Growing up, Tim Pylypiuk had to deal with an ongoing pattern of hurt and abuse by girls and women. But the worst part was, no one believed him.
Living life on the outskirts of a traditional periphery, you notice the brilliant symphony of patterns–streaks and curves painting a vibrant collage of images teeming with life. At least, that’s how routines and personalities of the common man appear to me with my way of processing information.
But there’s the gritty, grimy side of set patterns; mentalities that gnaw away at your resolve, uphold an ostracising status quo. If you’ve been through the brunt of it, the wounds aren’t quick to heal. Worse, you begin to wonder if there is a place out there for your situation.
Looking back on my childhood and teenage years, I was the unfortunate victim of nasty attitudes and abuse from boys and girls, men and women. My life was a living hell, something to survive day-to-day instead of take pleasure in. For nineteen years, there was no escape. I had very little in terms of support to count on, no shelter from the hurt, thanks not only to a harsh outside world but a dysfunctional personal safety net already worn and rotting. This nearly drove me to suicide at one point. I was only fourteen-years-old at the time.
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Luckily, I had come to terms with most of the abuse. The unfortunate side-effect is I have to live with the wounds and any triggers associated to them, learn to deal with the melodrama. But I made a grievous error and only considered what one gender inflicted on me while ignoring damage the other dealt in equal measure.
At thirty-two years old, I had to deal with severe anger and sadness bubbling to the top of the pot when recounting what the girls and women accomplished in cutting me down to size. I learned it was a mistake to file it all away and work through the shallow attitudes of those boys and men with no consideration for how the girls and women contributed to it independently.
These include the following experiences:
At age six, I was diagnosed autistic. In order to be official I had to undergo a series of tests for the mind, hearing and co-ordination at a local general hospital. These came in the form of games tailored to measure and gauge “Normative” criteria. My mother and father would drop me off, leave me in the hands of various counsellors and support workers. Needless to say, it was not a good experience. They screamed at me, put me down for breaking rules, some even grabbing my arms and forcing “normal” motions out of them when I refused to participate in their chosen game or pick something up like a “Normal Boy”. One support worker once burst into the room during a hearing exercise I was doing wrong and became unhinged while I sat and quivered in the chair, shaking; a scared little six year old child. These counsellors and support workers were women.
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In Elementary School, on three occasions, I was attacked by a move of kids outside the rear exit doors. Some were my age, others older. They’d scream and shout into my ear, crowding me in an effort to disorientate my senses. I was lead around in a few directions until groups of hands reached forward and took hold of my pants. I tried to fight them off, but in vain as they yanked my pants down to the ankles then dispersed in gleeful amusement at their handiwork. Girls participated in the deed alongside the boys. I never told anyone about these incidents, not even my mom and dad for it was drilled into them, and me, that my “behaviour” was a problem in need of correction. So who’d believe an autistic “Behaviour Challenged” little boy like me?
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There was a group of girls in elementary school whom took pleasure in teasing me just to get a major reaction. When they succeeded in reducing me to an emotional cripple, they’d sneer and snicker.
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In high school, the young women called me “Weirdo” and “Retard”, mixing amongst the young men’s slurs directed my way in the halls.
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One high school girl, as I was working on a story during spare time in computer class, picked up what had been printed from the printer and read it aloud in a mocking tone. She then ripped it out (properly, though) and wrapped the contents around my body, calling me “Retard” and inducing giggles from others around my station.
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A young man, with his “Clique” of girls and boys, started taunting me while waiting for the school bus to arrive outside after classes were done for the day. Another young woman stood up for me but turned around and criticised me for not using harsh language to repel them. When I told her about my aversion to it, she wouldn’t hear it and joined in the clique and their heckling before leaving me alone at last.
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In high school computer class, we were asked to start a story of our own design then pass it around our station on disk for others to continue. I used a scene from one of my stories I had been working on. When it was returned to me, all my characters were turned into sex-starved, foul-language spewing maniacs engaged in an orgy, including a seven year old girl named Cynthia. So, child rape was ‘amusing’ to them. Again, girls did it with the boys.
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But the biggest experience I recall was having a crush on a girl who sat next to me in computer class. She was struggling with her assignments, getting nowhere. Me being the natural, kind-hearted Samaritan I was decided to assist her. We soon formed a comadre, working together on tasks that stumped us. She was appreciative of the gesture and our relationship soon allowed leeway to whatever was on our minds: life, background, anything went in terms of conversation. It didn’t matter that she had a boyfriend. Friendship was enough for me to accept. Until one day when she tried to force me into a game of “Show me your underwear” she initiated with the others. I refused but she still insisted I do it, goading me on. Again, I refused repeatedly, causing her to lurch forward in an attempt to pull my underwear up herself. I howled in protest, fighting her off. She stopped, sneered, and then laughed with the others.
Days later, after her betrayal, I considered our friendship over. Walking the halls, I was suddenly thrust up against a row of lockers. Standing in front of me was my former crush’s boyfriend, his hand firmly on my shirt. He told me if I ever spoke to her again, he’d kick my ass. My former crush stood beside him, grinning the whole time.
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Just the mere act of typing these horrid events out brings me right back to those times, front row and center. They are as fresh as they were years ago. I now realized how much damage I accumulated in mind and soul thanks to these cruel females. But support was hard to find.
There were no articles or stories on how girls and women could hurt and bully boys and men. Everything was centered on boys bullying boys, girls bullying girls, and boys bullying girls. Never any examination of what girls and women could accomplish in the cruelty department towards the opposite sex.
Save for one online called “Boys Don’t Tell on Sugar-and-Spice-But-Not-So-Nice Girl Bullies”
In it, men in their late ages recount tales of bullying from girls that left an undeniable impression on them. From what the records say, the torment and harassment was no different from whenever a boy or gangs of boys had a similar appetite for exerting their power. While very cathartic reading material, the information is severely dated and stuck in the late 90s to early 21st Century. Already the antiquity tarnished its relevance to my current situation.
When you’re a man like me hurt by girls and women as a child, it’s a lonely road with nary a reassuring passerby in sight. Society just can’t seem to wrap its mind around the notion of a girl or a woman hurting a boy or a man. They jump through all sorts of hoops to justify the girls behaviour — mental illness, influence, they didn’t know any better — while tarring any boy or man inflicting similar harms.
It doesn’t help that the repeated, popular narratives tend to reinforce what happened to me as irrelevant and my pain refutable compared to the majority of victims.
It happened to me with certain Feminists. I was told how my privileged status negated whatever I suffered since I benefited from institutionalised sexism as a pure, white male. They put me out to pasture, minimizing and invalidating the raw trauma and feelings it called up with sentences like “It’s worse for women,” “You’re an anomaly. Boys bully girls and other boys. That’s a fact.” The less polite charged me with “failing to check my privilege.”
The only people who supported me when breaking my story out into the mainstream (on the internet, really) were the followers of Glenn Sacks and an assortment of male victims of female abuse at other sites, particularly Jacob Taylor of Toy Soldiers and some at Feminist Critics. I feared not fitting in because my abuse wasn’t of a similar nature compared to their injuries. They still welcomed me, and I, in turn, found a commonality of being ignored and ostracised due to the gender of the attacker in our dealings with the mainstream.
As for feminists themselves, the good news is there were some I encountered currently who considered my experiences and didn’t treat me like an oppressor. They left all “Privilege” talk in the closet and validated what happened by telling me “Girls and Women can hurt just like any abusive boy or man.” To them, I was a survivor of serious abuse regardless of the perpetrators but felt it a bitter pill to swallow because their views were labelled “Anti-feminist” or “Sympathetic to MRAs” by the rest.
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I’ve waxed enough on this so back to the subject at hand.
There was another consequence of these injuries. To this day, I’m anxious and afraid of assertive women. More of the feared capabilities of assertive women to hurt since I’ve experienced the same hard-lined attitudes flouncing me badly as a helpless young man.
Stories in popular culture of strong female protagonists I’m careful to avoid if they’re developed at the expense of the supporting male characters. The latter are either made to be buffoons, ignorant, stupid, or couldn’t lead their way out of a paper bag. For the ones who are as strong as the female protagonist, they’re quickly rendered weak doormats by her aggressiveness, unable to defend themselves or fight back like I couldn’t.
For example, take Pixar’s new animated movie Brave coming out next year. Same formula: Strong, independent female protagonist, buffoonish and simpleton men where their masculinity is exaggerated for a cheap laugh or they’re the fodder for comic relief as the female protagonist is shown to be competent at everything as the men struggle to lift a weapon. It hurt me so much to see an animation company I believed in for their well-rounded characters of both genders and attention to story sell out with such a trite “grrl power” narrative. As of now, I’m uncertain whether I’ll or not to see the movie as a whole when it reaches theaters.
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Whatever your position is in gender debate and equality, you must understand that stories like mine count. You can’t dismiss them. And I don’t care who has it worse or not, dubious statistics included.
I exist and deserve to be heard and supported in equal measure. Casting it all off because of stereotypical notions about girls and women incapable of harm and how it would take away from all those supports that exist out there for females in need lends credence to the isolation men like me don’t deserve to be put through. Life should be about pleasure, not an endurance test everyday where all that matters is survival of the fittest and a tightening of the bootstraps.
With such ignorance still in existence it feels, to me, like humanity never progressed beyond the high school cafeteria. All around, assorted cliques join together at different tables. You sit alone since no will bother to acknowledge you even when you strain to appeal to their sensibilities or they give you the cold shoulder because you’re “Different”.
Switch them with the popular narratives mentioned earlier about bullying and abuse. They’re all talking about their experiences at different tables as related to the subject at hand. You go around sharing your tale of woe only to receive incredulous looks and sniggers of amusement.
Dejected, you sit back at your table in solitude as others pass you by with turned up noses.
The only solace is your tears streaking down, tumbling in slow motion into the food you’re eating. Tasting it reminds you of your humanity because you can taste your sadness. Bon appetite.
Please don’t paint over me so I blend into the background where no one can see. The vibrancy is as valid as the everyday patterns I absorb with relish in everyday life.
About Tim Pylypiuk
Vocalyze
Thanks for telling your story.
We need a more honest conversation about gender and power structures than what is currently going on.
I’m just waiting for those who will insist that this story is about a “Disability Issue” and not a gender issue!
I was not surprised that the piece featured that old rotten chestnut of linking Disability to Pedophilia – taking a persons work and rewriting it to use difference in any form to create abuse and further it. So many disabled men know that one only too well. I have yet to see the same done to a disabled woman.
It should be remembered that the author has made it clear that they have identified gender issues – and not disability issues. If some wish to argue that their disability has clouded judgment and insight, that is to imply that the author is incompetent – and it could easily be read as Victimization and abuse on grounds of Disability.
But, if that argument is tried it would indicate that it’s seen by some as acceptable for Disabled People to be abused physically and otherwise by female perpetrators as well as male?
I wonder if that one would be attempted, if the issue was not disability but race?
The piece identifies physical assault by both genders, as well as verbal abuse and conduct that meets the accepted definition of torture, both as a noun and a verb. If some wish to claim that this was caused by lack of insight, then that would be a critique of education and parenting – and not the experience of the Disabled Person. It would even be seen as an attempt to Torture Language as in – “to twist into a grotesque form”. I also noted the Institutional abuse identified in early childhood – and there is no excuse for attempting to justify that one as due to pay differentials and low paid care workers.
It’s interesting when it comes to Bullying and Abuse there are three strategies to defense.
1) Deny and trivialize – It was just the way it was back then – they did not know any better – Things have changed and you should not dwell in the past – it’s time to move on and be healed – you only injure yourself when you allow what happened to affect you today.
If that does not work the person who is either bullied or articulating the bullying is attacked at stage Two.
2) You are making this all about women and calling all women abusers – This is just you and your friends making trouble – Your experience is nothing compared to what I have seen Girls go through – just be glad you weren’t raped over the computer terminal – Do you know that this ALSO happens to girls every day and .. and … and.. you are denying that ……
If that fails, the last line of defense at stage Three is to claim personal pain and attempt emotional and social manipulation to deflect attention away.
You are just making this all about women – we have suffered under Patriarchy for all eternity – you have no interest in women’s feelings – You try to make all women into monsters when you are the monster…
Stage three is most fascinating, as the Bully will drag in anything and divert attention anywhere about themselves as they seek to divert attention to themselves so they maintain control over all others.
When that fails – you have a bully cornered and they have run out of ways to run! On the net Flouncetastic exist will often follow.
Individuals who repeatedly reiterate that three stage defense for bullying are recognized as Serial Bullies.
Bullying is often seen as a learned behavior – but it is also linked to a person believing they are entitled and have the right to express power over another. One factor of that is that when a person speaks out and communicates how they have been bullied, abused and even tortured, those who hold such mindsets and learning will all too often attack – not because the Victim is wrong – but, because they bully type has to defend their own internal issues and their own bullying behavior. They attempt to get the victim to condone the bully’s actions. Bullies seek to create Willing Victims who collude with the bully.
Just because some have been through an educational system where bullying and abuse was not addressed, does not mean that it’s acceptable long after school days are over. Lessons are to be learned in the big wide world, and not some junior high text book.
If some lack that insight they have a bigger lesson to still learn.
This is very true in my experience with quite a few “feminists”. In fact it’s quite scary the diversionary tactics used to try deny female abuse and even male abuse victims, it’s like some want to be seen as the victim so much that they deny the other exists. It’s a pity because if people dropped gender from the debate and simply helped victims and perps get the support, treatment they need then we might actually excel as a species.
Good story.
Having lived something rather similar, I’m a post-feminist. We can treat the kind of things that happen in Afghanistan and Iraq as atrocities without demonizing the mostly good guys living in developed nations.
“Please don’t paint over me so I blend into the background where no one can see.”
Such a beautiful way to express the reality of all people who are abused and not believed.
It makes it clear, that the people with the paint are the issue, no matter what color or type of paint they insist on using.
I can really relate to what you are saying. I was was a shy, socially awkward girl and I was bullied relentlessly by a group of “mean girls” through grade school and jr. high. One of my few friends was a boy who was picked on by the same crowd. To this day, I have a visceral dislike of women who remind me of the “popular” crowd in school (cheerleaders, sorority girl types, etc.) as I had so many bad experiences with those types of girls. I wish you well.
Note for the moderators: the links in the article do not work. They are linked by to GMP and they all come up as “Page Not Found”.
Regarding Tim’s article, I am glad that he mentioned the dismissive responses he sometimes receives because they are often the main reason why people do not talk about the emotional, physical or sexual violence females commit. There is an element of people thinking it either cannot happen, rarely happens or that it is benign, and that simply is not the case. Girls can be just as hurtful and harmful as boys.
I also think this is important because it goes back to how some men treat women. Many men who treat women negatively or badly were hurt by women, and that anger, fear and resentment drives the way they view women.
Links are fixed — thanks Jacobtk for pointing it out.
Tim, thank you for this side of the story, one we don’t often hear and one that is valid and important.
Many men who treat women negatively or badly were hurt by women, and that anger, fear and resentment drives the way they view women.
Yes.
Maybe if those boys had gotten the proper support they needed that future anger, fear, and resentment towards women could be prevented. But no the current attitude seems to be ignore today’s boys, wait until they become tomorrow’s woman hater AND THEN get up in arms.
True dat.
@Jill: That’s kind of the cool thing about social media. When I first got out of high school, I had that same sort of reaction towards ‘mean girls’ and popular boys, avoiding them, and gravitating towards other outsiders. Now, due to being friends with some of them on facebook and twitter, I realize that they’re mostly normal people, who’ve changed, have their own problems, and who were just a part of the cruel high school culture.
Thank you for your story, Tim.
As a feminist, stories like this are extremely important and relevant to the dialogues that we pride ourselves on starting or being part of. Leaving anyone high and dry because of their gender hurts the cause; everything is relevant because we are all products of the same culture, no matter where on the ladder we’ve been put.
That said, the author’s last part about not being comfortable with strong female characters bothers me… quite a bit, actually. Not saying that his personal avoidance is damaging, but it’s important to note that there is a strong hesitance to accept “strong” female personalities in this culture, especially ones that don’t also fit the heteronormative narrative of conventional beauty. Men who also see themselves as Nice Guy™ victims at the hands of a cruel female population are often the ones that turn into stark raving misogynists. It’s not difficult to see how that attitude can manifest itself as slut-shaming or victim blaming, or excusing rape, or even something as pervasive and innocuous as indulging in male power fantasies, where strong female personalities are often fetishized and tortured (as punishment for being threatening).
Just be mindful of the media you consume; because it’s very possible that you’re supporting roles and stories that, while emotionally non-threatening to you, are in fact reinforcing the culture that turned those girls and women you suffered at the hands of into the cruel, competitive people they were. Support stories and narratives that tell these young girls that they don’t have to operate by the traditional social mores of male-dominated culture… and unfortunately, that means supporting media where female are allowed to exercise their own agency. (Of which there is very, very little to be found in mainstream film and television.)
L Says: “That said, the author’s last part about not being comfortable with strong female characters bothers me… quite a bit, actually. Not saying that his personal avoidance is damaging, but it’s important to note that there is a strong hesitance to accept “strong” female personalities in this culture, especially ones that don’t also fit the heteronormative narrative of conventional beauty.”
If the story featured abuse – violence – bullying on race grounds, sexuality grounds, age grounds, it would be seen as normal that the victim would have a phobic relationship with people who reminded them of that incidents. The same would be seen as normal and acceptable if the abusers – violence providers – bullies had other statuses as well!
Why should it be more troubling if it’s Strong Women – or even just women, period?
I believe that the author has most candidly written of experiences that are most troubling. I see no reason to make it about “Strong Women”, when the dynamics revealed can be applied to so many other dynamics too!
If “Strong Women” should be part of “the dialogues that we pride ourselves on starting or being part of”, then I’m sure they would find the piece interesting so that they can retain The “Strong Women” label whilst using it also in a way that does not cause people who have been abused to shy away from them.
There is nothing worse than stating “We are here to help” – but in such a way as to inspire fear, loathing and even terror. It’s a bit counterproductive. Ever dealt with a horse that has been attacked? You stand still and allow it to come to you! Calling it won’t work no matter how you do it!
After all – if you have body odder, it’s up to you to address it – else people will Shy away, no matter how strong or dialogue committed you are! P^)
Media has a lot to answer for – especially stereotype portrayal and even creation.
It’s funny that you find a way to blame the victim and men in general while excusing abusive women. Good job.
It is sort of funny how L reframed the original post in terms of men’s agency and women’s lack of agency.
Point to where I blamed the victim? If you though I was conflating the “Nice Guy” type with the author, I didn’t mean to come across that way, only warned that Nice Guys, who are often angry and have an inflated sense of self-entitlement, often see themselves as victims. Those individuals aren’t just toxic and dangerous, but they make stories and experiences like the one this author shared invisible to society at large, and probably less hesitant to accept when they hear them.
My post was a word of warning not for the author, but for others who see themselves in similar situations where they feel that an acceptable way to cope is to take it out on the people around them and perpetuate the cycle that screwed them over to begin with. I did just that in my teenage years, and am still learning how wrong I was.
I’m actually going to take this from a different direction. What would female characters ‘exercising their own agency’ look like?
I mean how much more agency-ish do you get then having the ability to hurt someone and exercising it? As the abusive girls in the OP’s story illustrate?
I don’t think they bullied the OP because they lacked grrlpower role models. If anything the ubiquitous amount of female-on-male violence in media (often perpetrated by ‘strong female characters’) is more to blame for his abuse.
Okay, let’s flip this around– media is chock full of “strong male characters” (they’re so pervasive that the term doesn’t even really exist as it’s own category, as though “weak male character” is a common phenomenon that it could be contrasted with). How do you define one? Does a strong male character’s agency depend on his ability to hurt someone and exercise it?
Abuse =/= strong, and I think plenty of people know that. Bullies are some of the most insecure people out there, and even though we may relent to them, and even though they are capable of hurting us, almost all of us know that.
And with that in mind, I would say that it’s very much due to the lack of decent role models for young women. What do they have right now? Kim Kardashian? Studies show that girls of the likes that harassed and abused the author are pretty miserable themselves, and at that age are more likely to suffer depression. Their entire worth as human beings are almost guaranteed to be determined by how their male peers see them, so they get disgustingly competitive with each other. Teasing and harassment of weaker individuals, boys and girls included, is all part of the circus. Even one of the author’s stories shows this: that one girl he thought he was friends with? Getting attention from her boyfriend, and reaffirming her status with him was more important.
Girls need much better role models. Ones that don’t depend on being catty or manipulative, and ones that don’t sing the praises of docility and traditional 1950′s style femininity. It’s possible to be a good, strong woman (and female fictional character) without being an asshole. Wanna know how I know? Male characters have been doing it for ages.
Actually I don’t think there are many, if any, ‘strong male characters’ in most media.
“Does a strong male character’s agency depend on his ability to hurt someone and exercise it?”
Uh, yes, it does.
If the “strong male character” is the hero, usually the people he hurts are “bad” and deserve to be hurt. If the hero cannot hurt people, he is ineffectual and of no help or defense against evil.
If the “strong male character” is the villain, he must be able to hurt people, otherwise he is ineffectual and not a threat, and there is no problem or conflict.
Characters who cannot or will not use violence are either bystanders or victims.
Okay, so then is it possible, from your point of view, to have a strong character of any gender that isn’t offensive? Or are weak characters the only good ones?
L:
The vast majority of strong male characters out there are protective of women.
Have you ever noticed the difference between Hercules and XEna?
To set the series apart and make Hercules a squeaky clean good guy you’ll notice that Herclues never kills anybody unless it’s a total issue of an inability to restrain/control an entity (if you notice he always knocks people out).
Compare that to Xena who kills w/her sword at least 20 people a day. Coincidentally, nearly everybody she kills is a guy. I think it’s interesting that Xena can still be “good” even though she murders 20 to 100 men per episode just be right of her gender, whereas Hercules has to be good the old fashioned way–by a moral code.
The vast majority of powerful female fictional characters have very little respect for men. I remember the bic commercial in which a powerful domineering female boss makes a male underlings pen run in his shirt (a metaphor for him wetting himself cause she’s so scary).
I remember some show called She spies or something very similar. IN one scene two female characters are dangling a man (presumably a bad guy) over a roof ledge several stories up. The question him, then after he answers they LET HIM GO.
This isn’t a positive view of professional law enforcement women.
Most of the strong female characters I see are about belittlling men. It would be nice if some feminists would actually remove the pink-tinted glasses and see how men and boys are displayed in a poor light too (like male rape being funny in movies, or the vast majority of “bad guys” being male).
Here is a christmas commercial showing you BETTER get your woman the right present or else
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TJejr9jRyZs
Ignoring the fact that I’m a bit creeped out that you can’t recognize a good female character when you see one, I’d say one that isn’t simply reacting to the characters around her or the plot devices as they happen (that’s just a prerequisite for a good character of any gender, imo), one who’s personality isn’t reduced to old sexist tropes like being a damsel in distress or a personified macguffin, a character that doesn’t heavily rely on sex appeal as a mechanism for audience/reader sympathy, a character who isn’t tortured, raped, maimed, and/or brutally murdered as punishment for outdoing or outsmarting a male character, or the aforementioned violence used as a means to “get to” the male hero (and the scenes depicting the violence should not be fetishized), a character has a backstory (preferably not involving rape, as that as a trope has been horribly cheapened over the years), a character that makes decisions about her life that do not include or are not contingent on a love interest.
That is by no means an exhaustive list, but they’re the ones that came up right away.
By your own list there are very few ‘strong male characters.’
In fact if you really think that. A character must not simply react to the situation around themselves, I can’t really think of one male character who fits that criteria.
BTW I find your accusation of creepiness to be highly innapropriate. I was asking YOU what you thought a strong female character would look like.
Really? I can… like, every male character on the new Battlestar Galactica. Fortunately, every character is a strong character in that series.
And as for the reactionary part, I meant that they, at some point, make a major decision that has a notable effect on the plot, rather than the plot is being done -to- them or -around- them. If you’re at all familiar with writing and narrative structure and characterization, you’ll know what I’m talking about. An example I can think of being Frodo from the LotR movies; up until the end of the first movie, where he leaves the fellowship and goes off to Mordor alone with Sam, there is very little I see in the way of being given “real” choices. His decision to go into Moria isn’t really a true decision, given that the alternatives are to venture into regions that are in Saruman’s direct control.
And I apologize about the creep comment, but seeing as how you have not given me any criteria about what you think a good character is, let alone a female character, your position and tone remains off-putting.
Your original statement referred to characters reacting to events as they happen, all characters do this; you added a clarification that they also have a notable effect.
As for explaining what I think constitutes a good character… I believe one that is defined relatively equally by their world of internal reactions to events and their external agency would be a well rounded character.
Is this the same Battlestar Gallactica in which Commander Adama was made into a woman in the remake? You might want to pick a better example.
I think one of the best female role models I have seen is Captain Janeway.
The reason I say this is I am sick to death of GI Jane type female role models (or ultra voilet, Resident Evil’s super human female baddy, Aeon Flux etc..) that can run harder, f*ck longer, piss farther, spit more blood than any guy.
Compared to janeway, they are all unrealistic and one-sided (for male or female role models). Firstly, in the beginning of the series when her ship & that of the rebels are flung thousands of light years away she successfully integrates the pirates into the current population. She walks a thin line with firmness and compassion again & again.
Also, in one episode I remember a decision she had to make because her back was against the wall which consigned 100′s of peoples to their deaths she cried in her office. I think the best female characters are not just the one-up aping of the traditional male characters, but those who handle adveristy and maintain their feminity.
I think rambo is stupid, why do I want to see rambina? I’ll take 1 janeway over 1000 ultra violets, resident evil (dripping with sexuality) assassin she-wenches anyday.
And Starbuck was made into a woman in the Galactica remake too.
How sad. A whole generations of sci-fi ers are going to be thinking the wise-crackin, sarcastic pilot was a woman.
The original Starbuck had a hilarious flair.
And that’s bad how? This smacks of blatant, blatant sexism. The new Starbuck was an incredibly well-written character, but I guess that doesn’t matter to you because she’s not a dude.
Something tells me you haven’t watched the new series at all.
Adama was a man in the new series. Not sure what show you’re talking about.
And yes, the “action chick” is a problematic character stereotype as well.
I also find it rather ironic that you don’t like the old ‘damsel in distress’ stereotype because you blazed past the girl’s agency to focus like a laser on how they could be cast as the true victims in the situation that Eagle recounted.
How so? A damsel in distress is a bad character that is in no way a good role model for anyone– just like these girls.
This is a situation that no can absolve themselves from guilt of. Men, women, mothers, fathers, boys, and girls are all guilty of contributing to this culture. We have all wronged at some point, and to believe that we haven’t is the epitome of foolish.
I rather think the girls in question, as moral agents, hold the most culpability for their behavior.
If society or adults were in any way culpable, it was not informing the girls in question of that fact.
I don’t think you’ve blamed the victim here, but the fact you managed to spin this from a discussion of a man bullied by women/girls into one of society wronging women through their portrayal in media is a bit…odd, and makes some of us (well, me anyway, and apparently others based on some comments here, though I don’t want to speak for anyone) wonder if you’re not still trying to turn even this into an example of sexism against women.
L did identify herself as a feminist right off the bat; shifting the discussion to focus on women is standard feminist discourse.
No, I’m trying to help shed light on the culture of girls that bully and why that is. Awareness and a willingness to understand the circumstances is the only way anyone is going to get out of this mess. Though you’re completely entitled to your ignorance if that’s how you want to navigate this discourse.
@L
Girls bully for the same reason boys do, because someone hurt them and someone didnt protect them. Why and who they choose to bully is very dependant on which gender they think is to blame. This is a very convoluted and complicated process to flesh out. The point is though, whoever is doing the abuse is responsible, regardless of why they are doing it.
Uhhhh, studies have shown that men are more abusive and sexually aggressive than women.
I’m not sure what the author of this article is getting at, except that women should be chopped down even more in society than they already are. Sure, there are mean girls out there, female bullies. But let’s not forget that the majority of abuse has been committed with by men. On a side note, the author referenced the upcoming Pixar film “Brave” as being insulting towards men. I almost laughed. If you’re unhappy with this portrayal of the male gender, then just watch EVERY OTHER PIXAR MOVIE, or EVERY SINGLE SUPERHERO MOVIE TO DATE, in which women are treated as laughable, boy-crazed, weak, and (sometimes) very narrow-minded.
I’m talking about how woman and girls have the ability to do harm as men and boys do.
In case you missed, I specifically mentioned in the article that I don’t care who has it worse and who does what, dubious statistics included. Maybe you skimmed over that or it didn’t register when you read it the first time.
Oh, and you’re deflecting the issue again when you say “Studies have shown that men are more abusive and sexually aggressive than women”.
Ken: “I’m not sure what the author of this article is getting at, except that women should be chopped down even more in society then they already are”
Please point out, in the article, with exact quotes, where I specifically said what you insinuated. My point was that I was abused by women and girls along with the boys and men, there are others out there like me, and we’ve experienced isolation due to the fact that NO ONE is talking about what girls and women are capable of. Instead, they focus bullying solely on boys aginst boys, boys against girls, and girls against girls.
Ken: “On a side note, the author referenced the upcoming Pixar film “Brave” as being insulting towards men. I almost laughed.”
I’m so glad that you almost got a chuckle out of a point of the film that triggers me. So all the male gender should be portrayed as bumbling idiots and buffoons as well as treated like dirt by the female protagonist in stories featuring a strong female protagonist?
Ken: “If you’re unhappy with this portrayal of the male gender, then just watch EVERY OTHER PIXAR MOVIE, or EVERY SINGLE SUPERHERO MOVIE TO DATE, in which women are treated as laughable, boy-crazed, weak, and (sometimes) very narrow-minded.”
You think every Pixar movie treates women that way? Seriously?
I don’t consume the media you speak of, thank you. I gave an example further on that one of the stories I love is The Hunger Games Trilogy of books. In it, the men are treated fairly and have layers beneath their character. They’re complex. And so is the lead female protagonist.
This is the media I enjoy the most: Where both genders, INCLUDING THE MEN, are treated with dignity. If the men are villains, I’m fine with that so long as there are other men in them with complex layers. If there are no men featured in a story with a lead female protagonist, I’m fine with it too. But again, if there’s still hatred of men or making fun of men, forget it. I won’t condone it. Same with females.
I really don’t know how much more I can make this clear to people like you, Ken.
I have a strong objection to your opinion regarding strong female characters.
I only avoid them because, all too often, I’ve witnessed the male character’s three-dimensions get sliced into ribbons to elevate the female character.
The only stories I’ve loved thus far are the Hunger Games Trilogy. Strong female protagonist but the males are just as complex and interesting, getting things done as well.
Like I mentioned before regarding the movie Brave. The main female protagonist is strong, competant and gets things done. The majority of the males are exagerrated macho stereotypes for comic relife or are shown to be so incompetant that they couldn’t lift so much as a small dagger! Not a single positive male model can be found amongst the cast of characters.
You want me to consume stories with female protagonists? How about you protest against male characters being sacrificed in the name of showing how the female character is so much better? So that way I don’t have to feel so alone out there, shouting in the wind.
“Support stories and narratives that tell these young girls that they don’t have to operate by the traditional social mores of male-dominated culture… and unfortunately, that means supporting media where female are allowed to exercise their own agency.”
Not at the expense of males. Not so that the strong female character can get away with belittling the men or boys. No more of this “grrl power” claptrap.
Sexism cuts both ways. It’s not solely about women and girls anymore.
There’s a major distinction between positive female protagonists and “grrl power” stereotypes.
By the way, in case you’re worried about me turning into mysoganistic woman-hater, I happen to work and know women in my personal life who have supported me. They believe in me. So don’t go casting a stone until you further consider the person with the bullseye painted on him.
The above was addressed to “L”, by the way.
The Idea that the only way a women can be shown as strong and competent is to debase and degrade the surounding male characters, is misandry pure and simple. Prime time TV is a stronghold of the incompetent male myth…….why is the OK?
Prime time TV is a wasteland, and Hollywood doubly so.
“I only avoid them because, all too often, I’ve witnessed the male character’s three-dimensions get sliced into ribbons to elevate the female character.”
Unfortunately, it happens on both sides. The bumbling man stereotype in popular media is reactionary, and quite shallow.
“The only stories I’ve loved thus far are the Hunger Games Trilogy. Strong female protagonist but the males are just as complex and interesting, getting things done as well.
Like I mentioned before regarding the movie Brave. The main female protagonist is strong, competant and gets things done. The majority of the males are exagerrated macho stereotypes for comic relife or are shown to be so incompetant that they couldn’t lift so much as a small dagger! Not a single positive male model can be found amongst the cast of characters.”
I don’t really know about either, so I can’t comment about them specifically. In your opinion, though, are “exaggerated macho stereotypes” okay when they’re -not- used for comedic relief? Like in comic books and video games? I think part of the reason that the stereotype exists is due partly for reasons that you, in theory, would be supportive of. Namely, tearing down the supposed “manly man’s man” male ideal of big muscles and no feelings, because it doesn’t represent the reality of the quieter, shyer, less “macho” males in the real world.
“You want me to consume stories with female protagonists? How about you protest against male characters being sacrificed in the name of showing how the female character is so much better? So that way I don’t have to feel so alone out there, shouting in the wind. ”
How do you know that I don’t already?
As for your “male being sacrificed” bit, it’s a trope that’s often used in male-gaze media because the “strong” woman is fetishized through a dominatrix or “action-girl” sort of way, so I would call those scenarios lose-lose, because those female character typically don’t make me feel empowered either.
“Not at the expense of males. Not so that the strong female character can get away with belittling the men or boys. No more of this “grrl power” claptrap.
Sexism cuts both ways. It’s not solely about women and girls anymore.
There’s a major distinction between positive female protagonists and “grrl power” stereotypes. ”
No, I totally agree.
“By the way, in case you’re worried about me turning into mysoganistic woman-hater, I happen to work and know women in my personal life who have supported me. They believe in me. So don’t go casting a stone until you further consider the person with the bullseye painted on him.”
You’re the one casting stones simply by making this statement. I have passed no judgements or made no assumptions about any one person here, simply stated my real-world observations. And guess what? I have plenty of men in my life that know and support me to, whatever that means. Though I don’t expect that to mean much to anyone who’s determined to paint what I’ve said in a bad light.
Eagle,
This is one of the reasons I like Cptn Janeway. She’s a good role model not because she’s a “BETTER MAN” than the other characters, but because she exhibits those traits associated with heros: leadership, truth, integrity and she does it all while still being a woman.
There are definitely scenes in which Janeway’s femininity show through. This makes her a more well-rounded character compared to the “female sexual bunny rambo” character.
Also, she is not overtly sexualized like most of the Kill Bill / aeon flux / ultra violet / resident evil characters.
I hate how recent movies are remaking thinking heroes into action heroes like sherlock holmes and Hugh Jackman playing Van Helsing.
I don’t know why you can’t have a hero that wins with his brain. I also like the character in the original die hard movie. He seemed pretty atypical. RAther than being like a rambo super dodge/karate guy where he fells every1 with a flurry of blows while never getting touched, he is a straight up brawler who gets his a$$ kicked again and again. He’s also bitching about his miserable plight all through the movie.
I also think that ending of Die Hard is the best “hero pulls the victory out by subterfuge” I have seen when he tapes the gun to his bare back to look like he is unarmed. Super classic stuff
@John D I would just like to point out (this is coming from an English major, a bibliovore, and a die-hard Holmes fan), that Sherlock Holmes as portrayed in the Guy Ritchie films is not at all terribly deviant from the source material. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s character was, among other things, an amateur boxer and a drug addict. So the physical ‘action-hero’ bits in the films are all in line with canon. (And, in a completely OT comment, Watson being an intelligent, capable partner in investigation is also canon, unlike the more common pop-culture portrayal of him as a bumbling sidekick.)
Some of these comments are laughable and far from reality.
Many here speak as if every film/television show/novel/radio program was created with female empowerment in mind. What world do you guys live in? I have been on a lifelong hunt for female-enpowering entertainment, and have been unable to find it, (with some exceptions of course.) But the fact remains that this country is run by sexist men who empower their own gender more than the opposite sex. Sure, there are many bad male stereotypes, but most of them are still portrayed as desirable; which is why most likable protagonists are male (spiderman, Harry Potter, Terminator, Batman, and a billion other archetypes.) The fact that these macho males kill and punch people in the face for a living is beside the point. The point is that men are deemed valuable, worthy, important to society, with only women existing on the fringes as the cheerleader or the springboard men use to vault them into the stratosphere of success.
There are strong male protagonists in Hollywood, from Saving Private Ryan to Truman Show, none of them are what I would call “macho.” But if I were to try to find an appealing female character that isn’t “chopped down to size’ isn’t a “bitch,” and isn’t “boy crazy,” I would have a much harder time. (Unless I travel outside of the USA in which female characters are often portrayed in better light.)
Ken, see my previous response above to you.
Or I can put it in easier terms for you to understand:
Read. The. Article. Again.
Who would you consider to be a good male role model? A good “strong male character”?
Not trying to shift responsibility from people who bully, but we need to acknowledge how important good role models for children are in this culture.
Just a male character with multiple layers, complexities, can stand up for himself when others put him down, gets things done but also thinks hard about things, etc.
Ken, does Saving Private Ryan show how valuable men are, I mean seriously.
Talk about laughable and disconnected from reality!
L
That said, the author’s last part about not being comfortable with strong female characters bothers me… quite a bit, actually. Not saying that his personal avoidance is damaging, but it’s important to note that there is a strong hesitance to accept “strong” female personalities in this culture, especially ones that don’t also fit the heteronormative narrative of conventional beauty. Men who also see themselves as Nice Guy™ victims at the hands of a cruel female population are often the ones that turn into stark raving misogynists. It’s not difficult to see how that attitude can manifest itself as slut-shaming or victim blaming, or excusing rape, or even something as pervasive and innocuous as indulging in male power fantasies, where strong female personalities are often fetishized and tortured (as punishment for being threatening).
So in short you think he is avoiding so called strong female characters because he secretly hates women and doesn’t want to see any woman that he can’t control?
He had already explained his avoidance so why is it important to note this? There are plenty of places where that “note” has been and can be discussed.
Why am I not allowed to discuss it here, then? Because it’s definitely a path that others wind up going down quite often. I went down that road myself. And if this were a woman writing about her experiences being bullied by men, I would be warning her not to buy into the “all men need to be castrated!” straw feminist stereotype. Extremes can be damaging all the way around.
Not to mention that you seemed to have missed my “not saying that his personal avoidance is damaging” caveat.
How do you know I wound up down that road? Do you know me on a personal level? Do you see me interact 24/7 with the women in my life?
I don’t buy into the “All women are evil” stereotype either, but I draw the line between consuming media where it’s okay for female protagonists to belittle and insult the supporting male characters in order to elevate them. Nor do I condone presenting men as nothing but two-dimensional louts so as to, again, elevate the female protagonist (I,e, Brave).
There are limits to advocating presenting women as equal. That includes condoning media and stories that fall into the “Grrl power” trope so popular with the masses where it’s a-okay for the female protagonist to dominate, hurt, or insult the supporting male characters or portray the male support as inferior in every way compared to her.
This is what the crux of the issue is for me. That’s what triggers me. That’s why I’m leery of stories that feature strong female protagonists because if there is so much as a negative portrayal of the supporting male characters while she’s placed on a pedestal, I’m not going to bother.
It’s very easy to understand what he didn’t like about the grllpower stuff. He said it was when males were stepped on to prop the females up, he didn’t say he disliked media when males are fine, and females get the great awesome roles.
“Their entire worth as human beings are almost guaranteed to be determined by how their male peers see them, so they get disgustingly competitive with each other. Teasing and harassment of weaker individuals, boys and girls included, is all part of the circus.”
It’s interesting that you mentioned this because that’s pretty much the same kind of stuff many of the boys do, in order to gain the attention, affections of the girls. They compete with each other for status and power to try win the affections of women. I’m not sure if you realize this at all, but girls aren’t the only ones with major self-esteem issues in school. It’s just in our current culture, the macho part of our culture silences many from speaking out and there are even misandrist parts of our culture which pretty much silence even more.
The stuff the OP was talking about, there is a major focus on female issues, female self-esteem, female this n female that to the point we have society believing women suffer tremendously and men’s issues aren’t worthy. Hell, it’s safe to assume A LOT of people blame men for all of the problems…how is that going to help us in changing society for the better? Even if men are privileged as a gender, men deserve the chance to discuss their issues, be believed, and not hear some line about women getting it worse as a way to redirect the focus.
I totally agree with you on just about every point. Rates of self-esteem among boys and girls are about the same (girls score a few points less, however), though it has been proven that girls are more likely to suffer from depression than boys. They’re far more likely to have eating disorders and more likely to have them earlier, and lets not even get started about statistics about sexual violence and harassment.
I’m not trying to derail, or whatever the other anti-feminist posters have said, I’m trying to widen the discussion, because that’s the only way understanding about the circumstances that create shitty situations like the one above can come to light. I don’t go on my blog and just rant about how men rape and how scary they are, I talk about the culture of rape, why men can’t report rape, why we’re still victim-blaming, and perhaps most importantly, *what we might do to fix it all*. That’s the thing that irks me about MRA’s and burgeoning masculists, is that they get the first step down right: they gather the courage to come out about their issues and how the system has disadvantaged them. But I have found little in terms of dialogue that is willing to go beyond that. For the most part, they’re content to share their story, underhandedly blame women, or feminism or what have you, and leave it at that. Some posit that they don’t want to widen their scope because then they’ll see that women are still, by and large, treated more unfairly; and I’m sure that’s totally on the money with some, perhaps most. But whatever the reason, it’s still a bad way to go; you get people like me, who try to come in here and explore why these situations get made, trying to get people to realize that it’s no one gender’s fault (well, it is if you go back far enough), and boom. Immediate hostility and cries of derailment. I mean, it’s like… c’mon guys. It’s not enough to just complain via someone else’s story anymore. We need some solutions; and not more solutions that demonize women, but real, sustainable solutions that benefit everyone. And as soon as I hint at that, the men just zero in again and put their blinders back on, focusing on one anecdote, or one piece of media, or one stereotype. Maybe they’re afraid to confront the bigger picture, maybe they’re not. They’re really making it hard to give them the benefit of the doubt in those cases, though.
Then why are you saying that girls score lesser points than boys when it comes to self-esteem? Why say that girls have it worse in the first place when both genders are treated unfairly? Sure in some areas, maybe, but overall there’s no difference in the levels of woe both genders feel.
It would be better if you approached it from that perspective.
Let me ask you something.
Considering that what you say there can quite literally be swapped gender for gender to explain how those men came to be that way how can this vile stand off be ended?
You’re absolutely right my friend……….high school doesn’t end after grade twelve……so many get older but they keep the same mentality. People hurt people and the survivors must tell their stories. Keep going, keep writing, keep living…
I find what you say both Very Important and Troubling!
I see the importance of recognizing that males, particularly boys, are abused in substantial numbers and that such abuse, particularly when perpetrated by women and girls, is frequently minimized and causes needless shame and pain for those who are victimized,
It is Very Important that we support Male Victims and believe their stories. We need to do a lot more to provide counseling and other help for Male Victims.
At the same time we also need to recognize that our socialization as Males (as well as perhaps some biological makeup) has created a world where the vast majority (though probably decreasing percentage) of interpersonal violence is Male Perpetrators assaulting both Men/Boys and Women/Girls.
A significant majority of the fears we have as Males is that we will be assaulted by other Males for various reasons. Where we are assaulted by Women/Girls, our fears of them should be most understandable!
We need to support Male Victims while Not using or supporting the increasing myth that Females are equally likely to assault others as Males are. We need to support Male Victims while working to end the violence of Men/Boys and Women/Girls. We need to spend more money both helping victims and working more seriously to end the violence.
We – men and boys – are hurting and we – men and boys – need to do a lot more work on these issues.
Girls and women are equally abusive.
The fact that you turned it around and proclaim that only men have the responsibility to end violence against women, girls, boys and men is just as sexist.
By the way, I find the fact that you think I should look at what the girls and women did to me as “Understandable” very disgusting! Just another way of denying their agency.
Most abusive patterns are laid down in childhood, Women commit the bulk of child abuse/neglect….. Correct that and we may never see the next generation of abusers.
Do you have sources to back that up? Because speaking from personal experience, the majority of the damage done to myself and the people that I know were at the hands of fathers, brothers, and men.
http://www.acf.hhs.gov/programs/cb/pubs/cm01/chapterfour.htm#character
For 2001, 59.3 percent of the perpetrators were women and 40.7 percent were men.
Interesting!
Though this sentence jumped out at me: “Caretakers typically include those persons who are responsible for the supervision of a child, e.g., relative, foster parent, and residential facility staff.”
I wonder if the studies counted a missing or non-involved parent as neglect, or if they weren’t accounted for because they weren’t considered “caretakers”. If the latter is the case, then the statistics are skewed, because women are far more likely to be single parents than men (~83% vs ~17%).
This is a common misunderstanding regarding neglect. Neglect is an active form of abuse. The abuser will often target a specific child for neglect while taking care of either herself or her other children preferrentially.
Also I think your version of neglect would also, necessarily, include women who put their children up for adoption. Which doesn’t make sense.
I wasn’t trying to define anything, I was wondering what the study’s criteria for “caretaker” meant, since that’s pretty important. If you only count parents that have custody, then that has a lot of implications beyond “women are more likely to abuse”. Whether or not you take that at face value, it’s true either way, but I think taking it at face value isn’t a good policy.
It’s interesting that the study referred to had two sets of analysis, designed to correct error and also reveal trends.
The first analyzed by reference to the Abusers to Target – and the other was Target (in this case children) to Abuser. This addresses the issue where an abuser abuses more than one target and also where the child is targeted by more than one abuser.
Mother only as abuser = 40.5%
Father only as abuser = 17.7%
Mother and Farther as joint abusers = 19.3%
Mother and Other = 6.4%
Father and Other = 1.0%
Noneparent = 11.9%
Unkown/Not recorded = 3.1%
The data does not show a sufficient quality to show any correlations between gender and single parent status. However, if you take the Parent and other as a possible identifier of single parent status there is a correlation which shows that both sexes are equally capable of abusing their own child.
It is of interest too that the stats reported by Office on Child Abuse and Neglect (HHS), Washington, DC 2003 – A Coordinated Response to Child Abuse and Neglect: The Foundation for Practice.
The rate of child abuse in single parent households is 27.3 children per 1,000, which is nearly twice the rate of child abuse in two parent households (15.5 children per 1,000).
An analysis of child abuse cases in a nationally representative sample of 42 counties found that children from single parent families are more likely to be victims of physical and sexual abuse than children who live with both biological parents
But what struck me most of all – is not how statistics get skewed, but how dialog on the OP’s experience has been skewed. As they say – there are Lies, Damned Lies and Statistics. Skewing is a noted statistical issue – and rhetorical devices to meander off topic can also cause skewing!
The devil is not always in the detail of the stats! P^)
I believe you mentioned that as part of Denial Stage Two: shift the focus away from the writer’s experience in favor of statistical discussions “proving” that women have it worse, thereby invalidating the issue Tim raises.
Maybe it’s just me, but this behavior seems to be used equally by men and women, on GMP and on other sites. For example, whenever a woman writes a post about rape, there are men who immediately shift the focus to how men are raped by women, inappropriately hijacking the thread. I don’t think that either gender can take the moral high ground here. Sorry, but it’s patently ridiculous, and anyone who reads their share of blog posts and the comment sections knows this.
At the same time we also need to recognize that our socialization as Males (as well as perhaps some biological makeup) has created a world where the vast majority (though probably decreasing percentage) of interpersonal violence is Male Perpetrators assaulting both Men/Boys and Women/Girls.
True but what does that have to do with the writer telling his story here?
We need to support Male Victims while Not using or supporting the increasing myth that Females are equally likely to assault others as Males are.
So what exactly makes it a myth? Over time I’ve seen numbers that go both ways.
I response to Geo and others:
Perhaps it’s a myth that women and girls are just as likely to bully as boys and men. Let’s just say for the sake of argument it’s a myth, that boys and men are still more likely to be bullies.
Explain to me what the danger would be in over-estimating how aggressive girls can be. Why not err on the side of equal likelihood? Shouldn’t it “be better safe than sorry”?
Unless someone is saying that it would be damaging to girls if society treats them as more aggressive than they really are. This might lead to unwarranted suspicion, unnecessary restrictions on their lives, and paranoia about how dangerous there are. I think that’s a very valid concern. I would heartily agree.
In fact, I would go so far as to make it a larger rule – it’s wrong and it’s hurtful to treat the members of a gender as more dangerous than they really are. It’s a disservice to millions of people to overestimate how violent particular groups of people are. Don’t err too far with either boys OR girls.
I would love to, but it just gets tricky when statistics time and again illustrate that men are far more likely to commit acts violence, while women are more likely to express their aggression verbally and socially. It’s definitely difficult to not play the “which is worse” game, but I would personally much rather be verbally harassed than jumped or assaulted.
It’s definitely difficult to not play the “which is worse” game, but I would personally much rather be verbally harassed than jumped or assaulted.
I’m sure that’s true for a lot of people.
However what has happened is that instead of looking at different abuse scenarios and taking them serious a hierarchy been created where the abuse the men commit is regarded as “worse than what women do”. To the point where even in the face of numerous stories of abusive women we still have folks like Dr. Phil actively ignoring the abuse the wife commits in a couple where both the husband and wife are committing abusive behavior.
Yeah I bet a lot of people would rather be verbally harassed than physically assaulted but its at the point now where someone’s reaction to abuse actually changes depending on who is doing the abuse.
L said – “It’s definitely difficult to not play the “which is worse” game, but I would personally much rather be verbally harassed than jumped or assaulted.”
So which is better – a physical assault that lasts 20 seconds – or verbal abuse and harassment with all the potential psychological, social and emotional damage that can ensue over say 5 years? … and lets not forget it’s not just verbal abuse – it’s actually social and domestic violence.
Forgive me if I say this bluntly – but your glib response to a most serious matter is down right insulting to people who have and are dealing with abuse! – and I’m gender neutral on that one!
In fact I don’t need to be forgiven – cos Your Comment Is So far Out Of Order!
Odd how abuse programming makes people ask for forgiveness before rightfully telling someone who is out of order to go jump off a …… and that what they have said is well beyond acceptable! P^)
That’s what none physically violent abuse can do to a person! Try five years and see what it’s like!
If you don’t know the subject – it’s better to ask questions and learn, rather than make comments that can only damage and even insult!
Worse does not come into it – being human does!
FAIL!
Uhm, not fail? I’ve been sexually abused and verbally abused. The one lasted a minute or two, and the other I’d gotten for about… 12 years. The sexual abuse fucked me up far more than any of the verbal abuse ever did.
If those wounds weren’t so old, I’d probably be far more offended at *your* “glib” and dismissive response. Don’t you fucking dare try to tell me which situation I need to be more hurt by.
I’ve been punched, groped by women and men. Thing is I could have reported to police or beaten the male attacker up and not have anyone bat n eyelid,. With a female attacker, I would have had a lot of victim blaming “women are weaker” type comments, and questioning my manlyness. If I had defended myself, I probably would have received the stigma of being a man that hits women. I know of times in highschool where a male had defended himself against a female and the students turned on HIM for it.
The physical abuse/violence I’ve received was bad enough, but no where near as bad as the emotional/psychological abuse and I would much rather physical because those scar’s tend to heal very quick. The damage to the self esteem with emotional abuse for me was very severe and those scar’s have been there for over a decade, ALL of my adult life, and much of my childhood. They’ve had a very debilitating effect on my life, the way I act, react, and has given me an anxiety disorder triggered by interacting with other humans. I’m not scared that they might hit me (because I can spot that abuse quite easily of course), I am scared that they will abuse my trust, treat me like shit, and slowly wear me down.
Many people kill themselves/commit self-harm, self medicate, have depression and other mental illness directly from VERBAL abuse alone. Verbal abuse is every bit as dangerous as physical abuse for a lot of people, it is a weapon used for control. Many lives have been destroyed without a single physical act of violence, but our culture focus’s and thinks the only bad abuse is physical. A scar has to be visible to be taken seriously. The guy that kills himself over long term abuse by a girl, isn’t thought to be a victim as much as the girl who was beaten to death by a guy.
When we say the stats of how violent men are, it can cause a culture that believes women don’t abuse men, or that when they do it’s very rare, or not as bad. We’ve painted women as the victim for so long, society just can’t seem to understand men can be victims too. This is especially true for sexual abuse by females.
Statistics on domestic violence are heavily biased, even the Department of Justice refused to fund studies of male victims of DV. Quite a few studies are female only, or worded to only accept female abuse victims in the questions. Many have spoken out about the failure of academics to study DV appropriately, and the stats nowadays vary wildly between mostly males as perps, to 50-60% female initiator. Quite a lot of DV/IPV is actually mutual and both partners are at fault, people like to assume it’s always 1 way but that just isn’t the case all the time.
People need to broaden their mind in understanding what abuse is, because a man may be stronger in muscle but even the largest, strongest male can sit there and be hit by a 100lb woman, with real damage physically and mentally, he might never fight back because he was taught to never hit women, she might only use emotional abuse to manipulate him but it can have very severe consequences and in emotional abuse BOTH genders are equally capable.
Citations and sources, please, L. You expect it of others, I expect it from you.
Gladly:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Violent_crime_rates_by_gender_1973-2003.jpg
http://www.unece.org/stats/gender/genpols/keyinds/crime/perps.html
I believe I stipulated that males are more likely to be violent than females, that boys are more likely to hit than girls. What I’m wondering is how we are to use those statistics in everyday situations. How do those probabilities get used in treating men and women differently? Should we use these statistics to treat boys and girls differently?
Suppose a teacher discovers a boy and a girl engaged in what appears to be a mutual physical fight. Each one claims that the other threw the first hit. Do we go with the statistics and just assume that the boy started hitting first? The fact that one is XX and the other XY is not enough evidence to decide who’s to blame. At least it shouldn’t be, as far as I’m concerned.
I’m suggesting that there is no harm done to women in recognizing the possibility that in some cases, however small the percentage of cases, a woman is the aggressor and not a man. Let’s say just for the sake of argument that it is only 5% of assaults. That’s still thousands of assaults. Our society tries to help and protect much smaller minorities than that all the time.
I argue that recognizing this possibility does not diminish the danger that male violence poses to women. Saying men are sometimes abused by women shouldn’t really hurt the campaign to stop domestic violence. It ought to make the campaign even better.
I was a teacher for ten years. Anne, one of the staff, told me of having to break up fights between girls and was of the opinion that the girls were even worse than the boys with respect to bullying.
Based on my personal experience I tend to agree.
I’m not saying this is conclusive, just an observation.
“At the same time we also need to recognize that our socialization as Males (as well as perhaps some biological makeup) has created a world where the vast majority (though probably decreasing percentage) of interpersonal violence is Male Perpetrators assaulting both Men/Boys and Women/Girls.”
It depends on how you define “Interpersonal Violence”!
When you speak to male victims of Domestic Violence – they will talk of verbal, psychological and social abuse, just as women will. The problem with existing data and investigations is that should a male respond to such with physical aggression it is seen as Male Abuse of the female. If a woman does so It’s seen as Female defense. There is a known factor called goading where one party acts in such a way as to precipitate violence so as to stigmatize the other party, and thereby enable further acts.
It is not possible to to agree with the view of “vast majority” as the monitoring of modus operandi by gender has not been consistent or even seen as required for many decades. There have been underlying assumptions of who does what to who and how that has tainted studies and the results.
I have spoken at length to a number of organizations that operate shelters/refuges for women who have suffered domestic abuse. All produce anecdotal evidence of women who have arrived, generally accompanied by law enforcement, and it has become clear shortly afterwards that the Woman has not been the victim but the perpetrator. They have claimed status and gone to the shelters/refuges as a ruse and calculated strategy to avoid liability and investigation. The Organizations have all reported that they do not keep statistics of such incidents, and they also don’t report back to Law Enforcement when it is found.
Even law enforcement agencies have had to admit that basic data collection at point of service attending events where one or other spouse has been injured have not been valid – due to assumption by the officers on scene.
Stereotypes and Bias are known issues in effective law enforcement. That Vast Majority bias and associated Stereotypes have also been seen to cause much injustice.
Anyway – wandering off topic again! I believe that the OP was providing anecdotal evidence to show a picture that is all too often denied to exist – and they did not make any comment as to any Vast Majority!
GEO says:
“We need to support Male Victims while Not using or supporting the increasing myth that Females are equally likely to assault others as Males are.”
I don’t think it’s true that you can discount women/girls being equally prevalent to abuse boys as men and boys as a falsehood.
You mention:
“At the same time we also need to recognize that our socialization as Males (as well as perhaps some biological makeup) has created a world where the vast majority (though probably decreasing percentage) of interpersonal violence is Male Perpetrators assaulting both Men/Boys and Women/Girls.”
But, those views are held by non-abused people who can only form their opinions based on stereotypes and loose information. To truly determine at what rates women/girls abuse boys versus man/boy abuse of boys would be to collect the stories of those abused.
This isn’t easy, as I have read many therapists refuse to look at the problem of female abusers and those victims who claim to be abused by women.
Look at the DV movement. Erin Prizzey was the creator of the the first battered women’s shelter in the UK. She wanted to create one for men and stated women were as likely to abuse as men. She was hounded threatened (with bomb threats and other things) and terrorized until radical feminists forced her out of her own shelter movement she created.
The researchers Gelles and STrauss who famously showed that 1 women is abused every 14.5 seconds were similarly forced out of the movement because they claimed 1 man was abused every 15.5 seconds. I don’t have the link handy, but a research team compiled the data from some 1200 DV studies into an online bibliography with a huge aggregate sample size in which their appears to be gender symmetry to DV.
True numbers will not be available until the ideologues get out of the way and let research move forward.
So, formulating opinions (or policy) upon a broken information gathering system is not very smart.
Read L and Geo carefully – pretending to care but weaving falsehoods about gendered abuse, victim blaming and misandry into their answers.
It’s ironic and hypocritical for a self-described feminist to tell you your experience was an anomaly. Even _IF_ your experience was that of a tiny minority, and I doubt that it’s really all that small, why does the size of the group matter in whether the experience is real or not? I think of honoring an individual’s story of abuse as a positive hallmark of the modern feminist movement. And I associate feminism with the critical analysis of the way that society often covers up bullying and blames the victim. This should have been right up their alley.
It would be ludicrous to say that the harassment of gays and lesbians is an anomaly because they’re such a small percentage of the population. So, why would the supposed rarity of this kind of bullying even matter?
Anonymous – I agree that the use of the word “anomaly” is misleading and even anomalous!
If anomaly was to be used to judge all factors and situations – then what about being hit by fast moving objects?
You dial 911 and call paramedics if that fast moving object is a bullet. Would it be acceptable for 911 to refuse the call because the fast moving object was a meteorite? People get hit by meteorites and it could well be categorized as quite an anomaly.
More meteorites fall to earth every day that bullets get fired! So which one is the anomaly?
Points of view can cause very large and anomalous views of the world and cause highly distorted views of reality.
They can also cause some people to bend over backwards in an attempt to justify the very odd world view they have. This leads to much injury, and I have as yet never observed anyone in such a back bent stance to not insist on 911 for their personal service – in fact they tend to be the most fractious of clients. They never see themselves and their contortions as an anomaly. P^)
Media:
You will also see arguments like GEO’s applied to victim funding based upon gender.
Another argument I have seen made is that splitting much more resources in such a way so that women are more likely to get help (whether a voucher or whatever) over a man is defensible.
VAWA specifically had a clause stating shelters that housed men would not be able to apply for VAWA grants. Marc Angelucci of Natl Coalition for men took up a case of a disabled father & his teen daughter who were turned away and had this grant process struck down in california.
This argument that if men get turned away it’s okay because they are only 5% of applicants (according to the feminist argument). Marc turned this around and say men were 98% of the applicants for workmen’s comp and attendance for emergency work hazard clinics. Should women then be denied workmen’s comp or have to go to a hospital and pay out of pocket (or their health insurance pay) for their work-place injury?
Civilized society is based upon the same help & services applied to all. There is no “GOOD” reason to short-circuit this process.
Unfortunatly, these feminists didn’t want to travel up that alley. They prefered taking their own fixed route, if you know what I mean.
@Geo. This particular story was a true and painful recount of past bullying and betrayal–that was at least in part, due to a mental disorder. Sure it happens to women too, but this is one man’s particular story, and it should be respected. This isn’t just some guy who’s sitting around on his computer complaining about alpha jerks, the evils of western women, and how all men are the ‘real’ victims without bothering to talk to any women. Please, don’t blame the victim in this story. He’s very brave to have come forward with it, as it’s not always seen as ‘manly’ for male victims of bullying and abuse to come forward.
There’s one thing I want to address, Aya.
Autism, being autistic, is not a mental disorder. It’s a processing system, the way the brain is wired to take in, absorb, and regurgitate information.
The only time it becomes a disorder is if there is no one there that understands how the brain works and what the autistic person needs in terms of supports. If the environment isn’t supportive of how the brain works, then the person’s natural human development will be stunted. It’s all about identifying the supports and utilizing them so the autistic person can live a life as any human being since they are already part of the human race.
“Behaviour” is really them expressing something is missing in terms of supports. Or it could also mean someone expressing serious trauma that hasn’t been addressed. Just like any human being reaches a point where they’re going to lash out emotionally or physically when trauma isn’t addressed, so does the autistic person no matter what age.
Other than that, thanks for the support.
I’m sorry! Thank you so much for the information. The word ‘autism’ didn’t even enter into most of our everyday vocabulary until very recently, and there are still a lot of misconceptions and ignorance about it (including mine). I come from an Eastern European family, where discussions of anything relating mental and emotional health were always about “crazy vs not crazy,” and “why are we talking about dealing with this issue when they could be studying, becoming engineers, or working in the field?”
Eagle33 said- “The only time it becomes a disorder is if there is no one there that understands how the brain works and what the autistic person needs in terms of supports. If the environment isn’t supportive of how the brain works, then the person’s natural human development will be stunted.”
The Social Model Of Disability speaks out!
It’s shocking the amount of abuse of disabled people that gets justified by Ignorance of the Impairment/disability a person has.
It’s more shocking that so many many people who live 24/7 with their Impairment/disability are not recognized as having any expertise in their own lives, their own experiences and the way they are treated, viewed and marginalized by others.
One shocking statistic that misses so many targets is that a Disabled person is upto 1000% more likely to be subject to Domestic Abuse – be that domestic setting a care institution, the person’s own home or a family/group home. Gender as victim is not a deciding factor.
I was struck by the first time I had to question such abuse. The abuser responded immediately that it was just the same as the way they treated their own children. I had to point out that the victim was first not a child but a 47 year old male, and that the abuser was not a family member and not employed to act as parent. The abuser could not grasp why they were being subjected to disciplinary action and sent to the unemployment line.
It is also interesting that studies of abuse have highlight how Abuse against a Disabled Person, where their Impairment/disability is used as a factor in the abuse, is actually more damaging than other types of abuse. The impact and long term damage is far greater.
For reading – I would recommend as a starter – Making the links, Disabled women and domestic violence – Gill Hague, Ravi K Thiara, Pauline Magowan and Audrey Mullender – Women’s Aid Federation of England, 2008.
I’m still awaiting other reading materials concerning Elder Abuse by caregivers – whether the venue is the person’s home – family home – care institution. There are concerns of correlations between Care Givers who have a propensity and even history of perpetrating Domestic Abuse being empowered to carry out such activities in alternate and domestic settings against none family members.
I was struck by your courage in telling your story. Because so many are unaware of the differences in impact of abuse upon Disabled People they will not recognize just how much courage it took – and even how being questioned and attacked over what you have said has a Disproportionate Impact upon you.
Keep up the Good Work!
This is a heartbreaking story. I was also bullied quite a lot by both boys and girls. The bullying by girls was the meanest in my own experience. One thing I can say is that mean girl bullying–while crueler than ever due to the use of social media–is getting a lot more attention today. When Tim was a boy, there were way fewer resources for dealing with it and the culture of bullying was largely ignored by adults. When Tim was young, boys and girls were rampantly bullied by boys and girls in every combination, and there was little help available. Back then, female bullying was less recognized and chastised than the male bullying.
Today things are changing. Bullying in general is now recognized by adults as a huge problem, sometimes leading to suicide, and bullying perpetrated by both genders is seen for what it is, well described, and now legally reportable. Schools have strict accountability. It doesn’t take care of it all, but at least people are not willfully “not seeing it” as much as used to be the case.
I have never believed that childhood bullying was perpetrated only or mostly by boys. As a longtime school administrator, I saw it perpetrated about equally by both genders, but in different ways. The title and description of this article make it sound as if the author were only abused by girls, but in the text he makes clear that he was bullied by both genders. This is important. We must all recognize that bullying crosses all gender lines in terms of perpetrators, victims and bystanders. Neither gender bullies more than the other, and neither gender gets bullied more than the other. Unfortunately, there is plenty to go around for everyone.
Bullying of the disabled is also an equal-opportunity situation. Horrible.
I do think things have changed greatly since Tim was a boy in terms of the adult population recognizing female aggressors. This is one small step forward, but every step counts. So, I just wanted to add to this discussion that there really is no debate about whether society sees that girls can and do perpetrate bullying. Years ago the situation was as Tim describes because girls were more verbal and sneaky and under the radar with their bullying than boys. But now, it is all acknowledged, and I see adults coming at the problem without gender biases about it. This is key.
Lori – gender bias and social media management is still an issue.
I’m glad that your own real world experience in the education field has revealed to you the “Gender Symmetry” in bullying – both for perps and targets.
The problems arise with studies in the field which all too often are not gender neutral from inception. Why would a grad student’s published findings be seen as higher in value than the voices of people actually living in the real world, day by day?
Changes in state financed institutional procedures has done much to address abuse and bullying – but the same control is as yet to be found in the private sector, especially via the net.
There is a bigger issue with social networking providers – they are private companies and they wish to keep so much hidden to protect the Bottom Line and Share holders. Bullying and abuse has been migrating from the class room and other real world venues for some time – and the owners of these cyber venues are not as pro-active in dealing with it as they publicly claim.
You only have to look at how many likes – referrals to social media this page has received, and contrast it with other gender based stories published here. Either there is an issue of writing style and content that causes disparity – else there could just be a few stereotypes and biases at work that could be called “Anti-Social Media” which prevents many from pushing the right buttons.
I’m heartened by the direction society is headed in with girls bullying boys based on your experiences in the system, Lori.
However, what we really need as the next step is to study the problem. I mean a thorough study, not one or two articles and presto, problem solved. We need people to get off their rear ends and STUDY it; research, talk to people, collect data, analyse, theorise, chart, etc. But so far no one seems willing to do it.
It could be bias or it could be the lack of awareness. The latter is easily fixed if more people like me speak out. The former…well, it depends on whether the bias is willed or just based on ignorance. Then approach it from there.
This is why the word privilege, especially when used in phrases like “check your privilege” or “your privileged so shut up and listen”, makes my blood boil. Like I said here we live our lives as individuals not as members of borg-like collectives. When a man or a boy is victimized by women and girls who have obvious power over him, why should it make a damn bit of difference that men have more power than women in the aggregate (assuming that’s even true).
There have been media portrayals of girl-on-boy bullying going back some time, so I don’t believe people who plead ignorance about it, it’s just that it has been treated as a joke. The best example I can think of is Lucy from the Peanuts Comic strips and animated films (arguably Peppermint Patty also, to a lesser extent). Besides the multitude of endless cruelties she inflicts on Charlie Brown, there are the physical threats to Linus (as when she gives him “five good reasons” to do something then counts to five while forming her fingers into a fist), and what can definitely be described as sexual harassment against Schroeder (again some Peppermint Patty’s behavior toward Charlie Brown might border on sexual harassment, but it is a less obvious case of such). It is no wonder that Mad Magazine, Robot Chicken and probably at least several dozen works of fan-fiction, showed Charlie Brown, about to be hurt and humiliated once again by Lucy’s football trick, instead kicking her in the head and laughing about it (and in the Robot Chicken version calling her a bitch!) I, and many others I’m sure, experienced vicarious satisfaction from that, similar to what I’ve felt from movie scenes where nerdy/underdog/outsider characters punch out or humiliate male bullies.
“Privilege” is a word that tends to make me ignore a person’s argument entirely. Which is probably a bad thing, because there are times it is a legitimate issue. But most people use the term as a way to shut down anyone who disagrees with them rather than pointing out actual instances of privilege.
Yes, talking about privelege isn’t a bad thing at certain times.
However, Priveledge discussions should not be welcome when talking about male victims of abuse, especially if their perpetrators are female.
It’d be like going into a safe space for abused women and girls, then declaring “Oh come on, the court systems favor you in custody agreements, divorce laws are biased in your favor,” and so on. Not only would the person be called on it, they’d be rightfully kicked out.
Priveledge talk should never be brought up in either space. Period.
Yes, of course, the word “privilege” has legitimate uses. But in discussions of politics and social arrangements it is usually brought up as a silencing tactic by people who are themselves extremely privileged – those who knew they would never need real jobs and so used daddy’s money majoring in identity/victim studies at some elite university. They can disregard the opinions of others, because they are of the “oppressed” gender/race/other identity group, or they are members of the “privileged” group but now have the “superior knowledge” to “get it.”
I also want to make another context crystal clear with this article I posted.
When it comes to men and boys refusing to speak out against abuse, it’s not all about machismo or pride. There is no pride whatsoever in holding in these feelings, especially for me. It’s all based on fear of ridicule and ostracisation.
For too long, I’ve read articles on it and there’s always the reasoning that men are too prideful and don’t want their masculanity questioned should they speak out. When in reality, they’re scared of being laughed at and abandonned by the very people who supposedly cared. That’s not machismo or pride, that’s raw fear and it should be approached from that perspective, in my opinion.
Eagle – I hear you loud and clear and you are on the front lines with many others!
Are you aware that we are now in the middle of Male Abuse Awareness Week December 1-8, 2011
http://help4guys.org/
A New Awareness Campaign is Being Held to Help Abused Boys and Young Men
An awareness campaign has been launched by the P. Luna Foundation, called “Male Abuse Awareness Week” every December 1st through the 8th. Scheduled the first week of December, this campaign shines light on the neglected cause of abused males during the holiday season when statistically domestic tensions rise. All forms of child abuse are considered in this effort.
http://news.yahoo.com/awareness-campaign-being-held-help-abused-boys-young-110052886.html
Didn’t know that, Mediahound. Thanks for bringing it up.
The more light shone on it, the better men and boys will feel about opening themselves up to others.
“For too long, I’ve read articles on it and there’s always the reasoning that men are too prideful and don’t want their masculanity questioned should they speak out. When in reality, they’re scared of being laughed at and abandonned by the very people who supposedly cared. That’s not machismo or pride, that’s raw fear and it should be approached from that perspective, in my opinion.”
Your getting to some of the real truths here. I’ve had Feminists tell me about toxic masculinity and that I need to go to therapy. Well, my own family wouldn’t even care about me, how can I expect the outside world too. Then I just carry around this rage and shame. I’m told I’m callous to others. How can anyone else’s feelings mean anything when I’ve had a whole lifetime of being told “I ain’t sh*t.” Then I’m supposed to “man up.” I think not….
Or if you do speak up, the implicit cultural expectation that men don’t feel emotions as fully or deeply as women do. The deep cultural expectations that “real” men should be able to just brush off emotional damage and move on. The horrible, soul corroding shameing men and boys receive form women and girls for not living up to the feminine expectations of male emotional “strengh”.
I think happens because people get so wrapped up in thinking “fear of women” is the center of everything that harms men.
Men and boys do not speak out for the same reasons most victims do not speak out. FEAR and Uncertainty. Fear of not being believed, of making it worse, of being ignored and further marginalized. Uncertain that things will ever get better or what the correct course of action to stop it is. When people are abused one reaction is shock and disbelief the abused person does not expect to or even believe it is happening – because it is not supposed to happen and often that feeling of can leave a victim unsure what to do.
Progress will only happen when people treat each other as they would like to be treated and realize we are more alike than different and we all need respect, dignity,caring, compassion and empathy even if we disagree.
To the author of the article I hope life treats you well from now on a brave and touching post.
Precisely, sweetsue. That’s exactly it.
It’s no different from when a girl or woman is seriously abused. They don’t speak out due to similar issues.
Lisa, I’d like to make a request:
Based on the response my article is attracting, especially with women who have come forth with their stories on being abused by both genders as well, you think we can turn this into a sort of support haven here for their demographic?
I’d be more than happy to ensure the haven is well tended. It’s just that there are very few mainstream places for their views to be lent credence and validated. I think we’ve got something good going here.
What do you think?
The commentary section of this article as a haven?
Let me know if that’s appropriate.
I’m not sure exactly *how* you see turning it into a haven, but I fully support the idea of continuing to allow people to tell stories, to provide validation those stories exist, and encouraging more people to write about their experiences. Let me know what I can do to help.
What I mean is to direct people who have been hurt by girls and women (in addition to boys and men) over here to tell their stories. Add to the content with the article and give them a chance to be heard in the commentary section. That’s what I mean by haven.
Thank you very much for sharing, I never had it that bad, but I can definitely agree with you from my own experiences that girls and women are just as capable of violence as men and boys are capable of being caring. I was quite afraid of assertive women for a while too, I think I’m over that though.
I think alot of the above opposition comes from the fact that articles like this are very threatening to many people. Female victims are thrown at us so much in our society that even the concept of male victimhood is grotesque and warped, as if women can only be victims if men are strong and invulnerable.
More stories like this need to be told
Lisa
When men here are correcting the feminist writers, they are correcting their misinformation and their miss-characterization of abuse as mainly gendered.
When feminists are hijacking conversations about female on male abuse, they are trying to invalidate and steer the focus away from the truth and back onto their falsehood based narrative on gendered abuse.
There is a very important distinction there.
Your story moved me, as it did others who have commented, and I commend you for coming forward. I was a girl who bullied boys at primary school. It’s a sadly typical story where I was bullied and then turned around to bully whoever I could find who was smaller, weaker or stranger. It shames me still to remember leading groups of eight-year-old girls in yelling taunts at one boy in particular. I don’t know why there is so little literature on this phenomenon when it would have seemed intuitive to me that girls were as bad as boys, especially with verbal bullying. We never became physically abusive, but anyone who has been victimised knows sometimes the words hurt more than the fists.
I hope people listen to you and you are able to overcome what was done to you. On behalf of girl bullies who grow up to be good women, I’m sorry.
Catie, this is really powerful. The truth is that there are lots of girl and boy bullies, and lots of men and women who grow up to regret it and lead normal, empathetic lives where they no longer bully anyone. And of course there are lifelong mean girls and lifelong male bullies…which should be obvious to anyone wondering “Where do kids get it from?” They get it partly from child development, because for a certain percentage of kids it is a developmentally “normal” (but destructive) behavior, and partly from the examples set for them by others, including adults. I so rarely see people apologize–in comments or in life. It is not easy to own one’s behavior. But for those of us who no longer want to “live in high school,” it is a great step forward. Unfortunately, too many adults suffer arrested development! In my Facebook world, some of the childhood bullies have turned out to be perfectly lovely human beings, while others are still complete a-holes!
Thanks so much Catie for your honesty and how far you’ve come in your self-development.
We need people like you.
“It’s a sadly typical story where I was bullied and then turned around to bully whoever I could find who was smaller, weaker or stranger.”
As the saying gore “the shit rolls downhill.”
“It shames me still to remember leading groups of eight-year-old girls in yelling taunts at one boy in particular.”
I understand your grief over this, and it was wrong. Find a way to accept this about yourself, take the lesson from it, forgive it and move on – you sound as though you have. What was even more wrong was the failure of adults to supervise you children properly.
“I don’t know why there is so little literature on this phenomenon when it would have seemed intuitive to me that girls were as bad as boys, especially with verbal bullying. ”
Patriarchy – literally. Daddies always think their little girls are pure, blameless litle angels – it’s so much easier than seeing them as real human beings. The legal system is rotted through with this thinking.
Well said, and good on you!
Okay. After stepping away and giving myself space to process everything, I’m going to make one final statement of opinion to you, “L”.
You believe girls and women harm due to lack of healthy role models in the media and competition for male attention. I agree, that is one valid reason.
But it’s not THE reason.
You’re a feminist and, likely, you’re examining bullying and abuse from a feminist perspective. Understandable, nothing wrong with that.
However, in the case of male victims and survivors, it is not entirely compatable with their trauma. Telling a male survivor or victim of harm from the opposite sex that it’s all because women and girls have no models to draw from due to “Male-dominated” culture doesn’t make them feel any better nor does it shed much light on what happened. For some, it makes them feel even worse since they are male so “male-dominated” implies they dominate the culture alongside the ones at the top.
Moreover, this statement by you:
“Just be mindful of the media you consume; because it’s very possible that you’re supporting roles and stories that, while emotionally non-threatening to you, are in fact reinforcing the culture that turned those girls and women you suffered at the hands of into the cruel, competitive people they were. Support stories and narratives that tell these young girls that they don’t have to operate by the traditional social mores of male-dominated culture… and unfortunately, that means supporting media where female are allowed to exercise their own agency. (Of which there is very, very little to be found in mainstream film and television.)”
Sounds more like a lecture than a suggestion. The last thing any male survivor of abuse from the opposite sex needs is to be told what to do in the name of feminism. Especially since I do believe in women’s rights, but not at the expense of men.
Not to mention, it’s also full of assumptions. If I consume media that doesn’t have male’s treated like garbage by female protagonists, why do you presume to think I’m “likely” reinforcing this culture of mistreatment when you don’t even KNOW what media or stories I read, watch, or enjoy? Or that what I do consume contains those things?
This is why your argument fails: It’s all from the view of women’s rights only.
I look at it from a more humanistic persective: Girls and women can harm. Period. They also should face equal consequences. Period. No excuses.
Anyway, we’ll have to agree to disagree for now. But, unlike those feminists I encountered who threw me out with the bathwater, your arguments are not as virtolic and you make some points. That I can respect. At least you haven’t called me a priveledged white male who benefits from institutionalised sexism nor belittled my hurt because it’s not as bad compared to what women go through.
Everyone else, thank you all for commenting. I appreciate the support and encouragement. Please spread the word and direct others towards this article so as the issue stays fresh in the minds of society.