“
I like threesomes with two women, not because I'm a cynical sexual predator. Oh no! But because I'm a romantic. I'm looking for "The One." And I'll find her more quickly if I audition two at a time.
”
”
Russell Brand
“
My panties were still on but he didn’t let that stop him, nosing them out of the way and tonguing my sex, making low, growling noises in his throat like a big cat purring with pleasure while it devoured its prey.
”
”
Emme Rollins (Dear Rockstar (Dear Rockstar, #1))
“
I am not your victim because you are not a predator any more than a bottle of scotch stalks an alcoholic.
”
”
Sue William Silverman (Love Sick: One Woman's Journey through Sexual Addiction)
“
We teach girls to be likeable, to be nice, to be false. And we do not teach boys the same. This is dangerous. Many sexual predators have capitalized on this. Many girls remain silent when abused because they want to be nice. Many girls spend too much time trying to be “nice” to people who do them harm. Many girls think of the “feelings” of those who are hurting them. This is the catastrophic consequence of likeability. We have a world full of women who are unable to exhale fully because they have for so long been conditioned to fold themselves into shapes to make themselves likeable. So
”
”
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (Dear Ijeawele, or A Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions)
“
We mute the realization of malevolence- which is too threatening to bear - by turning offenders into victims themselves and by describing their behavior as the result of forces beyond their control.
”
”
Anna C. Salter (Predators: Pedophiles, Rapists, and Other Sex Offenders)
“
Most women are all too familiar with men like Calvin Smith. Men whose sense of prerogative renders them deaf when women say, "No thanks," "Not interested," or even "Fuck off, creep.
”
”
Jon Krakauer (Missoula: Rape and the Justice System in a College Town)
“
The chief clears his throat and gives me the don’t be a sexual predator look.
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”
Pippa Grant (Mister McHottie (Girl Band #1))
“
Standing behind predators makes prey of us all.
”
”
DaShanne Stokes
“
When cops and prosecutors fail to aggressively pursue sexual-assault cases, Kevin argued, it sends a message to sexual predators that women are fair game and can be raped with impunity.
”
”
Jon Krakauer (Missoula: Rape and the Justice System in a College Town)
“
Lust, desire and passion. They can turn a wallflower into a sexual predator and a rational person into a raving lunatic.
”
”
Joanne Madeline Moore (Love and Sex Signs: Venus, Mars and Astrology)
“
The normal fuck by a normal man is taken to be an act of invasion and ownership undertaken in a mode of predation. Woman have been chattels to man as wives, as prostitutes, as sexual and reproductive servants. Being owned and being fucked are or have been virtually synonymous experiences in the lives of woman. He owns you - he fucks you. The fucking conveys the quality of ownership - he owns you inside out.
”
”
Andrea Dworkin (Intercourse)
“
He purses his lips, and the sexual predator mustache he’s rocking bushes up.
”
”
Elle Kennedy (The Score (Off-Campus, #3))
“
Astrid was surprised they still taught J. D. Salinger in school—he had slept with a teenager, hadn’t he? They should just be reading Toni Morrison. It seemed so easy, to cut out the creeps and sexual predators, just by cutting out all the men. Sure, you’d lose some decent people, but the net result would be so positive, who would complain?
”
”
Emma Straub (All Adults Here)
“
I don’t know any woman who hasn’t experienced some level of sexual predation, from catcalls, to unwanted advances at bars, to emotional manipulation, to violent rape. I certainly have—even “unrapeable” me. All women do need to worry about rape.
”
”
Lindy West (Shrill: Notes from a Loud Woman)
“
When rehabilitation works, there is no question that it is the best and most productive use of the correctional system. It stands to reason: if we can take a bad guy and turn him into a good guy and then let him out, then that’s one fewer bad guy to harm us. . . .
Where I do not think there is much hope. . .is when we deal with serial killers and sexual predators, the people I have spent most of my career hunting and studying. These people do what they do. . .because it feels good, because they want to, because it gives
them satisfaction. You can certainly make the argument, and I will agree with you, that many of them are compensating for bad jobs, poor self-image, mistreatment by parents, any number of things. But that doesn’t mean we’re going to be able to rehabilitate them.
”
”
John E. Douglas (Journey Into Darkness (Mindhunter #2))
“
A cougar is a sexually active and confident woman who's a predator. Tell me you not flattered.
”
”
Jane Green (Dune Road)
“
So many girls around the world—refugee girls in particular—suffer in silence after being sexually assaulted by someone they know. Most rapes happen at the hands of a relative or friend, not a stranger. I want girls to know that they have the power to speak out. They don’t have to stay quiet. No matter what culture or country you are from, there will always be pressure to remain silent, to never tell. But you don’t have to protect sexual predators. By speaking up, you are standing up for yourself. And you might be preventing it from happening again. Tell people what happened. The predators expect you to stay silent. You can prove them wrong.
”
”
Sandra Uwiringiyimana (How Dare the Sun Rise: Memoirs of a War Child)
“
Oddly then, in our search for meaning, we often assign victims too much blame for their assaults, and offenders too little. Our inconsistencies do not seem to trouble us, but they are truly puzzling. After all, if the offender is not to blame for his behavior, why would the victim be, no matter what she did our didn't do? Our views make sense, however, if you think that we are trying to reassure ourselves that we are not helpless and, that, in any case, no one is out to get us.
”
”
Anna C. Salter (Predators: Pedophiles, Rapists, and Other Sex Offenders)
“
I should meet many people who do not know anyone personally who has been raped or molested as a child. But I can't remember seeing a newspaper without a rape or molestation charge in it somewhere, and when I ask groups how many people know someone personally with a history of molestation, almost always, every hand in the room goes up.
”
”
Anna C. Salter (Predators: Pedophiles, Rapists, and Other Sex Offenders)
“
. . . Jennifer can’t be bought with money or threats. She wants this predator stopped. She wants the church to stop protecting or covering up for him. Settle this reasonably with no gag order or confidentiality clause. Do the right thing for a change. Only then will she consider a settlement.”
“See you in court.
”
”
Mark M. Bello (Betrayal of Faith (Zachary Blake Legal Thriller, #1))
“
To the sexual offender, possession is power, and total possession is absolute power.
”
”
Stephen G. Michaud (The Evil That Men Do: FBI Profiler Roy Hazelwood's Journey into the Minds of Sexual Predators)
“
I believe that sexual offenders and predators should be released…as long as it is mandatory they get to move into the house next door to the judge that released them.
”
”
Heather Chapple (Write like no one is reading)
“
And feeling like a failed sexual predator, because of pregnant Mary…
”
”
John Irving (The Fourth Hand)
“
When cops and prosecutors fail to aggressively pursue sexual-assault cases, Kevin argued, it sends a message to sexual predators that women are fair game and can be raped with impunity. On
”
”
Jon Krakauer (Missoula: Rape and the Justice System in a College Town)
“
I will focus on how the institution is organized, and how that structure—anachronistic, paramilitary, rigidly bureaucratic—produces a workplace culture that serves as a breeding ground for racism, corruption, sexual predation, brutality, unjustified lethal force, and excessive militarism.
”
”
Norm Stamper (To Protect and Serve: How to Fix America's Police)
“
It seemed so easy, to cut out the creeps and sexual predators, just by cutting out all the men. Sure, you’d lose some decent people, but the net result would be so positive, who would complain?
”
”
Emma Straub (All Adults Here)
“
In all the interviews I have done, I cannot remember one offender who did not admit privately to more victims than those for whom he had been caught. On the contrary, most offenders had been charged with and/or convicted of from one to three victims. In the interviews I have done, they have admitted to roughly 10 to 1,250 victims. What was truly frightening was that all the offenders had been reported before by children, and the reports had been ignored.
”
”
Anna C. Salter (Predators: Pedophiles, Rapists, and Other Sex Offenders)
“
One is that if women’s sexuality in Africa wasn’t under assault, if women were able to say no, if women weren’t subject to predatory attacks by men, or predatory behavior generally, then you would have a disease in Africa called AIDS. But you wouldn’t have a pandemic.
”
”
Stephen Lewis
“
Thomas MacAulay Millar argues that our culture offers sexual predators a “social license to operate,” by trivializing and denying their crimes, and reassuring them that they’re unlikely to face any serious consequences. Rape
”
”
Kate Harding (Asking for It: The Alarming Rise of Rape Culture--and What We Can Do about It)
“
The asylum, and later the national health service, warehoused thousands of patients made mad by the intrusions of a sexual predator. But these institutions had been dominated by the discredited Freudian fantasy that sexual abuse doesn’t happen - that it is our illicit desires that drive us crazy. A century ago, Freud recoiled from his own theory of the sexual seduction of children and projected the problem back into the patient. He claimed in his Aetiology of Hysteria that clients, typically women, were describing their fantasies, not facts, not ‘real events’. P3
”
”
Beatrix Campbell (Stolen Voices: The People and Politics Behind the Campaign to Discredit Childhood Testimony)
“
He studied me with his predator's gaze, assessing me from head to toe. I studied him back. He didn't just occupy space; he saturated it. The room had been full of books before, now it was full of him. About thirty, six foot two or three, he had dark hair, golden skin, and dark eyes. His features were strong, chiseled. I couldn't pinpoint his nationality any more than I could his accent; some kind of European crossed with Old World Mediterranean or maybe an ancestor with dark Gypsy blood. He wore an elegant, dark gray Italian suit, a crisp white shirt, and a muted patterned tie. He wasn't handsome. That was too calm a word. He was intensely masculine. He was sexual. He attracted. There was an omnipresent carnality about him, in his dark eyes, in his full mouth, in the way he stood. He was the kind of man I wouldn't flirt with in a million years.
”
”
Karen Marie Moning (Darkfever (Fever, #1))
“
Once women have lost her and then found her again, they will contend to keep her for good. Once they have regained her, they will fight and fight hard to keep her, for with her their creative lives blossom; their relationships gain meaning and depth and health; their cycles of sexuality, creativity, work, and play are re-established; they are no longer marks for the predations of others; they are entitled equally under the laws of nature to grow and to thrive.
”
”
Clarissa Pinkola Estés (Women Who Run With the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype)
“
Do not let your voice disappear! Protect our children from the predators of our society.
”
”
Dr. Patricia Dsouza Lobo
“
Be as the flower in the vase; as the viper at its base.
”
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Glenn Hefley
“
Recently I interviewed a psychopath. This is always a humbling experience because it teaches over and over how much of human motivation and experience is outside my narrow range. Despite the psychopath's lack of conscience and lack of empathy for others, he is inevitably better at fooling people than any other type of offender. I suppose conscience just slows you down. A child convicted molester, this particular one made friends with a correctional officer who invited him to live in his home after he was released - despite the fact the officer had a nine-year-old daughter.
The officer and his wife were so taken with the offender that, after the offender lived with them for a few months, they initiated adoption proceedings- adoption for a man almost their age. Of course, he was a child molester living in the same house as a child. Not surprisingly, he molested the daughter the entire time he lived there. [...]
What these experiences taught have me is that even when people are warned of a previously founded case of even a conviction, they still routinely underestimate the pathology with which they are dealing.
”
”
Anna C. Salter (Predators: Pedophiles, Rapists, and Other Sex Offenders)
“
over and over victims are blamed for their assaults. and when we imply that victims bring on their own fates - whether to make ourselves feel more efficacious or to make the world seem just - we prevent ourselves from taking the necessary precautions to protect ourselves. Why take precautions? We deny the trauma could easily have happened to us. And we also hurt the people already traumatized. Victims are often already full of self-doubt, and we make recovery harder by laying inspectors blame on them.
”
”
Anna C. Salter (Predators: Pedophiles, Rapists, and Other Sex Offenders)
“
fiction writers are fully ten times more likely to be bipolar than the general population, and poets are an amazing forty times more likely to struggle with the disorder. Based on statistics like these, psychologist Daniel Nettle writes, “It is hard to avoid the conclusion that most of the canon of Western culture was produced by people with a touch of madness.” Essayist Brooke Allen does Nettle one better: “The Western literary tradition, it seems, has been dominated by a sorry collection of alcoholics, compulsive gamblers, manic-depressives, sexual predators, and various unfortunate combinations of two, three, or even all of the above.
”
”
Jonathan Gottschall (The Storytelling Animal: How Stories Make Us Human)
“
I’ve heard nauseating stories of women who have given up their dreams because they fear for their safety, who go to worse schools that are closer to home in order to avoid sexual predators. These stories come from all over the world, including the US. Until the day we end all gender-based violence, we need stronger efforts to protect women and girls. There is no equality without safety.
”
”
Melinda French Gates (The Moment of Lift: How Empowering Women Changes the World)
“
My jaw tightened. “You mean to tell me any man can walk into our locker room?”
He said nothing, avoiding eye contact.
Just a few years ago, if a man walked in the women’s locker room, he would be arrested and thrown in jail and thought of as a sexual predator.
”
”
Riley Gaines (Swimming Against the Current: Fighting for Common Sense in a World That’s Lost its Mind)
“
In the months after the New York Times and New Yorker stories broke, dozens of additional women accused Weinstein of sexual harassment or violence. The number grew to thirty, then sixty, then eighty.
”
”
Ronan Farrow (Catch and Kill: Lies, Spies, and a Conspiracy to Protect Predators)
“
. . . this predator used his position in furtherance of his crimes and disguised his depravity as a religious ritual. This man will soon reside in an Ohio prison, where he belongs. He is not only guilty of serious crimes against children. He is guilty of a serious betrayal of faith.
”
”
Mark M. Bello (Betrayal of Faith (Zachary Blake Legal Thriller, #1))
“
Given these differences between the sexes, the sexual revolution was the biggest joke men ever played on women. By convincing them that the old rules didn’t apply and that two could play the predator game, men enticed women to do what men have always wanted women to do. But what a price was paid for the new “freedom.” And predictably, women were the ones who got stuck with the bill.
”
”
James C. Dobson (Life on the Edge: The Next Generation's Guide to a Meaningful Future)
“
Please do not ever put this pressure on your daughter. We teach girls to be likeable, to be nice, to be false. And we do not teach boys the same. This is dangerous. Many sexual predators have capitalized on this. Many girls remain silent when abused because they want to be nice. Many girls spend too much time trying to be ‘nice’ to people who do them harm. Many girls think of the ‘feelings’ of those who are hurting them. This is the catastrophic consequence of likeability. We have a world full of women who are unable to exhale fully because they have for so long been conditioned to fold themselves into shapes to make themselves likeable.
”
”
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (Dear Ijeawele, or a Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions: The Inspiring Guide to Raising a Feminist from global bestselling author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie)
“
The nub at the center of the notorious Roman Catholic sexual predation is an idolatry of the priest and of the priestly status that goes by the name of "clericalism." It is a malignity marked by a cult of secrecy; a high-flown theological misogyny that demeans all women and fosters an unbridled male supremacy; suppression of normal erotic desire; a hierarchical domination of priest over laypeople; and a basing of that power on threats of the doom-laden afterlife, drawn from a misreading of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
”
”
James Carroll (The Truth at the Heart of the Lie: How the Catholic Church Lost Its Soul)
“
With serial killers, for example, about the only safe generalization is that an inexplicably large percentage of them are named Wayne or Ricky Lee.
”
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Stephen G. Michaud (The Evil That Men Do: FBI Profiler Roy Hazelwood's Journey into the Minds of Sexual Predators)
“
What do you ask a sexual predator that likes to kidnap women and break them down until he’s tired of them?
”
”
Yolanda Olson (Save Riley)
“
Most sexual predators are people we know in settings we normally inhabit -at a party of a friend, at the department of a date, or in the sanctuary of our homes.
”
”
David M. Buss (When Men Behave Badly: The Hidden Roots of Sexual Deception, Harassment, and Assault)
“
It seemed so easy, to cut out the creeps and sexual predators, just by cutting out all the men.
”
”
Emma Straub (All Adults Here)
“
Just how and when events in Larry Lee’s life and mind had collided to create the compulsive sexual predator he’d become would never be clear. Yet
”
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S.R. Reynolds (Similar Transactions: A True Story)
“
And what happened? Fact-checked, focus-grouped, data-driven Clinton lost to the most deranged presidential candidate ever: a clown, a fraud, a sexual predator, an inveterate liar who has faked every single thing he’s ever done—a giant cube of flesh who embodies all our vilest instincts and our ludicrous celebrity culture. She lost—the Democrats lost, the liberals lost—to him.
”
”
Chapo Trap House (The Chapo Guide to Revolution: A Manifesto Against Logic, Facts, and Reason)
“
This monster needs to be locked up. Where did this predator come from? Has he done this before? How many young boys has he traumatized? How could the church expose unsuspecting children to such a man?
”
”
Mark M. Bello (Betrayal of Faith (Zachary Blake Legal Thriller, #1))
“
Males have an internal radar that can detect female sexual availability or vulnerability. This exposes young girls and women to predators who prey upon them and manipulate their unconscious desire and yearning for father-love. Combine this with a girl’s natural longing for an older male’s physical and emotional affection, and we see an increase in unwed teenage mothers, perpetuating the cycle anew. Many fatherless girls fall for the first male who shows them any kind of affection or attention that they crave.
”
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Rick Johnson (That's My Girl: How a Father's Love Protects and Empowers His Daughter)
“
But in any case, validity, offender self-reports have dubious validity, especially when the offender's self-interest is at stake. The only rule for deception in sex offenders I have ever found is this: If it is in the offender's best interests to lie, and if he can do it and not get caught, he will lie.
Being victimized as a child has become a ready excuse for perpetrating child molestation. The offender who claims he himself was victimized gets seen as less of a "monster" than one who wasn't a victim, and he gains much more empathy and support. It is hard to trust self-reports of sex offenders about abuse in their past when such reports are in their best interest.
Only a few studies on this topic have used objective measures, and they have found very different results.[102]
”
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Anna C. Salter (Predators: Pedophiles, Rapists, and Other Sex Offenders)
“
In a series of three studies, the offenders who claimed they were abused as a child were 67 percent, 65 percent, and 61 percent without the threat of a polygraph. With polygraph (and conditional immunity), the offenders who claimed they were abused as children were 29 percent, 32 percent, and 30 percent, respectively. The polygraph groups reported approximately half the amount of victimization as children as the nonpolygraph groups did.
Nonetheless, the notion that most offenders were victims has spread throughout the field of sexual abuse and is strangely comforting for most professionals.
”
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Anna C. Salter (Predators: Pedophiles, Rapists, and Other Sex Offenders)
“
Religious sexual harassment and abuse has become an epidemic. Sadly, it's not something new. It's existed since the fall of Adam and Eve. Religion is not exempt. A sacred place meant to be safe and holy has become the breeding ground for violence and evil.
”
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Dana Arcuri (Sacred Wandering: Growing Your Faith In The Dark)
“
Sigmund Freud was the first to hypothesize that female “hysteria” stemmed from childhood sexual assault, but he retracted his theory once he realized that it meant the ritzy neighborhood in Vienna in which he practiced was rife with sexual predators and child molesters.[
”
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Stephanie Foo (What My Bones Know: A Memoir of Healing from Complex Trauma)
“
The second most frequently asked question is, “What can we learn of moral value from the ants?” Here again I will answer definitively. Nothing. Nothing at all can be learned from ants that our species should even consider imitating. For one thing, all working ants are female. Males are bred and appear in the nest only once a year, and then only briefly. They are unappealing, pitiful creatures with wings, huge eyes, small brain, and genitalia that make up a large portion of their rear body segment. They do no work while in the nest and have only one function in life: to inseminate the virgin queens during the nuptial season when all fly out to mate. They are built for their one superorganismic role only: robot flying sexual missiles. Upon mating or doing their best to mate (it is often a big fight for a male just to get to a virgin queen), they are not admitted back home, but instead are programmed to die within hours, usually as victims of predators. Now for the moral lesson: although like almost all well-educated Americans I am a devoted promoter of gender equality, I consider sex practiced the ant way a bit extreme.
”
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Edward O. Wilson (The Meaning of Human Existence)
“
Some parents have taught their small children, “Go to the manager,” but this poses the same problem of identification as with the policeman: That small name tag is several feet above the child’s eye-line. I don’t believe in teaching inflexible rules because it’s not possible to know they’ll apply in all situations. There is one, however, that reliably enhances safety: Teach children that if they are ever lost, Go to a Woman. Why? First, if your child selects a woman, it’s highly unlikely that the woman will be a sexual predator. Next, as Jan’s story illustrates, a woman approached by a lost child asking for help is likely to stop whatever she is doing, commit to that child, and not rest until the child is safe. A man approached by a small child might say, “Head over there to the manager’s desk,” whereas a woman will get involved and stay involved.
”
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Gavin de Becker (Protecting the Gift: Keeping Children and Teenagers Safe (and Parents Sane))
“
All were dissected or decapitated or sexually assaulted after death. He cut leg meat from two of his victims into a macaroni casserole he prepared and ate. Kemper bludgeoned his mother with a hammer as she slept. He sawed off her head, had sex with her corpse, and carved out her larynx and shoved it down the garbage disposal.
”
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Stephen G. Michaud (The Evil That Men Do: FBI Profiler Roy Hazelwood's Journey into the Minds of Sexual Predators)
“
I've heard some people claim that their abuser/rapist made them stronger. We must realize that abusers and predators don't get credit for our strength, nor our healing. They did not make us stronger. Rather, the abusers and predators broke us. They shattered us. They turned our lives into a living hell. They violated us! Do you know who made you stronger? Do you know who made you brave? YOU did! You are a courageous survivor. You did the hard work. You overcame great obstacles. You are the one healing you. You did it!
”
”
Dana Arcuri (Soul Cry: Releasing & Healing the Wounds of Trauma)
“
Within-species sexual conflict arms races are analogous to arms races between predators and prey.
”
”
David M. Buss (When Men Behave Badly: The Hidden Roots of Sexual Deception, Harassment, and Assault)
“
A correspondent texted, “As a survivor of sexual abuse, I feel like we are working for a media cabal akin to the Vatican, willing to cover up sex crimes.
”
”
Ronan Farrow (Catch and Kill: Lies, Spies, and a Conspiracy to Protect Predators)
“
The pupils of her eyes widened, her nostrils trembled, and when she pressed up against him tenderly and began kissing him, she bared her teeth, a graceful predator in all her unfettered cruelty.
”
”
Leopold von Sacher-Masoch (Love. The Legacy of Cain)
“
The human mind and the peacock’s tail may serve similar biological functions. The peacock’s tail is the classic example of sexual selection through mate choice. It evolved because peahens (female peacock) preferred larger, more colorful tails. Peacocks would survive better with shorter, lighter, drabber tails. But the sexual choices of peahens have made peacocks evolve big, bright plumage that takes energy to grow and time to preen, and makes it harder to escape from predators such as tigers.
The human mind’s most impressive abilities are like the peacock’s tail: they are courtship tools, evolved to attract and entertain sexual partners. By shifting our attention from a survival-centered view of evolution to a courtship-centered view, I shall try to show how, for the first time, we can understand more of the richness of human art, morality, language, and creativity.
”
”
Geoffrey Miller (The Mating Mind: How Sexual Choice Shaped the Evolution of Human Nature)
“
He is a man-beast, carnivore incarnate, motivated by carnal avarice and wearing only the mask of civility.
She could sip from that cup.
It is his presumption that deters her: his belief that he has already caught Maud in his paw.
”
”
Emmanuelle de Maupassant (The Gentlemen's Club)
“
We seek compensation, true, but we also seek to prevent future abhorrent conduct by this or any other priest. We seek to punish a vicious predator of children and the religious institution that stands idly by and watches while a whole generation of God’s precious children are physically and psychologically raped of their childhood, their faith, and their trust in role models. This is about a hierarchy whose solution to the problem is to send the offending priest packing, quietly pay off victims, and actively cover up crimes. The cover-up is responsible for a vicious cycle of crime upon crime. This lawsuit says we will not go quietly like those who came before us. The vicious cycle stops here and now.
”
”
Mark M. Bello (Betrayal of Faith (Zachary Blake Legal Thriller, #1))
“
Humanity seemed to have a singular ability to find destructive uses for any constructive technology. Invent the computer, and you could be certain someone would invent computer viruses and other ways to attack it. Invent the Internet, an unimaginable treasure trove of information, and you could bet it would be used as a recruiting tool for hate mongers and instantly turned into a venue for child pornographers, sexual predators, and scam artists. Humanity never failed to find a way to become its own worst enemy. “I
”
”
Douglas E. Richards (Wired (Wired, #1))
“
Women were sub manu – under the hand: they could technically be executed by their fathers and husbands and were expected to display pudicitia, chastity and fidelity, to ensure the bloodline of their children, while running the home and keeping out of politics – though of course they exerted power behind the scenes. Once the childbearing was done, it is clear they enjoyed affairs with other nobles and even sex with slaves – provided they did not flaunt their pleasures. The familia included the family’s slaves, who were expected to be loyal to the dominus (master) and his household even more so than to the state. Domestic slavery, male and female, always involved sexual predations by masters – and mistresses. The killing of slaves by masters was entirely legal. In a slave-owning society, with as many as 40 per cent of the population enslaved, family and slavery were entwined. But slaves were often educated, sometimes revered and loved by their masters. They were frequently freed and freedmen could become citizens, later even potentates.
”
”
Simon Sebag Montefiore (The World: A Family History of Humanity)
“
I was amazed, shocked, and sickened by what I heard throughout the day, over and over, by many victims' stories. I can think of no one with whom I didn't recognize a common thread. These monsters, these evil priests, used the same words and methods on all of us. With each session, I would find something that sent a cold chill down my spine. It amazed and frightened me that the actual words used on me, to rape me, to rape me, were the same as the words used on so many others from all over the United States. You would think that all these priests either were educated in how to concur and rape us, or they met privately with each other to compare notes and develop their plan of attack on us. The pattern was so much the same, with the same words, that you would swear it was scripted and disbursed to these priests. Do they secretly have closed-door meetings on how to abuse us? A chilling thought.
Neary's routine of saying the “Our Father” during the rape and making me say it with him, repeating the “thy will be done” over and over, the absolution given me after he “finished,” the threats of having God take my parents away, the lectures about offering my suffering up to God, etc., etc., etc. My experience was identical, word-for-word, to that of many others. The exact words during the abuse were not just close, but exactly the same, as if it were some kind of abuse ritual. Ritual abuse is not limited to the religious definition and can include compulsive, abusive behavior performed in an exact series of steps with little variation. How could these similarities occur without the priests taking the same “abuse seminar” together some place, somehow? Was it taught in the seminary? In some dark corner? It goes beyond coincidence—the similarities in deeds and verbiage that these predators use on us. It truly chilled me to the very marrow of my bones.
”
”
Charles L. Bailey Jr. (In the Shadow of the Cross: The True Account of My Childhood Sexual and Ritual Abuse at the Hands of a Roman Catholic Priest)
“
He said that a killer comes to hunting humans gradually. The appetite builds from a young boy’s undifferentiated anger and morbidity of mind to a search for ever more violent pornography, the visual and written material that Ted believed had shaped and focused his fantasy world. Then comes the window peeping, followed eventually by crudely conceived and unsuccessful assaults. In Ted’s case, these gave way, over time, to a sophisticated taste for the chase and its aftermath: the selection of what he called “worthy” victims, pretty and intelligent young daughters and sisters of the middle class, nice girls whom Ted desired to possess, he said, “as one would possess a potted plant, or a Porsche.
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Stephen G. Michaud (The Evil That Men Do: FBI Profiler Roy Hazelwood's Journey into the Minds of Sexual Predators)
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Are Child Molesters Really Just Victims Themselves?
"All victims are offenders," one professional challenged me at a conference, "and all offenders are victims. How does your work address that?"
My work doesn't address that because I don't believe there's any evidence for that assertion. Obviously, not all victims are offenders, but it is also likely that most offenders weren't victims. The studies that find a high proportion of child molesters who were victims of child sexual abuse themselves are almost always based on self-report, and even there, study results differ dramatically. Studies show the number of child molesters who were themselves molested as children ranges from 22 percent in some studies to 82 percent in others.[101]
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Anna C. Salter (Predators: Pedophiles, Rapists, and Other Sex Offenders)
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While the party of Obama has little in common with that of JFK, for a better comparison, try exploring the Communist Party USA’s website (CPUSA.org), and you’ll be stunned at the resemblance between it and today’s Democratic Party. You might also take a moment to thoughtfully reflect on the Democrats’ candidates who in recent decades were either elected, or nearly elected, as president: Bill Clinton, a serial sexual predator; Al Gore, by many accounts a raving lunatic; John Kerry, who betrayed his fellow Vietnam vets and his country;10 Barack Obama, a deceitful, America-hating, Far-Left radical; and Hillary Clinton, accurately described by Pulitzer-winning New York Times columnist and Presidential Medal of Freedom recipient William Safire as “a congenital liar.”11 Whatever
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David Kupelian (The Snapping of the American Mind: Healing a Nation Broken by a Lawless Government and Godless Culture)
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We all feel the urge to exact revenge at one time or another, but most of us are able to suppress and control those impulses. Actual revenge murders tend to be one-offs rather than serial crimes. These types of murders have specific indicators and fall into one of two categories: retribution against individuals the killer feels have hurt or offended him, or retaliation against entire communities, such as school shooters who feel they have been bullied or disrespected. As a rule, though, while sexual predators tend to be acutely sensitive to any perceived slight or insult—while giving no mind to the feelings of others—they don’t generally have revenge as a motive; they don’t need it. They are already bound up with their own deadly obsessions, as we clearly see in Kondro’s case.
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John E. Douglas (The Killer Across the Table)
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No man ever really believes, deep down, that he is a predator. Some abusers blame their wives for their sexual frustration. Some blame their mothers for the way they were raised. Some men even tell themselves they are acting out a biological imperative, effectively blaming Mother Nature herself for their lack of self-control. There’s always a woman to blame behind every crime against womankind.
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Joanne Harris (Broken Light)
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Mankind is a self-domesticated animal; a mammal; an ape; a social ape; an ape in which the male takes the iniative in courtship and females usually leave the society of their birth; an ape in which men are predators, women herbivorous foragers; an ape in which males are relatively hierarchical, females relatively egalitarian; an ape in which males contribute unusually large amounts of investment in the upbringing of their offspring by provisioning their mates and their children with food, protection, and company; an ape in which monogamous pair bonds are the rule but many males have affairs and occasional males achieve polygamy; an ape in which females mated to low-ranking males often cuckold their husbands in order to gain access to the genes of higher-ranking males; an ape that has been subject to unusually intense mutual sexual selection so that many of the features of the female body (lips, breasts, waists) and the mind of both sexes (songs, competitive ambition, status seeking) are designed for use in competition for mates; an ape that has developed an extraordinary range of new instincts to learn by association, to communicate by speech, and to pass on traditions. But still an ape.
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Matt Ridley (The Red Queen: Sex and the Evolution of Human Nature)
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Trying to figure out where you fit while you’re living in a vanilla world is brutal. You basically never see yourself reflected back at you anywhere but porn. So your whole identity is super sexualized from the start. Which is so fucking weird, especially when you’re a kid. If you ever see any kind of Dom type on tv, ten times out of ten, people aren’t just making fun of them, they’re actually saying this person is a sadist and also a psychopath or a predator or a murderer, and they’re huge and scary and dressed in leather and latex and carrying whips. All that’s even available is warped caricatures of what vanilla people think kink is. It’s gross, and it makes it so hard to actually find your identity and not be ashamed when it’s just all bad rep written for shock value by people who have no idea what they’re talking about.
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Misha Horne (Hot Mess)
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Black women are acting irresponsibly by giving birth to baby after baby out of wedlock. Most of these children are from different fathers as well. These irresponsible men simply roam like wild beasts in heat from one woman to another and impregnate as many as possible without regard for the women or their children, dodging accountability as they go. These foolish women allow themselves to be used by these sexual predators and continue to give birth to babies who grow up without fathers. And, with fathers ducking responsibility, the welfare system picks up the tab for a big percentage of these illegitimate children.
The irresponsibility of black men and women is creating a cycle of poverty, mental disorders, and violence within the black community. This is not the result of white racism but immorality and the lack of character!
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Jesse Lee Peterson (Scam: How the Black Leadership Exploits Black America)
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Weinstein’s legal argument, in order of ascending absurdity and descending seriousness, was that anything negative about him was defamatory; that reporting on any company that used NDAs was impermissible; that he had cut a deal with NBC; that my sister was sexually assaulted; and that there was a child molester in my extended family. (Jonathan howled with laughter at it. “This letter is adorable,” he said. “I love this letter.”)
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Ronan Farrow (Catch and Kill: Lies, Spies, and a Conspiracy to Protect Predators)
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If a woman, teen, or girl says No, Stop, I Changed My Mind, I Can’t do This, or I’m Just Not Ready… Believe Her! No, she doesn’t REALLY want it. No, she’s NOT playing hard to get. No, she’s NOT just a tease. No, she didn’t ASK for it. Sexual violence is NOT okay no matter how much you try to rationalize it. Don’t be a predator! Have some self-control and RESPECT her decision. Forcing yourself on a person is sexual assault, period!
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Stephanie Lahart
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The sexual abuse of children is an ancient and pervasive crime, one that is committed wherever adults have power over the young. Schoolteachers, scoutmasters, other clergy, family members, even fathers and mothers are known to physically exploit their vulnerable charges. The home can be the cockpit of abuse. Defenders of the clerical status quo insist on this broader context, as if predation in the sacristy is no big deal. Alas, as I noted earlier, Pope Francis himself displayed this impulse to relativize the priestly crime.
But the exploitation of children by Catholic priests stands apart — in its worldwide range, in the enabling complicity of church authorities, and in its deeper meaning a sacrilege — because of how God is so often invoked to seduce and coerce victims. The crime of sexual exploitation, especially of children, has shown itself to be endemic to the priesthood.
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James Carroll (The Truth at the Heart of the Lie: How the Catholic Church Lost Its Soul)
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Humor can be such a good way to hide anger at racist, sexist degradation and to challenge white male authority sideways—without risking as much direct blowback—that it perhaps shouldn’t be a surprise that the comedian Tina Fey wrote jokes about Harvey Weinstein’s sexual predation—lines about being pinned under Weinstein, and turning down sex with him—that aired on her show 30 Rock in 2012, years before his behavior could be reported straight. In 2013, during the Oscars, the white male comedian Seth MacFarlane also made a Weinstein joke—about the lead actress nominees no longer having to pretend to be attracted to the producer. After 2017 reporting revealed the extent of Weinstein’s predation, MacFarlane explained that a friend of his, an actress who’d been harassed by Weinstein, had confided in him, prompting his joke. “Make no mistake,” he said at the time, his one-liner had come “from a place of loathing and anger.
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Rebecca Traister (Good and Mad: The Revolutionary Power of Women's Anger)
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The romance that has surrounded the Beat generation since the mid-Sixties has acted as a kind of sentimental glaze, obscuring its fundamentally nihilistic impulse under a heap of bogus rhetoric about liberation, spontaneity, and 'startling oases of creativity', Notwithstanding their recent media media make-over, the Beats were not Promethean iconoclasts. They were drug-abusing sexual predators and infantilized narcissists whose shamelessness helped dupe a confused and gullible public into believing that their utterances were works of genius. We have to thank Lisa Phillips and the Whitney for inadvertently reminding us of this with such vividness. If nothing else, 'Beat Culture and the New America' showed that the Beats were not simply artistic charlatans; the were -- and, in the case of those who are still with us, they remain -- moral simpletons, whose destructive influence helped fuel the cultural catastrophe with which we are now living.
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Roger Kimball (The Long March: How the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s Changed America)
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On his first day in charge of his new command, Hazelwood inspected the MPs’ living quarters and equipment. “They were pretty awful,” he says. “I picked up one soldier’s rifle and discovered that it was rusted shut. “The first sergeant said, ‘Sir, here’s your chance to establish your authority. Court-martial the soldier.’ “I said, ‘No, I think I’ll put him on the lead Jeep on tomorrow’s four a.m. convoy escort—with this weapon.’ “That PFC spent the entire night cleaning his weapon.
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Stephen G. Michaud (The Evil That Men Do: FBI Profiler Roy Hazelwood's Journey into the Minds of Sexual Predators)
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We long for an intimate connection, but that longing makes us feel vulnerable. Therefore, we guard our hearts for self-preservation, which barricades that intimacy we are longing for. Casual sex is a very sad cat and mouse game. The man is entrapped in his role as the sex-driven predator constantly on the hunt for new conquests, while the woman is the prey that must find her perfect combination of sexual allure and virtue, with the sexual allure being what attracts him and virtue what keeps him.
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Maggie Georgiana Young
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Within Darwin’s argument for mate choice in Descent was another revolutionary idea: that animals are not merely subject to the extrinsic forces of ecological competition, predation, climate, geography, and so on that create natural selection. Rather, animals can play a distinct and vital role in their own evolution through their sexual and social choices. Whenever the opportunity evolves to enact sexual preferences through mate choice, a new and distinctively aesthetic evolutionary phenomenon occurs.
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Richard O. Prum (The Evolution of Beauty: How Darwin's Forgotten Theory of Mate Choice Shapes the Animal World - and Us)
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she’d been offered money to attend parties hosted by Jeffrey Epstein, the billionaire investor, and attended by Trump. Hair-curling allegations of sexual violence followed: the lawsuit contended that the plaintiff and other minors were forced to perform sex acts on Trump and Epstein, culminating in a “savage sexual attack” by Trump; that Trump had threatened the plaintiff and her family with physical harm should she ever speak; and that both Trump and Epstein were told that the girls involved were underage.
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Ronan Farrow (Catch and Kill: Lies, Spies, and a Conspiracy to Protect Predators)
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It changed the life of mankind more radically than the printing press. It created suburbs and a hundred other dependencies—sexual and economic and narcotic—upon the automobile. And the automobile paved the way for more profound – more inward- inner dependencies upon Television and then robots, and finally the ultimate and predictable conclusion of it all: the perfection of the chemistry of the mind…It all began, I suppose, with learning to build fires—to warm the cave and keep the predators out. And it ended with time-release Valium.
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Walter Tevis (Mockingbird)
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All creatures must learn that there exist predators. Without this knowing, a woman will be unable to negotiate safely within her own forest without being devoured. To understand the predator is to become a mature animal who is not vulnerable out of naïveté, inexperience, or foolishness. Like a shrewd tracker, Bluebeard senses the youngest daughter is interested in him, that is, willing to be prey. He asks for her in marriage and in a moment of youthful exuberance, which is often a combination of folly, pleasure, happiness, and sexual intrigue, she says yes. What woman does not recognize this scenario?
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Clarissa Pinkola Estés (Women Who Run With the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype)
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Once women have lost her and then found her again, they will contend to keep her for good. Once they have regained her, they will fight and fight hard to keep her, for with her their creative lives blossom; their relationships gain meaning and depth and health; their cycles of sexuality, creativity, work, and play are re-established; they are no longer marks for the predations of others; they are entitled equally under the laws of nature to grow and to thrive. Now their end-of-the-day fatigue comes from satisfying work and endeavors, not from being shut up in too small a mind-set, job, or relationship. They know instinctively when things must die and when things must live; they know how to walk away, they know how to stay. When women reassert their relationship with the wildish nature, they are gifted with a permanent and internal watcher, a knower, a visionary, an oracle, an inspiratrice, an intuitive, a maker, a creator, an inventor, and a listener who guide, suggest, and urge vibrant life in the inner and outer worlds. When women are close to this nature, the fact of that relationship glows through them. This wild teacher, wild mother, wild mentor supports their inner and outer lives, no matter what.
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Clarissa Pinkola Estés (Women Who Run With the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype)
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The second story tells of how the malignity of that clericalism has been laid bare in recent years by the scandal of priests sexually abusing children, while bishops have protected the predators instead of their victims—a deviance so deeply driven into the Catholic culture that not even the brave and charismatic Pope Francis has been able or willing to uproot it. And the third story is my own—how Jimmy, how I, became a priest; then a writer, and an op-ed columnist for The Boston Globe, even as that paper’s Spotlight team broke the Church’s sexual abuse scandal; and, finally, a shattered believer forced to confront the corruption at the heart of my faith.
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James Carroll (The Truth at the Heart of the Lie: How the Catholic Church Lost Its Soul)
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The male imperative to compete for females often comes at a heavy cost. In some mammals, such as kangaroos, mountain sheep, deer and sea elephants, it leads to fights that can result in life-threatening injuries. At a minimum, the loser can expect a drop in status as well as eviction from the most favorable feeding grounds, leading to a shortened life expectancy. Moreover, sexual selection often operates at cross-purposes with other evolutionary forces.[152] A male who develops disproportionately sized organs, or displays brilliant color, or emits certain sounds, may well lose some of his mobility or become more vulnerable to predators. Trying to attract a female, in other words, may cost him his life.
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Martin van Creveld (The Privileged Sex)
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The 1.2 billion members of the church are expected to conduct themselves according to the morals foisted upon them by said church, but those in the church’s power structure do not hold themselves to the same standards. They don’t view themselves as beholden to the same morality as their parishioners, because they know what those parishioners don’t—that the morality they peddle is not about good or bad, it’s about maintaining power and control. So even the clergy that weren’t sexually preying on kids were defending those who did and working hard to see that predator priests were spared from the negative consequences of their insidious transgressions. The mantra of the powerful has always been: 'We are the powerful and we can do as we please. You are the subjects and you will do as you’re told'.
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T.J. Kirk
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Respect but do not fear your own fear. Do not let it come between you and something that might be deeply enjoyable. Remember it is quite normal to be a bit frightened of being alone. Most of us grew up in a social environment that sent out the explicit message that solitude was bad for you: it was bad for your health (especially your mental health) and bad for your 'character' too. Too much of it and you would promptly become weird, psychotic, self-obsessed, very possibly a sexual predator and rather literally a wanker. Mental (and even physical) well-being, along with virtue, depends, in this model, on being a good mixer, a team-player, and having high self-esteem, plus regular, uninhibited, simultaneous orgasms with one partner (at a time).
Actually, of course, it is never this straightforward because at the same time as pursuing this 'extrovert ideal', society gives out an opposite - though more subterranean - message. Most people would still rather be described as sensitive, spiritual, reflective, having rich inner lives and being good listeners, than the more extroverted opposites. I think we still admire the life of the intellectual over that of the salesman; of the composer over the performer (which is why pop stars constantly stress that they write their own songs); of the craftsman over the politician; of the solo adventurer over the package tourist. People continue to believe, in the fact of so much evidence - films, for example - that Great Art can only be produced by solitary geniuses. But the kind of unexamined but mixed messages that society offers us in relation to being alone add to the confusion; and confusion strengthens fear.
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Sara Maitland (How to Be Alone (The School of Life))
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Gazelles have evolved an antipredator adaptation known as stotting.20 Stotting is a behavior in which the gazelles leap into the air, lifting all four legs simultaneously, land more or less on the same spot, and then bounce-leap on all fours several times. Gazelles stot only when they detect cheetahs. The tactic serves two possible functions. First, it alerts the cheetahs that they have been spotted and communicates that the hungry predators have lost the element of surprise—one of their key weapons. Second, it signals to the cheetahs that the gazelles are in excellent physical condition. It is as though the stotting gazelles are saying: “I am so athletic, so nimble, so fleet of foot, that you won’t be able to catch me. You are better off going after more catchable prey.” Stotting works. Cheetahs rarely go after gazelles after watching them stot.
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David M. Buss (When Men Behave Badly: The Hidden Roots of Sexual Deception, Harassment, and Assault)
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Me?' he said, smiling, fixing her with icy blue eyes. 'Oh, I certainly didn't mean to. I'm sorry. I'm harmless, Mrs. Devon. Really, I am. All I want is a drink of water. You didn't think I wanted anything else-did you?'
He was so damned bold. She couldn't believe how bold he was, how smart-mouthed and cool and aggressive. She wanted to slap his face, but she was afraid of what would happen after that. Slapping him-in any way acknowledging his in sulting doul entendres or other offenses-seemed sure to encourage rather than deter him.
He stared at her with unsettling intensity, voraciously. His smile was that of a predator.
She sensed the best way to handle Streck was to pretend innocence and monumental thickheadedness, to ignore his nasty sexual innuendos as if she had not understood them. She must, in short, deal with him as a mouse might deal with any threat from which it was unable to flee. Pretend you do not see the cat, pretend that it is not there, and perhaps the cat will be confused and disappointed by the lack of reaction and will seek more responsive prey elsewhere.
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Dean Koontz (Watchers)
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One could understand feminism generally as an attack on woman as she was under “patriarchy” (that concept is a social construction of feminism). The feminine mystique was her ideal; in regard to sex, it consisted of women’s modesty and in the double standard of sexual conduct that comes with it, which treated women’s misbehavior as more serious than men’s. Instead of trying to establish a single standard by bringing men up to the higher standard of women, as with earlier feminism, today’s feminism decided to demand that women be entitled to sink to the level of men. It bought into the sexual revolution of the late sixties and required that women be rewarded with the privileges of male conquest rather than, say, continue serving as camp followers of rock bands. The result has been the turn for the worse. ... What was there in feminine modesty that the feminists left behind?
In return for women’s holding to a higher standard of sexual behavior, feminine modesty gave them protection while they considered whether they wanted to consent. It gave them time: Not so fast! Not the first date! I’m not ready for that! It gave them the pleasure of being courted along with the advantage of looking before you leap. To win over a woman, men had to strive to express their finer feelings, if they had any. Women could judge their character and choose accordingly. In sum, women had the right of choice, if I may borrow that slogan. All this and more was social construction, to be sure, but on the basis of the bent toward modesty that was held to be in the nature of women. That inclination, it was thought, cooperated with the aggressive drive in the nature of men that could be beneficially constructed into the male duty to take the initiative. There was no guarantee of perfection in this arrangement, but at least each sex would have a legitimate expectation of possible success in seeking marital happiness. They could live together, have children, and take care of them.
Without feminine modesty, however, women must imitate men, and in matters of sex, the most predatory men, as we have seen. The consequence is the hook-up culture now prevalent on college campuses, and off-campus too (even more, it is said). The purpose of hooking up is to replace the human complexity of courtship with “good sex,” a kind of animal simplicity, eliminating all the preliminaries to sex as well as the aftermath. “Good sex,” by the way, is in good part a social construction of the alliance between feminists and male predators that we see today. It narrows and distorts the human potentiality for something nobler and more satisfying than the bare minimum.
The hook-up culture denounced by conservatives is the very same rape culture denounced by feminists. Who wants it? Most college women do not; they ignore hookups and lament the loss of dating. Many men will not turn down the offer of an available woman, but what they really want is a girlfriend. The predatory males are a small minority among men who are the main beneficiaries of the feminist norm. It’s not the fault of men that women want to join them in excess rather than calm them down, for men too are victims of the rape culture. Nor is it the fault of women. Women are so far from wanting hook-ups that they must drink themselves into drunken consent — in order to overcome their natural modesty, one might suggest. Not having a sociable drink but getting blind drunk is today’s preliminary to sex. Beautifully romantic, isn’t it?
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Harvey C. Mansfield
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And what benefit do women derive from imprisoning men as date rapists apart from gratification of a desire for revenge? Seeing men punished may even confirm morally confused women in their mistaken sense of victimhood—resentment tends to feed upon itself, like an itch that worsens with scratching. Women are reinforced in the belief that it is their right for men’s behavior to be anything they would like it to be. They become less inclined to treat men with respect or to try to learn to understand or compromisse with them. In a word, they learn to think and behave like spoiled children, expecting everything and willing to give nothing.
Men, meanwhile, respond to this in ways that are not difficult to predict. They may not (at first) decline sexual liaisons with such women, because the woman’s moral shortcomings do not have too great an effect upon the sexual act itself. But, quite rationally, they will avoid any deeper involvement with them. So women experience fewer, shorter and worse marriages and “relationships” with men. But they do not blame themselves for the predicament they are in; they refuse to see any connection between their own behavior and their loneliness and frustration. Thus we get ever more frequent characterizations of men as rapists and predators who mysteriously refuse to commit.
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F. Roger Devlin (Sexual Utopia in Power: The Feminist Revolt Against Civilization)
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Jan Hindman knows all too well that people who have lied for decades about their offending would lie to her about being victimized as a child, so she compared the reports of abuse by child molesters who were not being polygraphed on their answers with a later group who was informed that they would have to take a polygraph after the interview. The group that was being polygraphed was also given immunity from prosecution for crimes previously unknown in order to take away one of the many reasons that offenders lie.[103]
The study is not about how good the polygraph is — although it appears to be highly accurate[104] and better than people are at detecting deception in any case. Rather, this study is about how good the offenders thought the polygraph was because the answers of the group who was going to take the polygraph turned out very different from the group who wasn't going.
In a series of three studies, the offenders who claimed they were abused as a child were 67 percent, 65 percent, and 61 percent without the threat of a polygraph. With polygraph (and conditional immunity), the offenders who claimed they were abused as children were 29 percent, 32 percent, and 30 percent, respectively. The polygraph groups reported approximately half the amount of victimization as children as the nonpolygraph groups did.
Nonetheless, the notion that most offenders were victims has spread throughout the field of sexual abuse and is strangely comforting for most professionals.
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Anna C. Salter (Predators: Pedophiles, Rapists, and Other Sex Offenders)
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Ladies and gentlemen!” A loud, brash male voice rose above the din in the bar; it was bellowing and unmistakable. “May I have your attention, please!”
Abe’s stomach tightened into a ball. After more than twenty years of listening to absurd nonsequiturs being bandied about during lulls in the office by the same voice, Abe knew who was speaking in an instant. His longtime business partner, CS Duffy, clad in his standard black Carhartt hooded sweatshirt and faded blue jeans, a Milwaukee Brewers cap on his head, was standing on a chair holding up his private investigator’s license folio as if it was some sort of officious piece of federal ID. “My name is Dr. Herbert Manfred Marx. I am with the CDC. We have an emergency situation.”
The bar quieted nearly to silence. Abe started to move toward his partner. He had no idea what Duff was planning to say or do, but he knew it wouldn’t be good.
Duff looked around the room, taking the time to make eye contact with the dozens of concerned speed daters. “The CDC has isolated a new form of sexually transmitted disease. We are calling it Mega-Herpes Complex IX. It is highly contagious and may result in your genitals exploding off your bodies in much the same way some lizards eject their own tails to confuse pursuing predators.”
There were a few gasps from some of the women in the room and a round of confused murmurs.
Duff continued unfazed. He unfurled a large, unflattering photocopy of an old photograph of Abe’s face. “We believe we have tracked Patient Zero to this location. If you see this man, for the love of God, do not sleep with him!”
Abe walked up to Duff, grabbed his sleeve, and yanked him off the chair.
Duff landed heavily. “Hey, Patient Zero! Good to see you.
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Sean Patrick Little (Where Art Thou? (Abe and Duff Mystery Series Book 3))
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THE ORIGIN OF INTELLIGENCE Many theories have been proposed as to why humans developed greater intelligence, going all the way back to Charles Darwin. According to one theory, the evolution of the human brain probably took place in stages, with the earliest phase initiated by climate change in Africa. As the weather cooled, the forests began to recede, forcing our ancestors onto the open plains and savannahs, where they were exposed to predators and the elements. To survive in this new, hostile environment, they were forced to hunt and walk upright, which freed up their hands and opposable thumbs to use tools. This in turn put a premium on a larger brain to coordinate tool making. According to this theory, ancient man did not simply make tools—“tools made man.” Our ancestors did not suddenly pick up tools and become intelligent. It was the other way around. Those humans who picked up tools could survive in the grasslands, while those who did not gradually died off. The humans who then survived and thrived in the grasslands were those who, through mutations, became increasingly adept at tool making, which required an increasingly larger brain. Another theory places a premium on our social, collective nature. Humans can easily coordinate the behavior of over a hundred other individuals involved in hunting, farming, warring, and building, groups that are much larger than those found in other primates, which gave humans an advantage over other animals. It takes a larger brain, according to this theory, to be able to assess and control the behavior of so many individuals. (The flip side of this theory is that it took a larger brain to scheme, plot, deceive, and manipulate other intelligent beings in your tribe. Individuals who could understand the motives of others and then exploit them would have an advantage over those who could not. This is the Machiavellian theory of intelligence.) Another theory maintains that the development of language, which came later, helped accelerate the rise of intelligence. With language comes abstract thought and the ability to plan, organize society, create maps, etc. Humans have an extensive vocabulary unmatched by any other animal, with words numbering in the tens of thousands for an average person. With language, humans could coordinate and focus the activities of scores of individuals, as well as manipulate abstract concepts and ideas. Language meant you could manage teams of people on a hunt, which is a great advantage when pursuing the woolly mammoth. It meant you could tell others where game was plentiful or where danger lurked. Yet another theory is “sexual selection,” the idea that females prefer to mate with intelligent males. In the animal kingdom, such as in a wolf pack, the alpha male holds the pack together by brute force. Any challenger to the alpha male has to be soundly beaten back by tooth and claw. But millions of years ago, as humans became gradually more intelligent, strength alone could not keep the tribe together.
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Michio Kaku (The Future of the Mind: The Scientific Quest to Understand, Enhance, and Empower the Mind)