A few years ago, a good friend of mine confided in me that she was being stalked by a man she did not know. She told me that one morning she walked to the bus stop to take the bus to work and that when she got there, she found a man who looked at her so intensely that it made her uncomfortable.
Every morning after that she would find him on the same bus stop at the same time looking like he was waiting for her. At first, she thought she was being paranoid; after all, which woman hasn’t looked over her shoulder when hearing footsteps behind her?
But a month into this horrible dance, she realised that the same man had found out when she finished work and was following her home. The next morning, she showed up at the police station bright and early to inquire as to what could potentially be done about her situation, only to be told: “If he doesn’t hurt you, we can’t do anything.”
Boys will be what you raise them to be
I can’t recount the countless tales of woe I have heard from women of all ages and statuses, but what I do find sickening to the very pits of my stomach is the lack of seriousness with which so many of them are taken. Years ago, an acquaintance finally plucked up the courage to leave her swine partner; she took her bruises and her two very young children and their teddy bears to a police station to file a report, only to be told to go back home and try to mend things with her abuser. It had taken her five years to manage to get to their doorstep, and in less than five seconds they had managed to invalidate all her progress. I literally can’t compute what kind of heartless moron you must be to put someone who has sought out your help in such a position.
Just last week we heard the shocking details of how a woman was treated at a bachelor party, with many people saying that she deserved what she got. Consent or not, too few commented about why you would want to degrade another human being you don’t know from Adam so badly that you would be willing to pay to throw dozens of eggs at her.
It’s incredible to me that most of the country is obsessed with how badly other cultures treat their women and then blatantly look the other way when things are happening in their own back yard.
Of course, you don’t just need to take my word for it; visit any comments board on any major or minor news outlet in this country and watch in horror as the misogynistic comments come rolling in. It’s a good thing that a good old public stoning is not legal in this country because you would probably be able to build girnas around me and a few of my more outspoken female friends by the time people were done with us.
And no, it doesn’t seem to go both ways. I have quite a few equally outspoken male writer friends and none of them ever get called ugly, are told that if they continue writing they might get murdered or are sent strings of barely understandable, crude text.
I don’t know what or how long it’s going to take but what I do know is that we all have to be part of the change. Instead of adding more quotas about the female to male ratio in the workplace, we should be educating our young to respect and embrace our differences, not exploit them. When you shrug your shoulders and say boys will be boys, when you treat women like objects that can be discarded in front of your sons and daughters, you are not only allowing abuse to continue, you are also sowing the seeds for new abuse to take place. Boys will not be boys, boys will be what you raise them to be.