Double standard?

[poltr1]

All my life, I've heard the old adage "boys shouldn't hit girls". But I never heard the saying "girls shouldn't hit boys". Does that mean it's OK for girls to hit boys?

My answer to that is "only in self-defense".

Yes, I'm aware that most survivors -- I really hate to use the term "victim" here -- of domestic violence are women. But there are some men who experience it from the women in their life. And we rarely hear about them.

The same goes for rape and sexual abuse. Rape is a crime of violence, using sex as the weapon. Men can get raped too, mostly by men, and in some cases, by women.
And men can be sexually abused as well.

I'm just tired of this perceived double standard that society has, that it's not OK for men to hit or abuse women, but it's OK for women to hit or abuse men. It's time to level the playing field.

Comments

[poltr1]

When they turn 18, we'll kidnap them and initiate them into manhood properly. Bwah-ha-haa! :-)

But seriously....that's one of the goals of the mens' group that I'm in: Healing the world, one man at a time. There are lots of wounded men out there, men who don't know they're wounded, and men who never met their own inner killer or their wild man.

I'm glad that the feminist circles you were in advocated equality between the genders, not female supremacy. There are few radical feminists out there that (in my opinion) are trying to swing the pendulum high in their direction. I'll talk more about this in my upcoming entry titled "Women vs. Womyn".

[folkmew.livejournal.com]

When I was involved in Womyn's music, especially the two years I worked at the Michigan Womyn's Festival - a very seperatist event, I got a lot out of it. It was a very powerful experience and one I do not regret. But, ultimately, I do want equality. The song that I love that says this is Peggy Seeger's "Different Therefore Equal"(wish I could post or link to the lyrics but...oh well. they start: "Is a father, better than a mother, is a sister, better than a brother? One's concave, one's convex, does that make one sex better than the other?" ) :-)

I think there is a place for being seperatist. I think that for some women they need that time and space to really heal and become strong. I can't speak to men because I (understandably) don't really know how men heal. I mean really, I don't. I would think that some time among other men alone could be valuable such as your group though. The fact that men simply do have still the dominant power position in the world however is potent and is a reason that women need to be able to be strong as women and not just as equals with men. I think there does need to be a serious swing of the pendulum. This Chile elects woman as president and Liberia elects first female president is a start.

Let's get to a place where there is something resembling real shared power, then maybe we can take advantage of the strengths of both genders.