Yes...I'm stuck in a reading rut. Or at the very least what I am deciding to post this week is myopic. I am trying to convince myself that the right things are being said when it comes to trying to draw everyone's attention to our rape culture.
This is what I am talking about...these are the kind of articles that, when we stumble across them, we need to share with everyone, everywhere: Male Privilege and Power Equal Rape
Part of raising boys to be men should be about teaching them from an early age about male privilege and actively talking about the importance of respecting women. These conversations should increase and become far more serious as they age. Sitting by passively and allowing them to naturalise the messages the media sends about violence against women and sexual assault, is abdicating parental responsibility. You cannot assume that they will grow up to think that it is wrong to hit a woman, or rape at will when the media, society and video games glorify these acts and treat it as a right of manhood.
What scares me about these incidents of rape, is not only that they occurred at all, but the degree of communal support these young men are receiving. It has not occurred to their communities to address the degree of violence or the cause behind it, but there has been plenty of questioning of the level of the victims responsibility in their own assault, as though any woman through her actions can protect against rape. It has been absolutely horrific to hear about the young girls enraged at the victims for causing their friends to go jail. To be clear, no one accidentally rapes a person. Rape is always a conscious act of will and no amount of apology or punishment can ever erase the harm that has been done.
And thank you Henry Rollins for your Steubenville edition. It's easy to find woman speaking up, but sometimes it is a bit harder to find the vocal men.
I think to a great degree, we humans still divide ourselves into two species, even though we are monotypic. There are males and females. We see them as different and not equal. Things get better when women get more equality. That is a bit obvious but I think it leads to better results up the road. If it’s a man’s world as they say, then men, your world is a poorly run carnage fest.
It is obvious that the two offenders saw the victim as some one that could be treated as a thing. This is not about sex, it is about power and control. I guess that is what I am getting at. Sex was probably not the hardest thing for the two to get, so that wasn’t the objective. When you hear the jokes being made during the crime, it is the purest contempt.
So, how do you fix that? I’m just shooting rubber bands at the night sky but here are a few ideas: Put women’s studies in high school the curriculum from war heroes to politicians, writers, speakers, activists, revolutionaries and let young people understand that women have been kicking ass in high threat conditions for ages and they are worthy of respect.
Total sex ed in school. Learn how it all works. Learn what the definition of statutory rape is and that it is rape, that date rape is rape, that rape is rape.
In the spirit of equal time, sites like Huffington Post should have sections for male anatomy hanging out instead of just the idiotic celebrity “side boob” and “nip slip” camera ops. I have no idea what that would be like to have a camera in my face at every turn, looking for “the” shot. I know what some of you are saying. “Then why do they wear clothes like that unless they want those photos taken?” I don’t know what to tell ya. Perhaps just don’t take the fuckin picture? Evolve? I don’t know.
Education, truth, respect, equality—these are the things that can get you from a to b very efficiently.
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