Dear Dr K,
Since men are stronger than women, doesn’t it mean that we can boss all girls around?
Pate Rearkey
Dear Pate,
Going by traditional wisdom that has been handed down from father to son for millennia or centuries or decades (I’m not sure which, since these traditions just keep coming out of nowhere), you would probably be right. The culture for which we fly our flag is also the one for which we beat up and silence our girls and women. And if they are not our girls and women, then whose are they? It’s not as if they are the ones who earned our country the distinction of being one of the most unsafe places for women in the world. No, like war and gun massacres and genocide, only men deserve the credit for that.
Some of us hesitate to be proud of this accomplishment. We realise that a country that is unsafe for women is also unsafe for our mothers and sisters, and later in life, our wives and daughters too (and our friends, if any of us happen to find girls worthy of our friendship). In order to ensure the safety of these girls and women, we find it necessary to boss them around and tell them where they are allowed to go and when, what they should wear, how they should behave, who they should spend time with, and so on.
This is for their own protection, of course. If they failed to heed our warnings and something bad happened to them as a result, they would have to take the blame for it, since men are naturally stronger and more violent and really can’t help what they do.
But then it seems unfair that men take credit for being stronger, creating a culture of dominance and making the country as unsafe as it is, then blaming girls and women when bad things happen to them, or blaming it on foreign cultures or strange food or the media or music or dance or alcohol or goats or bananas, instead of just taking the blame ourselves, like men.
Maybe it’s time for us to reconsider this culture that we have created for ourselves. Maybe, as males, we need to stop thinking about how to protect girls from men and start thinking about how we can work towards creating a country that’s equally safe for everyone.
And if we, as males, find that we are just too incompetent to figure out how to make that happen, at least let the women go into the world and figure it out for us. If we can man up and stop feeling so threatened by what they’re capable of, we can stop trying to boss them around and get in the way. Then we’ll see who’s really stronger.
Yours questionably,
Dr K