Violence can be physical or sexual. You've most likely heard the term 'rape culture', but have you wondered why physical violence is discussed nowhere near as often? You may think physical violence is of microscopical (if any) concern compared to rape, but does that brush off women physically assaulted by men because they weren't raped?
More often than not the case, with both genders, a man violating a woman is the main/only scenario people imagine when they hear 'rape' and 'sexual harassment'. For instance, the Screen Actors Guilt [SAG] Awards had an all-female lineup for the #MeToo movement, but what about the men who've come forward about being sexually assaulted in the entertainment industry? And the fact that men too are sexually assaulted daily - let alone that there are no rape clinics for men?
If you giggled in disbelief while shaking your head at the thought of women raping men because it's "just sex", does that mean I (an abstinent single male), if I want to lose my virginity, can hunt down a promiscuous female friend of mine because she "likes any sex she can get"? Or you may wonder how a woman could be capable of raping a man because he can "fend for himself", but what if she has a gun; or rapes him in his sleep; or drugs him; or threatens to tell everyone HE did the raping? How do you know a male rape victim was violated by a *woman*? And going back to the "it's just sex" logic for a woman rapist, what if she has HIV/AIDS?
'Rape culture' is called 'rape culture', but why don't people talk about physical violence as often?
... Well, they do, but that's called "End violence against WOMEN!" Other than that, I'm positive I'd catch Hell on Earth on Facebook if I posted about having sex with an unconscious girl; as opposed to getting some likes and 'haha' reactions if I posted about giving a guy two black eyes and a fractured nose for pinching me on St. Patrick's Day because I didn't wear green. After all, this is the same society that looks the other way when it comes to prison rape (and contrary to all the ranting about feminists having no care for male rape victims, I did a poll on here about prison rape and significantly more men than women voted that they couldn't care less about it... and mind you that I'm not a feminist).
Many would say that man-on-woman violence is the most heinous because "the man's stronger" and that a man should thereby NEVER hit a woman in ANY instance, not even if she hit him first; and dismiss a woman hitting a man because "she's weaker" and because "he likely deserved it". If treating men as bags of meat for women to slap, punch or beat whenever they feel like doing it isn't objectifying men, I don't know what is - and tell me again how objectification of women is a big factor in rape culture.
As said, people will flip out when a man hits a woman and react more passively toward a woman hitting another woman, and with plenty of males (including self-proclaimed 'chivalrous' white knights) who'd encourage the latter and get off to it; but it only takes ONE blow in either circumstance to cause damage as serious as a dislocated jaw, a cracked skull, brain damage or even fatality. If you're not going to be just as outraged by female-on-female violence in effort to end violence against women, change your slogan to "End violence against women by men because we don't care about a skank otherwise".
If a man does "pick on someone his own size" by hitting another man (size ratio apparently not important at all), even then, the act of him hitting anyone would desensitize him to eventually hitting women. How good of a vibe would you get from your daughter dating a pacifist guy who attends church versus her dating a guy who's quick to "stomp ass" whenever a "motherf**ker crosses him" and a record of "attending" prison that shows it? Even when a guy apologizes profoundly to his girlfriend for hitting her, they don't say "If he hits you once, he will hit you again" nor "Once a wifebeater, always a wifebeater" for nothing.
We live in a culture of physical violence where if a man or woman declines to swing hands at someone for derogatory talk, {s}he's a doormat in many people's eyes; or if {s}he chooses to walk away from a fight, {s}he's a coward; or if {s}he reports any strike made on him/her to the authorities, {s}he's a snitch (especially the man in each case). A woman also may be shamed if she doesn't smack a guy for grabbing her butt, with names thrown at her like 'slut' and 'cum-dumpster' - which would burn my blood because if society would care so much about her well-being if a guy hit her, they wouldn't pressure her to risk escalating ANY situation into a physically dangerous one.
Why must *anyone* risk their well-being like that? Nothing makes a woman's well-being more sacred than a man's, especially with all the rhetoric and demanding howls for equality from feminists and anti-feminists alike; and after all, if a man doesn't hit anyone, that makes it all the more likely that he'll never abuse his partner (female or male, to bring gay rights into this - especially with all the preaching about that too).
"End violence against women" is said with well-meaning intent and valued with zero tolerance for men hitting women, but at this point, can we not pretend that it has anything to do with female rights? Because it's 100% female privilege. If you truly want to end violence against women, or if you value men just as much as women, the right motto is "End violence against EVERYONE" and the right course of action is putting your foot down JUST as firmly and calling out ANY act of violence against another individual.
You may mostly agree with my proposed motto, but still believe female-on-male doesn't warrant inclusion because "no woman can harm a man" and say that nothing can change your mind on that. Apart from plain and simply being a bigot if you agree with that, as said previously, I guess you never read the statistics displayed below to save you the Google search.
You might argue with that saying "It still happens to women more" (even when hardly), but just like hitting someone desensitizes you to violence, getting hit also does. Picture a scenario of a woman slapping her boyfriend, her and her friends telling him it's his fault and her slapping him a few more times before punching him in the chest; and then him having the mindset of "If women can do it to me, I can do it to them" as a result of the long-term abuse and the enablement of that abuse by her friends... So he proceeds to punch her at a hard enough caliber to have her break up with him and from then on has the idea that domestic violence is okay. Likewise, a woman may be hit by her boyfriend and attempt to justify it with the excuse of "If the genders were reversed..."
A woman hitting a man because he "can't" hit her back is the same purest form of cowardice as a man hitting a woman because she's "weaker". A woman can alternatively brag about hitting a man and his "bitch-ass" not hitting her back, but men being raised to not hit women as a golden rule, that'd be the same as me bragging about hitting a a couple of Mormon missionaries and them not hitting me back. She can claim to hit a woman for the same reason she hit that man, but like with a woman-hitting man claiming he'd hit another man if he crossed him too, I'll wait for the situation to present itself and see if she has bite with that bark.
To conclude this Take, I won't deny that you may or may not think the message of ending violence is a load of b-s. To each their own, but the overall message is that all violence can be justifiable or none of it can be. Whatever you wish for, there's no having it both ways.
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