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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsDesmond Tutu: It’s time to talk to our children about rape
The social justice icon argues that stopping rape also means talking about it at the dinner table
BY KATIE MCDONOUGH
In an editorial for the Guardian on Friday, social justice icon and Cape Town Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu called on parents to talk to their children about rape, the same way they would discuss bullying, guns and drugs.
Horrific sexual assaults in the United States, India, South Africa and elsewhere have brought global violence against women into stark relief, and Tutu, joined by education nonprofit head Jacob Lief and author, activist and rape survivor Sohaila Abdulali, views stopping it as more than just the work of governments and law enforcement. Ending rape culture, they say, is also family work, a conversation that must be had around the dinner table if its message is ever going to take hold:
The fact is, rape is utterly commonplace in all our cultures. It is part of the fabric of everyday life, yet we all act as if its something shocking and extraordinary whenever it hits the headlines. We remain silent, and so we condone it. The three of us deal with this issue in different ways every day of our lives, yet we too are guilty of protesting articulately outside but leaving it on the other side of the door when we sit down to dinner with our families. Until rape, and the structures sexism, inequality, tradition that make it possible, are part of our dinner-table conversation with the next generation, it will continue. Is it polite and comfortable to talk about it? No. Must we anyway? Yes
Yes, governments must step up. But so should we all. Why shouldnt rape be dinner-table conversation? We talk about war, we talk about death, we discuss values with our children. But on the subject of sexual assault, we remain silent and squeamish. We leave them ill-prepared, with whispers of untold horrors and no guidance for our sons on how they should behave if one day they should find themselves in a group of boys with a girl in their power.
Rape does not exist in a vacuum, and we cannot talk about it as if it is removed from the rest of our lives. Lets teach our children that they dont need to live in little boxes defined by their gender or culture. Lets teach them that they are all of equal worth. Lets not favour our boys over our girls. Lets not tolerate bullying or stereotyping. Lets reject utterly the notion that boys will be boys and girls must work around this assumption or pay the price.
full article
http://www.salon.com/2013/04/26/desmond_tutu_its_time_to_talk_to_our_children_about_rape/
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Desmond Tutu: It’s time to talk to our children about rape (Original Post)
DonViejo
Apr 2013
OP
Leslie Valley
(310 posts)1. Sorry Tutu, but how many rapists, murderers and other assorted misfits
are products of fully functional families that sit down to the dinner table, or gather anyplace else, to discuss matters of right and wrong?
I don't know the numbers but I would guess that most individuals prone to socially unacceptable behavior are the result of dysfunctional or nonexistent family situations.
And spare me the few examples to the contrary, I said most.