There has been a series of recent news articles that have done much more than pique my interest in the surrounding world. Each of these stories feels more like a vindictive blow to the stomach than a piece of journalism. I’m talking about Elizabeth Smart, Brooke Wilberger, Sarah Michelle Lunde, and so many others– all young women under the age of 20 who have, probably or definitely, undergone sexual assaults, kidnapping and murder. It seems that every day, a new picture of a smiling female child is posted in the newspaper next to a caption saying she has been abducted.
The most painful to me is a recent AP story detailing the brutal sexual assault of a mentally disabled high school girl. In this case, the perpetrators were a group of male classmates, who dragged the girl into their school auditorium and proceeded to videotape the abuse.
It is possible that at a high school age, not one young man in that group of assailants realized his actions were wrong. Did the boys just stop caring? The time has come for an in-depth, nationwide investigation into the circumstances that breed sexual assailants and how these assaults can be stopped.
An interesting aspect of this subject to consider is Groupthink. Psychological studies have proved that in most situations individuals will ignore what they know to be correct and agree with the rest of the group. In one famous social psychology experiment a subject was shown three lines, one obviously longer than the others. When asked which line was the longest, the subject answered correctly almost 100 percent of the time. However, when the subject was placed in a room with other subjects who chose a different, painfully incorrect answer, the actual subject tended to go along with the group and choose incorrectly. If a person can be persuaded by a group to misjudge something as clear-cut as a line on a piece of paper, imagine the problem of Groupthink when it comes to such abstract issues as right and wrong.
So what is breeding a society in which men cannot learn from the world around them that it is wrong to assault?
In my mother’s health class, the middle-school-age children are learning to say “No.” I guess not much has changed since the “Just Say No” days of my own health
curriculum; unfortunately, not much has changed in the way of sexual
assault and teen pregnancy
statistics either.
I don’t know how to end sexual violence, but here’s a thought to wrestle with: Instead of assuming that school-age children are victims who will one day need to say “No,” why not assume that at least a portion of these children will one day be rapists? By god, that’s hard to say, but it is the truth. Besides the media, which have their heads way too far up their own asses to promote social change, the education system may be the only way to reach the future rapists of this nation. The current rapists of this nation.
Youths, especially male youths, need to be engaged in a curriculum unit that tells them not to rape. It is a simple message, but one of a much higher importance than anyone realizes. If I can learn by the third grade something as simple as three times three equals nine, I have no doubt that children can also learn that sexual assault is wrong. If children are surrounded constantly by the clear, unadulterated message that raping a person is wrong, social psychology surely mandates that these children will be less likely to perform assaults. Enough with abstract
messages of peace and goodwill and assuming that this group of students does not contain a future criminal. Victims are told how to defend themselves, but what message is given to perpetrators? I want to hear every sexual education class
begin with the teacher saying: “Don’t rape people.”
Granted, schools only have so much power in the context of the two other main influences on a child’s development, the home and the media. If children learn in school that violence is wrong, yet return home every day to an abusive set of parents, the message will not get through. Likewise, telling young men not to rape will hit a serious roadblock if every television show and magazine advertisement
portrays women as bodies to be
sexualized.
I guess I can only call for a country-wide agenda against masculinized violence so many times. Instead, here’s a different call to action: Don’t rape people. Don’t assault people. Don’t kidnap. Don’t perpetrate violence. Don’t perpetrate sexual violence. If every person sits down and decides he or she will not be the reason another little girl is forced to perform oral sex on her male classmates or buried under a concrete deck by her best friend’s father or systematically raped after being taken from her bedroom in the middle of the night. It hurts, doesn’t it? But if every single person makes a conscious decision to not be that perpetrator, not be that reason, then maybe actual reason will finally
prevail.

[email protected]