The New "She" is "He"

Submitted by scarbo on Mon, 2011-08-29 15:21

Article here. Excerpt:

'I see it in the school district where I work. Girls punching boys — punching them hard, sometimes out of meanness, sometimes for fun, but still packing a wallop.

It's been increasing in recent times, with situation comedies either reflecting, or leading, the trend. How did these young people learn this? Has this nastiness come to be OK because boys are supposed to be able to take a punch without showing pain? Or do the boys get the whack because they're such muttonheads and they have it coming?
...
So the totals were: eight boys physically attacked by girls, seven boys hit by boys, three girls hit by other girls and one girl struck by a boy. So we're being trained to get a laugh from girls striking and berating boys, and we're being conditioned to believe that boys are sloppy and violent among themselves when they get together, but there's nothing comedic about a girl being injured, whichever sex caused the harm.

What I'd like to know is how much of this is unconscious to the writers and producers of these programs, because as mean and dishonest as Eddie Haskell was, he never hit the Beaver.'

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Comments

When I was a kid, my dad raised us to never hit girls - ever. One time in an argument with a girl out on the street (she pushed my new bike over, scratching it) she shoved and hit me, and I shoved her back. When I came home and told my parents, my dad belted me as I'd 'been physical' with her.

Once, it was a sign of respect - we were taught that boys/men were physically stronger than girls/women, and that it was shameful therefore to use that strength against them. Women were pure, gentle, to be protected and valued. As a man today, I still hold that there's some truth in there, and I would still struggle to hit a woman even if I had to.

But today the world has changed. Girls are taught from an early age they are as good as, or better than, boys. Girls are shown in every media they look at that it's okay to hurt boys, with the messages being:

    "they're thick and they're slow, whack them to get the message across".
    "They are stronger than you, so smashing them in the testicles is fine - and hilarous"
    "They are evil, so don't feel bad about flooring them any way you can"
    "The rest of the world will give you a high five if you DO hurt them - so go ahead"

I have a teen daughter who regularly gets into play fights with her friends where she'll punch them, and amongst the boys (from what I can see) it's a mark of strength to not show pain. In other words, I think boys and men have held up their end of the deal, and they're still showing respect and restraint. How could they not - society as a whole demonizes the very concept of a man hurting a woman, it's evil, cowardly, sadistic.

At the same time, girls and women have let us down, and decided to take that chivalry (when it suits them) and at the same time to let fly with the fists.

I've told my two teen sons that it's wrong to hit a woman, but at the same time it's more wrong not to defend yourself. If you are getting hurt then you can defend yourself, and if that means hurting them back then so be it - you are nobodies punching bag.

But you can bet your last dollar that if they defend themselves at school towards a girl, they will get suspended and maybe even expelled from the school.

It's a tough world for boys right now.

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Submitted by GaryB on Thu, 2011-09-01 00:15

I once believed the DV movement was about preventing violence to women. At first I believed what they said, only to discover women were just as violent in relationships as men. The more they denied women's guilt and proclaim men's guilt, the more they made it socially and legally acceptable for women to abuse men--but men better not fight back, even in self-defense. And that was the movement's goal--to establish the rules so women could abuse and even kill their male partners but men better not fight back. Thus you see girls behaving as they do--it's the new norm. Abusive women and men afraid to fight back.

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Submitted by el cid on Wed, 2011-08-31 16:02