Are Women Responsible for the Behavior of Men?

Twitter is an interesting place, filled with interesting people and their interesting opinions. It's a great place to convey a short message on a large scale.

It's also the place to go if you feel like banging your head repeatedly against a wall - as I apparently did yesterday.

I was clicking through some of the articles showing on my feed, when I came across a woman who was angrily tweeting at a pro-choice writer.

"Women don't need to have abortions," she wrote. "They can stop sleeping with men they don't want to have children with and take responsibility for their birth control. Problem solved."

Okay - sure. These are, in fact, ways to not need an abortion - if both methods work as planned. If the birth control used doesn't fail. If the sex is consensual.

But, as we know - sometimes, despite our best intentions, life doesn't work out as we planned for it to. Sometimes condoms rip. Sometimes babies are conceived despite IUDs or birth control pills. Sometimes women are made to have sex whether they want to or not.

Sometimes, pregnancy happens when it wasn't intended.

I, apparently wasn't the only person who read the tweet and had these thoughts.

"What about in cases of rape or sexual assault?" another tweeter responded. "Sometimes, women don't get to choose if the man who has sex with them is someone they want to have a child with."

"Stop pretending like women don't have choices," she said. "Women can just tell men no. They're not victims in these situations. They're responsible for what happens."

Then, not to be deterred when no one responded, she continued, "If I was raped, I would proudly carry it to term. Do you know how hard it is to get pregnant? Ask any couple who is trying."

---

Most women do not think of themselves overarchingly as victims, but, the conversation had honed in on rape. The act of forcing someone into having sex.

Forcing.

By very definition, if we're forced we didn't have a choice. If we're forced, we are, in fact victims.

But apparently, not according to angry Twitter woman. According to her, women are responsible for their rapes, and should just tell men "no."

According to her, if sex continues to happen, the woman is responsible for not stopping the man. Apparently, the man has no responsibility for his own physical actions.

(Except, isn't that what makes a rape a rape? A woman saying no, and a man carrying forth as though she hadn't? I digress).

Who is this person, I thought, stunned by her idiocy and lack of logical thinking. I clicked into her profile, and at the top of her profile was a tweet that read:

"Stop encouraging sex workers. Women, stop leading good men to sin who are chemically unable to resist the pull of porn. Stop ruining families."

I burst out laughing.

Okay wait, I started to tweet to her. Do you mean to tell me that women are both responsible for men choosing to have sex with them even when they say no, and also for men choosing to jack it in a room by themselves?

I found myself confused. If women have the power to tell men "no," and men then have the power to stop, it stands to reason that men can control themselves. So, then, what is this about a "chemically unstoppable pull?" Are men capable of controlling themselves, or not?

And, if men are not capable of controlling themselves, then a woman saying "no," wouldn't be enough to stop a man, and he'd probably overtake her (since, you know, those irresistible chemical impulses are controlling him and he's powerless to stop), which would mean that she does. not. have. a choice.

I erased the tweet without sending. There's no reasoning with someone like this.

---

"You know there's no reasoning with someone like that," my friend said to me later when I vented his ear off over a virtual glass of wine. "She's not a true human. She's an ape that evolution left behind. That's why her reasoning is so lacking."

"Yeah well," I said. "She's an ape that gets to have an opinion and then vote using that opinion - and that's terrifying."

"True," he agreed.

How can we change the minds of people who think like this? It's not that I want to convince her to become pro-choice; while I'm staunchly pro-choice, I respect her thoughts on this.

But, I do wish that she could be taught that rape victims are not responsible for their attacks. There are power dynamics at play here. Brute strength is a factor. No one can be responsible for something that happens to them while they are being incapacitated by another person.

Only the perpetrator of said actions can be held responsible for those choices. The choices that he, by himself, is making. Why would we absolve anyone from that?

Likewise, I do wish that Terrifying Twitter Lady could understand that the person responsible for a man watching porn, is the man who is watching porn. If the sex workers aren't in the room with him - if they don't even know him as a human being on this planet - how can they possibly be held responsible for the choices he makes for himself in his own home?

But, for sake of argument, we could take it a step further and pretend that the sex worker is in the room with him. That she is having sex with him. That both parties are actively engaging in sexual activities.

But, assuming the sex is consensual here, - the responsibility for his ruined family still lies with him. His family - his responsibility - his problem.

Fin.

---

When we absolve men of responsibility for their actions, we're participating in multiple toxic behaviors. We're enabling a culture in which rape victims remain afraid to speak up against their attackers. We're enabling a culture in which men feel entitled to women's bodies whenever they so choose. We're teaching our children that women are nothing more than sexual objects for men to utilize as they see fit, and that men are nothing more than animals unable to control their urges.

But we're not only treating women poorly with this line of thinking - we're treating men poorly too. We're saying that we think so lowly of men, that we believe that they cannot - despite their best efforts - control their lust and their violence.

We're saying that we think so lowly of men that we believe women have a bewitching power that they're helpless to withstand. We're saying men are nothing more than thoughtless oafs with muscles and urges.

When I think about the men that I personally know, I know fully that they are none of this. They're in control of their thoughts and their behaviors. They have a fully established sense of right and wrong. They're capable of making decisions, and standing behind those decisions, taking the benefits and consequences of such as they will.

No, women are not responsible for the behaviors of men. Men are responsible for their behaviors. It's stunning to me that in 2020, some still need to learn this lesson, but here we are. Luckily, there are enough of us willing to teach it that hopefully, at some point, it will be common societal knowledge.