Matt Cook ("Clothes contribute to reasons to rape" SN 10/26) writes there is no excuse for rape. So far, he and I are in agreement.

But then he argues that a woman's clothes are important because men are visually stimulated, and scantily dressed women "stimulate male hormones."

Following this logic, perhaps we should institute some kind of dress code. If women all wore burqas, rape would disappear, right?

At least 80 percent of all rapes are committed by someone the victim knows. Rapists aren't poor, helpless men who caught a passing glimpse of a woman's cleavage and lost control. They are men who have learned to be aggressive, to take what they want and to see women as objects to be possessed.

Maybe one reason men rape is because we've worked so hard to convince ourselves we're not responsible for our actions. I give Cook credit for saying a man who rapes is the one at fault. But the rest of his letter is all about women provoking our "lust or passionate desires."

Men pay lip service to the idea that rapists are the guilty ones, but when we talk about rape, the majority of us put a lot of time and energy into showing how women are responsible.

I'm not saying all men are rapists. Yet more than 90 percent of rapists are male. Every time someone writes about rape in The State News, I see follow-up letters talking about what women should do to protect themselves. Maybe we should start focusing on men, asking why we're the primary perpetrators.

Saying "She made me do it!" just isn't going to fly. That doesn't work for my 5-year-old and it baffles me when I see college-aged men use the same excuse.

Jim Hines
1996 graduate