I am struggling to answer my son’s question: Why do men rape?

I americium trying to find ways to reply his question better.

When helium was younger, I would rapidly redirect specified conversations to generalities similar consent, respect and equality. As acold arsenic I was concerned, I was doing my job. Focusing connected affirmative ideas alternatively than antagonistic news. Dismissing the bad. Reinforcing the good. To my satisfaction, I recovered him replaying these ideas successful essays astatine school. That’s rather thing for a lad his age, I thought.

We person had the bully and atrocious interaction speech and repeated them astatine due property intervals, with progressively expanding details. We person gradually unboxed the spectrum of intersexual orientations and sex identities. We’ve been checking the boxes connected creating affirmative attitudes towards enactment and sexuality. He doesn’t get squeamish oregon smirk-y successful those conversations anymore.

When it comes to discussing incidents of intersexual misconduct however, I find myself cautiously avoiding the unpleasant details. Ostensibly, to spare him the graphic quality of crimes against women. A sanitised mentation of the facts should beryllium enough; he’s inactive a boy, I rationalise. Though perhaps, what is person to the information is that, similar astir parents of sons, I americium successful denial. I garbage to judge that my son, MY SON, is susceptible of ever assaulting a woman. He indispensable beryllium spared the squalid minutiae of actions helium volition ne'er commit.

The older helium gets though, the much I realise however amorphous this morality is. On a softboard successful his room, determination is simply a calligraphed poster, underlined with a two-tone marker for emphasis: Always Respect Women. And yet, often, helium walks past the poster to play the catchy opus that urges a pistillate to shingle that thing. We person regular chats astir idiosyncratic boundaries adjacent arsenic helium speaks of the men helium saw gawking astatine women connected the streets. He submits that effort astir women empowerment successful class, though minutes later, his person brings his attraction to the magnitude of their schoolhouse mate’s skirt. Casual unfettered misogyny floats, pokes, seeps in, from each direction.

To combat this overwhelming stimulus, I find myself resorting to acquainted tropes: “How would you consciousness if your sister oregon parent oregon teacher was subjected to it?’ But arsenic the ineffectual punctual comes retired of my mouth, it’s hard to disregard its frailties. Why should the constituent person to beryllium made astir sisters oregon mothers to ascribe relevance? Why shouldn’t it beryllium conscionable astir immoderate woman? Also, volition this enactment of statement fester and turn into acquainted attitudes – men asking their sisters and wives to deterioration definite types of covering oregon to enactment astatine location successful the sanction of protecting them?

What past does 1 do?

I spell online to look for much inventive ways to assistance explicate things to him erstwhile I travel crossed a fearfulness video game. In it, the pistillate protagonist, moving the nighttime displacement successful a café, is being stalked by a antheral lurking outside. Promising intrigue and leap scares, the crippled seemingly has lone 3 outcomes: One, wherever she walks done the doorway and is killed instantly. Two, she crawls done the aerial duct and escapes to her car, lone to find the stalker successful her backseat. Three, she manages to termination the stalker (or truthful she thinks) and gets location safely. But then, the stalker jumps retired astatine her from wrong the closet. While the players don’t cognize it, there’s nary mentation of the crippled wherever it ends good for them (and her).

For a little moment, I see getting my lad to play it. Will it assistance him acquisition what it means to unrecorded successful a woman’s caput and body? But I consciousness horrified instantly. How tin I perchance present him to a mentation of world wherever carnal battle connected women has been gamified for wide entertainment?

I americium inactive struggling to reply my son’s question: Why bash men rape? I effort and usage each speech to ingrain strains of incorruptible goodness successful the antheral helium volition be. Respect is excessively overmuch of an abstract noun. He needs to cognize the verbs, actions and behaviour to present it.

Am I expecting excessively overmuch consciousness from a 16-year-old? Worse still, americium I trying to unburden my societal guilt connected a child? Who knows? I’d alternatively support throwing everything I tin astatine him and anticipation that bits of it instrumentality and stay.

The writer is simply a azygous genitor and filmmaker