"when the anthropomorphized wolf consumes Grandma and Red, “Little Red Riding Hood” conflates eating and rape in a strangely cannibalistic act. In this connection, “Little Red Riding Hood,” whose oral tradition dates to at least 1000 CE, suggests a place we modern humans might look to the demise of one ancient behavior—cannibalism—to find the end of another ancient human behavior—rape...
In terms of war, sexual violence has functioned a lot like cannibalism. Both rape and cannibalism were ways for nascent states to consolidate power. Both acts create fear and both have the long-term effect of absorbing one culture into another, cannibalism through consumption and rape through procreation...
Europeans exported their ideas of cannibalism as a taboo as they colonized the world. But it’s all kind of a great big fat people-eating lie because as late as the Victorian Age, Europeans and others practiced medicinal cannibalism, which is exactly what it sounds like. Pulverized mummies, executed men’s blood, human fat—human remains appeared as nostra for a variety of illnesses. It was a cultural blind spot that allowed Europeans to condemn—and even colonize—others for being cannibals while retaining their #NotAllCannibals status...
If statistics are stacked against the bystander model, if young men are fuzzy over the concept of consent, and if men shut down at the word “rape,” what alternatives are there? How, for example, can rape prevention education make rape unpalatable? One way might be to tell stories differently—or to tell different stories."
There is no real solution here, but it's interesting as a comparison of taboos
FB: "while cannibalism has died out in a rich brocade of taboo woven from narrative, religion and sometimes law, rape lives on. The question becomes what cannibalism can teach us about new ways of looking at, understanding and ultimately preventing rape."
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