Boxing lessons? Hell, yes
When my 13-year old daughter told me recently she wanted to take boxing lessons, my answer shocked us both. It wasn’t “yes,” it was “hell yes.”
Aside from the obvious exercise benefits, what father or mother wouldn’t want their daughter to grow up strong, independent and able to defend herself? Her parents are not going to be around her forever, and if she wants to take steps to secure her own safety, I’m all for it.
Yet because no common sense position now goes unchallenged, this opinion about my daughter’s personal safety runs afoul of a certain brand of feminism that believes asking a woman to take steps to protect herself is somehow “blaming the victim.” Instead of putting the onus on women to avoid sexual assault, they argue, why don’t we “teach men not to rape”?
In 2015, the New England Journal of Medicine issued a study offering some suggestions for college women to recognize the warning signs in order to resist sexual assault. The study revealed that women who took a course on avoiding sexual assault were 46% less likely to be raped than those who hadn’t.
Surely, such a breakthrough would be seen as a positive development for women on campus, right? Not quite.
“Like rape itself, the persistent admonitions (’don’t drink that,’ ‘don’t walk there,’ ‘don’t talk to him’) keep us quiet and submissive,” wrote Dana Bolger on the Feministing website shortly after the study was released. “I don’t want to live in a world where marginalized people have to shrink their lives in order to survive. I don’t want to live in a world that even considers that an option on the table.”
A year earlier, four college students formulated a nail polish women could wear to test whether their drinks had been spiked — a novel solution to a problem everyone agrees shouldn’t exist. Once again, the naysayers spoke out.
“As a woman, I’m told not to go out alone at night, to watch my drink, to do all of these things,” said Rebecca Nagle, co-director of a group called FORCE: Upsetting Rape Culture. “That way, rape isn’t just controlling me while I’m actually being assaulted — it controls me 24/7 because it limits my behavior.”
Of course, we should teach men not to rape women. But in many senses, we already do. For one, we have laws that make rape and sexual assault illegal. The threat of prison is a pretty good lesson to men that sexual crimes are not acceptable and that they will be held accountable. Plus, men don’t grow up in sensory deprivation chambers; many men already have mothers, fathers and sisters who teach them throughout their lives how to treat women with respect.
Unfortunately, no matter how much education or guidance you provide, some men are going try to rape women. As with any other crime, it makes sense to take precautions against being a victim. We have laws against murder, robbery and drunken driving — and yet people continue to kill, steal and drive under the influence. If everyone always followed the law, we wouldn’t need locks on our front doors, police forces or criminal judges.
Crimes of all kind control our behavior. It’s why we have PIN numbers for our debit cards, lock our phones and have to show a photo ID to pick up a package at the post office.
The people urging us to “teach men not to rape” are right, but I don’t know all the world’s other men. I do know my daughter, and boxing lessons may help her protect herself against men who may not have taken a sexual assault seminar. Insisting on precaution isn’t blaming the victim; it’s making sure there are fewer victims to begin with.