When I was 19 I went on vacation to Italy with two girlfriends. In Catania, in a hostel in the middle of a fish market, we met an Australian guy and girl — cousins — who were backpacking through Europe. We all went out for pizza and cheap wine, and the guy and I started flirting. I drank enough to make me tipsy. Enough to make me think going to a remote beach with him in the dark on my own was a good idea. Enough to make me strip down to my underwear and go into the sea with him. We kissed. He wanted more. I said no. He didn’t rape me. But when I read about girls who did get raped and I catch myself counting the reasons why it wouldn’t happen to me — what they did wrong to let it happen that I would never do — I think of that night.
The Stanford swimmer case has left me reeling. Probably because the victim’s impact statement is so incredibly powerful. And because she has refused to be shamed into silence. For women, rape cases always sting, always spark cold fear inside us. And I suspect we all engage in our own share of victim blaming, as we seek out the reasons why this will not happen to us. She walked across a park in the dark. Her skirt was too short. She drank too much. We apportion blame to the victim to shield ourselves — we don’t walk across parks in the dark or wear short skirts or drink that much. We forget the times when we did those exact things, and we ignore the other cases where “blame” is harder to find. Rape terrifies us. We fear for our daughters, our friends, ourselves.
And now, as a mother to a 16-month-old boy, I fear for him, too. Now when I read about rape cases, I wonder about the parents. I wonder what they did or didn’t teach their sons. I want to know how I can raise him not only to not be the man who assaults and rapes an intoxicated woman behind a dumpster, but to be the man who sees it happening and chases down the assailant — the man who is so affected by what he’s seen, he’s sobbing as he gives a statement to the police. I want to know how to raise him not only not to share some poor girl’s “sext” gone viral, but to have the courage to report those who did and to stand in solidarity with the girl. I don’t just want to raise a guy who’s not a jerk, I want to raise a feminist. And I’m not sure how.
I think it starts at home.
I have to remind him that I’m a woman — a person — and that I matter and exist outside my role as his mother. I don’t want him to value and respect women just because they’re somebody’s mother/sister/daughter but because they are people, as he is a person. I want him to understand what it means to be a person in this world and to see how our actions impact people, society, the environment. So I want him to learn to recycle, to volunteer, to buy cage-free eggs. I mean, obviously not eating cage-free eggs doesn’t mean he’s destined to be a rapist, but I want him to respect the world — to respect life. I want him to see himself not as central to it all but as a small part in a large picture. The world is not there to serve him, no matter how adorable, hilarious, and all-around incredible he is.
I think it starts with accountability.
I need — we, his parents, need — to show him how to take responsibility for his actions. He’s going to get things wrong. We want to shield him from pain and from punishment. But sometimes we’re going to have to hold his hand while he apologizes. Sometimes we’re going to have to back up his teacher in delivering reasonable discipline. He’s going to need to see that we get things wrong sometimes as well, and that when we do we know how to apologize and make amends. It’s not love to defend your child when he is clearly in the wrong. I want my son to understand that what’s best for him may not always be pleasant in the moment.
I think it starts with society.
We need to stop lamenting how through “one little rape,” rapists have lost their futures. The focus needs to be on the victim — on everything she has lost and how her world has changed. We need to stop reporting on what the woman was wearing and how much she’d been drinking. We need to stop differentiating between “real rape” and “campus rape”, as if being known to the victim or being drunk or just being a dumb student are excuses. We need to stop teaching our daughters how not to get raped and start teaching our sons not to rape.
Of course it’s not just down to me. For now, I am my son’s world. The words he is learning, even the way he pronounces them, he learns from me. I nurse him, help him fall asleep, choose what books we own and where we go for day trips. The limits of where I stop and he starts are blurred still, but slowly then quickly he will start to detach from me. There will be others, so many others, who will influence our boy. He will read books and watch TV and find corners of the internet I don’t know exist. He will make friends, and at some point I won’t have any say in who those friends are. At some point the balance will shift and the wider world will hold more sway than me.
But until that time comes, I’m going to be working to raise a boy who has respect for the world he’s a part of. A boy who knows what rape culture is and knows how to refute it, how not to contribute to it. It’s awful to think he could be capable of something we fear so much. I suppose I don’t really think he could be — not my son. But the thing is, they are all someone’s son. So I’m not just going to cross my fingers and hope for the best. Because it seems to me that actively raising our sons not to exploit, not to assault, is the only way forward. Just assuming they won’t isn’t working.
