It is really hard, as a winner of the genetic lottery, to wrap your mind around how much tougher it still is to be a woman in society today.  Instead of simply teaching men not to rape, we have an entire industry teaching women on how to not get raped.  If they do get raped, they then often get blamed for being raped.  After all, there is this whole industry dedicated to rape prevention and they didn’t follow the rules.  Ergo it must be the woman’s fault.  Women are taught by society that they have to be sexy and then society blames them for being too sexy.  This would fuck up the sturdiest of women as certainly as war fucks up the sturdiest of soldiers.

All that is bad enough.  But then you have stories like this.  An Indian woman was literally raped to death by six attackers.  If it can be considered good news, her father has demanded that her name be known in the hopes that other women may find courage to come out if they have been raped.  Her name was Jyoti Singh Pandey.  Everywhere, there is a stigma associated with being raped.  In India, with its caste system, it is worse than most places.  Her family is very brave in releasing her name.  I hope her father is right and something good does come of this.

And then you have stories where someone brags for 12 minutes on camera about a girl that was gang raped at a party.  I find this one even more abhorrent than poor Jyoti’s.  Why?  Because this one has countless accomplices who will never be charged with any crime.  Not only was there assuredly countless witnesses to the gang rape(s) of this poor teenage girl that haven’t come forward, but it looks like there were attempts by authorities to minimize the fallout because of the involvement of a local high school football team.  You can follow the link in the above story for all the gory details.  Be warned they are pretty horrific.  If the allegations are true, police knew and did nothing.  Prosecutors knew and did nothing.  Coaches knew and did nothing.  Students knew and did nothing.  I can only forgive the students.

Society enables monsters like those above.  Chances are YOU enable monsters like those.  Chances are you know someone like them.  Chances are you know you know someone like them.  Call a woman a whore, you enable them.  Criticize a woman for dressing too sexily, you enable them.  If a woman says no and you push her to change her mind, you enable them.  Think it’s ok to get a woman drunk enough to have sex with you, you enable them.

There’s the old quote, “All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good people to do nothing.”  I disagree.  If you do nothing, you were never a good person.