Skirts are too short, pants are too tight, or it’s a ‘power thing’. We are taught from an early age to sit ‘properly’, comport ourselves as ladies, and to be demure. We glow instead of sweat, we are sugar and spice and all things nice.
It’s all designed to keep women in their place, pregnant and barefoot in the kitchen, a lady in public and a whore in bed. Don’t be shocked. Many men view women as nothing more than a receptacle for their pleasure. And when access to a woman’s body is denied, she is slut shamed, called a tease, or as is often the case, raped. And it’s almost always by someone known to the woman.
But it’s not just women under attack. It’s our children too. We teach our little boys and girls about body privacy, the ‘bad touch’, and keeping away from strangers. Then reports of senior citizens being raped surface and one has to wonder, what is going on?
It’s no longer a matter of simply keeping ones knees together and dressing like a nun. Lesbians are raped ‘to show them what they’re missing’, uncle’s rape nieces, step-fathers rape step-children, and children rape children. Somewhere, somehow, something has gone incredibly wrong with society when pre-primary school children march against child abuse .
So what is it that allows men to think they can escape censure? Is it the inadequate sentencing handed down by the courts? Is it the idea that women ‘ask for it’? Because if children have to stand up and say hands off, then the problem simply cannot be the victims.
Silence is assent. Silence is approval.
Until more men act against sexual violence, they may as well be cheering it on.
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