I don’t watch beauty pageants.  My main reason is that I’m a fat, balding 43 year old guy, and oggling 20 year old women in evening gowns and bathing suits would be creepy.  But of course, reading the news this morning, I saw that there was a big national show in Louisiana this weekend.  Apparently the young lady from Nevada won a new tiara to put above the family mantle, and she seems to have gotten a few backs up while she did it.

When asked about the problem of sexual assault on college campuses, Miss Sanchez replied that getting the problem out in the open and teaching young women to defend themselves are important.  I tend to agree.  No woman should be ashamed to come forward if she is attacked, and no woman should feel she has to be helpless in the attack.  Women should be encouraged to get the training, skills, and equipment necessary to deter attacks, defend themselves, and get away from the attacker.  Like Kathy Jackson says “If you have to fight, fight like a cornered cat.”

Now, it seems that some disagree that teaching young women that it’s OK to fight back and how to do it is the right thing to do.  Some have taken to social media to decry Miss Sanchez and assert that if only men were taught to not rape, then we wouldn’t need to teach women to defend themselves against rapists.  They’re correct, but I don’t think they live in the same world I do.

“If only we taught young men to not rape” is, to me, the same as saying “If only we taught people to not drink and drive” or “If only we taught people to not steal”.  No matter how much you educate, remind, and threaten, there are always those who are going to jump right over boundaries and hurt other people.

But they do have a point.  Young men need to be taught, preferably by people of both sexes, that a woman’s body is inviolate.  They should be taught that there is no exception to that rule, and no excuse for breaking it.  Men need to be a good example to their sons of how to think about women and act toward them.  A boy who is taught to respect women, to protect them, and to treat them as at least equals is less likely to look at them as objects or toys.

We have to cover both bases.  Our young men need to be raised up to believe that rape and rapists are abhorrent, and that they should never come close to the bright lines around sexual assault.  Our young women need to be raised up to respect themselves, to demand that men not use and abuse them, and to defend themselves against those who either don’t get the message or disregard it.