When I wished I was a misogynist sometime ago, Everchange understandably took me to task. For the record, I’m not a misogynist — in fact some of my beliefs could be perceived as feminist. I only believe in gender equality, something very difficult to find in today’s world. I’ve seen a friend of mine slapped by a girl over a ‘worthy’ issue that wouldn’t have been deemed worthy if he had slapped her for the same reason.
I like to call myself an equalist (whatever that means). Some of my opinions are offensive to either sex — sometimes both. I intended at first to write about gender inequality as a whole but when I started out, I discovered I had more to write than would fit below the boring/length threshold of a blog post so I chopped up my article and am focusing on violence instead here. This is a collection of bits and pieces so you’ll have to bear with me if it doesn’t appear well thought out. That said, let’s begin with:
A slap.
It’s quite simple — ‘touch’ someone’s cheek with a lot of force. Something as simple as being the recipient or giver of a slap can serve as a delineating factor between a man and a woman, a boy and a girl.
“A man should never hit a woman,’ someone once told me. I don’t disagree with this statement and a lot of people don’t either. When I asked her about women hitting men she told me there were lots of situations when women are allowed to do so.
“I’ll slap the hell out of his lying/cheating ass” is a statement I hear and see in one form or the other and everyone cheers her on.
Why is there an outcry whenever a man slaps a woman and yet the society actively encourages women slapping men? Why do a lot of movies feature men taking slaps coolly but in the rare cases where the woman gets slapped she’s usually the weak one getting hit by the villain? Why does the society only term it ‘abuse’ when the man is doing the slapping but thinks of any man who reports being slapped as wimpy? I could go on and on and on but I think we should leave slapping alone and focus on:
The beating.
In November I read an article on the BBC website (Survey finds male abuse approval) and I must admit I was quite shocked. In this so-called age of enlightenment, when a lot of women agree that pushing, slapping, punching and kicking men is acceptable, something is definitely wrong somewhere. What’s even more sobering is another article (Drop-in for male victims of abuse) that puts statistics at 1 in 6 men likely to experience domestic violence. What’s worse, it would be considered unmanly to report them.
The Wikipedia article on spousal abuse says the figures for violence among both sexes are almost even although the severity is usually higher in most but not all cases involving male perpetrators (you may take this with a pinch of salt like most Wikipedia articles although this one is well-quoted).
Who is to blame for this? The society? I think this is just a phase. We saw it in the past with women being actively discouraged from reporting abuse and rape. It’s going to be harder to convince men to speak up because as the dominant sex of the human species, the society has still not come to terms with the fact that men can be, and are abused but choose to remain silent for fear of ridicule.
Perhaps we should glorify men slapping ‘evil’ women in the media to the same extent as we do the reverse. Better still, both sexes need to be dealt with fairly and in the same way for committing criminal acts of violence.
Before I come off as misogynist, I’d like to say I don’t condone violence towards anyone regardless of sex. What bothers me is that a lot of women use their being ‘fragile’ as leverage to do what wouldn’t otherwise be condoned if the roles were reversed. I chose not to discuss violence directed towards women by men as this has already been examined everywhere ad nauseam.
I’ve told you what I think. You may now crucify shoot me.