(OPINION) Imagine an aquarium.

Not the kind you might have in your house, but more like an oceanarium. This aquarium is filled with gigantic, impressive marine life: shivers of sharks, schools of manta rays, ocean sunfish and sturgeon. We have arrived at the aquarium, bought our tickets and stand in awe to watch the show safely from the other side of the glass.

Less noticeable than the great creatures, hardly visible (definitely not worth the price of admission) are oodles of guppies and minnows, darting here and there. These smaller fish may have been added to the tank to serve as food for the larger beasts. Or perhaps they exist simply to add visual interest. Maybe they are essential to the entire artificial ecosystem. Most likely they fulfill all of these functions and more.

Some of the guppies and minnows are flashy and quick, fleeing as soon as a predator comes along. But some are dull and listless. They may be sick, they may be wounded, spat out, perhaps, by a predator in search of more substantial prey. Some school together, swimming quietly in the darker shadows of the tank. Some hover inside the caves of rocks on the aquarium floor, unseen and out of harm’s way.

We observers on the outside pay little attention to the guppies and minnows. We can barely even see these tiny fish — that is, not until now and then, when one singular sliver of a creature glides right in front of one of the monstrous ones, mattering now, for an instance, because the big one, the one we’ve come here to see, reacts. The tiny one is gobbled up in an instant. We might be horrified, amused or nonchalant.

It is a given, after all, that some of these minnows and guppies will be eaten by more important fish. By virtue of simply being in the tank, they are vulnerable. Only the smartest and strongest among them will survive. We looking on can make sport of watching the hunter hunt the prey. We can cheer on the minnows that succeed in hiding themselves away, and jeer at the ones who swim right into the maw of the predators. We can even root for the big fish. The ones who don’t hide from the sharks deserve what they get, after all. Each minnow or guppy for herself.

Never mind that the tank was built for this.

Never mind that the whole system is rigged for the predators.

This is an analogy.

Like all analogies, its parallels are not perfect. Indeed, the picture I have drawn is enlarged, distorted even, to make the point. As the writer Flannery O’Connor once explained,

When you can assume that your audience holds the same beliefs you do, you can relax and use more normal means of talking to it; when you have to assume that it does not, then you have to make your vision apparent by shock — to the hard of hearing you shout, and for the almost-blind you draw large and startling figures.

I am using this analogy to shout.

I am shouting to — and at — those who don’t — or won’t — understand what happens to too many women (and some men) who are enculturated in, subject to and groomed within systems designed by and for predators whose power comes from those very systems that are designed to ignore or even reward predation.

One small fish in the tank may resist the abuses of power she is subject to. She might reside peacefully in the shadows of the rock in the tank for the rest of her life. Another might cleverly glide atop a shark — out of sight, out of reach — and achieve otherwise unknown heights in deep waters. But another might mistake a shark for a friend and float right into his path.

When those inside the tank are taught that authorities are to be feared and obeyed simply because they are authorities, when women in particular are placed in one of two places — on a pedestal or underfoot — when they have places in the system as décor or tokens or food to be devoured, why are we so surprised by the results? You can’t put guppies and minnows in a tank of sharks and then blame the guppies and minnows when they are eaten alive.

Of course, the real world is not a shark tank. People are not guppies or minnows, nor are they sharks or stingrays or sturgeon. People are much more complicated than fish.

Indeed, that’s why human predators work so hard to gain the trust, perhaps even the affection and love, not only of their victims but of their peers and support systems, too. People have will, intention and agency. But like fish, human beings have instinct and a drive to survive, too. To mix the metaphor: Sometimes a fish knows only to fawn in order to survive.

And this is what predators and abusive systems count on. Some people are in survivor mode already. And some are put into survivor mode by slowly being made dependent on the ecosystem in the aquarium.

There may be only one real predator in the tank. But the whole system is set up to keep the predator satisfied.

Minnows and guppies are expendable. But it’s the big fish that bring in the crowds.

This commentary, which was originally published by Religion News Service, does not necessarily reflect the opinions of The Roys Report.

Karen Swallow Prior, Ph. D., is a reader, writer, professor, and columnist at Religion News Service. She is the author of several best-selling books. Her most recent is The Evangelical Imagination: How Stories, Images, and Metaphors Created a Culture in Crisis. She lives in Virginia.