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

[daisy-knotwise.livejournal.com]

Part of the double standard assumes that girls are smaller and weaker than boys and if they do hit it won't do damage. It is covered in childhood with "You're older and should know better." Bigger-and-stronger should not do violence upon smaller-and-weaker.

Domestic violence is a very complex issue.
One of the steps toward solving it is to create a culture that doesn't tolerate bullying, physical or emotional.
Right now we live in a culture that doesn't respect much of anything, except maybe money and power. And bullying is a way to get both.

So how do we bring respect into fashion?

GHR

[athenawindsong.livejournal.com]

There is a profound difference in how girls are taught to behave vs. how boys are taught to behave. Physical aggression in boys is accepted behavior "boys will be boys" but is suppressed to a great degree in girls. Instead, it manifests in emotional and mental cruelty.

At my last elementary school, we were examining various techniques of handling bullying. With boys, it's out in the open, but with girls it's hidden behind whispers and looks. We had a peace-focused curriculum in place for the middle schoolers by the time I left. Since then, I've come across a book that opened wide a whole new can of worms in explaining how girls cope with anger called "Odd Girl Out: The Hidden Culture of Aggression in Girls." Written like a dissertation complete with surveys, interviews, case studies, and summations, this book explained ALOT about my own childhood traumas. The movie Mean Girls was based on it.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0156027348/qid=1137391420/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/002-9448774-3873645?s=books&v=glance&n=283155

If you are going to level the playing field, you have to start from the beginning and dissect why our society has allowed boys and girls to grow up in this double standard, how it is self-perpetuating, bring it kicking and screaming out into the open, and give both sexes a safe avenue for expressing anger and frustration without judgement.

[athenawindsong.livejournal.com]

BTW, I do have a copy of Odd Girl Out, but lent it to the Sociology prof that I work with at Greenville. As soon as she is done with it, if you'd like to read it, I'll swing it on over to ya.

[suecochran.livejournal.com]

I believe that I caught a segment of Oprah one day which had a discussion of that book with the author and the audience. It is definitely about time that the idea of bullying being an equal-opportunity activity came to the fore. I was always one of the biggenst and tallest girls in my class. I never got beat up physically by boys or girls, but the majority of girls in my classes treated me very cruelly, and left me feeling isolated, alienated and just plain "not right". My parents reassured me (or at least tried to) saying "Oh, they're just jealous because you're smart." It didn't help. I wanted to be accepted - not to conform or "fit in" with how they acted. I didn't like dolls or clothes or make-up. I was a typical "tomboy" and liked sports, climbing on things, reading, riding my bike, and talking about things that was interested in. Once I got to JHS, I started making -real- girlfriends, and got to experience that feeling of belonging. But I know there are so many young girls and young women out there who are suffering terribly from bullying and meanness, and I hope that that can change in time with this new awareness.

Just curious - what brought this up for you? Did a friend or family member have a situation that involved bullying? It's interesting - I have only had two friends who were in abusive-turned-stalker relationships, and both of the "victims" in these cases were men. Yes, the statistics show that more women report domestic violence, sexual abuse and rape. But we don't know how many men experience these things as well and are just not reporting it for fear of embarrassment or being hassled. Understandable, sadly.

[folkmew.livejournal.com]

Well, in our household the standard is "it isn't ok to hit or hurt people." (and that includes emotionally too.)

OTOH I'm not at present raising girls. I am raising two boys.
I also tell them no one is allowed to hit or hurt them and that includes adults.

In the feminist circles I was in we usually acknowledged that sexual and physical abuse happens more often to women but that it also happened to men and that our goal was to change society so that it stopped happening to anyone. This means changing the way we raise both boys and girls. I'm sure your daughter will grow up strong and confident and powerful. Let's hope my boys grow up kind and loving and gentle. (and vice versa.)

Whenever I see new babies I always make it a point of saying some opposite gender stereotype first - like if it is a baby girl before I say "oh she's so CUTE (or pretty or...) I always say "She's so smart and wise and strong and brave..." then I add "pretty". For boys I go the other way. :-)

[poltr1]

Just curious - what brought this up for you?

As I reveiew the past hypomanic (as in "manic-angry") episodes, many of those were reactions to strong women. Why is this? Is it because men shrug this type of emotion off as no big deal? Or was there a strong woman (or women) in my past who emotionally wounded me, and that I'm projection that woman onto other strong women? Or is there something else, like a resolve that I will never let women defeat me?

As athenawindsong cited above, women express their anger differently than men. Women tend to get emotionally or mentally cruel, as opposed to men, who yell and scream and (in some cases, unfortunately) hit.

If I'm to hit something, it had better be something inanimate that can take the lumps, like a pillow or a punching bag, not a person.

[tigertoy.livejournal.com]

I may annoy some people with this comment, but if so, so be it.

It's very trendy these days to equate physical and emotional mistreatment and label both as "bullying", but I find people who talk this way painful and annoying to listen to. When I was in grade school, I didn't fit in and was the subject of a fair bit of verbal/emotional "bullying", but I wasn't really worried about it. It was not physical, but I was in real terror of what was going to happen to me when I had to go on to junior high and high school. I was sure that I was going to be beat up, and I actually expected to be killed. My idea of what regular high school was like was probably not very realistic, but the main reason I jumped at the chance to go to the university lab school was not the great academic environment, it was just the fact that I could expect to *survive*. If I had had to go to the regular school, I probably would have come out better integrated with society -- assuming that my expectations didn't become self-fulfilling.

But to this day, the word bullying to me means a threat of real, serious, permanent, possibly deadly physical harm, and having felt that threat aimed at me (for all that I might have imagined it), I can say that it's not the same thing for me as suddenly being denied the latest gossip. I feel pretty sure that the people who talk about emotional "bullying" didn't feel what I did in childhood.

I do not mean to brush off non-physical abuse as unimportant or acceptable, but I think that the physical merits another level of concern. People who are emotionally abusive in a relationship should receive help such as counselling. Those who physically abuse their partners should be dealt with as the criminals they are.

[poltr1]

So how do we bring respect into fashion?

Uh.....we could cancel "The Apprentice" and fire Donald Trump.

[daisy-knotwise.livejournal.com]

I think The Apprentice is less of a problem than, say, American Idol. Everybody seems to enjoy Simon being mean to the contestants. As a matter of fact great whopping gouts of our "entertainment" is unkind.
How do we stop it?
Circular question. Circular answer.
Sigh...

GHR

[poltr1]

I'm annoyed enough to respond.

If you find these people -- and I'm guessing I'm one of them -- painful and annoying to listen to, then stop listening with your ears (and head) and start listening with your heart. I also invite you to consider expanding your definition of "bully".

In addition to the mental and emotinoal abuse I endured, I too have been threatened and bullied in my growing-up days. In junior high, there was a skinny 8th grader who kept calling me "fag boy". (Why? I have no idea. I just knew he could have beaten the shit out of me.) And in high school, someone tried to light my pants on fire in the back of a school bus. I didn't feel that I was going to be killed, but I certainly felt like I had no friends or that anyone cared for me.

Over time, I've grown up, and have grown stronger emotionally. I've since learned that high school was hell for nearly everyone. I'm also still trying to learn how to effectively wield my personal power, and not use it like a club or have it leak all over the place. Because that's something I never learned back then.

And so, here's the flip of it all: After years of being bullied, sometimes I wonder: have I *become* the bully now? And how do I bully or intimidate people now? I dare to look people in the eye. I call people on their crap. And sometimes my ruthless tyrant comes out, tongue like a rapier, and callous as a clamshell. But when the Hulk comes out, all bets are off, especially if my intented target deserves what they're going to get.

Yes, I know this rambling doesn't make a lot of sense. Understanding is a thre-edged sword, Grasshopper. :-)

By the way.....if the "now" you could go back in time to your high school self, what would you tell that scared young boy?

[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.