They keep asking for more male representation in sexual assault victims,
as if boys have ever been absent from the fire,
only buried deeper in places where no one wants to look long enough to find them.
We are taught early that boys are built like strong tall walls.
That nothing should pass through them.
That pain should hit and leave without anything behind.
But it does not leave.
Now when the assault happens,
when something crawls into the space they were told was untouchable—
it does not become a story people hold carefully.
It becomes something hidden inside.
Something that stays.
A secret with teeth.
A presence that learns their name and never forgets it.
But monsters are a very strange thing in this world.
Because when they go inside a boy’s body,
people do not always see them.
Or worse, they see and call it nothing.
“Lalaki naman ’yan.”
“Nasarapan ka naman.”
Words said like they weigh nothing.
Like they do not land anywhere.
As if pain respects gender.
As if a violation asks for permission before entering.
As if the body remembers less just because it is expected to be strong.
The boy was left alone inside all of it.
Not comforted nor believed.
Just left there in a locked room no one bothers to open too long.
And when he finally speaks,
not loudly, not clearly, just enough to survive it—
the world does not move towards him.
It pulls away.
They wanted representation because it matters.
But then they cannot even handle this kind.
Not the kind that drags the truth into daylight and says: it was here, it had always been.
Because acknowledging it would mean admitting something heavier:
that strength was never a protection, only an expectation.
That masculinity was never an armor, only a mask for wounds no one is prepared to name.
Thus it cracks.
Half spoken.
Half believed.
Half buried again under the word normal,
as if “normal” has ever been enough to explain trauma.
And the boy remains—
not as metaphor, not as lesson,
but as a proof of something the world keeps refusing to hold: that what was done to him does not always stay outside his body.
Sometimes they learn how to live inside what everyone calls “a man.”
