Not to steal a march on Pandora, but she got me thinking.

We seem to enjoy a culture of victimhood. How many times have you turned on the news or opened the paper to hear someone complaining about their circumstance, some tragic life event, etc. and going on to say how it has ruined their lives? How many episodes of Dateline follow up with the people they have exposed (like that man who they profiled on the web predator sting who later killed himself rather than face the censure of his community) or profiled on their stories?

Pandora was speaking specifically of rape. Remove the emotion from the argument. We can all agree that rape is a bad thing. If we speak in psychological modern “vernacular”, rape is nothing other than a crime of aggression and violence, and not a crime of a passion and sexuality.

I do humbly beg to differ that last point. Rape is the ultimate expression of disdain – a man’s way of saying “I am and always will be more powerful than you in this particular capacity. I can do something to you that you cannot do to me. We will never be equal in this regard, and because I can do it I will.” I firmly believe that by committing this act, man demonstrates that at his basest level he has nothing but disdain for women, and sees women as nothing but a receptacle for his desires and his sperm.

My my.

Women do not need to embrace victimhood. If you let your rape or your molestation twist who you are, or become a pivotal moment in your life, you give your rapist/molester all the power in the world. You’ve given him more power than he deserves. Why should you let that person selfishness and arrogance and sociopathic desires change or influence who you are in the slightest? Ladies, don’t do it. You are not a victim. Your biology does not make you one. You can’t change what happened, or take it back, but you and only you have the ability to let it not change you.