A "good guy" is a rare find in this society. After all, boys are inherently beasts who can't control themselves. The requirements for a "good guy" includes the following:
Resists the temptation to rape people
Accepts a girl's rejection after the fifth time
Doesn't attack people in a dark alley
These are unusual and exceptional qualities in the male personality, and must be commended when observed.
STAGE DIRECTIONS: All safe now, continue to read in a normal voice.
Rape culture is heavily normalised in our society, not only in the actions we are conditioned to accept as everyday occurrences such as street harassment, slut shaming and victim shaming, but in the way we perceive the standard of decent social behaviour. With 1 in 5 women, and 1 in 22 men victim of sexual violence in Australia, rape is so commonplace that we have come to accept sexual assault as normal, and respecting sexual consent as a strange, alien outlier. As with anything regarding rape culture, the problem is with how we treat the perpetrator, and since men are the predominant demographic of sexual violence perpetrators, the issue lies in how we condition boys to view rape.
Currently we have this image of the "good guy" and the "average boy". As mentioned above, the good guy is commended on his resistance to the temptation to rape, and his lack of violence tendencies. Conversely, the average guy does the opposite. When boys ignore consent, rape and abuse women, or attack people in a drunken fight, their cases are more often than not dismissed in the social conscience as "boys will be boys, we can't expect them to do anything else".
There is a longstanding social assumption that boys are not in control of their sexual libido, which I shall politely describe as unsophisticated bovine defecation. Since gender and sex do not influence each other (read this for an explanation), and testosterone has been proved as only slightly more potent than oestrogen or other sex hormones, it does not make sense that we view male sexual drive as so significantly beyond someone's conscious control. Rather, this myth stems from a long history of allowing men to dominate in sex, and the subsequent need for an excuse as people started to criticise this.
And because of this harmful assumption, we as a society hold men - particularly boys - to a very low standard. We do not treat sexual violence or even general disrespect of women with particularly harsh criticism, and so have built a culture where this treatment of women in particular is seen as perfectly normal. This is further exacerbated when a boy displays very average characteristics of a decent human being, we shower him with praise, which makes acting in a non-macho-violent way seem like something unusual, special, and unattainable for the normal boy.
Ideally, when a boy considers taking advantage of a drunk girl at a party, but eventually decides not to, we should not congratulate him on an amazing display of humanity and responsibility, we should be disgusted that he considering raping someone.
We don't live in this world, but perhaps it is a case of "fake it til you make it". If we hold boys to a solid standard of decent behaviour, we could start to normalise a culture which does not accept rape and sexual violence as the status quo.
Ideally, when a boy considers taking advantage of a drunk girl at a party, but eventually decides not to, we should not congratulate him on an amazing display of humanity and responsibility, we should be disgusted that he considering raping someone.
We don't live in this world, but perhaps it is a case of "fake it til you make it". If we hold boys to a solid standard of decent behaviour, we could start to normalise a culture which does not accept rape and sexual violence as the status quo.
Leave thoughts and comments :)
Hannah
What are your thoughts on the way the government is addressing issues such as domestic violence? I am very interested.
ReplyDeleteToo little too late...
DeleteThat said I really like their recent campaigns because they've finally realises that telling women to avoid domestic violence is stupid, victim shaming and ineffective. They've started addressing how boys treat women, and that's a really great improvement
This probably sounds really bad and ignorant but. I know that concerning domestic abuse cases the perpetrator of the great majority of cases are male, but aren't there some female perpetrators?
DeleteI see these pillars in the library talking about women being the victims. But shouldn't there be something addressing the opposite?
How about if this leads to men who report domestic violence/etc cases where they are the victim being laughed off or condemned by peers for being "unmasculine".
I too agree that it is a good campaign due to more publicity to change the social norm set by men in the past. But I think that the other side should be addressed in some ways(Obviously to a lesser degree), maybe not now but eventually because while domestic violence and many issues have men as the aggressor, I think that such advertisement of female victimization/male aggression will negatively affect how men are viewed in the opposite versions of these cases despite how limited they might be.
Please Inform because I don't know if I'm being weird in thinking this. Maybe I'm just not addressing the issue the right way I guess.
Of course there are female perpetrators, but the vast vast vast majority of people who commit domestic violence are men to the point where it's not very useful to spend money on a campaign against female abusers.
DeleteHowever yes you're right there are many male victims (usually abused by a male partner though) and they are often ignored. Yes the recent government campaigns are heteronormative, but they address the same issue that affects both male and female victims abused by men: the victims are feminised. Since feminism largely aims at breaking down the gender role of femininity, feminist campaigns will often solve men's issues as a byproduct of solving women's issues because they stem from the same assumptions of gender.
That said the government should put more effort into helping male victims than it currently does like shelters and support groups
Delete