Fear of Laughing, Fear of Killing – Violence Against Women #3
It’s #3 of my Violence Against Women series, sparked by the murders in Isla Vista and UCSB, my Alma Mater. Addition events in India with the rape and lynching of two teenage girls only increases my desire to keep this issue on the front burner.
Size Matters
No, I don’t mean THAT size. I mean the size of the anger, the size of the ego, the size of the insecurity (which of course could possibly be linked to THAT size, who knows). In most cases men feel a little embarrassed and maybe a little humiliated by a woman laughing at them. It might sting a little, and it might make them a little angry. But most men are not all men. And all it takes is one man whose anger is BIG and whose predilection to violence is BIG to create a violent situation.
Not All Men
Too often men will listen to a woman talk about an incidence of sexual violence and their response is will be, “Well, not all men are like that.” But what they don’t realize is that for a woman, they may know most men aren’t like that, but they have very little way of knowing which man is which. I heard a great analogy the other day to help a man understand what a woman is dealing with.
Yes, All Women
Imagine you are given a bowl of M & Ms and are told that you shouldn’t worry too much because they are mostly safe, but there are about 10% that are poisonous. Would you be inclined to grab a handful? I doubt it. Well, that is how many women, especially those who have had run-ins with poisonous men already in their lives, feel about men in general. It’s hard to know who is who in advance. And yes, all women have to deal with it.
The quote above is true: Men are afraid women will laugh at them. Women are afraid men will kill them.
Hidden Men
The other thing us men who aren’t poisonous don’t realize is that we don’t see the poisonous men doing their damage, their seductions, their manipulations, their intimidations because they don’t do it around us. They do it when we aren’t around. What does that mean? It means we don’t default to saying, “Nah, that didn’t really happen.” or “eh, I am sure he didn’t mean anything by it.” It means we have to default to believing a woman when she tells us that it has happened. It means if a woman says WE are doing it, even if we don’t think we are, we stop and believe them. We don’t believe them because we are guilty of something (even though we might be). We believe them because the effect of what we said or did gave them that feeling. That is enough.
The entire series thus far may be seen here
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Drawing and commentary by Marty Coleman
Quote by Margaret Atwood, 1939 – not dead yet, Canadian author
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