They didn’t think of them as rape jokes, but that’s what they were.
I once overheard two men joking about a pair of young ladies they’d fancied, both of whom left college for a convent. The men started fantasizing aloud, as if it was the most natural thing in the world, about storming the gates of the convent to carry the women away before it was too late and they’d taken that vow of chastity. They joked about God having no business taking pretty girls to be His brides, religious sisters, instead of taking only unattractive ones and leaving the attractive ones for them.
They didn’t seem to notice that they were joking about dragging women away from the place they’d voluntarily gone in order to fulfill their vocations as women of God, so that they could marry and have sex with them against their will to fulfill their perceived vocations as men of God.
They didn’t seem to notice that they were talking about God as if He was another horny man, stealing their potential girlfriends away.
There was no talk about what the women wanted.
It was just a joke, yes. These particular men wouldn’t have ever done something like that. But there was no perception that their joke was as tasteless as any other kind of rape joke.
This is why I wasn’t surprised to read, despite what one would hope, and despite the PR – that sexual harassment and assault are as common there as anywhere else and seem to be swept under the rug. When men regard women as objects for their fulfillment, whether they use God as an excuse or not, this is bound to happen. When a man honestly thinks he’s entitled to a woman, this is the result. It’s unchaste, it’s disgusting, it’s sinful and violent in the extreme, and it’s in no way the victim’s fault. It’s what happens when a man believes that women are for him, rather than human beings equal to him with unique lives and vocations of their own. It doesn’t matter if the man calls himself an incel and complains on reddit or harasses women with fantasies about God’s will. It’s the same thing.
Using the language of Catholicism will not save you, if you still regard your neighbor as an object for your satisfaction.
I’m going to be absolutely frank here, to the Catholic men reading this: I don’t think there’s such a thing as a vocation “to marriage” in the abstract. If God calls you to the married life, then your vocation is to one specific person: not to “a marriage” but to manifesting the awesome self-sacrificing love of God to one person in a uniquely specific way– and you’ll know which person that is, in part, because she’ll feel the call from God to love you in that specific way. There will be no mistake on her part that you’ll have to correct by harassing her. Nor is it funny to joke about harassment- much less “carrying off”- that you don’t plan to commit. God will not be stealing from you if the lady you like decides to enter a convent instead– or to go to medical school or run for congress or anything else, for that matter. Your vocation is not to find “a bride,” any bride who’s finally going to give you that sweet sex you’ve been waiting for. It’s to live your life chastely as a single person, missing no opportunity to love your neighbor as another self, until such time if any that God arranges for you to run into your soul mate whom you will love in a unique way. And yes, that will most likely eventually lead to sex, but if your goal is sex first and foremost you’re making a mistake. Women are not for you, to satisfy yourself. Women are for themselves and for their Creator in the same way you are. They don’t cease to be themselves because you fancy them or feel you’ve got a calling from God. Not even after you’re married.
Saving sex for marriage is not the cure for the kind of entitled, spoiled man who calls himself an incel. Indeed, saving sex for marriage is not in itself chastity, depending on the way you regard your female neighbor while you’re avoiding sex. Chastity is of the heart, not the genitals.
People are not objects for your satisfaction. Begin by learning this, and you might become chaste.
(Image via Pixabay)
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