The R-Word

Now, understand that everything I say now is my biased, uncensored opinion. I'm not going to link to any sites supporting what I say. It's just an opinion. I'm human, my biases exist, I can fight it only so far. That's my disclaimer. That's it. That's all. 

Now, in highschool, we had a presentation that took up half of the our day. It was the basic sexuality, standard sex-ed type deal..They took us around from classroom to classroom to get the same information of how to be properly "safe" while having sex, the basic mechanics of it, and to not let peer pressure affect your decisions on sex one way or the other. Now, one presentation in particular stands out to me: only one after 5 hours of being lead by the nose (says something about how much I particularly cared about the entire ordeal, doesn't it?). The only presentation I remember is the one where we had an "emergency rape responder" talking about the procedure that she goes through when someone reports to the police that they've been raped. Throughout this entire lectrure, she was talking to the girls in the room, not the men.
The things she covered, to my memory, included: How to avoid being raped, to not blame yourself if you are raped, how you should seek help if you've been raped, the gathering of evidence, and how your family and friends are the most important support system after the fact.

Now, I don't have an issue with any of these, I think knowing all of these things can be vital to any woman. What I have an issue with? The fact that she never talked to the male audience in the room.

We focus quite a bit as a society on the women, and how they avoid becoming victims, I don't think we focus enough on the men on how to not become the offender of these crimes. I mean, I am a woman, so maybe there is a special conference I don't know about that sits the male half of our population down, and explains how being a rapist is wrong, but I doubt it sincerely. How to go about having this conversation? I don't know. I do however, think we need to consider making it a conversation to have though. I think it's important and beneficial to both sides.

What I define as rape is the forceful penetration of another human being without consent. That's probably very close to what the dictionary's definition is. I think there is also another conversation that needs to happen too, for both genders. I think we really need to look at what we define as consent. 

It's socially acceptable to take a drunk person home and have sex with them. It's okay, because they are consenting. I don't know if a person who's mental capabilities aren't fully there agreeing to follow through should be considered consent. I also don't think that having someone who was coerced or harassed into having sex should really be considered consent either. In my mind, consent is when two people, who are fully-functional to their mental capabilities mutually agree to having any sexual relations with another person. And I think both genders are equally responsible to upholding a moral standard where the "walk of shame" doesn't happen merely because the other person was stumbling, half-blind drunk. 

I don't know, maybe we are still taking the conversations of rape, and sexual identity as a little too taboo than is beneficial to our society. I don't see any instances of sexual oppression that will end well. When you start oppressing your own sexuality, that's when the deformities, and the unhealthy fetishes start forming like mold.