Rape: Part I

Rape is a taboo topic for most bloggers.

Rape victims seldom put themselves into a position where they are willing to be interviewed.  Those who share the fact that they have been raped universally want no publicity.  They just want to put the entire, horrible, trust-crushing event behind them.  They want to forget it and get on with their life.  They want to learn how to trust men again.

They want their privacy.  In the case of rape on college campus, only 20% of the victims reported being raped.  Reasons for not reporting include not expecting authorities will believe them,  anxiety about intrusive DNA collection techniques,  retribution by the perpetrator (or his friends or family) and being called back to testify in court long after they transferred to a different school or they graduated.

Image from HERE

In the words of one rape victim, "I was not going to report it because nobody ever does anything."  For a person in their late teens or early twenties,  jurisdictions that take months and years to move on reports of rapes are perceived as "...nobody ever does anything."

DNA testing is the silver bullet of sexual assault prosecution.  Unfortunately collecting it is intrusive.  Even more unfortunately jurisdictions sit on the evidence for excessive amounts of time.

Detroit, Michigan made the news several years ago because they "found" 11,000 Rape Kits in an evidence locker.  Later searches in other lockers turned up even more kits, although that information did not make the news because "Rape Kits" were so "yesterday".

Detroit was just the tip of the iceberg.  Today (May 15, 2017) the Daily Mail carried this piece

At least 175,000 rape kits are sitting in storage facilities around the country instead of being tested

Why the silence?

Partially because men find being falsely accused of rape to be all too imaginable.  We don't believe the numbers because we want to believe they are larded with cases of next-morning regret.

As crimes go, we, men, are biologically wired to want to be intimate with women.  We have all had fleeting thoughts about how much fun it might be to be "with" this woman or that.  Because many (most?) young men are vulnerable to these accusations we want to dismiss the validity of the reports.  We want to silence the reporters.

Men have no problems putting the hammer down on "insider trading" or even homicide.  We are not hard-wired to commit financial crimes and are weakly wired to murder.  It is much harder to demand justice for something you suspect your son is doing or that you did when you were younger.

Consequently, even bloggers who I hold in high regard are absolute bone-heads when discussing rape.  You read comments like, "Those numbers have to be fake.  If that many girls were being raped I would have heard about it."

They accept the existence of electrons and protons (which they have never seen) without a shiver of doubt but automatically dismiss the evidence of the prevalence of rape at ASU or MSU or U-of-Texas because a long line of coeds (And men, too.  Men also get raped) never lined up and personally told these bloggers and editors "I was raped."  There is a word for that:  Conceit.

It is one of those Heisenberg Uncertainty phenomena.  Attempts to observe it change the result.  Given the judgement radiating from these men, is it any wonder that rape victims just clam up and usually don't even report it?

Getting back to the man's perspective: Being falsely accused.

“Never play cards with a man called Doc.

Never eat at a place called Mom’s.

Never sleep with a woman whose troubles are worse than your own.”  -Nelson Algren

Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction, the original Psycho-chick

Leaving all "morality" out of this discussion, how is it possible to avoid sleeping with crazy women in a "hook-up" or "one night stand" culture?  It is not possible.  If you think with the head dangling between your knees then you run a grave risk of being falsely accused.  You also are at risk of being financially and emotionally drained by, and legally bound to a total whack-job chick for the next 18 years and nine months after you "hook-up" or catching incurable diseases.

The solution is very simple.

Never sleep with a woman you do not trust to raise your children.  I cannot tell you how long it takes to figure out if she is the one.  But I suspect than it takes longer than the time it takes to watch her guzzle two Cosmos and a half plate of Jello Shooters.

Tell you sons, "Never sleep with a woman they would not be proud to bring home and show off as the future bearer of your grandchildren."

This is not morality.  This is self-preservation and about doing the right thing for women.

Rape: Part II