Teach our sons that the only cause of rape is a rapist

When I was in the Marines, one of my fellow Marines came to me with a problem. She had been hanging out at the barracks with several people from our unit. She got drunk, ended up dancing with a guy who was a higher rank, and went up to her room. She said what happened next was not consensual. The guy she was talking about was my best friend at the time. I did what I thought was the right thing.

I reported it to our Gunnery Sergeant and our unit’s leadership started looking into it. She later dropped the complaint because she was told that if she pursued it, she would also get into trouble for underage drinking, having alcohol in the barracks, and fraternization. Now, hearing her story, I was convinced that my friend had done wrong, but when I bought it up I was told. “It is he said/she said. And she never should have put herself in that position.”

When I was in college at Ohio State, I went to a Halloween house party. A girl showed up with a costume that was way too revealing, drawing jealousy from the ladies and lots of attention from the guys. As the night and drinking went on, guys started getting too forward with her. She eventually put on a coat but a guy ripped it off and groped her. He was kicked out and she was crying. As I left the party later, my girlfriend at the time remarked, “Well what did she expect showing up like that?”

The fallout from the Cornell rape story hasn’t even settled yet and we are once again struggling with the notion that women have to be perfect in order to not be raped. The onus should not be........

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