VIOLENCE IN THE HOUSEHOLD

Domestic violence is a major problem in the world. When we think of domestic violence we automatically assume it is a male enacting the violence, but this is not always the case. Both males and females are guilty of being violent to their spouses or children. The only difference within domestic violence is that women aren’t seen as capable of being violent. We are a society that devalues women so much that we see women as weak creatures that can’t possibly cause any harm to anyone. When a woman is physically violent she is called out for being crazy not for being aggressive. Since women are not taken serious, it is harder for male victims to get the same support that females are offered. The male’s role is seen as the powerful one among the two sexes so people shame men for letting a woman over power him. Hooks states, “Yet when they are told that domestic violence is the direct outcome of sexism, that it will not end until sexism ends, they are unable to make this logical leap because it requires challenging and changing fundamental ways of thinking about gender.” To sum up, If we don’t change how our society views gender domestic violence will not end. Women aren’t seen as possible threats to the male sex. We have to modify our gender roles where no other gender is “more powerful” than the other. This sense of power is what men use to enact violence. They feel that women are just an object that they can control with just fear. Women who are aggressive to their partner are let to do whatever they want because of course they aren’t capable of the same “power” a man has.

Violence has to be taken more serious and gender should not matter. “Initially feminist focus on domestic violence highlighted male violence against women, but as the movement progressed evidence showed that there was also domestic violence present in same-sex relations, that women in relationships with women were and are oftentimes the victims of abuse, that children were also victims of adult patriarchal violence enacted by women and men,” states Hooks. Both men and women play a big part in violence being passed down through generations. Allowing children to be witnesses of violence only teaches a child that that is how marriage should be. Children learn almost everything from their parents, including violence. Individuals who grow up in a domestic abuse household are more likely to be in a domestic abuse relationship. Punishing children is also an act of violence that both men and women do. Physical punishment can easily be damaging to a child. Most parents start of using punishment as a discipline model, but can easily get carried away. They start hitting their child when they are stressed and take out their frustration on the child. The child no longer links their actions as a motive of the punishment. The child just sees it for what it is, abuse. I have been a witness of the gratitude of this abuse on a child. If this child’s parents had gotten into a fight he would get hit for the simplest reasons. Sadly his parents conditioned him to need fear in order to listen. I will never understand such parenting! We are teaching our children violence and in order to stop violence we need to be better role models. As a child my parents never hit me and I never saw them argue intensely. There are children who see violence on a daily bases in their home and they begin seeing this as the norm. I will never be in a relationship where there is constant arguing and violence because that’s not the type of home I was raised in. Hooks states, “…it is especially vital that parents learn to parent in nonviolent ways. For our children will not turn away from violence if it is the only way they know to handle difficult situations. The power parents have in ending violence is extreme.” If every parent taught their children by example that violence should never be used there would be no violence.

https://excoradfeminisms.files.wordpress.com/2010/03/bell_hooks-feminism_is_for_everybody.pdf