I don't suppose anyone remembers this blog...

Hello, friends! I'm currently recovering from sickness in Mexico. I have a few thoughts I would like to share with you.
1. I think we all need to stop using passive voice in discussing rape, abuse, or molestation.
I realize this is a semantic difference, but I think it is an important one:
"She was raped" becomes "Someone raped her"
"They were abused" becomes "Their mother abused them"
"He was molested" becomes "He molested him"
I think victims too often are assigned blame, and I think one small way of fighting this would be to consciously refuse to ever say "She was raped" again--place the culprit as the subject of the sentence, not the victim.
2. When we're afraid of our culture sending out negative messages, we need to make sure that we counter that with positive messages instead of a vacuum.
The instance in which I was thinking about this was the subject of gender identity. As enlightened, feminist egalitarians, my parents didn't emphasize "You do this because you're a girl" very much. Although this is much much much better than enforcing a sexist system of gender identification, this vacuum made me more vulnerable to other voices. I think a better way of dealing with that would be to say, "You're strong because you're a woman," and "You can show emotion and be compassionate because you're a man"--essentially giving children a rich and full definition of identity instead of a vacuum. (I'm pretty sure my parents tried to do that, it was just an example...)
I think this same principle is applicable to a lot of other subjects as well.

Okay, I'm all tired out. Please comment, people. It would make me feel so sad if no one commented!