A Radical Notion

I believe in the radical notion that men are human beings deserving of the same level of consideration afforded any other demographic.

Amy Whinehouse openly abused her husband and she faced no serious repercussion for her actions, if any at all. Jezebel.com used that and an article demonstrating violence perpetrated by women, as an opportunity to celebrate their propensity for Intimate Partner Violence as if it was empowering to beat up a boyfriend. (Girl Power!) A serious crime which has life altering affects on the victim, jezebel.com enjoys the privilege of openly flaunting their abuse for no other reason than they are women and their victims are men.

For more than a generation men have been the subject of character assassination. Men are always the perpetrator and women are always the victim. That is a tired and worn out cliche. But one can't blame the critics for cliches. For the critics are merely the observers pointing out an unadulterated fact.

Men have been reduced to a one dimensional character whose relation to women and the world is through abuse, oppression and brutality. Simply speaking out that men are human beings with a much more complex relation to the world around them is itself a political act against the status quo. A social gag order exists against any multidimensional, multiflavored analysis of masculinity's relationship with society or the world as a whole. Only conservatives and fringe lunatics worry about the welfare of the privileged white, male and heterosexual, is the stereotype.

As a consequence many voices who are victims of domestic violence are ignored, suppressed, marginalized all because it's an octave lower. The Psychiatry News piece cited by jezebel.com reports a shocking revelation about relationships in society today.

Of an 11,370 sample, 23.9% were violent. Among the violent relationships, 50.3% were non-reciprocal. Of those relationships, a staggering 70.7% were perpetrated by women. This makes one wonder exactly what the abusive relationship landscape really looks like. With constant images that only reinforce the idea that women are inherently victims and hardly ever the aggressors, we have this false image that the reverse is “very rare” thus not as important as the (supposedly) far worse problem women face.*

We now have the problem of resistance by people to affirm the severity of the problem. The very act of a male speaking up is met with silence, marginalization, or shaming. “Quit whining”, “you must have been burned”, “you just hate women” and so forth.

The sad truth is men are in a situation with their intimate relationships with women that women had to contend with generations ago: Silent suffering and alienation. The solution: More awareness with an urgency to take this issue as seriously as we take male on female violence. But perhaps the most challenging part is a discussion about the reasons why this happens. Plenty of resources have been pooled to analyze the nastier sides of masculinity. There needs to be the same kind of analysis of toxic female behaviors with no fear of being called a misogynist.

*Yet, when females constitute the minority who faces a particular problem and the majority are males (such as autism diagnosis), it's urgent those minority of females are addressed simply because they are the minority. So, it's always a zero-sum game with males the losers. But that's another topic.