Safe, Strong, and Free
Before my second marriage, I pretty much kept to myself. In fact, I was celibate for almost twenty years. I must have been awfully well behaved because - I am not joking here - my children, as gradeschoolers, once asked me if I had ever had sex.
Although I stifled a huge guffaw, I was actually stunned, thinking my brief and perfunctory musings, dutifully delivered when they were toddlers, preschoolers, and then kindergarteners, were brilliantly timed, age-appropriate, and effective . . . only to learn in an instant that I was wrong.
At the time, I felt that romance had been mostly a waste of energy, so there wasn't much in the relationship arena for the children to observe. Any way you choose to raise children will have its good points as well as its bad points: while there was none of the strong marital intimacy to show them how to do it right, there was also no more absurd drama to show them how to do it wrong. So, while my celibate years were uncomplicated and rewarding, the attitude making them so was unfortunate. But no matter how much I wanted to withdraw into spinster life, I had to make some sort of peace with my disappointment in men because I had smart, gorgeous, awesome boys and did not like seeing males devalued while women rose, however justly.
I was raised on the trailing edge of female oppression where even someone seriously and appallingly outraged could not give full voice to righteous anger. For example, one evening, I was almost the victim of date rape. Mortified, I did not yell to bring attention to my plight, but I resisted both with speech and with muscle. Finally, I spat out a swear word. You'd have thought I had pulled a gun. He told me I was no longer a lady, and had certainly spoiled things between us. While his actions were gross and self-centered, it wasn't completely his fault. Someone in the culture, the family, the world, and surely including women, had either taught him or not untaught him that "nice" women could never consent, maybe resulting in a (certainly self-serving) belief on his part that it was up to him to run stop lights to allow me a chance to get my freak on, too.
Clueless, I was also complicit. I actually went out to dinner with him at a later date! This time, he did not muscle me for anything more than a kiss, although it seemed he wanted to gag me with it. Once again, I resisted, and finally my brain clicked on and I didn't see him any more.
While I am too old to blame others for my poor or slow decisions, I don't think it's irresponsible to describe the culture of my youth. There are cultures and anecdotes in history where rapists became husbands and husbands became rapists. While the idea, put in such terms, is reprehensible to us in a mature democracy, and Women's Lib and the social, legal, and moral corollaries springing from it have since alleviated it, American culture had its version and actually institutionalized it to some extent.
For example, as a fifth grader in Catholic school in the late 1960's, I was kept after school with all of the girls because one or two had hit guys who tried to touch their breasts. I guess in those days, there was an acceptance that "boys will be boys" and anyone not having it was too sensitive. Oh, but that school was located in a bad part of DC. What about elsewhere?
Well, as a seventh grader in an affluent junior high (Montgomery County, Maryland, was, and maybe still is, one of the wealthiest in the U.S.), we girls took Home Economics and, while much of the education therein was useful because most women were still housewives and it was much too early to foresee the way things are today, we were expected to put on a substantial dinner for the boys' Industrial Arts class. In the cultural roles of the time, that wasn't humiliating, but I felt the boys should have been expected to do something reciprocal, even if it was something corny and old fashioned like making plastic finger rings on lathes. Instead, these boys, many of whose parents were college educated, barely said "thanks." So, even on a non-sexual level, we were pretty much chopped liver. And while we're touching on the attitudes of more affluent conspirators, my badly behaved date was working on his Master's degree.
It's not as though no one resisted. I was kind of immature, so my resistance to the perceived put-down at school consisted of ridiculing my lessons. In high school, there were girls who refused to date a certain heartthrob because they heard he had a child out of wedlock, narrowing the double standard somewhat. Moving into adulthood, many of us were determined not to clean up after a man, whether at home or in the office. Since having men share domestic chores is not something institutions have acted on, today's relative equality must be attributed to those (women and men both) who set up their homes to be more egalitarian.
Almost a decade after high school, I was a mom on the other side of the country. I didn't mind it when a California school brought their "Safe, Strong, and Free" program to my eldest child, then a kindergartener. Privately, I thought the program was just a bourgeois "feel good" scheme meant to keep that first batch of cookie cutter MBAs on the covers of magazines. But then, a few years later, I witnessed the whole, beautiful point of it.
My eldest must have been about ten. My youngest was almost five years behind him. We were watching a "007" film. "Bond; James Bond" was about to have his way with some busty spy in a barn or hayloft. Of course he was. As always. Raised as a "nice girl" to resist evil but not be "too sensitive" when evil prevailed, I was chomping my popcorn contentedly when my son jumped up and pointed to the television, alarming me with his cry of "Mommy, she said NO!"
And after all my experiences including the near-date rape and even my declaration to my youngsters that misery should not be fun to watch, I had sat there, brilliantly inculcated and complacent. But then I got up and turned the television off, telling my son he was absolutely right and it was a good call.
In our current culture where a woman is free, sexually, to call the same shots as a man, rape should be institutionally denigrated as a ridiculous crime for a man to commit. Although rape is a tool of power rather than a tool of sex, taking it out of entertainment altogether might weed out a layer of opportunists who would not likely rape without the inferred permission of mainstream television feeding these images since their youth. Even our language speaks of "ravishing" beauty. While "ravish" is a pleasant sounding word that reeks of refinement, it means rape and insultingly suggests that an unattractive victim has perhaps been done a favor.
Today, Scotland has outlawed the showing of staged rape for titillation, and similar action is being discussed in Britain. Why not in the U.S. as well? Since a woman's sexual history is not used as evidence and victims of sex crimes may remain anonymous, taking a stand such as Scotland's would be a logical next step.
A cultural change of this sort would start to free men as well. While a milder double standard than yesteryear's continues to prevail against women who are perceived as having had consensual sex with too many partners, serially or otherwise, a more insidious double standard exists for males who are victims of rape and who receive even less support after an assault than women do.
A cultural change is not likely to be one-sided. There are also women out there who use the accusation of rape as a tool of power even when a rape has not been committed, aware of its devastating effect on an innocent man who has angered them in some way. Making rape rare might put the brakes on them as well. A falsely accused man whose life is damaged by such an accusation should be exonerated at least as publicly as he was accused and have the right to press criminal charges against the accuser. I have always wondered if the quick statement on the evening news after such an exoneration actually reached a significant number of the people who lost trust and respect for a falsely accused man.
The most basic combination of human diversity will always be men and women. Race relations does not have anywhere near the same wattage as gender politics. But even if we confine a discussion to the plight of heterosexual men and women trying to work things out together, we should try harder to take the most serious sexual problems out of the equation. We all need to feel safe, strong, and free.
Although I stifled a huge guffaw, I was actually stunned, thinking my brief and perfunctory musings, dutifully delivered when they were toddlers, preschoolers, and then kindergarteners, were brilliantly timed, age-appropriate, and effective . . . only to learn in an instant that I was wrong.
At the time, I felt that romance had been mostly a waste of energy, so there wasn't much in the relationship arena for the children to observe. Any way you choose to raise children will have its good points as well as its bad points: while there was none of the strong marital intimacy to show them how to do it right, there was also no more absurd drama to show them how to do it wrong. So, while my celibate years were uncomplicated and rewarding, the attitude making them so was unfortunate. But no matter how much I wanted to withdraw into spinster life, I had to make some sort of peace with my disappointment in men because I had smart, gorgeous, awesome boys and did not like seeing males devalued while women rose, however justly.
I was raised on the trailing edge of female oppression where even someone seriously and appallingly outraged could not give full voice to righteous anger. For example, one evening, I was almost the victim of date rape. Mortified, I did not yell to bring attention to my plight, but I resisted both with speech and with muscle. Finally, I spat out a swear word. You'd have thought I had pulled a gun. He told me I was no longer a lady, and had certainly spoiled things between us. While his actions were gross and self-centered, it wasn't completely his fault. Someone in the culture, the family, the world, and surely including women, had either taught him or not untaught him that "nice" women could never consent, maybe resulting in a (certainly self-serving) belief on his part that it was up to him to run stop lights to allow me a chance to get my freak on, too.
Clueless, I was also complicit. I actually went out to dinner with him at a later date! This time, he did not muscle me for anything more than a kiss, although it seemed he wanted to gag me with it. Once again, I resisted, and finally my brain clicked on and I didn't see him any more.
While I am too old to blame others for my poor or slow decisions, I don't think it's irresponsible to describe the culture of my youth. There are cultures and anecdotes in history where rapists became husbands and husbands became rapists. While the idea, put in such terms, is reprehensible to us in a mature democracy, and Women's Lib and the social, legal, and moral corollaries springing from it have since alleviated it, American culture had its version and actually institutionalized it to some extent.
For example, as a fifth grader in Catholic school in the late 1960's, I was kept after school with all of the girls because one or two had hit guys who tried to touch their breasts. I guess in those days, there was an acceptance that "boys will be boys" and anyone not having it was too sensitive. Oh, but that school was located in a bad part of DC. What about elsewhere?
Well, as a seventh grader in an affluent junior high (Montgomery County, Maryland, was, and maybe still is, one of the wealthiest in the U.S.), we girls took Home Economics and, while much of the education therein was useful because most women were still housewives and it was much too early to foresee the way things are today, we were expected to put on a substantial dinner for the boys' Industrial Arts class. In the cultural roles of the time, that wasn't humiliating, but I felt the boys should have been expected to do something reciprocal, even if it was something corny and old fashioned like making plastic finger rings on lathes. Instead, these boys, many of whose parents were college educated, barely said "thanks." So, even on a non-sexual level, we were pretty much chopped liver. And while we're touching on the attitudes of more affluent conspirators, my badly behaved date was working on his Master's degree.
It's not as though no one resisted. I was kind of immature, so my resistance to the perceived put-down at school consisted of ridiculing my lessons. In high school, there were girls who refused to date a certain heartthrob because they heard he had a child out of wedlock, narrowing the double standard somewhat. Moving into adulthood, many of us were determined not to clean up after a man, whether at home or in the office. Since having men share domestic chores is not something institutions have acted on, today's relative equality must be attributed to those (women and men both) who set up their homes to be more egalitarian.
Almost a decade after high school, I was a mom on the other side of the country. I didn't mind it when a California school brought their "Safe, Strong, and Free" program to my eldest child, then a kindergartener. Privately, I thought the program was just a bourgeois "feel good" scheme meant to keep that first batch of cookie cutter MBAs on the covers of magazines. But then, a few years later, I witnessed the whole, beautiful point of it.
My eldest must have been about ten. My youngest was almost five years behind him. We were watching a "007" film. "Bond; James Bond" was about to have his way with some busty spy in a barn or hayloft. Of course he was. As always. Raised as a "nice girl" to resist evil but not be "too sensitive" when evil prevailed, I was chomping my popcorn contentedly when my son jumped up and pointed to the television, alarming me with his cry of "Mommy, she said NO!"
And after all my experiences including the near-date rape and even my declaration to my youngsters that misery should not be fun to watch, I had sat there, brilliantly inculcated and complacent. But then I got up and turned the television off, telling my son he was absolutely right and it was a good call.
In our current culture where a woman is free, sexually, to call the same shots as a man, rape should be institutionally denigrated as a ridiculous crime for a man to commit. Although rape is a tool of power rather than a tool of sex, taking it out of entertainment altogether might weed out a layer of opportunists who would not likely rape without the inferred permission of mainstream television feeding these images since their youth. Even our language speaks of "ravishing" beauty. While "ravish" is a pleasant sounding word that reeks of refinement, it means rape and insultingly suggests that an unattractive victim has perhaps been done a favor.
Today, Scotland has outlawed the showing of staged rape for titillation, and similar action is being discussed in Britain. Why not in the U.S. as well? Since a woman's sexual history is not used as evidence and victims of sex crimes may remain anonymous, taking a stand such as Scotland's would be a logical next step.
A cultural change of this sort would start to free men as well. While a milder double standard than yesteryear's continues to prevail against women who are perceived as having had consensual sex with too many partners, serially or otherwise, a more insidious double standard exists for males who are victims of rape and who receive even less support after an assault than women do.
The most basic combination of human diversity will always be men and women. Race relations does not have anywhere near the same wattage as gender politics. But even if we confine a discussion to the plight of heterosexual men and women trying to work things out together, we should try harder to take the most serious sexual problems out of the equation. We all need to feel safe, strong, and free.
posted by Exxuendo at 11:23 AM
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