No man left behind
Behind every rapist is a mother who says, “My son would never.” A father who says, “Did you see what she was wearing?” A bunch of bros who say, “Oh, she was asking for it.” A lawyer who shrugs and says, “These cases are so hard to prove. It’s going to be your word against his.”
Behind every rape victim, I hope, is a parent who says, “I believe you.” An ER nurse who says, “I believe you.” A prosecutor who says, “I believe you, now let’s get that sonofabitch in jail where he belongs.” And a ride-or-die friend who says, “I believe you, now let’s go find this bastard and destroy his life after he destroyed yours.”
And behind every rapist—alleged or otherwise, who evades accountability—is a system that pats itself on the back and says, “This is the way it’s supposed to be.”
That’s the brutal truth. We can scream about consent until our voices are hoarse. We can demand that we teach our boys to respect women until their eyes glaze over and they nod robotically in agreement. We can shout about rejecting violence against women in all its forms until we’re blue in the face.
But if the system continues to privilege men and the entrenchment of the patriarchy, real and lasting change will remain a fantasy—to the detriment, not just of women, but of the whole of society.
The blame game
We see this in how we speak about rape. We zoom in on the woman who was raped—what she was wearing, what state of sobriety she was in, what her sexual history is, what her motivations (i.e., fame, money, revenge) might be. We scrutinize her past to cast doubt on her credibility. We comb through her social media accounts to determine her level of promiscuity.
We do all this because to believe her is to believe that men are capable of such monstrosities.
To believe her is to believe that for all our activism and all our efforts over the decades fighting for gender equality, men really do not give a shit about women. To believe her is to believe that men are beyond reform, that they will always be comfortable in their misogyny.
And to believe her is to believe that the victim is not to blame.
For rapes happen because men rape. Full stop. It doesn’t matter what she wore, how much she drank, what drugs she took, how provocatively she danced, or whether she consciously consented or not. A woman was raped because a man—or in the case of the Cornell rapists, men—raped her.
It takes a village
It’s easier to blame the victim than to demand accountability.
And it takes a village, too. For every man who rapes a woman, there is a fraternity of other men who enable him. A family who coddles him. A law enforcement and justice system that protects him. And yes, women who defend him.
Men rape because they can. Because it is, for them, the ultimate power move, an act that puts women in their place as beings of lesser value who can be subject to humiliation and degradation. Because it is a bonding exercise that they share with other men. Because it is an assertion of dominance in an ever-evolving world that realizes the increasing irrelevance of men.
Because rape is violence, and violence is, lamentably, the language that men speak and the weapon they wield.
Rape culture must end
Men have even protested for the right to rape. Marital rape was declared illegal in many countries only recently. In Israel, a nation of rapists and a haven for pedophiles evading justice—yes, official statistics support this—citizens insisted on the right to rape Palestinian men, women, and children in (unlawful) custody, and vilified the whistleblower who exposed that rape was official policy in the Israeli prison system.
But this, all this—rape culture, impunity, and lack of accountability—has to stop. And it has to stop. Now.
Men will gleefully scorch the earth and destroy civilization (and choose to colonize Mars) rather than admit to themselves that they need to change. Misogyny dehumanizes them, too.
I suspect they’re just too stupid and unevolved to realize this.
******
Get real-time news updates: inqnews.net/inqviber
