Chances are, you know someone like me who was sexually abused or even raped.
April is Sexual Assault Awareness and Prevention Month. As someone who has experienced firsthand what sexual violence can do to a life, I make every effort to change societal attitudes on this vital topic.
Sexual assault is prevalent in America, just as it is around the world. At some point during her life, at least one of every three women in the U.S. is physically or sexually abused. One out of every five high school girls is physically and/or sexually abused by someone she is dating. Four women are murdered every day by an intimate male partner.
When a woman is raped, or when a young girl of 11 is gang-raped, as happened recently, the first assumption is that she was "asking for it." Was her skirt too short? Was she wearing too much makeup? Was she drunk? Did she lead him on? Our tendency is to blame the victim.
So, what is our role in making this kind of violent behavior possible?
The National Sexual Violence Resource Center (www.nsvrc.org) has identified five norms that shape our behavior and attitudes surrounding sexual violence:
As long as we hold these unspoken beliefs, as long as we continue to tolerate these attitudes and actions as somehow inevitable, women will continue to be treated as property, as lesser than, as objects to be used and abused.
So what can you do?
Most importantly, examine your own beliefs. You may be surprised to discover, as I was, that you subscribe to some of these "societal norms," even unconsciously. Were you trained by your family to believe that what happens in the family stays in the family? Was your brother permitted far more latitude in his behavior than you were? Do you treat your sons differently from your daughters?
Look at the way you are affected by the culture. Do you flaunt a lot of cleavage because that's the "look" these days? Do you get pumped up watching action thrillers or murder mysteries? Are you or your partner into porn?
Do you accept an unequal situation at work? Is compensation in your field equal between the sexes? Why not? Do you put up with sexual harassment at your place of work?
The most vital belief to examine is the one that we are separate, each of us alone on our path through life. It's time for all of us -- men and women alike -- to really grasp our inherent unity, our oneness. When we look at the world from the perspective of oneness, violence against another becomes impossible, because there is no "other" to have dominion over, to control, to assault or batter or rape.
So what I'm asking for is this: an expansion of consciousness, an opening of the heart, a radical rethinking of our norms. I hope you'll help make that happen!
Follow Deborah King on Twitter: www.twitter.com/Deborah_King
Instead of being empathetic, you seem to be angry and defensive. Defensiveness is often a clue as to what bad behavior a person believes they have a right to exhibit. Are you one of those tough guys who needs control and secretly thinks you are superior to women?
Are you a man who disrespects women and does not truly like them? Much like a fox might like chickens?
You are dismissing the statistics. Men are in the 90 percentile of those who both murder and rape. If they don't get their way, they hurt and/or commit violence. This also applies to sexual abuse. Please look it up in the government statistics.
Your ugly comments are cruel to those who have a need to educate themselves and find empowerment against societal myths that allow for the use and abuse of women and our young, both female and male. Ms. King has dug into the secret roots of the despicable, unquestioned weeds which grow in every neighborhood, town, village and country on this planet.
What have you done lately when you didn't get your way, besides attack a brilliant person like Ms. King, who is trying to connect the symptoms of epidemic horror with the root of the cause?
The topic is painful...but it doesn't have to destroy future generations if we all refuse to buy into the lowest form of human interaction, which is the hostile use the of others.
Guess what men also have dignity. Calling men as a group rapist, murders and pedophiles is bigoted and insulting. You do have to take the time to frame the discussion in a manner that is not insulting to men in general because most men are good. If you want to judge a population by the worse of it's outliers we would return to the bigotry this country worked so hard to minimize.
Sexual violence is a terrible thing and we should work to end it. We do not do this attacking men as a gender. We do not do this by attacking masculinity as the root of all evil. We do not do this by making victims out of our sons and fathers who will have to go through life trying to convince everyone they are not a creeps or sexist simply because they have male traits and like masculine things.
By the way I have met many women who value having power over others I am sure you have too. Do that fit the profile of a rapist?
Oh yeah you just have to be male...
She became a housewife and mother.Two boys,then me.She was dependent financially and was treated like a supplicant.She divorced and was forced to move with her father.
She despised me for being "just a girl" and made me the family slave,yet coddled and spoiled her boys.She projected her own unacknowledged feelings of being "a mere woman" onto me.
My grandfather was a pedophile.Sexual abuse started when I was pre-verbal.An older brother Mother knew of this and did nothing.The ripple effect of these societal attitudes is far reaching.They destroyed my mother.My older brothers internalized these attitudes as well, making them bullies to their partners and children.I am deeply saddened by my lost childhood devoid of most everything except suffering However,I have maintained my sense of humanity by questioning the authority that both originated these attitudes and perpetuates them.Thank you for being an advocate on behalf of our sisters everywhere for this is a worldwide desecration of dignity and life.Stop the use,humiliation and the rape of our souls,minds, and bodies.
My mother did not have the language to question the societal norms of her day. She simply ingested them and perpetuated bias onto the next generation.
She hadn't a clue where to start examining what hurt her or her children.
If there is inequity in a person's life..if they are being disrespected in any way, it is about time we question where it comes from and why. That goes for everyone. Thank you for saying it out loud.
I look forward to more of your courageous writings.
I did observe in my own experience a physical abuse that was justified by a male domination aspect, being considered as 'normal', oppression of a woman, and silence within a family being as well a part of the norm.
In particular the inhereted educational methods applied by our parents, permitting a male to silence his daughter if she had an opinion, a voice. If irritating she and her mum could be used even as a punching back.
The ultimate authority: "While you live under my roof, you will do what I say. Until you turn eighteen, you will listen, you will behave."
The conflicted experience with a deviated authority brings to my life challenging situations that are supposed to help me heal this issue. And which are NOT to my liking at all.
Today I turn to you to help me find my voice I had such difficulties to develop. I turn to you to discover a gentle, loving and powerful me, to learn to unfold my abilities. To search for a divine feminine power within: divine love, harmony, trust, self-confidence, inner beauty, happiness and joy. To elevate my consciousness with the help of your guided meditations, healing the hidden depths of my memories.
Open and flourish.
Just like you.
So sorry you had to experience breast cancer....that is such an upheaval in one's life and an assault to sanity.
You truly highlight what happens when a woman gets sick as opposed to a man who gets sick in a business setting. The response is universal. People flock to help a man but often reject a woman.
I have seen it firsthand. All crowd around Mr. So and So...(he's been diagnosed with something bad!)..yet women who have been diagnosed with breast cancer or the equivilant are often marginalized and avoided.
This second rate treatment of women who have been diagnosed with horiffic illnesses must stop.
Why aren't we as nice to women as we are to men in this world?
I am on your side. I can't imagine your pain and suffering. I truly care.
I am writing to you to ask you to please consider sharing our website with survivors you may come in contact with. It is through the support of courageous advocates like you that we will succeed in our effort to help one survivor at a time. Together we can; together we should; together we NEED to stand up and be counted.
I admire your courage thank you so much for the work you do and the awareness you bring.
Men feeling powerful or having traditional male behavior does put them in the profile of a rapist
Traditional male behavior does not create rapist. That kind of statement is insulting to men in general. The men who worked themselves to death for their families and would readily give up their life for them. I think we have two different idea's of what a traditional man is and was. I think your view of the traditional male is some kind of hideous distortion produced by feminist to convince men and women to hate masculinity.
I no more think the traditional male is evil than I would a traditional female. These people were not advocates of rape nor were they accepting of it as a community. Rape has always been a crime, along with murder, assault, even if their were different attitudes about domestic violence traditional people would demand the death penalty for rapist. Modern attitudes towards rape descend directly from their deep desire to protect the virtue of women. That is why the topic get's so much attention, more than any other form of violence including murder. Don't blame masculinity or male virtues for rape. Blame rapist and their desire to force women into sexual acts. Attacking an entire gender for something like that is perpetrating a horrible slander on our sons and fathers.
Thank you for delving deeper into the factors that contribute to the rape culture of the U.S. So many Americans are ignorant (some willfully so) to these social dynamics, and the result is the kind of attack we're seeing on women by the GOP and the Tea Party.