Stop Being Silent

http://www.cnn.com/2013/03/07/opinion/mcpherson-men-domestic-violence/index.html?iref=allsearch
To stem violence against women, men must step up.

An estimate says more than 30% of women and girls in the world are sexually abused in their lifetimes, usually by men. Don McPherson, a feminist and social justice educator, argues that it is equally important for both women and men to end the culture of domestic violence because our lives are inevitably interdependent over sexual orientations. Women’s safety issues are directly related to men’s lives as well. In this sense, it would be significant to involve men in the activities and men take the initiative while it usually hard for men to stand up and speak out about these issues. McPherson states that “men do need to stop being silent” rather than just to stop being violent. Active engagement to the problem of violence against women is required but it does not necessary mean one has to do something big. Small challenge to social norm or injustice culture can make a big change if gathered. Regarding a media, it has strong influence on forming our sexuality imposing us overly sexualized script, and keeping silent means accepting the script. Passive attitude to take in the message from the media is dangerous while the passive behavior itself is not violent at all.

I would like to pick up this article because it enhances my insight into the myth of violence against women which we dealt with in Weekly Learning Project for this week. As it showed in the slides of chapter 10, it is a myth that sexual assault is a topic of only women and men can ignore it. But it fact, a lot of sexual assaults toward men and boys are reported in the U.S. and men’s lives are closely connected with women including their sisters, mothers, wives, and friends. The most important statement I found in this article is that men should stop silent and passively follow the injustice culture but should speak out and take an action to change the situation. I think this message can be applied to women as well.

In our society, there is a cultural legitimation of violence which people learn through their family or social institutions including law, education, media, and religion. In my experience, it is difficult to identify what culture represents the male superiority or male control because I am too used to it. So it is impossible to take proper actions to end the culture of violence if we know we should stand up to deal with it but have no idea what exactly is the problem which should be address. At this point, education would be a significant tool to make people to respect and value each other regardless of their sexual orientations. We need to recognize our culture which place men at a center and marginalize women, and what will happen if we keep silent and ignore it as normal. And then, with this knowledge and critical view on the issue, we would be able to address the macro-level change in legal, political, economical systems.