Recently, there has been extensive news about violence against young college age women, specifically in Iowa. I want to preface this piece by first and foremost sending my deepest condolences to the victim’s families and friends of these stories that hit the news recently. I am not here to politicize the tragedies, but feel these tragedies shed light on a larger issue, and that issue is violence against women, that unfortunately, we are still finding today in our well-developed first world nation.
I find this disturbing in itself that these atrocities have occurred, let alone in Iowa, the place I grew up living feeling safe and sound myself. These developments literally hit too close to home. However, no matter where you live, the identities of these women should evoke emotion in you because they were human beings, let alone targeted as women just trying to live their life like anyone else.
Throughout our life, we are forced frozen by hearing these stories repeatedly on the news, and at times, we stop into stillness to pause and wonder, if they lost their lives for existing, then who’s to say whose next… whose to say not me? Now the topic of violence against women is nothing new, it is historically actually commonplace, which in here relies the problem. Why is this still happening?
Women, especially on college campuses, fear for their safety in obvious and subtle ways each and every day. And it is in knowing that these realities, no matter their commonality, still occur as to why we still hold fear where it does not belong.
In our culture as young people, men are still excused for violent behavior against women, in not only physical ways, but by way of commentary and behaviors that are stemmed into our very thread of societal norms. These norms can contribute to creating inequalities between genders, when none should still exist. And it is in the innate and commonplace assumptions about the genders that this violence is still occurring in modern day America, leaving no room to end violence or unite equally.
What I mean by this is that because men are told “boys will be boys” and women are arguably expected to uphold higher expectations, narratives are enforced to divide genders, creating expectations that men can have what they want, and when that expectation is exploited or denied, then men feel justified in the retaliations that follow. This retaliation, as we see still today, can lead to violence against women. I am not here to say no women has ever hit a man, or that they too should be allowed to, or that all men agree that it is okay to hurt women. Not for a moment, is this the case or the direction we as a society should take and no violence is good violence. But when we do not hold all people accountable for their actions equally, we create a less safe and fair society, all leading to more extreme atrocities.
Not all men are violent to women, but that does not excuse the ones that are. We need to stand against this until no women is abused or assaulted in anyway. Some people would argue “you should never hit a woman”, but to me, although correct, still defeats the whole purpose of not doing so. Someone should not hurt a woman because she is a woman, but also because she doesn’t deserve to be hit ever, just as men should not be hit in return. As the saying goes, violence only creates more violence, and it is when we perpetuate the idea women are the weaker sex that men sometimes take advantage of those assumptions, while others ignore the oppressions right in front of them. Either way, whether the man is the offender or the bystander, no one is stopping the problem, and women are left to fend for themselves because of it. It is no wonder women often carry keys between fingers or never walk alone ever at night, and why by the age of ten I knew how to get out of a moving car from the trunk. My parents wanted me to fend for myself, because even if it is not something that happens to everyone, it happens…and that is enough of a risk to try to gain some protective skills before we are put out into the real world without any safety in sight.
So please, I beg you America, young women and men holding your new born child, promise now, in this generation, to be better. To speak up when you’re a bystander, to set the record straight that men and women are equal and that if someone is met with violence, no matter the context or case, that they will be reprimanded by the fullest extent. Boys will not be boys, they will be accountable. This is a cruel culture that we live in today, but we are the only ones with the power to change it. So let’s start, as it should’ve started yesterday.
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