"Re-educating" Men

An interesting discussion on Comment is Free...

What should be done about the increasing number of incidents of rape and sexual violence? The columnist at the guardian's blog thinks that the solution is "re-educating" men. She then clarifies that re-educating doesn't mean "forcibly enrolling every person with a Y-chromosome in the rape school", but rather "to change the way we talk about gender, sex and violence". Haven't we all heard this argument before? How many men, even the hardcore maxim and FHM reading crowd, I wonder, still think that raping a woman is okay? Even raping a woman who is dead-drunk, unable to refuse or consent, or even when she changes her mind in the middle of the act? Everybody knows that it is wrong when the woman doesn't explicitly says yes. But even then some men do rape women.

This whole thing about re-educating men is like arguing that someone stole or robbed because he didn't know the concept of property rights. Perhaps we should distribute copies of Adam Smith to all those thieves and robbers!! I think it will help immensely if we treat rape as a criminal problem just like any other, and not confuse it with vague sociological theories.