Rape culture does not begin with rape

There is something deeply, fundamentally wrong with the way we socialize boys.

I refuse to accept that men are simply inherently violent, aggressive, or incapable of empathy. That kind of bioessentialism doesn’t challenge the problem—it makes it seem inevitable. It’s just a more sophisticated version of “boys will be boys.”

Look at what we teach boys instead.

We discourage vulnerability and ridicule tenderness. We teach them to suppress fear, sadness, and insecurity until anger becomes one of the only emotions they are permitted to express outwardly. We often fail to teach them the same accountability, humility, emotional awareness, and consideration for others that we demand from girls from an incredibly young age.

And then there is the way we teach boys to understand women.

Women are objectified before boys are even old enough to fully understand what objectification means. They absorb messages that women’s bodies exist for male consumption, that sex is something to obtain, that persistence is romantic, that rejection is humiliating, that masculinity is tied to sexual conquest, and that other men’s approval matters more than women’s comfort.

Rape culture does not begin with rape.

It begins much earlier—in entitlement. In objectification. In the inability to tolerate rejection. In laughing when a woman is degraded. In staying silent when another man crosses a line. In treating empathy as weakness and domination as masculinity. In excusing cruelty as humor. In protecting men from the consequences of their behavior instead of teaching them accountability for it.

So preventing sexual violence cannot begin and end with telling men, “Don’t rape women.”

We have to go upstream.

Teach boys empathy, and reward them for practicing it. Teach them how to experience painful emotions without externalizing those emotions onto someone else. Teach them humility. Teach them accountability. Teach them that another person’s boundaries are not a challenge to overcome. Teach them to recognize dehumanization and intervene when they see it. Make cruelty socially unacceptable among boys in the same way compassion has historically been expected of girls.

And perhaps most importantly, stop waiting until boys become men to have these conversations.

If we want to dismantle rape culture, we have to change the culture that raises boys.

Enough is enough.