For the past few years, awareness of
consent and rape has grown. Through the
evolution from sanitizing it as “non-consensual sex” and “date rape” to calling
it what it is; sexual assault, our society is becoming aware of the devastation
this violence has on it’s victims and how widespread it is.
Because one in five female college and
university students will be raped at some point in their scholastic career,
progressive schools now offer workshops and seminars. At first they were for females and provided
tips on how not to be raped. But due to societal backlash against placing the
responsibility on the victim, these have evolved into including male and female
students and focus on what consent looks like (“an enthusiastic YES”), and that
both participants need to check in with each other at each stage of a sexual
encounter to ensure consent has not been withdrawn. When these first began,
enrollment was sparse, yet as social awareness has grown, these workshops have as
well, moving from 45 minutes in small classrooms into two to three hours in
auditoriums, with male/female attendance equalizing and much discussion taking
place.
Yet some educational centres still engage
in victim blaming, such as the Mormon Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah,
who habitually expel female students who report rapes. But more and more universities are coming on
board.
But I want to address this issue on a
psychological and societal level that goes beyond the realm of rape.
In the human brain, there are three areas
which host mirror neurons. These neurons
react when we observe the behaviour of another living being in our
presence. These are the neurons that
alert our genetic programming for empathy.
When we observe another person (or animal) in distress, our mirror
neurons notice, and though we don’t feel exactly what the other person is
feeling, we feel a strong pull of empathy and an urge to help them.
I’m a big Mixed Martial Arts fan. The whole purpose of MMA is to dominate one’s
opponent either through devastating kicks, punches, elbows, submission holds
that can dislocate joints, or chokes that can render a person unconscious. What I find fascinating is that at a large
MMA event, 20,000 to 60,000 people are there to see those very devastating
actions, yet when they happen, people gasp, flinch, or cry out because the
person who that just happened to is hurt.
Their mirror neurons fire bright and the crowd feels that strong pull of
empathy for the vanquished.
So why is it that some drunk male
university students, who see an unconscious female, bypass their mirror neurons
and see it as an opportunity to rape her?
The irony is that those in the
Bondage/Domination, Sado/Masochist (BDSM) community who partner with people to
engage in sometimes brutal forms of sex have been using “safe words” for
decades - a prearranged word that the submissive partner can utter, that the
dominant partner will respect immediately.
They will release their partner and begin after-care to calm and relieve
their partner’s distress, and let them know they are safe.
Years ago, while working as a security supervisor
in Vancouver, I was visiting our guard at Queen Elizabeth park (aka “Little
Mountain”). As we were checking in, two
full-patch bikers rode up the hill to the upper parking lot. One of the bikers had a female passenger who
almost fell off his bike as they rounded the last curve.
The guard and I walked up into the parking
area and saw that the bikers had ridden up onto the grass and the female was
lying on her back, the bikers standing over her. As we approached, the female - who was very
intoxicated and barely conscious - was reaching up, inviting both bikers to
have sex with her. I overheard one of
the bikers say to his brother; “This ain’t right, man.” The other agreed.
The bikers saw us approach and one noticed
the portable radio on my belt. “Can you
call for an ambulance?” he asked, “I think she needs to go to the hospital.”
I radioed our Dispatch and they called 911
for us (I specified an ambulance and not the police as both bikers had been
drinking as well). As we were waiting, the
female started vomiting and choking, and one of the bikers rolled her into the
recovery position, rubbed her back and even held her hair as she vomited.
It turned out that the female was unknown to
these men - they had picked her up in a bar - and despite their intention to
have sex with her, they cared about and for her. They knew she was in no state to give proper
consent for sex, and suspected she was approaching medical distress.
Shortly after the ambulance arrived, the female
stopped breathing and the paramedics had to intubate her and use a breathing
bag. If the bikers hadn’t felt empathy
for her and acted on it, this female may have died.
My big question is; Why is it that Doms in
the BDSM community or two bad-ass 1% full-patch bikers respond with empathy
when they see a passed out female and ensure she gets medical attention, but a
bright university athlete decides to rape her instead?
Has two decades of “rape culture” in rap
music, online homemade porn videos featuring men dominating and abusing women,
and examples by a few professional athletes turned some young men away from
their natural empathy?
I wish I had the answers.
But I do know one thing that we should all
be alarmed by …
Mirror neurons, empathy, and our entire
Limbic system are all part of our survival system - survival of self and
survival of species. As Dr Bruce Perry
said in one of his books; “We are born for love”. We are hardwired to care about and care for
each other. What is happening to our
society through rapes, murders, assaults, mass shootings, and religion-driven
violence is evidence that there is a growing number of people who have lost
touch with that survival system.
We need to teach our children from birth
that caring for others is our most important duty as human beings. Men need to intervene when other men treat or
talk about women as objects. We all need
to stand up against any form of bigotry, be it race, gender, religion, or
sexual orientation, and we need to do it loudly and often.
Without empathy, without caring about and
caring for each other we are done as a species.
To sit passively by while this trend continues, well …
“This ain’t right, man”.
Aaron D. McClelland, MPCC - www.interiorcounselling.com
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