*Author’s note: I have received a bit of feedback about this title and I want to set something straight. To be clear – I do not believe that it is the fault of any woman or child if they have been sexually assaulted. However, it would be foolish to think that there is nothing we can do as women to lessen our chances of this happening. Not entering a frat house, for example, is probably a good place to start. You could go into the wolves den or you could not, and one decision is far more likely to get you killed. When I say rape-proof, I mean the way a 90s watch was water-proofed. A few splashes wouldn’t hurt it, but submerging it was likely going to render it useless. Better just to take it off when you go swimming.
No, the onus is not on the women to stop the men from raping. But there are predators among us, and if we venture out into the wild, it would be good to know how to handle ourselves if we encounter one. And to remember that the fiercest and scariest one to come across is the mother bear with cubs.
My 14 year old daughter took the bus home from school yesterday for the first time. Not the school bus – public transportation.
I was initially excited for this new development. I remember the freedom that taking the bus provided for me when I was young and couldn’t drive yet – the worlds that it opened up. The independence. It was thrilling. It was also boring. And a fascinating study of humanity (there are almost always characters with varying degrees of mental illness and/or intoxication on public transportation, especially in a decent-sized city like where I grew up).
I’ve written songs and poems on public transportation, done character studies for theater class, cried, laughed – the value of the liminal space between transitions that riding the bus provides is, I believe, totally underestimated. All this to say, I was looking forward to this unfolding for her.
So yesterday I picked her up from the bus stop for the first time (the nearest bus stops are still way too far from our house to be considered convenient). And I asked her how it went.
“Good!” she answered emphatically. “Except….”
I waited for it. What kind of scintillatingly strange character had she experienced already? The woman with the overloaded cart mumbling odd obscenities to herself under her breath? The person already wobbling drunk and reeking by midafternoon? These were the kinds of characters I would invariably encounter back in my days of consistent public transport usage. But this was not her response.
“Well,” she continued, “the bus goes through the college campus and stops at every stop. A LOT of people got on from the college – the bus was packed.” She showed me a picture she had taken of the packed bus, while texting her friend for support as a creeping case of claustrophobia overtook her.
My blood ran cold for a moment. A bus full of college students. 62 million views. Gen Z being the largest group of consumers. Gen Z – the ones currently in college and/or starting new families. The generation of men who think it’s ok to drug and rape their girlfriends and wives – or at the very least watch videos of other men doing it.
I was not prepared for this. I had found out about the website just a few days prior. Bringing awareness of its existence to my husband had catalyzed a huge fight between us that left me physically ill for two days, and I was just climbing out of it – while still psychologically reeling from the aftermath and the exhaustion of it all. I was not planning on telling my daughter about this website – not any time soon.
If you know me at all, if you’ve read the book I wrote about how to talk to your daughter about puberty, you know that I believe in consistent conversations that gradually age with your child, meet them where they are in their development, and adequately prepare them for what is going to happen in their bodies – as well as how to appropriately respond to the world and culture around them. I have always been adamant that these be developmentally appropriate conversations. I wasn’t planning on talking to my daughter in-depth about rape culture until she started exhibiting a greater interest in dating and sex – or it became clear to me that this was a topic she and her peers were starting to discuss. We just aren’t there yet.
I was not ready for this.
But now college students had entered the mix. And now the conversation seemed unavoidable.
I gripped the steering wheel, and my daughter – ever alert to my changing moods – knew something had come over me. Attentive to subtle energetic shifts, curious and probing about adult issues, she wanted to know what it was.
I couldn’t speak at first. I didn’t know what to say or how to say it. I didn’t know what, if anything, to filter and I definitely couldn’t believe that I was about to say the words out loud – that there is a place online where men are being trained how to drug and rape women – to my 14 year old daughter.
How would she receive this information? What would this do to her? Did I have to tell her? What would happen if I told her? What would happen if I didn’t?
Why the fuck is this real?!
My silence, clear agitation, and inability to elucidate my thoughts were concerning her. Finally, I spoke. Following the advice I have given so many mothers about how to talk about hard things when you have no idea where to start – I just started talking.
I told her how hard it was for me to know what to say, but acknowledged that I needed to say something, and that I would fumble through it and do it imperfectly because it was something I wished I didn’t have to do.
And so it began.
I told her about the website. About how the generation that was getting on that bus with her were the most likely consumers of this content. About the importance of knowing where the other women in the space were at all times – making eye contact with them if she could (to which she replied that everyone is always on their phones…).
I told her in no uncertain terms that if she ever felt the least bit uncomfortable that she could get up and move, that she had a right to get loud and aggressive in response to unwanted contact or attention. To sit in the front of the bus, close to the driver.
We talked about how to trust your intuition.
I let her know that her body is wise, and if it ever gave her the slightest bit of feedback that something was off about a person, place or scenario – to listen and act accordingly. That her body would not lie to her the way our minds can.
I told her that she was under no obligation to ever be kind or nice to someone who was treating her disrespectfully. That if someone looked at her in a way that made her uncomfortable, to glare right back and not be the first to break eye contact. Make him feel more uncomfortable than he’s making you feel.
I could tell this all sat heavy with her. How could it not? At one point she began to cry, asking how would she know which men she could trust? This broke my heart, because I have been seeing so many women asking the same question. If you’re a man reading this, it should break your heart, too, to know that this is where women are at now. This is the question on our hearts:
How do we know which men we can trust?
My daughter is fortunate beyond words, because there are many trustworthy men in her life to look to as role-model men. And I reminded her of this. I named them, one by one, the good men she knows – starting with her father. And I encouraged her to surround herself with men like them. My daughter speaks energy, and I reminded her of this. I didn’t even need to orient her to their qualities and characteristics – I just had to start naming them as a group, and she got it.
These are good men.
Men who are respectful and kind. Playful and loving. Who pray and sacrifice for the good of their community. Men who serve others from their hearts. Men who protect their women and children. Men who know how to make hilarious jokes that aren’t at the expense of another person’s dignity. Men who know how to be serious and sincere when the moment calls for it.
And I painted the sly fox picture for her. The man so slick and clean, always with the right words and the right gestures. Handsome, successful, polished in his outward shows of adoration and attention. Willing to denigrate another for a cheap laugh.
Watch the fuck out for that guy.
I told her to bring any guy she wanted to date to meet me first. If he doesn’t run away screaming after that, then maybe he’s ok. (My daughter has told me on more than one occasion that her friends are all simultaneously afraid and awed of me because, clearly, I am a bona fide witch – with my herb cabinet stacked to the ceiling, regularly dosing my family with herbal concoctions to treat their ills. I am also a woman who doesn’t give a fuck about what others think of me anymore. In today’s culture – especially in the Midwest – this combination is somehow terrifying).
And I let her know that we do not have to be victims. I told her the story of Lorena Bobbit – the women who, after years of sexual abuse and torment at the hands of her husband, cut his penis off while he was sleeping and threw it in a corn field. Who got off scot-free on charges of temporary insanity. I let her know that Lorena’s only mistake was to throw the dick away whole, without chopping it up into little pieces or burning it first. Whole, they were able to reattach it, and her disgusting husband was able to go on and star in porn films afterwards (true story).
I told her that if she ever was in a situation where she or someone she knew had been drugged and then raped, that drugging the man in return and cutting off his dick in his sleep was a reasonable response to such behavior. Just make sure you cut it into pieces after so it can’t be reattached. If you are going to use it to abuse someone like that, then you just don’t get to have one anymore. Period.
And I meant it. And she knew it.
I taught my 14 year old daughter that castration is the appropriate response to rape, because after everything I have lived and seen and heard, I now believe that this is the only way this shit will ever stop.
I never imagined it would come to this, that I – who have lived my life in a perpetual quest for that which would bring peace to our planet – would be an advocate for this kind of violence. Of course there are culture-building shifts that need to take place so that this kind of response just isn’t necessary, so that drugging and assaulting women and children becomes unthinkable in the first place. But here we are. And since we are here – it’s necessary.
I think telling her this emboldened her too. I hope she never is in a situation where she needs to employ this kind of tactic. May it never come to pass. But my fierce mama bear came out in that conversation. You will not cross my cubs and live to tell about it. And I could tell that meeting that bear helped my daughter rest and feel safe with me.
And I cannot stress the importance of this enough.
Because having our daughters walking around scared and feeling like victims isn’t going to help matters either – it can only make them worse. I told her this too – that predators like the smell of fear. And so getting aggressive and loud and in their face is generally very unattractive to them. This whole demure, hairless, coquettish type that all women are culturally groomed to be is what most of them are after (hence the grooming – how childlike can we make our women…). Don’t give it to them. I want my exquisitely gorgeous daughter to be as ugly and terrifying to predators as I have become.
She told me later that night, over a game of cards, how grateful she is that I am her mother. My daughter, while obviously changed after our exchange, has been able to metabolize and integrate it all. It didn’t leave her broken and scarred, a frightened shell of herself – as I feared it might.
And I know that this is because I have gradually, over the years, stepped her into this conversation. This is why I wrote my book. Because I want this kind of relationship for all mothers with their daughters. And it is only possible if you build it over time.
After deciding that, yes, she would still take the bus regardless of all of this, because we aren’t going to let predators dictate the way we live our lives, I finally told her my story, the story that started me out on this whole path over 20 years ago – the story of Lone Wolf…