we normalize violence because it's a men's issue
the double standard of violence.
listen instead:
I’m sure many of us have heard the stats. There’s a myriad of data on how much violence men commit. If you haven’t heard, let me catch you up.
As of 2022, women made up about 51% of all violent victimizations.
Men are more likely to be victims of homicide, with the perpetrator being other men.
1 in 6 women in the U.S will experience attempted or completed rape in their lifetime.
In jail or prison, the staff (majority male) committed 60% of all sexual violence against inmates.
Every 74 seconds someone in the US is sexually assaulted, every 9 minutes it’s a child.
Overall, the trend has been that men are the major contributors to violent crime. It doesn’t matter where you look, men will be the ones committing majority of the violent crime.
With the recent shooting of Charlie Kirk there were a lot of people confused about how we could possibly celebrate violence. How could we have become desensitized to violence to the point that it seems normal? Well, because it’s a men’s issue. This is the environment that patriarchy has created. Mass shootings, public executions and assassinations are a white man’s game. They’ve been doing this for so long with little to no nationwide repercussions that nobody should be surprised about it anymore. This is the environment that white supremacy has created.
The environment that both have created is one where men are allowed to rape & beat women, white men get to shoot second graders, and men in power can enact terror and genocide on nearly anyone they want. If someone uses violence for revolutionary purposes or as a defense against any of the above, that is not allowed. If you wish ill will on any of the men who commit the crimes listed above, you are the problem.
I make it no secret that I’m not actually against violence. Violence in the face of oppression is not only expected it is justified. When the systems in place use violence to maintain their power, nonviolence can’t be expected to knock them down. What I take issue with is violence only being acceptable from the oppressor. I take issue with violence being normalized for men as they terrorize our entire planet. I find it insane that less than 6% of rapists go to jail but if I say rapists should bleed out from their nuts I’m suddenly the most evil of evil whores.
We normalize it because it’s a men’s issue. If we all woke up tomorrow and women were responsible for 95% of all violent crime, we would all be strung up by our bits. Public executions in the town square would make an insane comeback, vigilante justice would be applauded, and the death penalty would make a miraculous reappearance everywhere. We wouldn’t go 5 minutes without hearing about the female violence epidemic.
I think it is possible to live in a world with minimal violence. This will never be achieved until the issue is addressed with honesty. Men, and white men more often than not, have a rape issue, a domestic violence issue, a mass shooting issue, a political violence issue, a pedophilia issue. Violence isn’t only bad when non-white men do it. There should be no scrambling to find a trans woman when a white political commentator is shot, it’s a men’s issue. Without this honesty about the real danger, nothing will be done about it. It will never be addressed honestly as long as the men committing these crimes are the ones making the rules.
When the issue can be named without excuses or deflection, we can begin addressing the entitlement that is socialized into men that often leads to them committing this violence. Studies have shown that misogynistic thinking correlates to violent crime and extremism in men. Imagine what progress would be made by eradicating a majority of misogynistic and hypermasculine behaviors? If the same thing could be done for racist beliefs, we would be many steps closer to a less violent world.
i already know this is one of my hottest takes and i’m about to make it worse. terrible people deserve to die. rapists deserve to die. pedophiles deserve to die. terrorists (mass shooters, domestic terrorists, torturers, israeli forces and politicians, ICE) deserve to die. nazis deserve to die. zionists deserve to die.
the reason it is so heavily pushed that this line of thinking is wrong is because the demographic that makes up 98% of perpetrators of the above is men. more specifically, i don’t have exact numbers, but white men make up a very large portion of these perpetrators. if we woke up tomorrow and suddenly women were the ones committing 95% of all violent crime, we would see the death penalty make a miraculous reappearance everywhere. suddenly vigilante justice would be fine. the female violence issue would be blasted everywhere you looked. but it’s not, it’s men. therefore we will continue having this idea that every person is worthy of life on this planet shoved down our throats when that’s simply not true and no one will convince me it is.
I posted this note yesterday, and while most understood my meaning the comments that I did receive disagreeing were exactly as I expected, and further proved the point I’m making.
The focus became my thoughts on the death penalty, philosophical questions about legality and morality, and whether Zionism is a crime or not. The blaring point that was directly in everyone’s faces was completely ignored: men’s violence.
As I stated above, wishing ill will on men who are violent is regarded as wrong while the men actually enacting this violence are given slaps on the wrist. Saying I think violent oppressors should die is a problem and is me “reacting emotionally” as someone stated, but the actual violent oppression is just another day. It has been normalized.
Sometimes, you need to make a heavy statement to draw attention to a bigger issue.
As a whole, I think we rely too heavily on the systems that are already in place. It speaks volumes to me that so many people zeroed in on legality when I wasn’t making an argument for all rapists to face the death penalty. That never came from my typing fingers. In fact, as showcased above, my solution to the issue of men’s violence actually doesn’t involve the legal system at all.
Violence will be acceptable as long as men hold the monopoly on it. Hell, men are proud (a real thing I’ve been told many times) that they hold the “monopoly on force.”
It’s not about me thinking rapists should die. It’s not about a podcaster being shot because he (allegedly) wasn’t Nazi enough. It’s about refusing to address the elephant in the room.
Violence is a men’s issue and we will be forced to accept it until men no longer have a violence issue.
This may be the most accurate piece I’ve read all year.
Recently I attended a conference at my Local Women's Shelter, and there was a speaker- Dr Jackson Katz. He has written about violent being a men's issue and has created curriculum in other countries (has tried here but they won't let him) that has severely reduced violence against women and men. I like your message and wanted to share a nugget of hope that this is something that is long overdue.