Hi John — unfortunately the man who raped me and also assaulted and predated upon many other young women at the high-cost, high-prestige private colleges we attended — is deceased. He died in a “single car accident” on Mt. Baldy Road in So Cal in the 1990s. I didn’t know about this because I had moved on with my life. It was almost 10 years later when I saw a musician with his same surname and wondered if they were related — doing an internet search I saw he had died. The irony is, he drove off the very mountainous road I tried to drive off and kill myself on years before. I was also called back to campus as a young adult to describe my experiences to a “discipline committee.” While there, that is how I learned I was far from the only victim, and his offenses took many forms and had continued longer after I left. The out come of that process was the school sent him to France for 2 years. That’s it! I think it’s very possible someone’s father or brother ran him off the road or maybe sabotaged his car because the regular justice system was not able to cope. And it was a lot longer than that, that I realized this was not an isolated instance no one knew how to cope with. I realized there was one or more on every campus of any size. Today I’ve come to realize that while women and girls are most-often victimized by this type of predator (teacher, professor, scout leader, coach), the publicity and big court cases currently going on (Catholic Church, Scouts, etc) are focused on male victims of male predators. Can women do this? Yes, we have seen some famous high profile cases of that as well.

I was thinking some about this topic of men being upset that women reject them. Another person was like “men reject women, and there are women that pursue them” (always a bad idea).

We women have ways of sending signals that we would be receptive to being asked out. I can truthfully say that if I’ve ever been interested in a man and have sent out a few of these signals and he is unresponsive/uninterested, then I’m for sure not interested in him. If we’re decent women we also need to be hands-off and unencouraging to a man who’s married or in a committed relationship. I’ll be honest and say my husband was married when we met — due to the circumstances (he was very good at presenting he was divorced) I did not know that and by the time he confessed, I was too deeply in love with him to turn him aside without an immediate ultimatum. If he had not confessed and immediately left his marriage I would never have spoken to him again. It broke up his family, and it’s not good. It would never be something I’d choose or do deliberately or want to repeat. At our older age ranges the chances somebody would never be married are slim and zero. His situation was a common one — many years of unhappiness and trying to improve the relationship. What he did was wrong, and me too, but it is what it is. We’re all human.

So, my advice to men who are facing situations where they can’t find a compatible partner, or who have been in relationships where the woman has treated them poorly, is to do in their way, what we women must do in ours. It might not be easy because men and women are different and send different signals, but my advice would be to work on learning how to catch the unspoken signals that a woman would be interested, and also to catch the signals, often spoken, that they are either in a relationship or are not interested. This will help to avoid the unpleasant and disappointing situation of being told “no,” possibly even rudely. The “red pill” advice could not be more wrong. Any woman that would have anything to do with a man saying or doing that stuff isn’t somebody that is a suitable partner for anybody. Our culture is also extremely sexualized so this too is probably overwhelming for young men who don’t want to act like Robin Thicke or others in videos. They should look for other young women who share their interests and personality. They’re out there, and the young men need to get over the media images, “OnlyFans” girls etc — it’s not like that. Sex in real life with someone you love isn’t like these portrayals and thinking it should be that way is a sure way to disappointment. Hookup culture also sucks. I saw my students exposed to that constantly and I also saw many happy couples meeting in my classes.

Men do have to be heroes these days, as do women. We face difficult challenges each and every day, from work to money to COVID to the way things are changing so fast. I also give the same advice to young men as I do to my daughter: you are marrying their family as well as them. That’s why she left her first fiance — she knew she couldn’t take his family for a lifetime and raise children with them. And she already knew what an awful custody battle would do and did do. She, and my former students, and her friends, they have to negotiate this relationship minefield and battle all the time. I felt like I had unreasonable pressure to maintain a certain appearance (110 lbs) when I was young and was horribly intimidated by other women in the media. I felt like I should look like Heather Locklear. And I didn’t. Or Apollonia or Martha Davis of the Motels. All these women are basically my age or a little older and … guess who they probably wish they could look more like today. Me, the poor one who has no cosmetic surgery, does not dye their hair, and wears bikinis from WalMart. Apollonia passed — I know this because I talked with her about doing a book about her life but she was too ill. You see sad, scary pictures of Heather being busted for DUI or acting disturbed. They felt the same way as me back then. Our culture was that bad, it was about looks only, and over a certain age, it sent the message that women have no use any longer and might as well die.

Having been through the horrible situation with Alan and his divorce/custody battle (said to be one of the worst ever in Los Angeles County courts), this situation seemed on the surface to be a parental alienation/abuse case, and the “other parents” were spectacularly crazy and abusive — the truth is there was only one vaguely competent parent out of four and she saw these kids only once every other weekend. Alan was also a bad parent and a bad partner. Only someone with low self esteem and ignorant of the full picture like me would have stayed with him. I know better now. Unfortunately, as my best friend was also a second partner to a guy with a horrible divorce — that’s another barrier men must face, and even more important for them in choosing a partner. I’d choose dependability and character over looks, but the funny thing is, better-looking men and women also tend to be … bizarrely … often better people.