The senseless metaphor
“If you put meat in front of a lion, he will eat it,” an excuse to rape
It makes me furious when people use the “If you put meat in front of a lion, he will eat it,” metaphor to excuse rape.
Remember that you are not a lion; you have higher brain functions than a lion. And also, we have dissimilar societal standards. You know what lions do in their social interaction? They occasionally eat their kids because they get annoying. Are you going to eat your kids too?
What if a random lion was prowling, unbeknownst to you, just behind you on the street? They would most certainly attack you and devour you up because you are meat. Can you help it that lions don’t have the higher brain capacity to comprehend your squealing and protests? No, because lions don’t know what it means, and maybe that’s why we term them as ‘animals’. A human being, however, can follow the thought process of “This person does not like this. I should stop immediately,” and actually have the self-control to stop before enforcing themselves on another human being.
If rapists choose their victims based on hairstyles and the ‘seductivity factor’ of their attire, it is news to those in law enforcement, since they’ve never noticed this trend. Rape victims have short hair, long hair, wear shalwar kameez, jeans, tightly-fitted and loosely-designed clothes. They’re also young kids and adults, short and tall, fat and skinny, femininely dressed or looking like they just fell off a tractor, and all points in between.
When a fire starts, you try to put it out where it started so it doesn’t spread. With rape though, we don’t go to the source we tell the things that can burn that it’s their fault for being flammable.
This is what is wrong. People aren’t being raped because their clothes are meat and their rapists are lions. That metaphor is just a fragile excuse for unsightly behaviour that you know you can control. You can’t do things that lions do and still be considered a human because doing lion things would just make you a lion, wouldn’t it?
They are not meat. And you are not a lion.
Published in The Express Tribune, December 29th, 2014.
Remember that you are not a lion; you have higher brain functions than a lion. And also, we have dissimilar societal standards. You know what lions do in their social interaction? They occasionally eat their kids because they get annoying. Are you going to eat your kids too?
What if a random lion was prowling, unbeknownst to you, just behind you on the street? They would most certainly attack you and devour you up because you are meat. Can you help it that lions don’t have the higher brain capacity to comprehend your squealing and protests? No, because lions don’t know what it means, and maybe that’s why we term them as ‘animals’. A human being, however, can follow the thought process of “This person does not like this. I should stop immediately,” and actually have the self-control to stop before enforcing themselves on another human being.
If rapists choose their victims based on hairstyles and the ‘seductivity factor’ of their attire, it is news to those in law enforcement, since they’ve never noticed this trend. Rape victims have short hair, long hair, wear shalwar kameez, jeans, tightly-fitted and loosely-designed clothes. They’re also young kids and adults, short and tall, fat and skinny, femininely dressed or looking like they just fell off a tractor, and all points in between.
When a fire starts, you try to put it out where it started so it doesn’t spread. With rape though, we don’t go to the source we tell the things that can burn that it’s their fault for being flammable.
This is what is wrong. People aren’t being raped because their clothes are meat and their rapists are lions. That metaphor is just a fragile excuse for unsightly behaviour that you know you can control. You can’t do things that lions do and still be considered a human because doing lion things would just make you a lion, wouldn’t it?
They are not meat. And you are not a lion.
Published in The Express Tribune, December 29th, 2014.