Should Society be doing more to teach boys not to commit sexual assault?

One in five women in the US have reported being raped in their lifetimes. This is definitely a shocking statistic. First of all, many will argue “But of course men can be raped too?” and that is very true. However, it is statistically more likely for a woman to be raped than a man, and this essay is going to focus on the female victims, whilst male victims are still of course just as important.

I strongly believe that society isn’t doing enough to teach boys not to rape when girls are constantly told to dress appropriately and to never stay out late. Would you want your son to end up in jail for this horrible crime?

Two US scientists, Craig T Palmer and Randy Thornhill argue that rape is a natural urge. This is wrong because if it was a natural urge, all men would be doing it, which they are not. The scientists go on to say that rape is an act of sex rather than violence. Although many men claim they do rape to have sex, it is not an act of sex. Sex is when two consenting adults have intercourse. Without consent; it’s not sex, it is rape. Rape hurts the victims physically and emotionally. Then the scientist say that it is a mating strategy used amongst animals. However, animals have no sense of moral judgement and rape is clearly morally wrong, so comparing wild animals to humans isn’t a valid argument. So despite the research and the time that the two scientists put into this, rape is completely and utterly inexcusable.

As I have been growing up, sex education in school has been very conservative and based on using abstinence as the best contraceptive. That’s like saying, the safest way to ski is to not go skiing. We as a society need to destroy the idea that sex is disgusting. It’s something that we as humans do for reproduction and also enjoyment. There was also very little focus around the issue of consent, and I still know boys who make rape jokes, which are absolutely disgusting. They say the jokes are harmless, but what if a rape victim had been sitting near then. It would’ve brought back vivid images from their traumatic experience.

As a teenage girl, I have been told all my life “are those appropriate clothes?” and “don’t stay out too late” but most of the boys that I’ve spoken too have never been sat down and told “Never rape anyone. Always ask for consent”

Many argue that some woman are just asking to be raped by what they're wearing but this is clearly wrong. A woman is wearing short shorts because she feels confident about her legs, not because she wants to be raped. And if a woman wanted to be raped, it wouldn’t be rape. Woman out late could be walking home from a nightclub or work and is not asking to be raped. If a woman says no to you, even if you’re her husband, she means no.

Many women say that when they report rape to the police, they are treated unfairly. They say that the police often question them on what they were wearing and why they were out, when obviously none of those things matter. When a person is robbed, the police never say “Why did you have a TV anyway? It was asking to be stolen” do they? An even more shocking fact is that 98% of rapists never go to jail.

Another factor to take in is that children as young as 10 and 11 can rape. Many argue that children do not know that they are doing something wrong. If this is the case, we have failed as society and we need to teach boys about consent from an earlier age. Others argue that since most of these crimes committed by children are more like sexual harassment then the child should be able to get away with it. This is ridiculous. If someone throws a tennis ball at me, giving me a bruise, I don’t say “Oh that’s fine, at least it wasn’t a bowling ball”

In 2009, and 8 year old girl reported to the authorities that she had been sexually assaulted in a park by two ten year old boys. In 1998, a ten year old girl reported that she’d been gang raped in her school toilets by a group of boys her age. So we can see that there are examples of children committing sexual assault and a few more google searches can prove this even further.

So what should society be doing? Schools should be teaching children from an earlier age about consent and why it is crucial. We should make sure that parents are able to talk to their kids about sex and about consent. If parents are unable to do this, we should make sure every child has an adult they can talk to. We should destroy that toxic idea that a woman’s clothing excuses men to harass or rape her. Finally, we should train PSE teachers more so that sex education will be more relaxed, less conservative and centred around consent. Because we all know, telling people to abstain is not the best way forward at all.

So we as the human race need to lift ourselves from these sexist ideologies and start making changes, so that every woman will be safe from rape and that every man will live their life without sexually assaulting a woman.