"How to Avoid getting Raped"

[Ken Burch]

121. The fact that every man has it in himself to be and not be the things I mentioned

Is not the same thing as saying there was going to be a guarantee that every man would find the way to get to that place.
We as men need to find the way to get all of our brothers in life to choose to go there, to chose to be the best of themselves.

The key problem is that, for most of history, men were REWARDED(and continue to be rewarded) for embodying the most negative and destructive aspects of masculinity...strength was and is defined as the ability to inflict suffering, on the battlefield, at the hunt, or in the workplace. Toughness was and is defined by the capacity for heartlessness and inflexibility, for refusing to change or bend at ALL cost(think LBJ and Nixon on Vietnam externally...think Trump on our TV screens...think Biblical-style patriarch in the home. We've been trained and have trained ourselves, overall, to think that that the way to be a man is to be a brutal, destructive, soul-destroying bastard...a rapist not only physically, but socially, economically, and spiritually-to rip out our own hearts as soon as possible and to turn ourselves into stone.

Like any bad lesson that has been learned, all of this can be unlearned, can be untrained. We can free ourselves of it and free the world of it. We owe it to all those we share the planet with to do that work. It's a collective male responsibility.

The challenge is to reward and value the good, rather than the brutal and ugly. Men will then be much more likely to go to the good when the good is valued more than the bad in this world.

And of course, women should be taught to protect themselves for the forseeable future...no one would deny that...but it's disgusting to say that women should be given a greater responsibility for surviving rape culture than men are given for ending it. At this point, no one can expect to never be a victim, but everyone can expect that we, as men, will work to make the world where, at some point, everyone WILL be able to expect that.

Is there any reason NOT to try?