Reply #129: That's certainly worth considering. When dad finds out his little

[jtuck004]

girl is raped, he goes berserk with rage. And here we are only talking players in sports, not relatives. Depending on the circumstances I have no trouble believing a large percentage of the men I have known over the decades would have trouble understanding what happened, much less deciding what to do. Even something as basic as taking the boy to the doctor, unless it was bleeding-ly obvious. Not all, but many men deal with oppression and violence against boys differently than they do girls.. They might fool people in the larger community but this isn't the wider community. It is a small circle of males within.

I have no problem envisioning a father, much less a non-relative not calling the police because he can't quite bring himself to say it, maybe not until a trusted counselor tells him in painful detail. Not all men, certainly, but enough. And I can damn sure see them condoning this against little boys out of self-interest, a better job. I mean, look at Wall Street.

I think most of the men I knew/know in my life were and are either uncomfortable or ignorant of how to care for a boy, short of bringing home a paycheck. (I could be overstating it, but if 50% of marriages end, how could 50% of child care not be negatively affected?).

But especially a boy's sexuality and personality. Men handle that differently, perhaps even worse than they do the girls. It's sort of a fraternity thing, like cops, where the norm is to see the hurt boy in tears and tell him that it will be ok, to be tough, and would he like a football? I have real trouble seeing a coach do that to a hurt little girl. And the boy, especially by 11, would be too ashamed to say anything, maybe admitting to a mythical fight or accident if he had to.

I would bet most fathers would rather have a kid with a cleft palette than one where he perceives a sexual abnormality in his son.

People STILL think rape is about how women dress, and many see pedophilia as about sex. How can they NOT have REAL trouble wen it comes to the boy? He should have worn other jeans? It's the same violence and oppression, and perhaps sickness, but in these little clubs it is not handled the same way.

It's not just churches and football locker rooms btw. It's little military academies, juvenile detention and jails, foster care (In South Dakota they take a lot of tribal children and give them to white folks in the community, (what's up with that, anyway?), I can't imagine there aren't some problems there. Other places...

The experience of a boy is that getting hurt may not mean the same thing when heard from a boy as it does when heard from a girl in one of these, or other, male-dominated places, especially when the discovery is made by one of the men in the circle.

Girls are a separate issue, yet there are just as many places where they are abused and where it is ignored.

Evil can exist in a lot of places, eh?