I think this is an important and complicated issue and one that our society (like all other societies) needs to address in a careful and reflective manner. I hope many people read your piece and appreciate both the urgency and the extent of the problem that you’ve described.
I think it’s apparent that men and women tend to behave in very different ways, that those differences lead to widespread suffering (mostly among women), at least partially because of different standards that we apply to them as children. I think the first step is to consider the extent to which each gender is behaving in a suboptimal manner, how we can alter those patterns of behavior, and what changes would reduce suffering the most.
I totally agree that men tend to treat women badly and that women too often don’t feel like they have proper options for escaping from that mistreatment. However, I have a visceral reluctance to suggest that social norms for females are dysfunctional in a way that social norms for males are not. I definitely think there are areas in which social norms for women are overly strict, but I think social norms for men are fundamentally much more destructive.
To put it simply, the male gender is the defective gender. The way men are brought up to think about morality, authority, and confidence is, in my opinion, the root of a huge chunk of the violence and suffering that exists in the world. We should bring up every child feeling the absolute right to repel abuse, but we shouldn’t bring up any children to feel the sense of moral confidence that men so often have. I believe that the standards we should begin applying to every child fall much closer to the ones we’ve traditionally applied to girls than to the ones we’ve applied traditionally to boys.
Why do I believe this? First off, females aren’t necessarily more likely to be victims of violence. For instance, most murder victims are male. However, females ARE much less likely than males to COMMIT murder. We can argue about the importance of nature and nurture, but what’s clear is that males are (on average) messed up in ways that females are not.
Yes, I’m speaking in terms of statistical groups and am aware that individual male and female behavior varies widely. In fact, that’s one of the reasons I feel so strongly about this issue. I luckily haven’t experienced an abusive romantic relationship, but my wife often points out to me that my self-image is in some ways very feminine. I have an extreme tendency to avoid confrontation and to doubt that my own actions are reasonable. That can be problematic, and often has been. I certainly want to find ways of tempering my own fear of being at fault, but I also have a profound feeling of repulsion for what I would consider typically male forms of conflict “resolution.”
In the end, I can relate to your perspective on a deep, personal level and I appreciate the profound need for worldwide action to alleviate the widespread suffering that you have felt and that so many others feel every day. Yet, I also feel a great deal of admiration for those who challenge the values that you seem to advocate. I don’t know what steps we take to make to make abusive relationships less common, but I think the solution will involve a recognition of the feats of compassion that females routinely perform and of how far behind males tend to fall in that regard.
