Breaking a Culture of Violence

One of the issues we face as a society is a culture of violence. We as a society applaud violence, which makes the violence that appears within a household less surprising than it should be. Males in our society are held to higher standards of masculinity, masculinity being synonymous with violence in many cases. Boys are told to be a man and not express emotions, “quit crying you pussy!” Boys are told they throw like a girl when they do not perform well in sports. Boys are teased and called sissies, girls, pussies, and other names which do two things, demean women making them seem like lesser beings and they also work to remove any sense of compassion that might be present in boys from a young age making violence seem like a good emotion, while others are bad or of an inferior gender. Women are given ideas of subservience to a husband in much media, such as Disney princess movies. Women and men are also marketed to in completely different manners with toys such as “Tough boy trucks” for men. The issues caused from a separation of the genders and making one seem better than another, and making a clearly dominant group. When this macro issue becomes a micro issue, misogynistic ideals can be present. The sexist ideals that are created from our culture allow abusers to feel that they are in the right, or that they deserve better than what their partner is giving them. The abuse that is shown through media, and often idolized by society, might make the victim feel their abuse is normal or even warranted because of their actions. We must end our culture of violence that leaves women disproportionately victimized by their lovers. When abused women when they have already been victimized by an abuser, society steps in and ensures further victimization by pushing blame onto the abused. The culture of violence we have created and cultivated not only creates abusers, but also serves as a means for society to accept the ‘inevitable’ abuse and not take steps to prevent it or help the victim. We must take steps to break the culture of violence, only then can we properly tackle the issues of domestic violence.