners (e.g. Cook and Lane, 2017; Donnelly and Kenyon, 1996;) and judges (e.g. Fuchs, 2004) have been more commonly highlighted in order to explain and exemplify discriminatory actions.² With respect to policing, Dellinger Page (2010) found that male victims were the least likely to be believed by law enforcement professionals and researchers have also studied victim blaming within the police (e.g. Abdullah-Khan, 2008; Davies and Rogers, 2006; Lees, 1997; Rumney, 2009; Shechory and Jaeger, 2020; Sleath and Bull, 2012, 2017). Javaid (2015a, 2015b, 2016) has published extensively on police work into male rape and has identified how victim blaming practices build on the acceptance of gendered beliefs about rape among police professionals.

Until now, very few studies about help and support for male victims of rape have engaged in the contextual circumstances of policing, healthcare and other human services. Scholars interested in human service organisations have, on the other hand, directed considerable attention towards the analysis of contextual conditions in everyday services. Foot (2014), for example, has advocated for a ‘cultural-historical activity theory’ framework to be able to analyse how psychological motives, various ‘tools’, as well as the intricate dynamics of power, money, culture and history in society, can influence human service procedures. Focusing specifically on social services, and building on a critical realist stance, Blom and Morén (2010) have described how investigations of contextual contingencies and ‘generative mechanisms’ in everyday work can help to explain how results in social work practice arise. Jensen et al. (2009) have moreover combined institutional theory and theories about sensemaking to link macro- and micro-levels in analysis. According to Jensen et al., this can help investigate how healthcare practices are enacted and shaped, as well as identify how services in healthcare organisations are adopted by users. On policing more specifically, Robert and Dufresne (2016) have argued for criminological approaches that account for the ‘messiness’ in everyday crimefighting. Aligning with ideas from Actor-Network Theory (ANT), they urge scholars to resist already defined models for explanation, and approach crime and crimefighting as results of various intersecting conditions. Organisation scholars like Wenger (1999), on the other hand, have stressed the situated character of identity formation related to professional practice by explaining that ways of thinking and doing are communal and made possible, but also confined, by the specific social and organisational context in which specific ideas and practices are performed. Also, Hasenfeld (1992, 2000) has described the ways in which enactments of organisational norms and the ‘moral work’ of welfare professionals influence human services. Hasenfeld, does, however, also emphasise the actual conditions that are in place for professionals and users in human service organisations. Day-to-day services include interactions between users and professionals, but services also consist of a myriad of other practices, like routines, technologies, ‘know-how’, etc. Other scholars interested in understanding the complex interplays in human services have suggested a ‘turn to practice’ (Gherardi, 2015; Miettinen et al., 2009; Schatzki et al., 2001) or a ‘care in practice’ perspective (Mol et al., 2015). Feeding off a ‘practice ontology’ (Schatzki, 2016), care scholars such as Pols (2011, 2016) have suggested that help and support need to be approached as a situated practice, where outcomes and user experiences are ‘co-produced’ by subjective, professional and organisational practices in specific settings. Here, much analytical focus is set on the relations between a studied event and the specific contextual conditions in which the event is enacted (Meier and Dopson, 2019).

The scholarly approaches that are presented above constitute a broad collection of theoretical perspectives that are heterogenous yet connected by historical and conceptual similarities. While they might carry ontological and epistemological differences, a shared denominator is that they are focused on human services in context. In approaches that are attentive to cultural, social, material, organisational, political or other conditions in human services, ‘context’ works as a theoretical construct in which specific conditions in everyday work are stressed in analysis (Meier and Dopson, 2019). Evidently, many of these perspectives are not new as such. Nonetheless, given the decontextualised perspectives that have so far dominated research about support for male rape victims, context-sensitive approaches can help scholars to explore further aspects of such services and highlight how they can influence outcomes on, for example, quality and equality. In this article, it is not a primary objective to define an approach set on ‘context’ that is superior and thus the one that should to be used in research about help and support for male victims of rape. More so, I am interested in foregrounding the potential contributions of approaches that can go beyond professionals’ gendered attitudes and that can account for important contextual conditions in human service organisations’ provision of support. In doing this, I try to demonstrate that a research approach based on practices and how different practices relate to each other, can be a fruitful approach to analysis.

Methodological outlines of a practice-based approach to research about help and support for male victims of rape

The approach to help and support for male victims of rape outlined in this article is inspired by ‘practice-based’ research approaches (Nicolini and Monteiro, 2016) in human service and organisation research, but also by gender research and research about support for male rape victims. Nicolini (2012) describes how practice-based research approaches tend to include a methodological ‘package’ that consists of a theory and method, as well as a specific style of narration that includes detailed descriptions of a studied phenomenon or event.

Theory

It is a fundamental theoretical tenet in practice-based research approaches that phenomena like human services are ongoing activities situated in a cultural, social and material world that includes a variety of actors. In this context, practices are the sets of actions performed by human and non-human actors (Reckwitz, 2002). Practices include forms of bodily or mental activities performed by subjects, such as attitudes or affective states, but also activities that are material or semi-material in character, like legislation, institutionalised routines, ‘know how’ instruments or ‘logics’ in organisations (Reckwitz, 2002; Wetherell, 2015).

It is an important theoretical assumption that all practices are performative. Practices have shared cultural understandings ‘built into’ them that are enacted by various actors (Schatzki, 2005b). That way, practices and the specific assemblages of which they are a part empower certain courses of action over others (Davis, 2020). This theoretical stance does not imply that all practices have the same capacities to promote particular lines of action (and discourage others). Rather, support (or lack of support) to male victims unfolds through socio-material arrangements that are mission-critical (Nicolini and Monteiro, 2016). The impact of a specific practice on support depends on its relations to other practices; how, where and by what actor practices are performed (or not performed) are central to how organisational and social phenomena are enacted (Latour, 2005; Schatzki, 2005a). Some practices might rely on specific contextual conditions in order to affect outcomes, while other practices might have the potential to influence actions to a large extent because of their institutionalised and materialised character, such as the institutionalised ‘logic’ of police work described further below.

As stressed by Fisher and Pina (2013), shared cultural notions about gender, sexuality and rape can have fundamental implications for the support of male rape victims. An important contribution from previous research about raped men is the gendered aspects of support for victims (Javaid, 2018, 2019b). Shared cultural notions on masculinity, sexuality and rape make rape of men appear as an anomaly in both human service organisations (Bullock and Beckson, 2011; Depraetere et al., 2020; Javaid, 2019a, 2019b) and society more generally (Gavey, 2018). Such insights turn gender into an important theoretical matter. A third theoretical principle in a practice-based approach to support for raped men is that shared gendered notions affect services to male victims by influencing the actions (or inactions) of professionals, organisations and victims. A practice-based approach, however, can help to explore outcomes that are only partly indebted to gendered notions, as in the case presented here. Overall, the theoretical emphasis is set on how outcomes and experiences of support are produced through the combined representation of practices in services to male victims (cf. Latour, 2005). This critical mode of engagement builds on feminist insights about how care is not neutral but inherently political (Puig de la Bellacasa, 2017; Tronto, 1993). In practice, human services are a selected mode of attention where some groups are included and others excluded (Martin et al., 2015). Therefore, the practice-based approach as suggested in this article is situated within a broader strand of critical social theory.

Method

Since practiced-based approaches build on the idea that cultural, social and organisational phenomena stem from real-time actions in everyday life, practice-based approaches focus on how activities are enacted in context (Miettinen et al., 2009; Mol, 2008; Nicolini and Monteiro, 2016; Reckwitz, 2002). Hence, the analytical units for researchers to explore are practices enacted by human and non-human actors and the ways in which they relate to each other in different contexts of help and support.

One way to employ a practice-based approach is to describe and interpret and thereby deconstruct, the combined performances of a set of practices in a specific type of support situation, namely what specific practices support situations consist of, how those practices are related in the specific context, and how such relations can influence outcomes and experiences of support (Nicolini and Monteiro, 2016). An essential matter is to identify key practices that are performed by, for example, professionals, organisations and victims, and how they unfold together in a particular support situation. A guiding principle can be to identify and select practices by posting questions about how they endorse certain behaviours and outcomes, or the contrary, how they make certain experiences or outcomes less plausible. In the analysis of the research material used in the article, a first analytical step was to identify critical practices that were performed by relevant actors (Schatzki, 2005a). A following step was to analyse how those practices were interconnected and theorise about the ways in which their relations could influence outcomes and experiences of rape investigation. A final analytical step, and a step that can illustrate an important contribution of a practice-based approach, is the possibility to reflect about possible ways of making police work and other human services better for raped men.

Case study designs can be particularly suited to study complex phenomena where the variables being studied cannot be separated from the contexts in which they exist (Yin, 2018). By selecting cases strategically and using them to analyse help and support, researchers can highlight both case-specific and more general tendencies found in research materials (Flyvbjerg, 2001). In order to show how a case study design can be used in a practice-based study about support for male victims and to display the particular style of narration in practice-based approaches, a strategically selected case deriving from a study about police investigations into rape will be presented in this article.

Research material and narration

Research materials in practice-based studies can vary, but qualitative materials like field notes from participant observations, in-depth interviews and social-material artefacts like documents, instruments or protocols are often used (Gherardi and Perrotta, 2014; Mol, 2008; Nicolini, 2012). Given the sensitive subject, research about support for male rape victims can pose specific challenges in terms of access to research materials (Lindberg and Sjöström, 2019).

For the study on police investigation into the rape of men, the author and colleague conducted in-depth interviews with 10 men who had filed a complaint about being raped to the police and as a consequence, experienced a police investigation. To gain a contrasting perspective that made it possible to explore the contextual conditions of male rape investigation, 10 police investigators were also interviewed. The study was approved by the Regional Ethics Board at Umeå University (approval number: 2016/112-31).

The ways used to collect the research material were based on a practice-based methodology (Nicolini, 2012). This included an explorative approach during interviews where victim participants were asked about how they did certain things, how it felt and affected them, and why they did these things instead of others. This was discussed against the background of the rape that they had been subjected to and had reported to the police. Similarly, police investigators were asked about professional practices, but the interviews also included more general discussions about sexual violence, policing and gender. By selecting a case from this gathered research material and relating it to more general results found in the in-depth interviews, key practices could be explained in detail in order to communicate to readers how rape investigations unfold and why such services are enacted in particular ways, along with the potential effects (Miettinen et al., 2009).

The selected case about rape investigation will now be presented and discussed. Importantly, the discussion should not be understood as original findings or normative accounts of how police work should be performed. For the purpose of this article, the case is presented to clarify the topic of methodology, and stand as an explorative example of how a concern for contextual conditions and different practices in human services, can provide recourse for scholars to reflect on outcomes and experiences of help and support.

Exploring a practice-based approach about help and support for male victims of rape: victim blaming in police investigations into rape

Victim blaming has been established as a major issue in police work into rape. Studies on both male and female victims have disclosed negative- and victim-blaming attitudes among police professionals (Javaid, 2015a, 2016; Maier, 2008; Sleath and Bull, 2012, 2017). By using a practice-based approach to research about support for male victims of rape, scholars can advance such analysis and explore under what concrete conditions feelings of blame can emerge. As part of the study on police investigation into male rape, Robert was interviewed.³ In the case description below, three interrelated practices, a need for support, a logic of policing, and homophobia, are presented. They will be analysed in terms of how they together, in the specific context of a rape investigation, might contribute to experiences of victim blaming.

Need for support

Robert was in his forties and living with his wife and child in a big city in Sweden. During the interview with Robert, he described how he had been raped anally by a male acquaintance while he was intoxicated and, due to reoccurring social issues, on heavy medication. After the rape, Robert reported it to the police, and a police investigation was initialised.⁴ As part of the investigation, the supposed perpetrator, as well as Robert, were interrogated multiple times by a police investigator.

When talking about the police investigation, Robert said that he felt as though his investigator had been very helpful and supportive. He shared this experience with other victims that were interviewed for the study. Just like many of them, Robert also seemed to need and anticipate emotional support from his investigator. Robert said that it was important for him that the police were ‘on his side’ and the support that he received from his investigator helped him to go through with the complaint against the supposed perpetrator, even though it was very stressful for him:

They [the investigator] didn’t say it out loud but it was like ‘you’re doing the right thing’ and ‘of course you should do this’ (. . .) How they tell you how brave you are and that part, that’s still why I do this [file a complaint].

Nevertheless, while Robert had felt supported by his investigator, he also said that it felt like the investigator had questioned him and challenged his story. All the men that were interviewed for the study described how their police investigators had asked critical questions about their rape during interrogation. Robert, however, really stressed those questions and described how they had made him feel like he was, in part, to blame for the rape:

(D)uring the police interrogation, I didn’t feel believed or something had changed, like the picture was that it couldn’t be proven if it [the rape] was consensual or not.

It was clear during the interview that Robert had needed and appreciated the support that he received from his investigator. Still, his lasting experience was that he felt blamed for the rape. When Robert was asked critical questions, and thereby felt like he did not receive the support that he deserved, feelings of being blamed emerged. In this situation it did, however, appear as if both the police and Robert were active in the production of such feelings.

A logic of policing

One way to try to understand why experiences of blaming can arise in rape investigations is to analyse such feelings in relation to professional police practice. Following a practice-based methodology, this can include professionals, organisational practices, and victims as active actors in the production of victim-blaming experiences.

A formal objective of the Swedish Police is to investigate and solve crimes and promote justice and security on behalf of the public (The Swedish Police Act, 1984: 387). Reiner (2010), however, argues that scholarly perspectives on police work need to be conceptualised more broadly. While crime-solving is an inherent part of police work, policing is a complex activity that involves a multitude of practices in different social domains. Most of the police investigators that were interviewed for the study stressed the social aspect of rape investigation, such as the importance of being ‘personal’ and supporting victims both practically and emotionally. However, they also explained the need to post critical questions to victims to be able to investigate crimes ‘objectively’. One investigator described this stance:

You’ve got an approach, you need to have as an investigator, that’s to investigate all crimes objectively. And to evaluate the evidence, what crime is in front of me? (. . .) Here, we don’t make subjective assessments.

Most of the investigators said that they tried to communicate their objective approach to victims during investigation and claimed that it did not affect the fact that they were trying to be supportive. Still, many said that their oscillation between support and crime-solving during investigations seemed to be difficult for rape victims to fully comprehend. Moreover, while emotional support was presented as a very important task and a tacit quality specifically in rape investigation, the objective crime-solving approach still appeared to be a privileged practice.

Building on the works of organisational scholars, the privileged quest among police investigators to obtain objective facts could be described as a semi-material practice, or ‘logic’ of police work (Nicolini et al., 2021; Thornton et al., 2012). This practice is articulated in legal documents (The Swedish Police Act, 1984: 387), but during interviews, it also seemed to be internalised and part of a professional police identity. As such, it helped to guide professional practice and provide a sense of meaning to professionals in the context of rape investigation (Thornton et al., 2012). In the presented case, Roberts’ experiences of feeling blamed can be analysed as a result of a ‘clash’ between two founding, yet conflicting, practices in rape investigation: Roberts’ need to be supported and the institutionalised and privileged police practice to investigate crime in an objective and crime-solving manner.

Roberts’ explicit homophobia

Previous research about male rape victims has shown how cultural notions about gender, sexuality and rape influence how men experience sexual victimisation. Weiss (2010), for example, describes feelings of shame and denial among men that have been subjected to rape. It has even been suggested that it is particularly difficult for men to handle the psychological consequences of rape (Peterson et al., 2011). In light of such results, a relevant way to approach Roberts’ experiences of blaming is to analyse them in relation to his affective responses, influenced by cultural notions about gender, rape and sexuality.

During the interview, Robert was very explicit about being homophobic. He said that:

My wife can confirm that I’m more or less homophobic, you can say. I’m very. . . strict with that (. . .) I don’t feel comfortable. Like, I don’t have anything against those people but still, you’re not comfortable.

This seemed to contribute to him feeling shame about being raped. Later in the interview, he continued to state that his homophobia affected the ways in which he related to the rape:

It’s a homosexual act, this [the rape], however you look at it. Right now, I’m just repressing it as much as [possible].

It was obvious during the interview that Robert subscribed to gendered notions where transgressions of heterosexuality were frowned upon. Like other victims that were interviewed, such notions also seemed to have influenced how he understood and approached a rape investigation. Roberts’ explicit homophobia appeared to make him very sensitive to the ‘objective’ stance of the investigator. Due to his homophobia, he seemed to have interpreted the critical questions that he received as questioning his heterosexuality. This seemed to have generated feelings of being blamed by his investigator. In the context of a police investigation, and having been exposed to man-to-man and anal rape, Robert’s strong antipathy for homosexuality appeared to increase his need of support and simultaneously make the investigators fact-finding stance very hard to comprehend.

To account for male victims’ active participation in the production of victim-blaming experiences challenges a general and political standpoint in much current research. As displayed, empirical studies have focused almost exclusively on how professionals within the police and other human service organisations mishandle male rape victims. Such studies, however, often fail to take important contextual conditions into account, such as victims’ emotional involvement in police investigations, or essential intra-organisational practices. To recognise male victims as active actors in the production of their own experiences of blame in no way implies that their feelings are not representative or true, nor does it suggest that victims’ accounts of interactions with human service professionals are not worthwhile. As Spohn and Tellis (2012) remark, victims’ experiences of feeling blamed for a rape are highly problematic and can have a severe impact on help-seeking behaviour. Hence, exploring rape investigation in context, and approaching victim blaming experiences as a consequence of specific relations between practices enacted by professionals, organisations and victims, can provide important insights and add to critical explorations about why and how such feelings surface in certain support situations. That way, such approaches can also help provide suitable solutions.

Key contributions of a practice-based approach to research about help and support for male victims of rape

As described, previous research about support for male victims have tended to privilege analyses of gendered attitudes among professionals and how such attitudes produce discriminatory action. In light of this, an outline for a practice-based approach has been presented in order to provide ways for scholars to approach support for raped men so that different practices in human services, as well as their effects, become visible.

A key contribution of a practice-based approach is that it can help scholars to explore welfare in context, and how different practices by multiple actors can affect help and support for male victims of rape. In the presented case, a variety of practices, ranging from Roberts’ explicit homophobia to institutionalised ‘logics’ within the police were highlighted to show how they can influence experiences and services in significant ways. According to Reckwitz (2002), the ontological underpinnings of contemporary social and cultural theory have contributed to narrow our understanding of agency. Researchers have tended to favour subjects and their minds in their analyses. Given the complexity of human service organisations like the police, research strategies centred only around subjects’ minds risks missing vital aspects of every-day situations and that can influence services for raped men. Similarly, theories focusing solely on gender can offer only a limited set of analytical tools. By pre-setting an analysis on professionals’ attitudes about gender, masculinity and sexuality, there is a risk of reducing the complexity of a studied phenomenon (Forsberg, 2010; Moller, 2007). Compared to the dominant strand of research about support for raped men, a practice-based approach can help to forefront the critical and active roles that different conditions can play in human services. By spreading the empirical attention to a multiplicity of practices by numerous actors – such as organisational logics and routines, for example, but also legislation and professionals’ gendered attitudes – and analysing their potential impacts on different outcomes, a practice-based approach can help researchers to expand their empirical and analytical scope.

A second contribution is that a practice-based approach can help scholars scrutinise connections and contradictions between practices and show how such relations can influence human services. It is a pivotal theoretical assumption in practice-based research approaches that the effects that particular practices have rely on the specific contexts in which they are enacted (Nicolini, 2012). It is the relations between practices in a particular context that will establish potential outcomes (Latour, 2005). As demonstrated in the present case, rape victims’ experiences of investigation can rely on how intersubjective and organisational practices align, but also ‘clash’. Here, it was clear that institutionalised ways of pursuing crime investigation ‘objectively’ affected investigators actions to a considerable extent, even in the context of a rape investigation. At the same time, gendered notions seemed to be pivotal to how sexual victimisation and police investigation were understood, experienced and approached by male victims. Such complexities call for theoretical and methodological sensitivities that can account for the potential effects of different organisational conditions, as well as gendered and affective responses by individuals. An analytical approach that stresses the ‘co-production’ (Pols, 2011, 2016) of situations and experiences is well-suited to adhere to such interplays.

This brings us to the third and most important contribution of a practice-based approach to research about support for male victims of rape. Since research has focused primarily on intersubjective responses by victims and professionals, empirical findings have had limited utility for the police and other forms of human services (Almond et al., 2014). Pols (2011) has suggested that practice-based research approaches can be particularly productive in studies on groups that are marginal or less recognised in human service organisations. By critically investigating the concrete actions (including in-actions) of professionals, organisations and victims, a practice-based approach can help identify both problems and possibilities for groups like raped men. That way, it can help researchers to produce applicable knowledge with the potential to increase the quality of services, without losing the edge of cultural critique. In relation to the presented case, a possible resolution could be for the police to find ways to communicate the fact-finding purpose of a police investigation more thoroughly to male victims in order to counteract feelings of being blamed. To avoid feelings of blame is of course relevant in all types of police investigations; however, preventive measures might be particularly important in the context of the rape of men, as empirical results suggest that male victims tend to avoid or terminate public support in fear of feeling blamed by human service professionals (Artime et al., 2014; Machado et al., 2016).

Concluding discussion

Historically in the Western world, rape victimisation has been associated with women, while men have been defined as aggressors and perpetrators (Gavey, 2018; Spiegel, 2013). This understanding of sexual violence is often mirrored in the practices of human service organisations (Bullock and Beckson, 2011; Larsen and Hilden, 2016). Generally, help and support is arranged for female victims only or more adequality put: although not explicitly excluded, men are often not expected to be victims. This can affect the quality and equality of services (Lowe and Rogers, 2017), as well as male victims’ proneness to seek help (Donne et al., 2017; Masho and Alvanzo, 2010). While it is not a pervading feature, men are not always given the same level of support as comparable groups, like women and children (Depraetere et al., 2020; Turchik et al., 2016). It is therefore important to try to improve services for raped men in organisations like the police, healthcare and social services (Depraetere et al., 2020; Turchik and Edwards, 2012; Turchik et al., 2016).

An overall objective of this article is to introduce greater concern about the contextual conditions in human services to provide ways for scholars to approach support for raped men so that different practices, as well as their effects, become visible (cf. Ceci et al., 2017). The earlier critical strand of research about raped men has contributed to a progress in knowledge about help and support in significant ways. Given the persistent focus on professionals’ attitudes, it does, however, fail to account for important contextual conditions. In light of this, a practice-based approach has been used in this article to demonstrate how research approaches that are sensitive to contextual conditions in support can offer both methodological and empirical advances. By setting out to explore practices enacted by different actors and how they relate to specific support contexts, a practice-based approach can help scholars to better understand how problems and possibilities for raped men occur, and such knowledge has the potential to make services for raped men better.

A practice-based approach to help and support can also help open up new empirical domains and address uncharted matters. While the case in the article was set to provide an illustrative example of a how a practice-based approach can be executed, and what results it can help provide, the inherent focus on relations between practices can also help to think about areas where there is a need for further research. It is, for example, an implicit task in rape investigation to cooperate with other human service organisations – healthcare, social services, victim support agencies, etc. Such collaborations have proven to create issues for victims of similar crimes, such as the rape of women (Martin, 2013). In future research, there is a need to account for inter-organisational collaborations and how practices in different human service organisations converge and ‘clash’ (Donne et al., 2017). Also, feminist scholars have stressed how the entwinement of social categories can affect the quality and equality of support (Crenshaw, 1991; Powell et al., 2017; Shim, 2010). Given the explicit focus on gender in earlier research, a practice-based approach can help scholars to engage more critically with how conditions like socio-economic status, disability and age can influence human service organisations’ provision of support for male victims (Meyer, 2020).

As has been maintained throughout this article, it is a key argument that scholarly approaches focused on human services in context can help to progress research and contribute to making support for raped men better. Given the possibilities to highlight professional, organisational and victims’ practices, and analyse how they can coincide and ‘clash’, a practice-based approach can be particularly suitable in reflecting about how outcomes and experiences for raped men come to pass. Such potentials will hopefully inspire scholars and instil a greater concern for different practices in studies about help and support for male victims of rape.

Footnotes

Declaration of conflicting interests

The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship and/or publication of this article: This work was supported by the Swedish Research Council for Health, Working Life and Welfare (FORTE) [grant number 2015-00576].

ORCID iD

Jens Lindberg

Notes

Author biography

Jens Lindberg is a Senior Lecturer at the Department of Social Work, Umeå University, Sweden. His research is about human service organisations, interpersonal violence and digital health.

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