Silenced Boys
The vicious circe of violence
Recently I had a conversation about a project against violence:
- I’ve read it, I think it’s missing something. It doesn’t mention violence against boys which is also a big problem which often gets forgotten. A lot of boys are being beaten in the family (here in latin america more than in Europe) but this is not addressed as much as violence against girls because they are men and have to be tough. Acording to statistics, more boys than girls suffer phisical abuse (nonsexual):
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0145213419304077
https://plan.org.ec/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/patterns-of-violence.pdf
but the proyects against violence always give more space to girls. A lot of mothers normalise their violence against boys, they sees it as a method to educate them and put them in order. Violence against boys exits far more than what it’s believed and boys don’t have anyone to talk about it exactly because the projects against violence put more emphasis on violence against girls and leave little space to boys. From there, from this beaten boys who live with subconscious resentment towards their mothers, who suffer in silence, are born violent men and femicides.
(she responded immediately, without even thinking about what I said, not even for a minute)
- I agree. The patriarchy is fucking us all, men and women. The workshop which my project proposes seeks, throught the medium of relexion, to understand the violences and foment the cultures of peace. My defence is for human rights of every human being.
- Why does it have 4 pages about violence against women and girls, but doesn’t even mention violence against boys?
- Because this is not the focus of the project. But I’m not making invisible the violence against boys because of that.
- Then the project is about violence only against women and girls?
- No, the goal fo the project is that both men and women learn to recognise violences of any kind. And in this case, seek to erradicate harassment and violence against women in the university to foment a society of peace.
- It’s about recognising violence of any kind, but doesn’t even mention violence against boys. Why?
- Let’s see. If you, for example, see someone who figths for the rights of old people, would you say them this is bad because the young ones or indigenous people or any minority also experience violence? No, right?
- No I wouldn’t. But in this case I also wouldn’t say the project is to recognise violences of all kind, I would recognise that the project deals only with violence against old people. And if I had realised there’s a related problem, let’s say if the voilence against young people was something which later produces violence against old people I would definitely include this problem in the project too. In great part, the cause of violence against women is violence against boys and normalisation of this violence, that’s why it has to be included in the projects which fight against violence towards women.
- If you want to do your own camapain or project for the boys or men or black or trans people it’s legitimate and I would support you. But this doesn’t mean my project is trying to make invisible the violence towards boys or girls. All the social fights for every human being are just and needed.
- I agree that your project is not trying to make invisible the violence towards boys, but I think it still does.
- My project is about conversation and reflexion. It’s not neither female not misandrical. Yes, it bothers a little trying to minimise the efforts for the rights of women and girls by saying why don’t we fight for the boys. You guys make your own project and I will support it. But if you are insinuating that I’m a false feminist who wants that now the women are the opressors and that I hate men, you’re wrong.
I’ve ended the chat. I felt she was triggered. She started projecting which is a sign of insecurity, which often leads to aggresive behaviour. I wanted to give her the benefit of the doubt and continue the discussion, but my instincts told me she might become violent, which I have zero tolerance for.
I thought a lot about it. I thought about the conversation for the next day, it kept staying in my mind all the time. I couldn’t shake it of, there was something she wrote which kept poking me, which kept standing out. It sounded so off track, like it reveals an underlying truth:
You guys make your own project and I will support it.
It does say that she would supports efforts for rights of men, but it also reveals her mindset:
She doesn’t percieve little boys as children, in her mind, she puts them in the same group as adult men, thus thinking it’s the responsibility of men, not hers, to fight for the rights of little boys.
I do agree that men are fighting against violence far less (extremely far less) than what is their responsibility, but putting defensless little boys in the same group as adult men is uterly wrong. The life of little boys is more similar to the life of little girls than adult men. They are in a position where adults (both men and women) have power over them, they are expected to follow rigid gender norms, they are phisically weaker than adults and rely on them for their basic needs, they have less options and rights than adults, they are defensless in front of adults as much as the girls, they are ignored and silenced because they are children. Being children and being defensless is what defines their life and struggles much more than being male.
Furthermore, the violence against girls and women is tightly interconected with violence against boys, it’s not a straight line where violence pops out of nowhere but a vicious circle where any type of violence produces more violence and it won’t end until it’s addressed at its core — violence against children of any gender.
If you teach boys not to be viloent against girls, but don’t address the violence they experience, you’re giving them mixed signals.
This conversation is not an isolated case, there are a lot of people ignoring the suffering and traumas of young boys while focusing on violence against girls. A lot of mothers normalise their violence against boys nor do they understand how this violence affects their sons and their behavious towards women in the future. They belive that by beating the boys they will make them better persons, ignoring all the trauma and subconscious resentment towards women they are planting inside these little minds. When I asked a former friend of mine, a single mother, a feminist, and an educated architect, if she has ever beaten her son, she responded without even blinking: “Yes of course”. I’ve met her son, he lives in constant fear of her.
I do understand these mothers. When you are subjected to systematic violence, it’s hard to accept you can be violent too, it’s hard to accept you feel subconscious resentment towards men, and even when they are children you see them as men, it’s hard to accept this systematic violence has affected you and made you contribute to it — it’s much easier to normalise it and ignore it.
But still, I don’t endorse their behaviour, they can do better. I have suffered violence through all my childhood, because of which I have lived in constant fear most of my life, but I would never be violent towards a child. I made efforts and leaned how to be a better person than that. Of course, there are a lot of fathers who are violent against their children too (mine was) and this produces a whole other set of problems, but the resentment and fear towards women, which can later grow into violence against them, is planted in little boys when their mother, their role model of a woman, beats them or exerts other forms of violence over them.
This resentment becomes the breeding ground for machism and misogyny and when these silenced boys who suffer alone look for comfort and understanding, for someone who will listen to them, they get easily groomed by toxic masculinity and the patriarchy which offers them a way out for their repressed feelings. An unhealthy way out, but it’s the only one they get offered, so they take it.
I don’t think this will change anytime soon. Women are too traumatised by the systematic violence to become aware of the complexity of violence and how they contribute to it. Men are blinded by their privilege and traumatised too by the vicious circle of violence. Little innocent boys are thrown in the same bin as toxic and violent men, and nobody cares about them. But I do hope that someone reading this will stop and think, break the vicious circle and give to a little boy, and the women he meets later in his life, an environment safe from violence. Hopefully it will be you.
