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What are the roots of male violence? We can look into how males are raised in society and the gender stereotypes we inculcate them with.
Observe the list in blue. It, and similar archetypes, dominate our social discourse and structure of our societies. It is from many of these bedrock values patriarchy springs, and along with it, male violence. These values are passed from parents to children and to have any hope of ending the problem of male violence the cycle must be interrupted. I think that in some aspects our society has been proactive in reducing direct violent behaviour toward members of the family unit. However, the use of violence to solve disputes within the family setting still exists, and is prevalent enough make the existence of well-watched violent compilations on youtube a reality.
We know that children are like little sponges and they observe almost everything that happens around them. Here is what is disturbing about the following ‘funny’ collection of parents – usually fathers – destroying their children’s electronic toys: What lessons are being learned in how male children are to process their anger and frustration in a reasonable pro-social manner?
Now, after seeing the vid (there are 4 more similar compilations?!) how can we be ever be surprised when males act the way they do? Yes this is a gratuitous generalization, but really in what possible world is destroying someone’s stuff a reasonable course of action? They are not listening? Talk to them. Do pretty much anything but rely on patriarchal domination and violence to get your point across to your child. The behaviour a parent demonstrates now shapes the future behaviour of the child and we, desperately, as a society need to break some of the more deleterious aspects of male socialization.
It is evident that Auntie Wanda has thought a fair amount on gender and how it is constructed in society.
It’s [sex and gender] really not that esoteric:
A girl is a prepubescent to adolescent human female. A woman is a post-adolescent human female. A boy is a prepubescent to adolescent human male. A man is a post- adolescent human male.
Gender is the socially enforced prescribed behaviors and expectations people are pressured to follow based on which sex they are. It’s profoundly harmful and, especially for girls and women, oppressive.
“Gender identity” is therefore associating oneself with the oppressive gender roles of the opposite sex and determining that makes one the equivalent of the opposite sex (or in some way something other than the sex they are), which only reinforces the idea that gender roles are inherent to the sexes, which only furthers their oppressive use on the sexes.
That’s it really.
Can you explain it a little differently? I’m really tired and frustrated at the moment, please just make it a little more simple if that’s okay?
“Okay, consider it this way: you’re born female, you’re a girl. You’re born male, you’re a boy. That in of itself is a neutral statement.
But in our society there are certain things expected of girls that aren’t expected of boys. We’re expected to be quieter, more agreeable, less capable, less competent, less intelligent than boys.
We’re expected to like makeup and fashion and princesses and we’re also treated as vain and frivolous and less worthy for liking these things.
If we like “boy” things that may be seen as quirky and charming for a while, but it’s still discouraged and we’re still expected to grow out of it.
We’re expected to be disinterested in science, engineering and technology, discouraged from purusing it if we are interested and treated as less competent if we make it our career in adulthood.
(Even though a scant few decades ago women primarily did the mathematical calculations for NASA and preformed the earliest computer programming. Because those things, like typing, were seen as jobs that were beneath men to do.)
We’re expected to be sexually appealing to every man on the street. This is the role given to us in most advertising, film and media by default.
We’re expected to grow up to be the helpers of men, to be their wives and girlfriends and the things they get sex from. To further their own needs and ambitions while having none of our own.
That’s gender. It’s sexist. And it sucks.”
What we are exposed to in childhood helps set the tone of our expectations later in life. Consider the female role models little girls and boys are exposed to while they are making up their minds on what and how they want to be.
-Woman Hating. Andrea Dworkin
Contrast this passage with male role models who are actively adventuring, swashbuckling, and generally getting shit done. The gender roles and socialization are woven deeply into every aspect of our society. Gender roles are for the most part, destructive social constructs, whose expectations and limitations hurt women and men. We should strive to counter the normative messages that our socialization breeds into us because ultimately, gender is a hierarchy that happens to discriminate against half the human race and we need less oppression not more in our society.
bleatmop
Mystro
The Arbourist
Dead Wild Roses 
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