The Associated Press carried a story the other day on efforts to raise awareness about violence among dating teenagers (Schools struggle to contain dating violence). The story described efforts in Massachusetts, which has one of the most comprehensive programs in the nation to address and prevent such violence.
Addressing the possibilities of interpersonal violence and teaching young men and women to deal with their problems without resorting to violence is certainly an admirable goal and with some studies suggesting up to 1 in 5 students are victims of some form of dating-related violence sometime in their lives, this is certainly a worthy project.
Unfortunately, the Associated Press story included a quote from an alleged expert who argued that in some cases a physical assault or emotional abuse really don’t count as violence. What special cases are these? When the violence involves a young women assaulting a young man.
The surveys of violence among young men and women are pretty clear — both groups report similar levels of victimization, although as with violence between adults, women are far more likely to end up requiring hospital visits or other medical intervention as a result of an assault.
Still violence is violence, but not according to Carole Sousa, a consultant on dating violence to the Massachusetts Department of Education. According to the Associated Press story,
Some studies have suggested that almost as many boys as girls are victims of dating violence, but Sousa contends such figures are misleading. Boys
may be mocked or slapped by a girlfriend, but they often laugh off the
mistreatment, she said. Girls almost exclusively are the victims in cases of
sexual violence or injuries requiring hospitalization, Sousa said.
This is a bizarre claim. The obvious implication is that if a man just slaps a woman a little and calls her names, which she laughs off, that it is misleading to call this serious violence. I thought feminists wanted to call that battered women’s syndrome.
Why is it so hard for these activists to get it through their heads that violence is always an extremely serious matter even if it doesn’t lead to serious injury and regardless of whether it is perpetrated by men or women. Sousa’s claim outrageously minimizes violence committed by women, which is very odd given the general feminist claim that we need to set aside our pre-conceived stereotypes of male and female roles. Instead activists such as Sousa seem to be informed entirely by stereotypes of men as always being the aggressive victimizer and women as always being the passive victim. Which is ironic given that young men are far more likely to be victims of violence than any other group. Reducing violence requires a holistic approach, not the sex-segregated stereotypes being pushed by activists like Sousa.