It is an important thing to instill in a younger generation about the impact of rape, the lasting impact of rape. Children from grade school to high school to college are incredibly susceptible and incredibly malleable, as we all know. To get them early, to teach them about the facts and figures and other realities of rape is key. It is an important issue to me as not only a man, but as an educator, as a human being and as a person on this planet.

From an early age, boys are fitted with emotional straight-jackets tailored by a restricted code of behavior that falsely defines masculinity. In the context of “stop crying,” “stop those emotions,” and “don’t be a sissy,” we define what it means to “Be a Man!” Adherence to this “boy code” leaves many men dissociated from their feelings and incapable of accessing, naming, sharing, or accepting many of their emotions. When men don’t understand their own emotions it becomes impossible to understand the feelings of another. This creates an “empathy-deficit disorder” that is foundational to America’s epidemic of bullying, dating abuse and gender violence. Boys are taught to be tough, independent, distrusting of other males, and at all cost to avoid anything considered feminine for fear of being associated with women. This leads many men to renounce their common humanity with women so as to experience an emotional disconnect from them. Women often become objects, used to either validate masculine insecurity or satisfy physical needs. When the validation and satisfaction ends, or is infused with anger, control or alcohol, gender violence is often the result.

Rape isn’t a ‘natural hazard’ like a cliff edge that women must be careful to avoid when drunk - it is a willful act of violence perpetrated by another human being and the responsibility lies with the perpetrator not the victim. Drinking alcohol is not illegal or wrong. Perpetrators are in control of their actions. A woman is never responsible for a man raping her. But society’s morals and logic currently display a yogic ability to bend over backwards to accommodate, accept, and normalize the reality of violence against women. Studies show that people who display high levels of sexism are more likely to accept the idea that women can be to blame when a man rapes them. This propensity to blame victims and often to absolve the perpetrators allows the cultures that breed sexist violence to go unchallenged. Victim-blaming must also end for the real cause of sexist violence—gender inequality—to come into full view.