Power, its Enabling Abuses

Men, equipped by nature to perform the act of procreation under any circumstance as an assurance of species survival pose a threat to the women around them when they cannot or will not suppress this carnal urge, the imperative to spread their seed. Clever nature made sexual congress a supremely pleasurable act for males in particular to ensure that they not only could but would be prepared at all times to pleasure themselves by serving her plan.

This primitive act of procreation has been civilized by humankind's ability to understand that there was a need for control, that men could not go about heedlessly forcing themselves upon women because of their singular need for sexual congress as a self-absorbed act of pleasure, without an attendant, civilizing realization that reason should dictate they have a willing partner.

Sadly, we still and likely will always have men whose preoccupation with their ego and their ungoverned needs choose not to restrict or restrain themselves. Undisciplined sociopathic men endowed with an overabundance of testosterone and a lack of compassion, an overwhelming sense of self-indulgence and a lack of human perspective have presented as an acute problem to women and society throughout the course of civilization.

Responsible society enacts protective laws and exacts fitting penalties, the least of which is general public anger and distaste accompanied by a recognition of the needfulness to protect women and vulnerable children from these sociopaths who themselves express little empathy for their victims.

We have men targetting the most helpless members of society: young girls and boys whose natural instincts are to trust adults. From the isolated instances when young children are abducted, assaulted and sometimes left for dead, to those other events when a crazed and angry adult will storm a school to deal abuse and death on innocent children, society reels in horror.

There are the abusive husbands and fathers who cannot deal with the fact that their wives or girlfriends will find the courage to wrench themselves away from a relationship that brought horror and pain into their lives. From helpless victims they transform themselves into responsible adults who refuse to be further victimized, and to take their children away from the harmful relationship.

In all such instances there is a power element involved which enables the bully, the egotist, the sexual predator to prey on his target. Whether it's the perceived power of the husband in a relationship, that of an adult over children, that of a teacher, a politician, doctors, priests - all have positions of authority and trust which they betray.

Their ranks are legion, bringing shame to their gender, to those other men in the vast majority whose imaginations could not begin to conceive of satisfying their sexual urges at the cost of forcing their unwanted attentions on innocents. Let alone living with the knowledge that their actions have ruined their victims' lives.

Despite the acknowledgement of these events as a dreadful societal problem, despite the best of intentions in drafting new and expanding laws to deal with this age-old problem, society has done too little to help the victims, too little to enact laws adequate to ensure that those guilty of these crimes are not let loose again on the public to re-enact those same crimes when the urge strikes.

Until we are able to better protect victims of sexual abuse we'll just continue to wring our hands about the ongoing carnage. And the victims will continue to live in fear and loathing; often not of their tormentors, but of themselves, living out their blemished lives in agony.

Surely we can do better.