Can a Man be Raped by a Woman?

(I’m hungry but I really want to write this just before I forget it. There are many samples but you can skip it to the blue bold letters if you just want to read the main point of this essay)

I found this question under my friend’s picture in his blog. A friend of him said no way, but I disagreed. I believed that it rape could happen to men either, but I didn’t have much to talk about it. So I kept thinking about it as I recalled some related experiences.

I remember watching a movie from India (probably it’s a bollywood movie, but I’m not sure) when I was in primary school. There were a group of women who had been raped by a certain man. They gathered to make revenge. One day they kidnapped the man and did a surgery to him. In the next scene, the man told his friend that he lost his penis. The women have cut it.

I can’t recall what happened next. Maybe I went to school after the scene. I was 9 or 10. I understood what had happened but I didn’t understand how critical and interesting the movie was. It wasn’t a rape, but still it is about women do something to man sexual organ.

It reminds me of a TV seri from Colombia titled Paquita. This smart beautiful woman somehow got married to a movie star—Casanova type. I said “somehow” because they didn’t seem to love each other (the film was a bit complicated). They never made love until the end of the seri.

One day the Casanova disappeared. When the Casanova came home a few days after his disappearance, he told Paquita that he’d been kidnapped by 8 women. He said that they raped him. Surely Paquita didn’t believe him. He was Casanova! Not long after, Paquita found out that the Casanova had cheated on her with an actress. So they got divorced.

I watched it when I was in the first grade of Junior High School. Even now I can’t decide whether it was a rape or not. In fact, I’m not sure that the Casanova had really been kidnapped. He might have just gone out with his girlfriend. Possibly even if he really had been “raped”, he enjoyed it. What will a greedy cat do when we give him 8 fresh fish?

Another incident crosses my mind. There was this tall handsome guy named Bryan McFadden—the most favorite member of an Irish boyband Westlife. One day as he entered his hotel room, he found two naked young women. Those women desired to make love with Bryan. But Bryan got angry and asked them to get out.

I read about it in a teenage magazine in the same year when I watched Paquita. Bryan McFadden was no Casanova. He was modest and low-profile. He even had low-esteem when he had been younger. Maybe if there were more women, it would have been a rape. Maybe.

Currently my mother told me about a new talkshow run by Desi Ratnasari. The guest was a mother and her son. Since senior high school age, the mother used to force his son to make love with her. Now the son is 26. His face showed us that he felt humiliated. In contrast, his mother showed no sign of guilt.

The mother said she had been doing it because her son reminded her of her late husband. When the son was asked why he had not run away, he said that he had been afraid to be neglected. He had been afraid that he wouldn’t be able to make his own living.

The audiences were college students. They shouted at him for being such a loser, “Even a garbage collector can make a living!” My opinion was more or less the same. He has graduated from a vocational senior high school. He could have worked in a car service and sleep there!

But then I was thinking of another possibility. The son might have been mentally weak. As in a book titled A Child Called It, it was very difficult for the child to think that her mother had been a bad person that treated him so cruelly (in fact, she had). Well, I’m not a psycholog, so it’s just a possibility.

My mother also told me about what had happened in her hometown. A junior high school boy had been forced to make love with his aunt. It had been used to happen years until he’d entered high school. He was underage—a minor. Yet the local court claimed his aunt not guilty. My mother said it was because in her village, people would listen to the older one.

I felt sick as listening to that story. What about the boy’s rights? They just didn’t notice it. As what happened in the Desy’s talkshow, no one had sympathy on the victim. Even though they were male, they were weaker. What people have in their mind is men can rape women because men are physically stronger. So it is impossible for women to rape men because men are created to be physically stronger.

Then they forget about boys—younger, weaker, and less independent than men. Then they forget about mentally weaker men. Or maybe it’s as simple as a bad woman gives a sleeping pill to a good man and then rapes him. So my answer is yes, a man can be raped by a woman. But this lack of understanding explained-above makes people less aware of what happen to men and boys around them. In consequence, such cases were revealed years after it had been started.

Finally, all I want you to bear in mind is please pay more attention to your environment, your society. It’s not impossible that something wrong is going on around you, but you don’t notice it when you should have. Men or women, boys or girls, young or old—nobody is immune to any kind of abuse, even from their closest persons. If you find anything suspicious, tell the police. Let them check it while you keep yourself unnoticed.


(I guess I’ve made many language errors. If you notice some, please tell me)

The Importance of English and Indonesian Language

He said that nobody speak English in Indonesia. This is bad for Indonesian people’s carrier, and Indonesia’s carrier itself as a country...

I have two young men from India as my students. They’re learning Indonesian language from me. I discussed with one of them (Mr. T) about languages in India. I’d always thought that English is their national language. But he said it’s Hindi. But they’re speaking both English and Hindi fluently. He told me that all schools and offices in India use English. And Hindi is okay to live side by side with English.

Well, it’s only one piece of information from one man. I dare not to say that it’s completely true. But now they’re learning Indonesian language fast. It shows that they’re not unfamiliar with acquiring foreign language. And that’s a positive thing.

Mr. T also gave me his opinions on Indonesian people English ability. He said that nobody speak English in Indonesia. This is bad for Indonesian people’s carrier, and Indonesia’s carrier itself as a country. If our people can’t speak English, it will be difficult for foreigners to communicate with us. In consequence, fewer foreigners interested to invest in our country. It was also told by my previous student from Korea. The inability of Indonesian people to speak English properly makes things more complicated when foreigners investing their money in Indonesia.

English is getting more and more vital in this global era. Fortunately, Indonesian schools have shown a significant improvement. Some of them are opening international classes. My sister will start her junior high in an international class. I doubt that there are enough English-speaking teachers for all of them. But this is a good sign. Our people are getting more critical about education so that schools are getting more careful in linear.

After all, Indonesian language should remain important. Rarely I find someone speak Indonesian well. Even some foreigners speak Indonesian better that most of Indonesian people themselves. Thus I shall remain you once again that language is one nation’s identity. Furthermore, a strong language indicates a strong nation (it is related to soft power, maybe we’ll talk about this later). Indonesian people have to be able to speak Indonesian as a part of Indonesia. They also have to be able to speak English as a part of the global village. So let’s go internationalize ourselves while bringing tremendous national identity as well ^^

Miss I-can-do-it Can Do It!

This is how I learned that starting a dream is as easy as thinking I want to be like him/her! out of the blue. Well, I’ve proved myself once...

I should have started working on my translation but my friend Yuki started her blog so I just can’t wait to make my own new entries! There are so many ideas running over my head that I can barely choose what to write down first. I guess I will start on the most recent one.

I’ve just seen this talk show called KickAndy! Tonight Andy interviewed some young successful men—most of them are well-educated. My first reaction was oh, I wish one of them were mine! Hahaha. But soon I thought of a much greater thing—I shall be one of them!

I’ve spent the last 6 years avoiding becoming a leader. Sub leader was okay but I didn’t want to be on top. I thought that it’s exhausting and I wasn’t capable of it. I valued myself so low that I forgot what I had done. During my last year in junior high school, I was a leader. I pushed my friends to make a monthly school magazine. It attracted many attentions—my schoolmates, teachers, even alumnus. I remember how I felt at that time—I was cool. Haha. But I did no such leadership thing after graduating from junior high. I was too afraid of facing people, encountering problems, and the worst—my own presuppositions.

However, the last few years also has taught me about making dreams come true. When I was a freshman in the university, I had to sing in the graduation ceremony (well, all freshmen did). There I witnessed how the name of the youngest cum laude graduate pronounced. I thought that it was cool and I wanted to achieve that too. The problem was I wasn’t young enough. I knew that there were a few younger freshmen than me. So in order to widen the possibility of accomplishing this goal, I tried so hard to finish my undergraduate study in 7 semesters. And I did it. There were some sickening obstacles and things to be sacrificed, but I did it.


This is how I learned that starting a dream is as easy as thinking I want to be like him/her! out of the blue. Some people do think that I’m crazy, that it’s just some kind of phantasm, and that it’s way too high for me. Well, I’ve proved myself once. I was the youngest cum laude graduate. I had my name pronounced in the main hall and written in the two national newspapers. Then why not doing it again? And again?

I have guts and strong will. God has shown me a glimpse on the way. And I’m not afraid of walking on it. All I have to do now is to work (look for money) and study as hard as possible. Both of them will be my key ingredients for my next year targets.

After all, just like my friend Naana said, I’m Miss I-can-do-it :)

just a lil bit

Hmm... Today is a bit tiring. I have many translation works. It's okay. This is also how I can improve my English.

Well, I found out that if I got sleepy, I should eat something. Whew, it’s costly and I might gain too much weight. Ha-ha.

Got to work again now. See ya ^^

Seminar and Something to Think of

Today was nice with a little silly bad news in the end. But I won’t let myself down because of it. No way. Thus I won’t tell you about the silly bad news, ahaha...

This morning I attended a four session seminar on linguistics. The first speaker was the current Netherlands Ambassador for Indonesia, Dr. Nikolaos van Dam. He spoke about Arab-loan words in Indonesian language. His lecture was in English. I can catch every words but I can hardly remember them. Most of the audiences were lecturers. So I felt like having a class in graduate degree, ha-ha.

The second speaker was Dr. Anton Moeliono—rival of my professor Dr. Harimurti Kridalaksana. During my first years in the university, I thought both of them had already died. Then suddenly I had Dr. Harimurti in my course. And today was the first day I saw Dr. Anton alive. He spoke about multilingualism, polyglots, and their impact on Indonesian language.

The third one was Dr. Uri Tadmor from an anthropology institute. He was attractive. Listening to him speaking Indonesian was no boring. Strangely he gave me different impression when speaking English debating. He told us about the implication of loan-words in Indonesia on the archipelago’s history recognition. He exposed some remarkable facts and stories about how and what other languages have influenced Indonesian.

The last one was Dr. Jérôme Samuel from Paris. His paper was about the word “sepuh” (temper)—how it developed into various meanings. It was very analytical that I got sleepy during his speech. I knew I shouldn’t since I’m going to study in graduate degree but I couldn’t make it.

It was raining after the seminar. My friends asked for my help in a Portugal poetry reading and music. Actually I would have had a class this afternoon but it had been canceled. So I helped my friends and got a tip and two nice books in revenge. Meanwhile all I’ve done was welcoming guests and eating snacks.

I also got another reference letter from my lecturer Mr. F. And I met my lecturer Dr. M who works in the university main office. She told me that I might be able to ask for school fee payment suspension. So there’s a possibility for me to start my graduate study this year on September in University of Indonesia. But there are so many consequences I have to think about. What about Hawai’i, Australia, and Leiden? And that I’m still yearning to study at Cardiff? Studying in Indonesia self-funded will be crazy. I’ve experienced studying and working in the same time and how I wish it wouldn’t happen to me again!

Well, I’ll be thinking of it tomorrow. Now I have 12 pages to work on. Yaaawn, English again. No time to stop studying :)