Summon the who?
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Never noticed before how much Cindy-Lou Who looks like a toddler Hannelore.
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seriously... we men are taught from childhood: "don't hit girls"... violence against women is vilified above all else save violence against children.
In a tiny subset of humanity, restricted by geography, culture, history and socio-economic status. Talking about this walled garden as if it were somehow universal, or even usual, is dubious. If you're going to be against violence, be against violence everywhere, not just violence in your neck of the woods. However, violence against men is very much normalised, and we don't have to look at boxing matches on pay-per-view to see it. Men are much more frequently the victims of violence than women. The extent to which we don't realise that, or don't think it is as important as violence against women, is a measure of its normalisation. From last week's edition (http://www.economist.com/news/americas/21636052-drugs-and-machismo-are-dangerous-mix-lethal-culture) of The Economist:(http://cdn.static-economist.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/original-size/images/print-edition/20141213_AMC497.png)
I can't read the text on YB's stick-grenade. At first I thought it was "Vorsprung durch Technik" but I suppose, if it were, that copyright lawyers would be calling on Jeph to say 'Audi! :claireface:
Eh. "Violence against Women" encapsulates the concept "Men being violent towards women." To actually have double standard here, we'd need to have epidemic issues of "women being violent towards men." We don't.
That ought to be enough, but it probably isn't. It's important to understand that women are in a disadvantaged position here. The system doesn't work for them. Specific political efforts targeting violence against women acknowledge that. Such eforts are necessary. Unless you have a plan that will stamp out violence over the next few years.
Moving away from the politics of law to the politics of social "conversation" (whatever that means), the focus on violence against women does spring from the erroneous position that relative lack of violence from women is natural state--a default position, if you will. I doubt anyone would disagree that men are more apt to be violent because they are socialized to believe violence is acceptable. Women are generally pressured to accept violence is not acceptable.
The issue here is that women are socialized to non-violence via the application of violence. (Similarly, men are socialized by the same means, but with a different end in mind.) Violence isn't the only method, but it's among them.
It's basically meaningless to say "be against all violence" when we don't really understand how violence weaves into human development. Because we don't really understand human development.
People don't respond well to abstractions. Try to explain to a person who doesn't already agree how racism and sexism live in the unconscious these days, and they'll just nod and keep doing the same shit, without actually thinking about how their shit is part of the problem.
People like things simplified. You don't get much simpler than "Violence against women." It's broad enough to encapsulate a lot of things, while remain specific enough to be accepted a bad thing.
I'd really like say that Violence was the issue (because, technically, it is), but from the practical standpoint, I know that I can safely point out issues without fear of certain kinds of retaliation simply by establishing the existence of my penis. Women, saying the same things, are targeted with threats of physical attack, harassment, rape, and death. This has happened so often of late that it seems absolutely absurd to me that anyone could view efforts to underline this problem as a double standard of any kind. The double standard is in the fact that my penis is a shield against violence.
Because seriously. That's not what it's for.
No one expected to come into this thread and think about my penis.
You're welcome.
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Just in case and the cover song Banana Smoothie