I’m afraid of strange men.
I’m afraid of strange men in elevators. I’m afraid of strange men when I walk home, when I travel, when I go to work, when I go to school…. But that’s just the mindset of the modern woman, always on the defensive – don’t let anyone find the chinks in your armor. In other words, don’t give anyone the chance to take advantage of you.
From birth we’re conditioned to act, speak, and think a certain way. Boys, according to society, should like blue, toy cars, and destroying things. And likewise, girls should love pink, playing with dolls, and being generally dainty. While a boy is a “little tyke” and roams free, a girl is a “young lady” and is expected to act as such. She is expected to act nice and proper, no matter what. No temper tantrums, no rolling around in the mud, no cursing, no eating with her hands at the dinner table, no, no, no, not allowed. Boys can act like little terrors while girls’ actions are strictly policed by the watchful eyes of society.
Being a girl is tough.
The stigma of being a girl is perpetuated by the verbal abuse and conditioning that little boys endure. “Pull up your skirts, ladies”, “Man up”, “Stop acting like such a girl”, and “Mama’s boy” are all problematic expressions. They say that hate breeds hate and that’s exactly what happens in these instances.
Those expressions all imply that when the boy is acting “like a girl” he’s somehow doing something wrong. Acting like a girl holds negative connotations in our society when it really shouldn’t. Because this mentality is ingrained in us from a young age, its damaging effects carry through to the teenage years and especially into adulthood.
Boys go into their teenage years with a raging sense of entitlement. They’ve always gotten their way, they’re the star players in their own worlds and they feel that they should be recognized for it. They’ve hit that magical period where the idea that they’re better than girls is at an all time high. This happens to most every boy during these pre-high school and high school years. They’re immature, insecure, and have been force fed the notion that not proving their manliness is a cardinal sin.
Girls are taught to be cautious around boys at this age, and for good reason. Their insecurity can manifest itself some pretty terrible things. It’s also during this time that girls become the subject of their jokes. Kitchen jokes and rape jokes are the most prevalent and sometimes border on sexual harassment.
Kitchen jokes blatantly state that a woman’s place is in the kitchen. Now, we’ve come quite a long way since those days. Starting during the World Wars women were able to get out of the traditional household and prove themselves, to shape their futures and pave the way for others. They were the first of many and certainly not the last. But for some strange reason, the height of hilarity seems to be using jokes to demean women and their rising status in the world.
Rape jokes are harassment, there’s no other way about it. They are demeaning, they make women uncomfortable, they harm people. Every girl is aware of the threat of rape. Stranger danger is what they tell you when you’re young, but they don’t warn you about the people you think you know. Rape is no laughing matter. Though again, for some odd reason, boys seem to find it hilarious. Maybe it’s because boys fixate on sex during these years, or maybe no one taught them better. Either way, it’s still terrible.
Speaking of sex, when a guy gets a lot of girls he’s a player and he’s applauded for having sex. When a girl gets a lot of guys she’s a slut and is berated for her apparently despicable actions. This gender bias only adds to a guy’s budding sense of entitlement and it perpetuates the idea that women have to be policed and men can do no wrong.
As we know, that entitlement can lead to some pretty gruesome ends. Girls and women are being killed because they don’t immediately do what men want.
You declined an offer to prom? Better be on the lookout ‘cause you might get stabbed.
You didn’t throw yourself at some random guy just because he was a man? Watch out, you could be the next to die!
This happens time and time again with no immediate response. If this was an act of terrorism from another country, it would have been controlled years ago. But unfortunately, these men keep getting the benefit of the doubt from our officials. They blame it on mental illness, they blame it on gun control laws, etc. Those may be factors in the situations but they’re definitely not the root cause.
These are examples of misogyny and male entitlement at its worst.
I came across the word misogyny on a social website at about 4 in the morning one day. I looked it up and learned that it’s a hatred or dislike of women that manifests itself in sexual harassment, violence, and discrimination against women. It’s not the same as sexism which is just discrimination based on gender. It’s used as an all encompassing word for discrimination and acts of violence against women.
I went back out into the world the next day with these new definitions buzzing around in my head. It was as if someone had slapped me in the face and knocked off the glasses that kept me from seeing things as how they really were. I started to notice small (and even large) acts of misogyny in my everyday life.
Noticing these things made me angry. I was angry that no one else could see them, they just thought of them as the norm. And it is. In our male dominated society this is the cultural norm. But it shouldn’t be. Why should women have to endure this constant shaming, the jokes, the sexual harassment and assault, the discrimination, the wage gap, the constant threats?
The answer: we shouldn’t have to. We shouldn’t have to put up with all of this. Instead of trying to play catch up, we should be fixing the root of the problem.
Stop teaching boys that being a girl is not a bad thing.
Start teaching girls that being a girl isn’t something to be ashamed of.