Last month, I noted that our academic school systems operate on the premise that “nothing is worth fighting for.” This month, I want to bring this point directly home by reporting on a manifestation of this passive philosophy that shouldn’t be ignored-and that is rape.If you have a daughter in middle or high school or college, then I encourage you to discover for yourself just what your school is teaching your child about how to deal with forcible rape. It appears that many, maybe even most schools today, are teaching young women the same old reaction: “Don’t resist a forcible rape or you will be severely injured.”
To these professional educators, being forcibly raped apparently is not the same as being “severely injured!” Teaching women this passive attitude-that they had better “lie down and take it”-truly enrages me to the very core of my being.
My “reality check” is to ask women what they had been taught on this subject in public schools and colleges. Some of their responses are listed below. These should reveal why our academic schools have moved in a totally wrong direction, too.
“This fact is true. In high school, they tell you not to resist, and even well-meaning friends have told me, `Don’t resist or you will just be injured worse’.”
“Lying down and taking it was what we were told at a 1972 self-defense freshman orientation class for women. I argued with the professor about this advice. It never made sense to me then and it still doesn’t-and I don’t think I would have done it then or now. My personal experience is more about date rape, and even then, if you make plenty of noise and act very belligerently, then you should be able to extricate yourself from the situation better.”
“Yes, that’s what we were taught during the late 70s and early 80s. I have seen this concept expressed in television shows, too. [The message is:] Give him what he wants (money, sex, car), so he won’t kill you. The instructor was telling us that it was better for girls/women not to resist a sexual assault. He downplayed the concept and said rape was `Simply having sex when you didn’t want it.’ His words exactly. I wanted to ask this jackass that if he were camping in the woods and were confronted by men who wanted to bend him over a tree stump and make him `squeal like a pig’- similar to Ned Beatty in Deliverance-then would he follow his own advice and squeal like Ned did?”
If you think academic schools are teaching high school women a different approach today, then, well sadly, you’d be right, they are! One high school girl told me her story that wasn’t unique.
“My health class teacher told me that if a man tried to rape me, then I should acquiesce and talk to him, and then maybe ask him nicely if he would use a condom. My teacher [also] told me to carry a condom with me for this purpose. Well, I didn’t tell him what I thought of him or his advice. If a man tries to rape me, however, then I will fight with every ounce of my strength. I will be loud as hell about it, too, rip at his eyes and groin and make him think more about protecting himself than trying to rape me!”
I salute this young woman. She has absolutely refused to accept her teacher’s lesson that she is not worth fighting for. She has rejected her health teacher’s advice because every fiber of her being shouts to her that she is a human being. She knows she has value. She knows that she is an individual human being with her own mind, will, personal pride and dignity that very much is worth fighting for. What’s more, she has prepared herself mentally and physically to do just that if need be.
She couldn’t have hoped to do the latter if, first, she had not felt that fire within her that screamed, “I do have value and I am worth fighting for!”
I will tell you that more than a few of the women in the self-defense classes of Bill Kipp, my RMCAT partner, have already been raped, and that’s exactly why they are in the class. The first goal is to instill into their minds and hearts that they are worth fighting for. They must first have the determination that no twisted, sub-human animal has any right to violate or abuse them. In essence, women must reprogram themselves, since they have previously been taught the exact opposite.
