Violence between genders suffers from double standard
Childhood serves as a time to teach girls and boys what is appropriate for each gender. More specifically, boys are taught it is wrong to hit a girl. Girls are taught it is acceptable to hit a boy if he is being disrespectful.
Emily Lowe
America’s society has long reinforced the strength of men and the fragility of women, as evidenced by the fact that it is only deemed fair for a woman to hit a man and not the other way around.
With the struggle for equal gender rights, it’s time for this double standard to be put to rest. Violence shouldn’t be tolerated from any gender.
An example of this can be seen in a viral video of Italian boys, ranging from ages six to 11, being asked to slap a girl. Every single one said no. When asked why not, one boy said, “‘Cause she’s a girl. I can’t do it.” Although this is the answer every parent wants their son to say, it would be interesting to see what would happen if the video participants were asked to slap a boy their same age, and what their reaction would be.
No matter how many videos one watches of a man slapping a woman or a woman slapping a man, the reactions are always based off gender. It doesn’t matter if the woman is taunting the man and hits him first. The second a man decides to hit a woman, there are people in his face trying to start a fight, since men aren’t supposed to hit women.
In contrast, when a woman hits a man, no one even reacts. Sometimes people will even laugh at the man’s pain, as seen on countless TV shows. Half of the humor of “Everyone Loves Raymond” is poor Ray Barone suffering abuse at the hands of his wife, Debra.
On top of that, a study conducted by Sonja Starr, assistant law professor at the University of Michigan, found men “are given much higher sentences than women convicted of the same crimes in federal court.” The same mentality relates to domestic violence as well.
One law demonstrating this is the Violence Against Women Act. The act is a necessary federal law, which establishes a commitment to change law enforcement’s response to violence against women. However, it also only focuses on female victims, who are not the only ones who suffer from violence or domestic abuse. Recent research from Safe Alternatives to Violent Environments (SAVE) reports almost one-third of domestic violence victims are men.
It’s obvious men and women both experience violence in their lives. Laws are needed to promote the end of violence, but there also needs to be an understanding that violence shouldn’t be tolerated by any gender.
The U.S. can never be truly equal if it accepts one gender harming another in any circumstance.
A bystander should stick up for anyone being wrongly abused. A young child should know to say “no” when asked to hit either gender. Not just because, “she’s a girl, so I can’t hit her.” The answer should be that everyone deserves to be respected, because everyone is human.
Emily Lowe can be reached at the [email protected]