Truth About Rape

The other day I sat watching a talk show on “rape prevention.”

“Don’t let your daughter go to Frat parties and get drunk while wearing a short skirt or they will get raped,” was the advice.

And I thought,

Why have I never, not one single time, seen a show or read an article or book about how to avoid turning a boy into a rapist?

That might actually be effective and place responsibility where it belongs – on the rapist.

As it stands, I’m letting my son snuggle so close to me in my bed at night that I can’t sleep. He rolls 360 degrees at least once every two seconds.

He’s 2 and seems to need the physical closeness. Since I have absolutely no scientific evidence or even maternal advice on how to ensure that my son does not grow up with a rapist’s mentality, I don’t send him back to his own bed. What if withholding that snuggle-time is the crucial misstep? I define a rapist’s mentality as a pathological inability to recognize a girl in a skirt, even a drunk girl, as a whole human being worthy of his respect, to be valued as more important than his penis.

It’s not too much to expect from the male gender.

I’m guessing withholding of maternal and paternal love, physical closeness, disallowing or punishing feelings, yanking the doll out of their hands and replacing it with guns, teasing them for crying, and making jokes about their manhood and sexuality – turns some boys into rapists. The less pathological ones just turn into bad dates and worse husbands.

The truth about rape is that rapists and child pornographers would invent turtleneck porn and turtleneck fetishes if we all made our daughters wear turtlenecks to protect them from bad men. We believe its a lot easier to put a girl in a turtleneck (we can make her do it) and hope for the best, than it is to hold men accountable for their pathological and distorted thinking about girls (we have far less control over them), right?

The problem with this strategy is that it’s 100% ineffective.

I’d like to see Dr. Phil or Oprah so a show along these lines:

Prevent Rape – Teach your son not to be a rapist.