By Apurba Roy
A question for all men: What can women do so that you don’t rape us?
Content warning: rape, sexual harassment
We take precautions, ones that we have been taught since we were little girls. We hold our keys tight, walk fast, keep pepper spray, try our best to get home before dark, sit right behind the taxi driver, pretend to be talking on our phone when walking, try to be nice even when we say no, give our location to our
friends, never take the same route, and still, we get sexually harassed. Clearly, the problem isn't us.
Ask yourselves, did you ever get the talk about how to respect women? Did your dads sit you down and tell you how to respect women the way moms tell their daughters to cover up so that they stay safe? I am guessing not. It seems unfair that women have to let go of their freedoms, like wearing what they want and going where they want to go to avoid getting raped. It’s not women who should be doing things to not get raped. Men should just not rape women.
Rape has nothing to do with what the victim was wearing, how much she was drinking, where she was or how late she was out — it was the rapist’s disgusting desire to rape, and that’s it.
Instead of telling girls to cover their shoulders because they will distract men, let’s teach boys to respect women.