Kevin Kantor performed with his team from the University of Northern Colorado at the College Unions Poetry Slam Invitational (CUPSI) in the early months of 2015. He performed his own original piece, a personal anecdote on his experience with a sexual assault and how it affected him. His poem, titled “People You May Know”, received great attention from the audience, eliciting many supportive and shocked reactions from the story. Though Kantor’s whole team did not win the competition, they made it into the semi-finals and Kantor won two awards for his poem, one of which being the “Best of the Rest” award and the “Best Persona Poem” award.
He also won something else through this experience, he was able to make amends with his brother, Adam, after …show more content…
He wanted this poem to be able to “lend a voice” to other male survivors of sexual assault, especially those of which who are not believed when they come forward. At the very least, Kantor said, he wanted his poem to make people realize that the “systems in place that work to shame and silence male survivors… are the same ones that work to invalidate the voices of all survivors”. This invalidation that occurs, as Kantor would say, goes to show why 68% of sexual assaults go unreported (RAINN). If, as a society, we are ignoring and even shaming victims then we push victims into silence and they no longer feel comfortable reporting their incident. He recalls that as a society that “privileges” and “presupposes” a dominant masculine identity, he was asked, as a male, why he did not fight back. This goes to show that gender inequality is very predominant in the United States and that this idea of “masculinity” is an outdated one that only serves to shame men and not help them. If men wish to maintain this masculine persona then it serves to harm the men who are sexually assaulted and are therefore not believed it occurred or feel a sense of guilt that they never speak
He also won something else through this experience, he was able to make amends with his brother, Adam, after …show more content…
He wanted this poem to be able to “lend a voice” to other male survivors of sexual assault, especially those of which who are not believed when they come forward. At the very least, Kantor said, he wanted his poem to make people realize that the “systems in place that work to shame and silence male survivors… are the same ones that work to invalidate the voices of all survivors”. This invalidation that occurs, as Kantor would say, goes to show why 68% of sexual assaults go unreported (RAINN). If, as a society, we are ignoring and even shaming victims then we push victims into silence and they no longer feel comfortable reporting their incident. He recalls that as a society that “privileges” and “presupposes” a dominant masculine identity, he was asked, as a male, why he did not fight back. This goes to show that gender inequality is very predominant in the United States and that this idea of “masculinity” is an outdated one that only serves to shame men and not help them. If men wish to maintain this masculine persona then it serves to harm the men who are sexually assaulted and are therefore not believed it occurred or feel a sense of guilt that they never speak