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Comment by _f1dq | Hacker News Reader

There is a lot about the sexual events in this post that, to me, highlights something I feel is important which is: we parents need to get better had having conversations with our children around sex.

This girl was feeling uncomfortable and crying but at the same time "didn't think those behaviors were problematic". I can't help but wonder if her parents never sat her down and discussed situations like this and, I get it. That's a really uncomfortable conversation to have with your child. It is, however, an important one.

This doesn't just apply to girls by the way. We parents need to be telling our sons what kind of behavior is and isn't acceptable. It's not enough to expect them to figure it out. Who are they figuring it out from if not us? Probably other inexperienced boys.

Please don't rush to put words in my mouth by thinking I am suggesting the guy in the article is innocent of the accusations. I'm making no commentary on either party from this article. That's for the courts to decide should one or both parties choose to take that course of action.

I'm simply saying it is important that parents overcome their discomfort around discussions of sex with their children so that the children can make informed decisions.

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we parents need to get better had having conversations with our children around sex.

I'm a survivor of childhood sexual abuse. I thought long and hard about this and decided that talking to my children about the existence of sexual predators would rob them of their innocence.

I've studied how this works. Sexual predation almost never starts with rape. It starts with myriad instances of boundary violation and disrespect and culminates in rape.

Rape hinges on the detail of consent. As a society trying to combat this issue, we seem to overlook that for the most part.

I taught my children that hugs and kisses required consent. I taught that from birth. Even a baby too young to talk can turn their face away because they don't want a kiss or hold their arms up enthusiastically to receive affection.

When they were older, I told them if they told someone "no" and their decision was not respected, come get me.

I only had one of them come get me once. The person who felt entitled to get "sugar" from my child was utterly shocked that I told them they were wrong.

This was an elderly female relative. My children are both boys.

Most likely, she wasn't actually a child molester, but this practice of adults demanding hugs and kisses from children who have no right to say "no" is commonplace and gets treated as something funny in movies. I treated it as no laughing matter.

If you want children to understand consent and respect, the best thing to do is let them experience it firsthand from birth. And make sure they know that rule is a two-way street, not a one-sided privilege.

DoreenMichele coming in as a strong contender for Parent of the Year 2021. You rule.

Thank you for sharing this!

We've also taught a similar one in "your body, your choice." I can confirm some folks look at us sideways when we agree with our kids choice to not hug or kiss.

If there is one thing I'd want my kids to know it is how to establish and confidently hold a boundary.

My wife told me something a while back about how girls are often taught from a young age to be "sweet" and to defer to adults who demand their affection. I can't remember if it's something she read or came to herself upon examination of her youth. I can see the way that this idea on boundaries can grow to adulthood to having difficulty strongly advocating for oneself. The philosophies you laid out resonate strongly with me, and as a first-time parent expecting a daughter soon, I hope I can correctly instill them in her.

Did you ever deal with an instance where your kids started telling you "no" in response to demands you felt were reasonable, twisting your original explanations to use against you, for things like eating, cleaning up or hygiene? How did you reconcile the difference?

I made sure my demands were reasonable and gave them options. If they didn't want to bathe that night, they had to pass a sniff test. If they didn't want a haircut, they could grow their hair as long as they wanted so long as they kept it clean.

For eating, I made healthy foods available that they liked. This worked really well. One son has two conditions that can land a child in in-house hospital treatment for aversion to eating and he never had issues like that.

For trying new foods, they had to try it, not finish it. I never made them do things like clean their plate. Instead, I planned ahead for how much I expected people to eat at the meal.

I always had a good reason for what I was asking and it very rarely came to "because I said so." On the rare occasions where it did hit that point, they went along with it because it was rare, so they were convinced I had a good reason even if I couldn't get them to understand it.

Thanks for your responses :)

I also am super flexible with food. Lots of obesity is caused by forcing kids to eat in excess. I don’t make candy available for meals, but not do they have to eat. When they do it, it’s natural food.

I have one major rule - if I give an absolute command, it must be obeyed immediately without question. In exchange, I promise to do it very rarely and explain my reasons as the earliest possible convenience. This has helped in situations where it wasn’t practical for me to physically drag them - get out of the way of the car, come towards me NOW and away from that crumbling cliff. Stuff like that.

Most other things fall into place just by showing by example. Show interest in their homework, talk excitedly about science, etc, they do their best in school.

> Did you ever deal with an instance where your kids started telling you "no" in response to demands you felt were reasonable, twisting your original explanations to use against you, for things like eating, cleaning up or hygiene?

As a parent of teenagers... omg, yes. LOL. I think it's as much because they're teenagers preparing to leave the nest as much as anything.

The question was aimed at me. I never experienced that.

That doesn't mean the teen years didn't have some bumps. The worst of that was cleared up by explaining to my children that they were being flooded with hormones and a side effect of high levels of testosterone is aggression and anger.

So if they were feeling very, very angry, it wasn't because they were being subjected to extreme injustice they had never before seen. It was because they were hormonal.

That conversation ended with the punchline "You're problem is called testosterone, not my bitch mother." which caused everyone to crack up.

After that I occasionally would say "You sound like an icky, hormone soaked teenager." And my son would say "I am an icky hormone soaked teenager" and he would try to tone down whatever made me say that and I would try to cut him some slack for being hormone soaked and not entirely in control of his big, fat mouth because of it.

I love you. You sound like an awesome parent.

My grandma had a campfire saying that "smoke follows beauty." I realized many years later as an adult that it was part of a subconscious family mythology, handed down for who knows how many generations. If you're pretty, it's your fault for unwanted attention (smoke).

It’s your saying, but it doesn’t read that way to me. It’s not your fault but it’s a consequence. Just like with a campfire, perhaps this gives people an ounce of solace with unwanted attention, i.e. you’re dealing with this because you’re lucky to be pretty. It’s still not right to have to deal with it, but it’s reality.

We have a saying that "smoke follows the sheep-fucker".

Different kinds of families, I guess =)

Totally agree. As a boy I played chess at the book store. This one man would always have long conversations with me and tell me about all sorts of books. (This was great, I loved reading.) After a number of weeks, he wanted me to go have lunch with him down the street. I felt like this was weird, and said no. The following weekend one of the other men, a math professor at the college, took me aside and said flat out not to hang out with that man, or go anywhere with him. Long story short, predators start by forming a friendship and building trust. If, for whatever reason, your kids don't feel like they can come to you first for things, then they're at a higher risk for predators.

Thanks for this. I haven’t actually drawn a line between this kind of semi-forced physical affection and the blurring of consent as an adult, but it makes perfect sense. We even encourage/force kids to reciprocate gifts with physical affection. Surely this also inculcates a subconscious notion that you “owe” someone in this way.

Both genders should be taught both sides of the situation

This isn’t to play down the experiences of women at all, but it can be easy to forget that this happens to men too

Given the current culture, it can be even harder for men to come forward with their stories, and even less likely for them to be believed

As a plus, I think making sure to teach boys what is and isn’t acceptable to happen to them could help to teach them how to treat others

I think that otherwise, if it’s “don’t rape” for boys, and “don’t let people rape you” for girls, then it’s almost like marking each gender out solely as potential abusers and potential victims, which surely couldn’t be a good thing

These events are just as much about alcohol, misplaced trust in strangers, personally unsafe arrangements (sharing an AirBnb with an unfamiliar person), grossly disproportionate social influence etc. etc. as they are about "sex". In fact, even the sex the OP talks about was clearly coerced.

We should stop treating "tell folks not to have 'unacceptable' sex" as if it's a foolproof solution to all social problems. It just isn't.

+1 but especially our boys. Girls and women already learn so much about how to avoid being harmed by men. It’s time for our boys to learn how to become kind men - and for those of us who are men to model that for them.

Doesn't this remove agency from women?

If two adults get together, fly together, get a room together, drink wine together, have relations... Then we're supposed to say that consent can't be given because the woman is drunk. But they're both drunk. Isn't it essentially the patriarchy to say that a woman can't make that choice? Like if they're equals and they're both drunk, why do we blame the men?

Because they aren't really equals? Isn't that what we're fighting against? We blame the men for not ignoring the wishes of the woman while drunk. It's a little bit chauvinistic to think the men know better isn't it?

No, why on earth would it?

It seems like everyone is equal, until everyone is drunk, then the women need to be treated like children and protected.

Which is the very thing feminism was fighting AGAINST - having men make decisions for you. Then we blame men, say they need to do better.

That seems ridiculous.

> then the women need to be treated like children and protected.

Mate, no. This applies to men, women, nonbinary folks, non-human animals, etc. Literally any living thing. If you don't consent, anyone having sex with you is wrong. It's wrong if a man tries to have sex with a drunk, non-consenting person, and it's wrong if a women tries to have sex with a drunk, non-consenting person.

This is the _opposite_ of making a decision for someone. It's recognizing that they kind of _can't_ make a decision, so you simply do nothing.

...so why is the part about them drinking in the story?

They were consenting adults, both well within their senses? Or was she like unconscious and he's an absolute monster?

By non-consenting do you mean says no or didn't say yes?

They are the same.

non-consenting means not actively choosing the activity. Words or their absence are evidence from which someone might infer consent, but do not define it.

The guy was a predator, there was a clear pattern of sexual and emotional abuse.

"Predator" also implies the other party had no agency. It's this weird thing that keeps popping up...

Educate yourself on narcissistic abuse for more info.

Thanks, I'll read up on it.

In her story.

A story that paints him as responsible for everything including her feelings.

Blaming behaviors are a marker of Narcissistic Personality Disorder and Borderline Personality Disorder.

I'm obviously not qualified to diagnose either party, but a lot of the content of her article blames him for things he's not responsible for and that are completely out of his control.

Furthermore, it seems the worst he's guilty of is being interested in having consensual sex with her. Whereas she's interested in destroying his livelihood and career.

> For example, when I confronted him in person about the episode in Berlin, he told me that I had lured him. His words left me scared, humiliated, and ashamed. I found myself self-doubting, distressed, and depressed.

Ya from an armchair this does seem like classic narcissistic abuse. Mentor public figure in a position of power. Blame and gaslight the victim when confronted. Then shame the victim when she comes forward with her story.

Yes

At least here in California (and presumably much of the US) the threshold isn't merely intoxication. It's intoxication to the point that someone is incapable of consent. Not impaired judgment or above the legal driving limit, but drunk to the point that they are not even capable of giving a yes/no. If two people are drunk and have sex, evidently at least one of them was capable of consent because they had the capacity to initiate sex.

Thanks for the clarification, I didn't know that.

So neither of them would classify, in this story?

So it was just two consenting adults, and the part about wine was... Flavor text, essentially? Unless she was saying she was unconscious and I missed it.

I thought the implication there was essentially that she couldn't give consent, which is a rape accusation - that's very serious. But it doesn't sound like either of them would pass the bar for inability to give consent?

Unless I read it wrong.

People have the capacity to initiate all sorts of stupid things when they are too intoxicated to consent to anything legally.

Maybe in the case of financial agreements or other contracts, but that's not how sexual consent works with respect to alcohol. Otherwise, what happens if two people are both drunk and they both have sex? They're both simultaneously victims of and perpetrators of rape?

The above commenter is insinuating that society applies a double standard here: that if an intoxicated man and woman have sex, the former is considered a perpetrator while the latter is considered a victim. That is incorrect, both are treated equally in the eyes of the law. This scenario doesn't happen because if two people had sex at least one was sober enough to decide to have sex. This situation where two people are intoxicated to the point where they are incapable of consenting have sex cannot occur.

Here's the actual law: https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml...

> A policy that, in the evaluation of complaints in the disciplinary process, it shall not be a valid excuse that the accused believed that the complainant affirmatively consented to the sexual activity if the accused knew or reasonably should have known that the complainant was unable to consent to the sexual activity under any of the following circumstances:

> The complainant was incapacitated due to the influence of drugs, alcohol, or medication, so that the complainant could not understand the fact, nature, or extent of the sexual activity.

It's not supposed to be fair, the women are always right

Consent is too often treated as this magical concept that makes everything right when it's present in some form. Many people seem to think of consent as a "yes" when often it's more a lack of "no". Someone not protesting or going along with something doesn't absolve the other party of responsibility. Heck, even explicit consent doesn't do that. Would you accept someone repeatedly offering another person in their company drugs when that person hasn't outright refused them but not really shown interest either?

When someone goes along with something but ends up feeling uncomfortable or even resentful about it, they can talk about it with the other party. And that party should acknowledge it. They may have meant no harm or even be surprised or feel hurt, but a decent person would consider the other's feelings and admit they may have had poor judgement. This Jon Pretty guy allegedly has a pattern of maneuvering women into vulnerable positions, inappropriately bragging about his "conquests" and from what multiple sources confirm shows a bunch of telltale signs of an emotional abuser and manipulator. It wasn't one instance of them being drunk, it was an extensive period of pushing boundaries, coercion and probably gaslighting.

You'll always hear questions along these lines. "Why did she stay around him if she was uncomfortable/mistreated/abused?" "Why did she wait so long to talk about it if it bothered her so much?" "Why didn't she collect proof?" "Why didn't she just say no?" These questions interpret the situation as far too simple. Abusers are great at creating doubt. They do something wrong, they make their victims feel as equal accomplices. Good and fun times are alternated with bad ones. They don't outright break the law or force someone but will push boundaries and wear someone down repeatedly to get their way despite the discomfort of the other.

That's why it's so hard for a victim to come forward. It's exactly because everyone says "well you didn't set hard boundaries, did you?" It's because maybe no crime was committed according to the letter of the law so they don't feel like they really have a case to make. It's because the victim initially feels like they share as much responsibility or it's their own fault and they should have known better. Abusers are great at walking that line where they get what they want while still maintaining plausible deniability, making it impossible to fully dismiss the argument that the other person is responsible too. It lets them justify their actions to themselves and others, believing it was as much the agency of the other party as their own. Meanwhile they're constantly using a position of power and a victim's weaknesses to manufacture precisely the situation they want.

They call them predators for a reason. It's cause they seek out prey. They know what to look for in a potential target. Don't blame a victim for being possibly naive, inexperienced or easy to sway when those were exactly the preconditions to be taken advantage of. It doesn't justify someone doing just that.

Pretty much, yes. Women are held to the same standard as children in situations like. Sharing a room with a male stranger? How could she possibly know something was wrong. Poor, sweet, innocent woman.

The man is expected to be the adult.

Boys should be educated, but this will still happen.

I cannot believe this guy doesn't know that what he's doing is wrong.

We should identify and mitigate high potential threats by public warning, ostracism or legal action. Overcorrect if necessary.

> Overcorrect if necessary.

Hell no, that’s what all our legal systems are not about and there are also provisions against this sort of zealotry.

And rightly so, it’s such a historically proven road to hell and unintended consequences.

Are you implying that rape occurs because someone’s parents didn’t tell them not to or that they would not rape if their parents HAD told them not to do it?

Please don't put words in other people's mouths either. I think it's clear from GP's post that that's NOT what they were implying.

Then can you explain how “it’s time to teach our boys to become kind men” is relevant to the original discussion?

"Son, I want to talk to you about something.

You're getting older and obviously you're interested in sex. Being sexual is a healthy and normal part of being human. Know that I support you if you are gay, straight, non-binary, binary, etc... I love you because you are you and that will never change.

As your father, it is important to me that you are a kind and caring person. Kindness comes in many forms, many of which are obvious. Such as lending your arm to an elderly woman trying cross a busy, snow-covered street, for example. Kindness is also being generous to and patient with your partner before, during, and after sex. It is being aware of their needs and desires as well as what they don't like.

To that end; nobody, and I mean nobody, should be forced to have sex. If your partner doesn't clearly consent to having sex with you then it is forced. To do otherwise is an act of violence--the opposite of kindness. If you are unsure about whether your partner wants to have sex then they don't.

It is my sincerest hope that one day you find someone who you will fall in love with and who will fall in love with you. When you do, you will find that kindness plays an important role in that. Because sometimes that person will treat you poorly. They will be angry, short, and disrespectful to you. And you will do the same to them. That is part of being in a healthy relationship. It's unpleasant but it's how we grow. One thing I have learned in the years spent with your mother is that returning such anger and disrespect with kindness goes a long way towards developing a deep and lasting bond with one another.

Know that I am always available to you if you have any questions about sex, or any other subject for that matter. I know it's uncomfortable to talk about this right now. It is for me too. But it will get easier the more we talk about it so come to me anytime you feel you need to."

You said no that’s not what it means then you went on to imply just that. You are disconnected from your own communication

I can play devils advocate a bit on this topic, because sadly there's no real "rules" for being a parent other than "don't let your kid die".

I am lucky to have a mother who never hid the harsher realities of life from me; She taught me how to understand what "no" means, because it's easy for horny young boys growing up to hear "no" as "No, I want you to try harder" or "No, I am a good girl and I do not want to look like a slut by giving in", so, she said "no means no because the risk of hurting her is much higher than the reward of getting your way".

I don't want to blame the media for putting this in our heads, because it _is_ a real thing (that women are sometimes bashful and may expect men to be a bit more pushy to show that they are serious) but because it's so nuanced and difficult it's better to play it safe, because you really _need_ to be _looking_ for the nuance and looking out for clues they're not into it and I don't think people (especially men) understand that.

And even then it's not a given that we're taught to look for it; and even if we are: it takes time even if you _do_ look for it, it's MUCH better to play it safe.

Anyway, my point is, parents don't _necessarily_ teach men or women what consent actually means, the media doesn't help.

A good example, of course, is: Silence is not consent. Which is a very difficult concept to grasp given that it leads to weird thoughts about "it's not romantic to ask if she wants to have sex" but it's not just about not asking, it's about looking for non-verbal cues which could be easily missed if you're aroused.

When I was a boy, back when dinosaurs roamed the earth, we were explicitly taught that “no” meant “you’re not trying hard enough” and this message was backed by popular media/movies and sometimes actual testimony from the opposite sex. It took decades of unlearning to acquire a healthier sense of what consent meant. Not forgiving or excusing, but adding some often-missing context. I don’t think the current younger generation was raised with this warped view, thank goodness!

Not to mention that boys, small boys in particular are frequent targets of abuse. At certain ages even more than girls.

And an abused boy could well become an abuser in the future. Sad but true

And an abused boy could well become an abuser in the future. Sad but true

Are you talking sexual abuse? If so, then references please.

There are a lot of ways that abuse goes down the generations. For example girls who were abused are more likely to get together with abusive men as adults. But I've encountered zero evidence that victims of pedophiles are particularly likely to become pedophiles themselves when they grow up.

I have personal reasons to be interested in the topic, so I spent a lot of time at one point looking for evidence that sexually abused boys were likely to become sexual abusers as adults. I have concluded that such evidence both doesn't exist, and it isn't true. Had I known that when I was younger, I could have avoided a whole lot of guilt and self-hatred.

I just did some research. To me I always hear pedophiles themselves admitting that they were abused when they were children.

for example here https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/72050039.pdf https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/2082860/

but both of the studies says that the self reports are questionable.

Yes, those self-reports are very highly questionable.

First of all, we all rework our childhood memories to better fit our adult personas. Depressed people talk about all of the terrible things that happened to them as kids which make them depressed now. Happy people, all of the happy things that happened that make them happy now. A gay man might talk about wearing dresses and playing with dolls that made him gay.

But attempts to corroborate current stories with past events (the gold standard being longitudinal studies) find that none of that is true. Happy and depressed people have the usual mix of happy and sad childhood events, they just remember them selectively. The gay man's twin brother says maybe he wore a dress once, and has made a mountain out of a molehill. And so on.

Pedophiles are even worse. Pedophiles have the problem that they fall in love with children, and have to gaslight themselves into believing that they do no harm by having sex with the child. Under this pressure, pedophiles make up memories out of whole cloth.

However in general, we have not found any correlation between what actually happened to you before puberty, and who you wind up sexually attracted to after. We can't predict whether you'll be straight. Whether you'll be gay. Or whether you'll be a pedophile. Which means that if you were the unfortunate target of a pedophile, there is no particular reason to believe that have anything other than the 1% risk that every boy does of growing up into one.

This isn't true and looks to be a statistical issue. And the myth that you'll become an abuser is terrible one that haunts many abused individuals to this day.

To expand on this the two reasons for this myth are abusers tend to lie about their childhoods to gain sympathy. And basically there are a bunch of confounds that both increase the likelihood you will be abused and that you will be an abuser but there's no real causation.

Boys and men are constantly taught to be kind and protective toward women and even deferential to their wants. Just because there might be a small percent of men who have psychological disorders or otherwise don't behave properly doesn't mean that 95%+ of men don't have GOOD character, whether or not that comes from education.

But I think we should also be teaching boys and men how not to be victims. Both sexes can be abusers, and we spend almost no time teaching boys and men how to recognize and escape abusive situations.

This is not an education or even an inherently sexual issue.

In case you didn't notice, there is a pattern, very often, the aggressor is in a relative position of power.

People with power feel free to abuse people with less power, simply because they've learned that most of the time they can get away with it.

I also think we can build better communities by ensuring people are in safe situations, especially when traveling or when they are in an unfamiliar environment. This is especially true of young adults who have yet to experience predators.

I know it's probably not your intention, but you are shifting the blame from Jon to Yifan's parents. I hope this doesn't stay as the first comment in this thread.

It wasn't my intention nor do I believe that's what I'm doing. I'm simply using this event to highlight to other current and future parents like myself that we need to overcome our discomfort with discussing sex with our children so that we can provide them with tools should they ever find themselves in similar situations. I posit that her parents hadn't had those conversations, but I'm also not blaming them in any way if they hadn't, nor am I try to shift blame away from or to anyone.

That is why I was explicit in my request that people not put words in my mouth or read between the lines.

Asking for that doesn't take away the fact you decided to focus on how the victim's parents could have prevented that instead of focusing on the crime itself. It's an indirect way of blaming the victim instead of the accuser. We see this all the time when women get killed and someone says "we have to tell people it's not safe to go around alone at night". First, let's try to fix the real issue and then we can focus on stuff like that. And again, I know it wasn't your intention, but sometimes the impact is more important that the intention and this is still the first comment in the thread. People come, read this and then the idea of parents educating their kids lingers instead of how to stop predatory behavior from men.

If you want to suggest this wasn't the forum to bring up the topic of parents discussing sexual situations with their children then, fine, I'll concede to that. I believe the subjects of parents educating their children can coincide with how to stop predatory behavior, but I'm willing to accept the desire to discuss them separately.

However, to suggest I'm blaming the victim is the epitome of putting words in my mouth and I soundly reject that suggestion as nothing short of offensive. I have done no such thing, nor would I ever.

I respectfully ask that you retract any such suggestion.

Imagine for a moment your daughter was the one in this situation. She decides to share her experience and the first comment you see is "parents need to be better at teaching their kids about sex". How would you feel?

I think this comment is saying "here is something that some of us can do that might help prevent these kinds of situations in the future". In my opinion, that's a productive contribution to the conversation, and does not imply that Jon is any less guilty.

This is not about blame, it's about protecting people.

There will always be Jon's and worse than Jon's out there in the world. They are to blame indeed. But what are you going to do about it? How are you going to protect yourself and others?

Taking measures for protection does not mean you are to blame.

> we parents need to get better had having conversations with our children around sex.

Exactly. The conclusion is simple, yet challenging to implement: don't have sex outside of marriage. For girls and women: don't have casual relationships with men. Problem solved.

Marriage has nothing to do with it. It's just legal binding to unite the possessions and caretaking of the children. Abuse still happens, more often than not, in marriages, including rape. Unless you comment was sarcastic, your point is clearly proven wrong by and large.

> Marriage has nothing to do with it

Of course it does. Marriage means responsibilities and protects rights, and no one night stands. Just because abuse happens in some marriages does not mean that we should leave sexual relationships to happen adhoc. Limiting sexual relationships to contracts (marriage, not prostitution) is the solution that has worked forever basically. The widespread of STDs, not to mention children out of wedlock, not to mention the mental tolls that come out of easy relationships is already documented, and the society is paying the price.

The incident in very article you're replying to would have been avoided had there been no casual interaction with the man, let alone sleeping with him in the same room.

> your point is clearly proven wrong by and large.

Quite the contrary. We're already seeing the effects on conservative societies that have "westernized", and normalized sex outside of marriage. The effects have been catastrophic to say the least at every level: mental, societal, familial, health, financial. The society in its entirety is paying the toll.

By what metric has the solution worked? The number of kids produced?

What your logic straight dictates is that the solution to our freedom and dignity being stolen is to not have freedom and dignity in the first place.

You speak of mental toll. Do you understand the mental toll of being locked with your abuser in the same house and your abuser also having the support of the "society"? The mental toll of being devoid of any alternatives in the first place? The toll of being degraded and considered inferior and subservient to the other half of the population? Do you understand how much society pays because kids are grown up in such environments?

You speak of "Westernization" as if treating women as humans is a strange new counter-society idea. You got it backwards honey. Islam placing women below men and denying the freedoms and dignity of a human being, with the seal of approval of allah himself, with a small a, is the abnormal and perverse thing in human civilization.

You ask why I assume you are a Muslim? Only a Muslim would write such hateful things towards women. Even the misogynists of the other places and religions would not be able to write the things you did with a straight face and with such confidence.

May Islam die so that women can live.

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