”For if men are beasts, then what are we to say about the women who maintain relations with them?” asks David Rubinstein (”Feminism that degrades women,” Jan. 31). Belle, the beauty in ”Beauty and the Beast”
represents the answer, which is that women can find the good qualities in
”beasts.” Would that all men transformed their beastliness the way the beast did.
Rubinstein`s criticism that some statistics of male aggression crimes, like rape and child molestation, are bloated focuses too much on the trees and entirely loses sight of a dangerous forest. Even using his proffered conservative statistics of yearly rapes (1 in 1,000) results in five times more women being raped (more than 200,000) than those who die each year from the No. 1 unpreventable disease for women-breast cancer. Isn`t that number astonishing enough?
And if Rubinstein does not believe that incidents of unwanted hugs and kisses should be included in studies of child molestations, then he reinforces rather than discredits the fact that socialization makes it difficult for women to resist unwanted sexual coercion.
