I Almost Skipped Those Chapters…

I picked up Why Men Rape by Tara Kaushal, expecting to read about crimes, criminals, and maybe the psychology behind sexual violence.

The Social Web

That seemed like a fair expectation.

When we hear about rape, we usually focus on the individual. Who committed the crime? What happened? Will justice be served?

Most conversations begin and end there.

But a few chapters later, I was reading about schools, English, jobs, caste, class and social mobility. I remember thinking,

“Why is a book about rape talking about all these things?”

At first, it felt completely unrelated.

But I didn’t skip those chapters.

I even wondered if those chapters belonged in another book. I went back and read those pages again.

I found myself wondering : What kind of society shapes people long before a crime ever happens?

Growing up, we quietly learn things nobody writes in a textbook.

We notice which schools people admire.

Which language gets more importance.

Which jobs earn more respect.

Which backgrounds seem to open more doors.

Nobody teaches us these lessons directly.

Yet somehow, we all learn them.

It was around this point that I started understanding why these chapters were there. Maybe the author wasn’t asking me to look only at the crime. Maybe she was asking me to look at the world people grow up in before the crime ever happens. That was a very different question.

That doesn’t excuse violence. It doesn’t reduce responsibility. It simply asks us to look beyond the crime itself.

And The book made me wonder:

If society teaches us certain ideas about status, power, and belonging from a young age, do those lessons also influence how we see other people?

Do they shape how we understand respect, equality, consent, and relationships?

I don’t know if I have the answers.

But I think these are questions worth asking.

Whenever something terrible happens, we naturally demand justice and we should.

But if we also want to prevent such violence, maybe we need to ask questions that are harder and less comfortable.

Not just about individuals.

But about the society that quietly shapes all of us long before any crime becomes visible.

I picked up the book hoping to understand the crime.

I closed it wondering whether understanding society is also part of that conversation.

………

This is my personal reflection after reading a few chapters from the book. It reflects what those pages made me think about, not a summary of the book or a conclusion about society.