Reflections on Gender Roles and Domestic Violence

Today I came upon a very interesting video about domestic violence-- by women. It got me thinking. (A dangerous pastime, I know.)

In our culture, most boys are told at some point to "never hit a girl." Now, I stand behind that 100%, except for one thing-- why single out girls? Shouldn't all children be told simply, "don't hit"? It doesn't matter if it's a boy hitting a girl, or a girl hitting a boy, or girls hitting girls or boys hitting boys. Hitting is wrong, period.

How many of us have watched movies-- romantic comedies, dramas, etc.-- where a woman slaps a man for some reason? With the exception of self-defense, that strikes me as very wrong. Why is it that, as a society, we don't react the same way to women hurting men as we do to men hurting women?

In an earlier blog post I talked about feminism, and how it's often misconstrued to mean that women are better than men and maligned by people who don't understand it. I'll reiterate-- true feminism is simply the assertion that women and men are equal. Perhaps a more accurate term would be human-ism (although the word "humanist" is already used to mean other things). Feminism is important because women, historically, have often been treated as though they were less than full persons. But perhaps it is eve more important to emphasize that all human beings are equal. They all have innate human rights. And they all feel pain.

I'm not denying that men and women are possessed of different general propensities and predispositions; however, I have lately come to the conclusion that the cultural imposition of gender stereotypes is generally harmful. "Men are strong." Well, so are women. "Women are sweet and gentle." So are men. All these cultural stereotypes do is inhibit people-- humans-- from expressing the full range of their personalities. And, in the case of domestic violence, it can lead to the marginalization and downplaying of the suffering of fully half of the population. In our society, men aren't supposed to be so weak as to be able to get beat up by a woman.

The way I see it, the bottom line is that cultural gender stereotypes are damaging to people of both genders. Sure, men and women do have feminine and masculine qualities, but there's no need to impose them in the exaggerated way that our society does. If people are allowed to be who they really are in every respect, the world will be a better place-- where people don't hit other people, regardless of their gender.