When Men are Animals

I guess there are certain women who would say that men are always animals; but women who would say such a thing have probably never been accused of being ladies. Still, with the general hardening of our society over the last couple of decades, men have often not fared so well.

Recently my wife and I traveled to Japan for a special occasion. As I expected, every Japanese man at the ceremony was dressed in a suit and tie. There was not a pair of jeans in the place much less a pair of cargo shorts and flip flops. Neither were there any children under the age of 15. Japanese society still benefits from a sense of collective pride and the good sense to know there are places where young children simply don't belong, and adults should be properly dressed, things American society abandoned long ago.

Yet, I'm happy to say that men in American society, while less than gentlemen all too often, are far from the bottom of the barrel when it comes to behavior and values. The world has been shocked not once but three times in recent weeks by widely  reported gang rapes of young women in India. And these gang rapes did not take place in some back alley in a squalid Indian slum area. The first one took place on a bus and even the bus driver was reported to have joined some five other men in committing the crime.

The woman and a male friend, who have not been identified, were traveling on a bus in New Delhi after watching a film on the evening of Dec. 16 when they were attacked by six men who raped her. The men also beat the couple and inserted an iron rod into the woman's body, resulting in severe organ damage. Both were then stripped and thrown off the bus, according to police. The young lady later died in a hospital in a Singapore hospitle in spite of all out medical efforts to save her, so savage was the rape.

The incident was not an isolated one. A few days later in the Gurdaspur district of Punjab state, seven men joined in another rape of another young woman whose only provocation had been to climb onto a city bus at night. The bus driver, evidently willing to take advantage of the fact that she and another man were the last riders in the bus, ran right past her stop. They took her to an undisclosed address where they were joined by five other men who raped her all through the night.

Finally, just this weekend, the third widely reported attack took place in central India. The woman was camping near a forest in India's Datia district with her husband when a group of men beat the husband and raped her. As many as five to seven men joined in the attack. The victims were also robbed of money and valuables. It is a shame that a country which has produced some of the most revered world heritage sites as well as some of the world's best known advocates of peace, has such a barbaric view concerning its women.

The Taj Mahal is perhaps the worlds most elaborate and beautiful memorial to one man's love of his wife. Yet, in modern India the number of reported rapes in -- a country where a cultural stigma keeps many victims from reporting the crime -- has increased drastically, from 2,487 in 1971 to 24,206 in 2011, according to official figures. As in many third world countries, blame for the rapes is often laid on the victim of the attacks. The general feeling, at least among men, seems to be that a woman should not be out at night. The gulf between these two facts is unfathomable.

Of course, India is far from being the only third world country whose female citizens are subject to life long abuse, cruelly treated as property by their father's and husbands or even murdered or sold into slavery as young girls because girls have no value in the culture.

In some third world countries, women are treated as objects and are life-long second or third class citizens as a matter of religious laws. They are told what they must wear, how the must act, where they can go and where they cannot go. Those who rebel are often murdered by their own fathers or brothers because they have brought "shame" to their families.

And of course, we are not immune to the problem of rape here in the United States of America either. Our Armed Forces are constantly dealing with alleged rapes of female soldiers by their male counterparts. College campuses are awash in incidents in which male students have refused to take "No" for an answer. How can such a thing still happen in a country in which women are seen to be equal under the law.

In America, rape has recently decreased about 4% according to the FBI along with all violent crime. But still, almost 100,000 rapes are reported every year. One difference between rapes in the U.S and rapes in India, only 25% of rapes in the U.S. are committed by men who are strangers to the women they rape. Obviously American men have not been trained well enough that a woman "always" has the right to say, "No." Neither have they been taught that buying a woman a few drinks and dinner does not entitle one to sexual favors.

I know that rape is, in the real sense, not a sexual crime but rather a crime based in the perceived or real difference in power between the raper and the raped. But even with that said, I have never really understood rape. How can a man force himself on an unwilling woman? It doesn't make sense to me. As a young man, my wife seldom said, "No." And, I have to admit that when she did say, "No," it usually made me mad. But anger never evolved into my taking her by force. Quite the contrary, my ego tended to go the opposite way. If she didn't want it, then, by God, I didn't want her either.

I'm not naive. I know that men are not the only gender that uses power for self advantage. Women have long since figured out how to use accusations of rare as their own powerful weapon in countries like the United States where even a false accusation of rape against an innocent man can destroy his life. The reality is that women should see that kind of thing as the rape of a guy's reputation, for that is surely what it is.

As for men who rape, I'm sure they must get off on it. They couldn't perform the act if they didn't. I guess it makes them feel like big powerful men to force themselves violently into the body of a woman. It's too bad they have no understanding of the fact that it doesn't make them viral or powerful at all, and those who imagine that the woman they are raping really likes it have to be the dumbest shits around. The fact is, a man who forces himself upon a woman is a weak and sniveling coward. No matter how strong he may be, there is nothing beyond his cock and his balls that has anything to do with true manhood. Not only is he mentally and emotionally unbalanced, he is a pathetic and small human being trying to make up for his inadequacies by proving that he can have a woman. In his warped state, he has no idea that he is only proving himself a coward and a bully as well as a perverted human being.

The world simply has to start doing a better job of raising its sons, for sons turn into brothers and husbands and husbands turn into fathers. It is time that all fathers valued their daughters as they value their sons.

I am one of those lucky guys who has both a son and a daughter. I love both of them beyond description. Both are grown with sons and daughters of their own, and both are successful adults. My son has lived in a foreign country all his adult life and has raised his daughters there. In that culture, women are rarely physically abused, and certainly not abused while the government turns a blind eye. But yet, neither are women considered equal to men. 

My son's task has been to teach his daughters to live astraddle of both his world (America) and the world of their mother (Japan). I think he as done a good job, but only time will tell how they fare as adults. The truth is, I worry about my granddaughters both here in the United States and in Japan. When men are animals, they are dangerous to be around.

There are times when men must be animals. Our safety, even our lives depend on the brut force of men even in the modern world. We need to teach our boys that being boys is an ok thing, but being a gentleman is also a necessity of life.

TC