Nipping violence in the bud

greenspun.com : LUSENET : domestic violence : One Thread

(I don't know if "politics" is the best heading for this, but it was the closest of those available.)

Let me start from the awkward beginning. I am a person who would like to be in a relationship with someone in which we would often kiss each other on the cheek as a sign of affection. I typed "kiss on the cheek" into a search engine and got a variety of stuff, as you might imagine. But something that came up repeatedly, on a variety of websites, was the kind of thing you sometimes get in one of those annoying chain e-mails. It said that kissing on the cheek means, "Let's just be friends." while kissing on the lips (only) means "I love you".

I was already writing to disagree with this, when I noticed, on several of the websites (and the words were identical just about every time) a few more "rules". It said, "Girls: if a guys [sic] gets fresh, slap him." "Guys: if a girl slaps you, her intentions are still good." ... or perhaps the equally ridiculous: "if a girl slaps you, kiss her." (Wouldn't that perhaps qualify as being "fresh"?)

angry messages at these sites about how blatantly and flagrantly wrong this message is. I'm wondering if anyone else has heard of this "list", and from where it originated. We need to attack things like this with full force.

Further, we've commonly seen TV shows, movies, plays, commercials, music videos, and so forth, that show (in a playful, condoning manner)women hurting men. Not out of self-defense, mind you, but just for any reason, for "freshness" or the mere perception of infidelity. I doubt these same people would show a man hurting a woman in a similar manner for the same indiscretion. I was wondering if there is any sort of letter-writing campaign we can embark upon to address this. We need to nip this in the bud. A lot of teenage girls and women believe in hitting boys/men simply because they are told that it's okay. What can we do?

-- Anonymous, December 29, 2002

Answers

This is just the way it is in this country, in many ways. Men are subject to the double standard in thousands of areas. We men are told from the time we are little boys that we owe females respect, but girls are never taught this same respect for men.

There is probably very little we can do about it. We live in a very feminized society and that is just how it is. I remember when I got my first car, my insurance rates were double the rates my sister had to pay. Why ? Because I am a guy, she is a girl. She thought that was funny. Years later I remember a story about a hair salon charging women more than men. That was called "Sexism". Bottom line, there are millions of things that are society says are OK for females, but not OK for males.

-- Anonymous, January 09, 2003


Thanks for your reply. I think men have a chance at bringing these issues to light so long as men present their case as a matter of equality, instead of succumbing to the stereotypes of "angry male" syndrome.

Years ago, women who were beaten or in some other way unfairly treatment were given ridicule instead of help. Now, things have changed a bit...so there's hope for men, too.

Of course, there are still some double standards that unfairly target women, too; for example, women are sexually objectified more in the media than men. Maybe if we package these two together, we'll come across as simply wanting to be fair to both genders, and can accomplish two good things at once.

-- Anonymous, January 09, 2003


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