The Importance of Men Seeing Women as Human Beings

[redqueen]

...

These are anything but isolated incidents. South Africa has notoriously high levels of violence against women. In a survey in New Delhi conducted last October and November, before Pandey's rape and the public outcry that followed, 95 percent of women said they felt unsafe in public spaces. Nine out of 10 women reported they had experienced sexual violence in a public space in their lifetime, ranging from obscene comments to groping to stalking to rape.

...

Treating girls and women as less than human is not behavior contained to developing or middle-income countries like India and South Africa. Next month in Steubenville, Ohio, high school football stars Trent Mays and Malik Richmond go on trial for the rape of a 16-year-old girl last August. She was also raped repeatedly and carried unconscious from party to party, her body hauled by her limbs. Photos were tweeted and put on Instagram. In a 12-minute video made that night, another party-goer, Michael Nodianos, turned the assault into a stand-up routine, laughing at his own jokes about the "dead girl." A sampling: "She's deader than O.J.'s wife." "She is so raped right now." Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine said last week that he didn't have enough evidence to charge Nodianos with a crime.

In one moment from the video, behind the maniacal laughter, another boy can be heard off-screen: "That's, like, rape. It is rape. They raped her." You can hear the realization dawning in his voice. A few minutes later, the same voice asks, "But what if that was your daughter?"

That comprehension—drawing a line between the woman or girl who is lying there "so raped" and the women and girls in the lives of men who would rape and men who would stand idly by—could be the tipping point in stopping this violence.
...

http://www.theatlantic.com/sexes/archive/2013/02/the-importance-of-men-seeing-women-as-human-beings/273417/

It is sad that so many think that this issue has to be put in personal terms before progress can be made. Appeals to men to think about 'their' women (wives, daughters, mothers). I don't know if it's the only way to raise awareness, but if so, then that is (yet another) very depressing thought.

[CrispyQ]

1. I've come to believe that with most people, seeing things from a different perspective

usually only happens when it becomes personal. I'm ashamed to say it happened with me, regarding poverty. After going through a very unstable financial period, I had a total "OMG, what a total non-empathetic asshole I've been!" moment.

[redqueen]

2. And we all grow up so immersed in this...

seeing women as less-than. It's just 'natural'. We hardly ever think to question it.

[CrispyQ]

3. I think that's why it generally has to be personal before people see things differently.

When it hits close to home, you finally see that your viewpoint has largely been based on society's "that's just how it is." Caring people will ask, "Why do we view it this way, and what can I do to change it?"

[seabeyond]

5. and that is about the only thing

i do well, and always have. makes it so easy to live with me and so fuckin' hard to live with me.

ya....

[seabeyond]

4. "Men are part of the solution," on the one hand we have some men that want to be able to dehumanize

women to be able to sexuality use her as their sexuality wants. on the other, they would be appalled by the rape. what they do not get is the dehumanizing of women, is what allows the rape

[smirkymonkey]

6. +1000

Thanks for your post.

[seabeyond]

7. hey smirkey...

i am lovin seeing you in these threads...

[smirkymonkey]

9. Thanks seabeyond!

Glad to be here!

[sufrommich]

8. Great post,Redqueen. nt

[redqueen]

10. Just read about the rapist in a Michigan high school who was protected and his victims ignored.

So fucking sad.

Anyway it reminded me of the way girls and women are viewed, and made me want to kick this.

[seabeyond]

13. i just read about the florida girl that was gang raped and now being verbally britulized

yet, her father is speaking out for her and the police seem to be taking it seriously.

ya... a pattern yet?

[ismnotwasm]

11. This is a continuum

I had a friend, A sex worker who was murdered by this guy;

Robert Christian Hansen (born February 15, 1939) is an American serial killer. Between 1980 and 1983, Hansen murdered between 17 and 21 women near Anchorage, Alaska. He was convicted in 1983 and is currently serving 461 years in Spring Creek Correctional Center in Seward, Alaska.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Hansen

Her name was Sue Luna, she is third on the Wiki list. She was a stripper, and had gone to Alaska in part to get away from an incredibly abusive husband--that charming kind who throws their wife out of the house injured and naked and doesn't let them back in.

This guy, literally saw women as animals to hunt.

On the other end, we have men who see women as objects to fuck, or to masturbate to, or to leer at, or to harass at work, or on the street----not in innocent fantasy, not in honest admiration, or even honest desire, but in a dehumanizing, women-as-a-collection of body parts, or entitled way.

It's part of the same continuum, and why people can't see this I'll never know. It shouldn't take the death of a friend, the horrific rape of a woman or a child to see-----its all connected.

[redqueen]

12. "why people can't see this I'll never know"

I tend to suspect it has something to do with how awful a realization it is.

[ismnotwasm]

14. Yeah

The thing is if I posted something like that elsewhere, I'd get an argument about serial killers, sidestepping the core causes of objectification and misogyny. I'd have to defend the strawman argument that would be created.


Men will objectify without understanding how ugly it really is, women will claim 'choice' and autonomy in being objectified. And I know---I know--how wrong and deadly this is. The disconnect *is* probably ego-protective, but dammit; it's such bullshit.

[seabeyond]

15. that is why i was impressed with kurdian men protesting a judge that had a man dress as a woman

and walk in the town, as punishment.

it is the "lesser" slight for sure. and so many would dismiss that slight, here in the u.s. and even on du. yet, the kurdish men stood up and spoke out that it is wrong to diss women in this manner.

that is getting beyond the ego.