Day 27

We are on our way to the finish line. It’s almost the end of another Women’s History Month, and also almost the end of my writing marathon. I will continue writing, and many of my protagonists will continue to be women, but it will not be a focused, directed project. Eleven months out of the year, I write for me. The other month, March, I write for you. For all women. And tonight, I have written an essay about a subject that has been disturbing my sleep lately. Sharks. Well, not quite.

SHARKS WILL BE SHARKS

I don’t know if you have been following news in Britain, or if you’ve heard of Sarah Everard. If you haven’t, you might want to check it out. This case is a prime example of exactly why we need to be having the conversation I’m trying to have…and many of you are trying to have. Everard left a friend’s house, and never arrived home. She was not seen again…until her remains were found in a bag nearly fifty miles away. The case has rocked London. Women are holding candlelight vigils. An arrest was made, and it was a cop.

You probably know what is next, right? All over the country, schools are scrambling to try and teach young men not to rape and abuse and murder women. Laws are being passed to help women. People are reaching out to tell women we’re going to do something about this so you can be safe on the streets.

HaHaHa. I laugh. Of course not. What actually happened is probably what you expected to follow that phrase you probably know what is next. Women are being told to stay home at night, not to walk alone, not to dress immodestly, to take care, etc etc etc. Women are being told that it is their responsibility to not be raped or murdered. No one is telling the men, not even telling the cops, that it is their responsibility not to rape or murder. The answer is simple. If women truncate their lives, if they stay home and never leave the safety of their house, they will be safe…well, except for all those nasty cases of domestic violence, of course.

Boys will be boys, right? We can’t change things, it’s just hormones, they can’t help it if a drunk, sexy woman is walking alone late at night. It’s just some sort of primal instinct. Except…no. Everard was not drunk. She was dressed modestly. It was not late at night. And she wasn’t in a bad part of town. She was doing the things she was supposed to do, the things women are told to do to protect themselves…and she was murdered.

But, we can’t change boys. Of course not. It’s biology. Well, I like to look at it this way (I say I like to, but that’s sort of hyperbolic, since this analogy only occurred to me this evening. But now that it occurred to me, I like to think of it this way). It’s sort of like Jaws. You know, the movie? 1975? Oh, wait, that was last century. No, don’t kid me, I’m sure you’ve heard of it. So, let’s talk Jaws.

When a shark kills a woman on a beach, they choose not to close the beach and tell the tourists to stay home, stay safe. I saw the movie, and I don’t remember a single time when someone shrugged and said “Sharks will be sharks”, and everyone went back to what they are doing while blaming people who became shark chow for their own failure to wear appropriate shark repellant bathing suits. That would make a rather short movie, right?

No, they got a crew together, Richard Dreyfuss and Robert Shaw, and went on a man-vs-shark adventure. They go through many trials and tribulations, the shark outwitting them time after time, until finally Dreyfuss manages to destroy the shark. Now it’s safe to go back into the water. Everyone is happy…well, except the shark. And the people he already killed. And their family. But…problem fixed (at least until the studio decided a sequel would be worth making because this was at the time the highest grossing movie of all time. It held that title for a whole two years, until Star Wars).

So see the difference? In Jaws, the problem is met with energy and fever, and no one says just don’t go there. They said, fix the problem. How did they fix the problem? By removing the problem, not by removing the victim. (Though as an ecologist, I might argue they have victim and perp backwards, since the ocean is, after all, where the shark lives, and, frankly, sharks will be sharks, but this is an analogy about women and not an ecological treatise, so…) When tourists were getting eaten, they didn’t say it was the tourist’s fault (it probably was, though). They said it was the shark’s fault. They went to the source.

So why the difference? What is there about men murdering women that makes us treat it the opposite way? Why do we not look at removing the problem, but focus on removing the victim? We are telling women to curtail activities that are allowed to men, and in many cases, these are the very activities they must engage in to succeed…networking. Socializing. Networking. By doing that, they go to places where men are. They leave those places and go home. That means crossing through other places where men are. It may mean they have a drink…or a few drinks. It’s part of being one of the boys, right?

“But” you splutter. “They aren’t one of the boys. They’re girls.” Ah, there you see the problem. Women can have it all…except they can’t. Because they’re women, and men might want to treat them badly. And because men can’t behave, women must reduce their activities. In other words, women must be responsible for their own actions, and for the actions of their male companions…and any other male who happens to be anywhere in the vicinity, even if they cannot see those men, do not know they are there, and have no interaction with them. Each and every woman on the planet is single-handedly and at all times responsible for the behavior of every man on the planet…at least, if they become aware of her. In this age of the internet, that translates to almost every male human being over the age of three.

I often hear that there should be consequences for our actions. This is always directed at the woman, who is deemed to have been dressed to immodestly, to have drunk too much, to be in the wrong place or with the wrong people…and, of course, unstated but underlying every word, to have been female. I agree. There are consequences for our actions. So why then are women suffering the consequences for men’s actions? Why do we hold this standard for women, while men get a pass.

“Oh, just a mistake.” “Don’t want to ruin his promising career.” “It was just one time, just 15 minutes.” I do not exaggerate. All of these rationales have punctuated high profile rape cases where the accused was given a slap on the wrist or nothing at all. “She tempted him.” “She led him on.” “What was she doing there, anyway?” “She had sex with several men in the past few years.” Yes, we hear that, too. He does the crime, she does the crime. Her life may be ruined, her career destroyed, because they do not want to ruin his promising life.

I would like to propose that we look at rape not as a woman’s issue, but as a man’s issue. If the men are doing the rape, why are we correcting the behavior of the women? And yes, I know men get raped, too. Simple fact: almost all of those rapes are by men, also. Cases of women raping men usually fall into the category of an adult woman having consensual sex with a boy too young to consent. Bad, yes. Crime, yes. Punish them, fine. But do not use them to change the subject. Almost all rapes are committed by men. Almost all rapes are blamed on women. There’s something wrong with this equation.

Sharks will be sharks. But “boys” can be taught to be men. Men who do not rape.