CDC report on sexual violence. We're not listening.

The CDC released a study today about rape and sexual violence which has rather deeply disturbed me.  According to the NISVS report:

• approximately 45% of women and 22% of men are victims of sexual violence over their lifetimes. 
• 1 in 4 women and 1 in 7 men reported severe physical violence.  
• 1 in 5 women reported having been raped, with 80% being under 25 and 42% under 18 when they were raped for the first time.
• 1 in 71 men reported having been raped, with 28% of those being under 11 when they were raped for the first time.  
• Nearly 40% of non-hispanic minority males surveyed reported rape, sexual violence and/or stalking. 

As disturbing as those figures are, here is where things really go pear-shaped.   The focus of this report is sexual crimes perpetrated by intimate partners.  Go back and re-read those numbers, because that is what we, as a society, are doing to those we love.  This isn't some frat party accident or bathroom stall happenstance, these are our husbands, wives, SO's and boy/girlfriends who are doing this.

If this is an indication of how messed up the collective understanding of how to express love and intimacy is, then perhaps some of the pronouncements from the prelates sound no less removed from reality than those to whom they are preaching to.

I can recognize and even rationalise the long-standing disconnect between social justice and capitalism and how we, as a nation, have delved into narcissism. The vilification and demonizing of certain groups (including my own), I can intellectually grasp as a defense mechanism and the age-old conflict of the 'Other' and how that can lead to man's inhumanity to man.

But this?

This?

"This I command you, that you love one another." (Jn. 15:17)

We're not listening.  Kyrie Eleison.