The thing that my male friends have never understood is the concept of sexual assault. Yes, I know that many victims are young boys, but a boy isn’t taught to fear for his safety the way a girl is in childhood.

The need to travel in groups isn’t stressed as much. The curfew delineation is joke, where girls have to be home hours before boys do. If a boy encounters a physical attack, he is taught to fight back and let the other guy have it! Why is it that daddies meet their daughters’ dates with a shotgun in every little dating anecdote, but not their sons’ dates?

Girls are instructed to keep their heads low and out of trouble, because not only can they get beat up—they can also get raped and impregnated. This added fear to anything from attending a ballgame to walking in a parking lot at night serves to disenfranchise and dismember the power of women even further than the constraints of politics, religion, and medicine.

This is something that just about any man can do—something they can just whip out as a control mechanism anytime. And as long as we live in a society where a woman fears leaving her abuser for her life—and let’s face it, why shouldn’t she, since he’s likely not going to face much of a punishment anyway—and then stays behind just because of that, they’re going to continue to do it!

It doesn’t even have to be a relationship, of course; strangers also attack women to experience some form of control. What I wonder about, though, is if the men realize that’s why they’re doing it? With men in the religious sector, do they know that they’re controlling women or do they just consider it a bonus? I know their leaders are likely aware of it, but what about male followers?

Politicians definitely know what they’re doing when they utilize the “religious right.” But say a psychologist profiles a rapist and learns that he was abused as a child, he seeks control, etc. Does the rapist know that’s why he rapes? Or is it all in the background, the underlying motivation within his subconscious that he’s really not quite aware of?

I’m betting it’s the same as with clergy—the more power, the more the motivation is not only known but utilized. I realize that I’m comparing rapists and abusers in the same category with clergyman (and there could be a lot of jokes stemmed from that, actually) but are they not in the same category as far as controlling goes? Sure, they use different means, but they’re both working towards the control of women—the stifling of their voices, minds, and souls entirely.

Women have to take an active role in not only protecting themselves, but in raising their own status, security, and rights every single day. There are no holidays when it comes to freedom; no sick days, no hiatuses, no sabbaticals—not even long vacations in Crawford. Freedom demands a constant watch.

Our own founding fathers—the ones conservatives seem to quote so often but don’t really understand in the least (atheists, free thinkers, revolutionaries, anti-war activists—and even slaveholders; yeah, they might want to think twice about using them in their quests for control or oil or cash or whatever is fashionable for the GOP in a given year)—demanded that the Constitution that they constructed be revised every so often to keep up with societal needs and changes! But we have men—and women—who do work to keep those “traditions” in tact every day! So if we want to make any progress at all, we have to work against that, every day, without fail.