Calls for Action?

Today, we talked about all the things we thought would help the world and our society, in order to cut down the number of rapes that happen each year. First of all, we all decided that sex-education classes are very key. They provide children at a young age with information that they will need for years to come. Also, many children may not have known about the progression of their bodies and especially the boundaries and emotions that are connected to them. Our teacher gave us an example of how if someone kept asking for his M&M candies, and he had to say no again and again because the person kept asking, creates a problem...What happens if you don't ask, but you just take it? If people want it, they want it. However, you cannot just pester them until the give in.

Health education is also very important, and very different. In my own health class, we were shown graphic pictures, etc. and all of the things that can happen to your body if you are not safe about sex. This kind of class helps people to understand things we are usually not able to talk about openly. The class should discuss hormones, desires, being aware, and to always stop in the absence of consent. Health ed., basically informs people about sexuality, to inform them on certain situations as well. We all came to the consensus that this should be taught at a relatively young age as well [12-14 years of age].

One article we discussed was about serial rapists, and that they will most likely not kiss you. In fact 7 out of 10 serial rapists in the article said that they had not kissed their victims. There were discussions about behaviors and rations from good to bad things in relationships. However, "if he's not kissing you than run away". This article and evaluation kind of gives us a way to evaluate the kinds of people we should, and should not focus on. It also clarifies, that rape is not really about sex at all.

One other article we discussed in class, was about the different types of rapists, and the ways to resist them. Power rapists have a goal to humiliate. Anger rapists have the goal to torture their victims. Sadists are all about power plays [date rape]. The article focused on things will, or will not work on each kind of rapist. This kind of article seemed to be more useful for law enforcement, for classification purposes, rather than for the perpetrators targets.