Parents, please raise your sons to not be rapists

I’m pretty sure I’m not the only person in the world who feels sickened, outraged and more than a little sad when reading articles or hearing on broadcast TV stories about rape cases that usually end up in ridiculously short sentences. Does anyone else remember Brock Turner, the former Stanford University student who was convicted in 2016 of sexual assault and then received a six-month sentence? That story received international coverage, sparked outrage in many corners, and brought to the forefront necessary conversations on “the rape culture” on college campusus (and in the world as a whole, one might argue).

All to often nowadays, with the current administration in the White House, one hears about how colleges are scaling back on rape investigations, and other similar nonsense. I want to spit whenever I read about people whining about how their sons might be “falsely accused” of rape (to which I think, “if you don’t want your sons to be involved in a sexual assault then whey don’t you raise him better to prevent him from ever taking part in such an awful crime”). While I am in no way denying that it probably does happen, it is most likely in a very small percentage of reported assaults. I am not naive enough to understand that sometimes rape accusations are made against men to “get back at them” for some reason (dumping the woman, for one). But again, there’s no doubt that the actual false charges happen in only a small number of cases brought to the police.