Eleven men in Serbia speak of their experiences of sexual violence and harassment – and explain their reasons for not reporting it.
Bojan’s story of falling in love is no different to countless others – starting at university, he met an older, articulate, intelligent man who “swept me off my feet”. The man became Bojan’s first sexual partner, and, at first, he was happy.
When the man began cheating on him, however, Bojan* broke things off. His partner wouldn’t accept it; he threatened to out Bojan to his parents, and then said he would kill himself if they could not be together. Just 19, Bojan took him back and stayed in the relationship for the next three years.
“It carried on because he threatened to kill himself if I left him,” said Bojan. “I agreed to sex because I couldn’t take hisscenes anymore, but also because I was afraid he would hurt himself or me.”
Bojan knows now that he was a victim of sexual coercion, but back then he had no understanding of the concept – when consent exists only on the surface and is in fact the result of fear, threats and pressure.
Bojan was one of 11 men who shared their experiences of sexual violence or harassment: rape, coercion into sex within a relationship, and sexual harassment at work and in public places.
None of them reported the violence they survived. Most of them barely discussed it with anyone, whether out of a sense of shame, an inability to define what went on, or fear of how others might react – with ridicule, pity or disbelief.
Ridicule is what Milan faced when he told friends about feeling under pressure from his girlfriend to have sex.
“She put pressure on me about when, where, how many times and how often we had sex,” he said. “She was always comparing us with others in that respect and commenting on what was normal to be doing at which stage of a relationship.”
Milan said his partner insulted him, threatened to break up with him, and suggested he “get treatment” for his sex-drive.
When he opened up to friends, some were supportive, but others asked: “What kind of man are you if you don’t want sex?”
Patriarchal tropes portray men as always desiring sex, and a ‘real man’ as always sexually available and initiating sex, said sociologist Hristina Cvetincanin Knezevic.
“That’s why a man’s ‘no’ often raises the question of what is ‘wrong’ with him,” she said. “Is he manly enough, is he sexually capable, is he attracted enough to his partner, is he gay?”
“The person is pressured into agreeing to sex to prove their own masculinity.”
Men ‘should’ want sex
Photo illustration: The Kaleidoscope/Pixabay.
Dusan was raped on a night out. A man had approached him in a bar and insisted they have a drink together; when the man tried to kiss him, Dusan pushed him away.
When Dusan left to return to his hostel, the man followed him.
“I asked my ‘friends’ at the time not to tell him where I was going, though I did tell them I had to go to the hostel to get my things,” said Dusan. “But it seems they told him, because he turned up at the hostel not long after me.”
Dusan was raped in the corridor. He cut off all contact with the people he spent time with during that period of his life.
Vuk was 18 when he met an older man on a dating app. They met at the man’s flat. Vuk said he appeared to be about 50.
He said the man encouraged him to try anal sex. Vuk said it hurt, but when he complained the man became “more aggressive”.
“There was no direct physical force,” he said, “but he repeatedly ignored what I was saying”.
“I felt guilty about refusing something he was insisting on when I hadn’t said in time that I didn’t want it,” Vuk said. “I did feel guilty, and I still do, because I didn’t stop it sooner. I know I could have.”
For a long time, Vuk didn’t call what we went through ‘rape’, believing rape by definition involved force, resistance and explicit coercion.
Between 2022 and 2025, only one case of rape involving a male survivor reached court in Serbia.
“I don’t know why I haven’t told anyone,” said Dusan. “It’s not even about shame; it just happened to me, and I can’t bear those shocked or pitying looks, or worse still, not being believed. I’ve tried raising the subject with a few people, but the reaction was always: ‘Come on, men can’t be raped’.”
Marko was raped in a club. Waiting for the toilets, he was pulled into a cubicle by a visibly drunk woman.
“Heavily under the influence of alcohol, she pushed me into the cubicle and demanded sex,” he said. “I was really very drunk, and she raped me: I kept refusing sex, and she, without any hesitation, forced me into sex I hadn’t consented to.”
Cvetincanin Knezevic said: “erection or ejaculation can be a physiological response to stimulation and does not in itself mean that the person wanted sex, enjoyed it or consented to it.”
“The body can respond even in a situation the person experiences as unwanted, frightening or violent.”
Cvetincanin Knezevic said patriarchal patterns were also behind the ‘vow of silence’ surrounding the rape of men.
“If we’ve taught men that they ‘should’ want sex, then they themselves will find it harder to call an experience in which they didn’t want sex – violence.”
The same model of masculinity makes it harder for men who have survived sexual violence to recognise themselves as victims.
“If a man is supposed to be strong, in control of the situation and able to defend himself, the experience of victimisation becomes something that is very hard to fit into that image of himself,” said Cvetincanin Knezevic.
No consent
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One night, some years after Bojan’s first experience of coercion, he opened the dating app Grindr and arranged to meet another man. Bojan was in his late twenties and had been drinking.
“He offered me a drink and went into the kitchen to get me some juice,” he said.
Half an hour later, Bojan began to feel physically weak and to see the other man “as if through a fog”.
“I don’t remember what the juice tasted like. I remember him laying me down and undressing me. My body no longer worked the way it had when I arrived.”
He did know, however, that he wanted none of what followed. As the man assaulted him, Bojan told him to stop. The man did not use protection.
“I didn’t consent to penetration, or to unprotected sex,” Bojan said.
Only later did it occur to Bojan that he had been drugged. For years, he didn’t recognise what happened to him as rape.
“I blamed myself for drinking and going to a stranger’s place,” he said.
“It was only when people started talking more openly about sexual violence and rape among gay men that I realised I had been raped, and that alcohol, Grindr, the photos we’d exchanged and going to someone’s flat did not amount to consent to penetration.”
No circumstance in itself can be taken for consent, said Cvetincanin Knezevic.
“The fact that someone is on a date, at someone’s flat or at a sex party, is using a dating app, is naked or has previously agreed to some sexual activity does not mean they have consented to every touch and every sexual act that may follow,” she said. “Consent is specific and can be withdrawn at any moment.”
Work pressure
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Petar was just 20, out clubbing in late 2000s Belgrade, when the queer community was almost invisible and queer spaces often tucked away in basements.
An older man, influential in civil society circles and known to Petar, approached him, visibly drunk.
“He came on to me, touching me and propositioning me for sex in the middle of the club,” said Petar. “As I was an alumnus of their programme and saw him as an authority figure, I didn’t resist aggressively, but it was clear that I didn’t want him to touch me, let alone for anything to happen between us. When he started roughly pulling me towards him, a friend of his came over and dragged him aside.”
Petar left the club and never went back. He never spoke to anyone about what happened.
“I later heard I wasn’t the only one he’d come on to – he particularly had a thing for younger, well-built guys,” Petar said.“I never talked about it myself, because for years I thought no one would believe me, since ‘why else would you go to a gay club?’, and because he’s influential in the sector and, as a lot of people put it, ‘he can ruin your life’.”
Jovan, on the other hand, was coerced into sex in order to keep his public sector job.
“This went on from the age of 22 to 26, at a health centre in Belgrade where I was working at the time,” he said. “Will & Grace was popular back then, and at one point Karen says to Jack: ‘Put your legs up and think of handbags’. So I also put my legs in the air and thought about the bills and a roof over my head.”
Nikola, an athlete, said he is often touched by strangers or people he barely knows.
“It’s happened to me several times on a night out that women have touched me without any warning – on my arms and shoulders, my stomach and my backside,” he said. “The comments boiled down to: ‘I want to see those sexy abs’, ‘your arse is great’, plus the question of whether I had anything else that was hard.”
Pavle said that, because of the nature of his job, he is often in close physical contact with clients.
“It often happens that I feel clients groping my biceps and thighs,” he said. “It usually only sinks in later, because I’m focused on the job – only afterwards do I realise that while I was working, the client’s hand was on my thigh, and I feel like a piece of furniture.”
Pavle said he doesn’t generally react, not wishing to make a big deal of it or to start a conversation that he fears might make it sound as though he had allowed such behaviour himself.
None of the men quoted in the story reported their experiences to the authorities.
Vuk said he did not trust the authorities “at all”.
“I think most people are afraid of being outed,” he said. “A lot of bad things can happen in that case. For a start, the case being reported would probably become less important to them than the mere fact that I’m gay. I know there’s a good chance of any number of bad scenarios – from mild awkwardness all the way to outright violence, humiliation and the case being ignored.”
Reporting violence is not simple for gay men, said Cvetincanin Knezevic.
“The problem becomes even more complex when a person assesses that reporting the violence itself could lead to them being outed,” she said. “In that case, seeking protection may carry the risk of further violence, stigmatisation or losing control over their own identity.”
“The person needs confidential, LGBT+-competent support through which they can weigh up the risks and options and decide for themselves what steps they want to take.”
Bojan said he wishes that younger people have what he didn’t – “the words to recognise coercion, people they can turn to straight away, and the certainty that their ‘No’, their ‘Stop’ or their inability to give consent must be respected.”
“To someone who has been through something similar, I’d say: call the experience by its proper name. Don’t carry it around for years as your own guilt and shame. What was done to you may leave its mark, but you don’t have to live with it alone for the rest of your life.”
*With the exception of ‘Vuk’, the names of all the men quoted in this story have been changed at their request, to protect their identity.
This article was produced within the framework of MOST – Media Organisations for Stronger Transnational Journalism, a Journalism Partnership funded by the Creative Europe programme that supports independent media specialising in international reporting.
Source: balkaninsight.com
