As much as I love to believe in the hopeful yet naive notion that the world I live in is not marked by gender discriminations and expectations, I find more and more each and every day that genderism permeates even the slightest aspects of our society and culture. I have been wondering for the longest time where certain aspects of femininity and masculinity stem from. I have come to this great realization that no answer will ever suffice in assisting me to understand how our views as a society have become despicably skewed, narrow and inevitably wrong.

I cannot help but reflect on the stereotypical ideas of masculine and feminine ideas. I have grown up believing in certain concepts, so much so, that I have struggled with undoing some of the mindsets that I unfortunately learned. Up until a few years ago, I battled immensely with detaching the ideas and themes that I have unknowingly always described as being gender specific. I had great difficulty reversing what had become so deeply rooted, that it verged on a factual level in my own mentality about gender differences.

But the prevailing message that I took away from my own ambivalences and confusions about genderism is simply and significant that we must not, as functioning, genuine members of mankind, create unequal expectations for men and women. Though this of course is undoubtedly an idea that is not foreign and groundbreaking, I find that it is much too often that people can agree on this statement, yet allow their own thinking to stray from such.

In particular, one of the issues that has been looming over my head as one that does not receive great emphasis is one centering around domestic abuse. But it can also be applied to abuse and/or violence between any two people.

Now, there is no doubt that one of the most prominent, popular yet stereotypical ways of defining masculinity is by strength and aggression. I myself, have grown up believing for majority of my life thus far, that men were to be physically stronger than women. I believed in this ridiculous ideology that a woman is not only fragile and delicate, but incredibly susceptible to physical harm. I believed in an outrageous concept that men were not only superior in terms of physical strength, but were vigorous enough that it was their duty to protect the breakable women of society.

I emphasize the absurdity of these beliefs, that I previously held, not only to highlight how much my mindset has altered, but to truly bring to light that these notions that we have in our society are completely and utterly wrong. These beliefs disgrace the human right to equality.

Equality is not only about actions, denials or discrimination. Equality does not cease to be necessary in the face of individualistic mentalities. Equality is about how we view the men and women of our society. This immediately begins not only in our definitions of men and women, but what we truly associate with masculinity and femininity in general.

Going back to this issue of domestic violence and abuse between two people, there is no doubt that from an objective perspective, all would agree that violence is intolerable and wrong. But, no matter how much we may all agree to this idea on a general, more vague line of thinking, when it comes to abuse within a heterosexual relationship, the standards and expectations become skewed.

When we hear of repulsive situations and tragedies in which a man assaults and/or abuses a woman, we cannot help but become overwhelmed with disgust, rage and an inexplicably desperate need for justice. We cannot fathom the inhumanity that can cause men to physically harm women. Why is this so tragic to us?

Beyond the horrific nature of any violence or abuse between humans, is the underlying conception we have that a woman is significantly delicate. But the truth of the matter is, there is nothing wrong with the delicacy of human beings at all. My issue does not lie with viewing people as fragile and sacred, but it is the overarching idea that women specifically are the fragile ones in our society.

When we are presented with the same violent situation, but a woman is the perpetrator, as a society we read it differently. There is an overwhelming under-recognition of domestic violence in which women abuse men. This scenario is somehow interpreted as less severe and unable to contain the traumas that are associated with the reverse. Men are held to this standard of strength in which it almost seems as though we believe that a man is not capable of being hurt by a woman. We view this as not only improbable, but as a situation that contains subtle comic implications.

Without a doubt, this unequal standard and interpretation of domestic abuse is undeniably wrong. I believe there is this overemphasis on abuse as an action that is simply physical and thus must be measured in regards to intensity of violence and pain. But though this definition of abuse is definitely important, it fails to recognize all the other aspects of abuse that which absolutely anyone of any gender is susceptible to.

Pain does not discriminate based upon gender. Aggression does not discriminate based upon gender. Shame does not discriminate based upon gender. Self-loathing does not discriminate based upon gender. So why is it that we choose to recognize the assaults against women, and not treat assaults against men with the same concern and attention? Why do we allow such a repulsive action to be overlooked, simply because the victim is a man? Why do we expect that a man is strong enough to handle abuse and thus it is not legitimized as an act of abuse?

It is not only infuriating, but deeply saddening to come to terms with the fact that we as a society have not held true our stance against violence. We have become guilty of allowing ourselves to commit a social sin in which we feel we can choose which gender is allowed to be a victim and which is not.

I hear so many situations, even in my own personal life, in which women are slapping their partners out of anger or frustration, but this is somehow justified based on gender. The bottom line of this issue as a whole, is that we truly need to work towards internalizing violence and abuse for what it truly is. We need to open our eyes up to the unequal gender expectations, actions and mindsets that exist before us. We need to understand that we cannot and should not rule out abusive behavior based upon gender.