snapshots & snippets

Old enough to know about rape

Sun, 24 Mar 2013 08:12:03 -0430

I told my seven year old godson.

I told him about Steubenville.

No squicky biological details were involved.

I told him that two big, strong teenaged boys had done mean things to a girl when she was drunk (he knows what “drunk” is).

This was obviously wrong to him.

I told him that they had touched her in private places when she wasn’t even awake or able to let them know how she felt about it.

This was obviously wrong to him.

I told him that they’d taken pictures of her and sent them to friends, pictures that would embarrass her.

This was obviously wrong to him.

And I told him that people had watched them doing mean things, and done nothing about it.

This was obviously wrong to him.

I told him that the whole thing greatly upset me, but that the two boys were going to jail for a long time, which is what happens when you touch people in their private places without them clearly wanting you to.

I told him that people who do those things are being weak inside, even if their arms and legs are strong.

And I told him that he always had to be strong inside, and to do the right thing, whether his arms and legs were strong or not.

If rape is so obviously wrong to a seven-year old, perhaps the problem is not that we’re “not teaching boys” that rape is wrong.

Perhaps the problem is that our cultures, in many, many ways, are teaching boys and girls that rape is right.

Perhaps my godson is just too young to have yet gotten that message.

Andromeda Gardens, Barbados. (Taken with instagram)

Mon, 19 Mar 2012 11:45:10 -0430

Andromeda Gardens, Barbados. (Taken with instagram)

Photo

Mon, 26 Jul 2010 07:01:43 -0430

"The pure and simple truth is rarely pure and never simple."

Sun, 25 Jul 2010 07:00:42 -0430

“The pure and simple truth is rarely pure and never simple.”

- Oscar Wilde

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Fri, 23 Jul 2010 07:06:42 -0430

"I believe I found the missing link between animal and civilized man. It is us."

Thu, 22 Jul 2010 07:05:43 -0430

“I believe I found the missing link between animal and civilized man. It is us.”

- Konrad Lorenz

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Wed, 21 Jul 2010 07:04:46 -0430

"It is not that love sometimes makes mistakes, but that it is, essentially, a mistake. We fall in..."

Tue, 20 Jul 2010 07:04:42 -0430

“It is not that love sometimes makes mistakes, but that it is, essentially, a mistake. We fall in love when our imagination projects nonexistent perfections on to another person. One day the phantasmagoria vanishes, and with it love dies.”

- Ortega y Gasset, “On Love”

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Mon, 19 Jul 2010 07:03:43 -0430

"My mind to me an empire is, While grace affordeth health."

Sun, 18 Jul 2010 07:02:43 -0430

“My mind to me an empire is, While grace affordeth health.”

- Robert Southwell

Photo

Sat, 17 Jul 2010 07:02:42 -0430

"To be wise is not to know particular facts but to know without excessive confidence or excessive..."

Fri, 16 Jul 2010 07:01:43 -0430

“To be wise is not to know particular facts but to know without excessive confidence or excessive cautiousness. Wisdom is thus not a belief, a value, a set of facts, a corpus of knowledge or information in some specialized area, or a set of special abilities or skills. Wisdom is an attitude taken by persons toward the beliefs, values, knowledge, information, abilities, and skills that are held, a tendency to doubt that these are necessarily true or valid and to doubt that they are an exhaustive set of those things that could be known.”

- John Meacham, “The Loss of Wisdom”

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Thu, 15 Jul 2010 07:00:42 -0430

"Every person’s life is a fairy tale, written by God’s fingers."

Wed, 14 Jul 2010 07:00:42 -0430

“Every person’s life is a fairy tale, written by God’s fingers.”

- Hans Christian Anderson

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Tue, 13 Jul 2010 04:13:06 -0430

"No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it’s not the same river, and he’s not the..."

Sun, 11 Jul 2010 07:00:42 -0430

“No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it’s not the same river, and he’s not the same man”

- Heraclitus

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Sat, 10 Jul 2010 07:00:43 -0430

"The hardest arithmetic to master is that which enables us to count our blessings."

Fri, 09 Jul 2010 05:23:00 -0430

““The hardest arithmetic to master is that which enables us to count our blessings.””

- Eric Hoffer

"When nothing seems to help, I go and look at a stonecutter hammering away at his rock perhaps a..."

Thu, 08 Jul 2010 05:22:43 -0430

““When nothing seems to help, I go and look at a stonecutter hammering away at his rock perhaps a hundred times without as much as a crack showing in it. Yet at the hundred and first blow it will split in two, and I know it was not that blow that did it, but all that had gone before.””

- Jacob Riis

…from “If The World’s Population Were...

Wed, 07 Jul 2010 05:22:42 -0430

snapshots & snippets

Old enough to know about rape

Andromeda Gardens, Barbados. (Taken with instagram)

Photo

"The pure and simple truth is rarely pure and never simple."

Photo

"I believe I found the missing link between animal and civilized man. It is us."

Photo

"It is not that love sometimes makes mistakes, but that it is, essentially, a mistake. We fall in..."

Photo

"My mind to me an empire is, While grace affordeth health."

Photo

"To be wise is not to know particular facts but to know without excessive confidence or excessive..."

Photo

"Every person’s life is a fairy tale, written by God’s fingers."

Photo

"No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it’s not the same river, and he’s not the..."

Photo

"The hardest arithmetic to master is that which enables us to count our blessings."

"When nothing seems to help, I go and look at a stonecutter hammering away at his rock perhaps a..."

…from “If The World’s Population Were...

…from “If The World’s Population Were Reduced To 100”