One my friends has been wondering why some men treat women so badly, including battery, rape and murder and seem to feel that their actions are totally justified and natural.
There’s no simple answer, I suspect, but I think one part of it is hinted at by this:
Young children think about gender in the same way they think about species of animals. They believe, for example, that a boy’s preference for football is innate, as is a girl’s preference for dolls, just as cats’ behavior is innately different from dogs’…
…The study’s findings confirm prior research, which has shown that adults and children alike think different species have deep biological differences, for example, that innate differences cause dogs to behave differently from cats. This study also found that it’s not until children are at least 10 that they treat gender and species concepts as distinct from one another, as adults do. At that age, they also understand that environment plays a role in gender-related behaviors.
I think a lot of people never really get over this. In the same way that for most of history and indeed today in many places stranger is the equivalent of alien or enemy, to many men (and women, but with less devestating effects) the other gender isn’t even really human. As such, just as with strangers in traditional societies, whatever is done to them is moral, because they aren’t even of the same species. There is no real sense of connection, of empathy shared on commonality.
The only way to break through this is usually to say “what if it were your daughter/mother/sister, but men often put those women into a special category and don’t generalize.
I should add that female contempt for men, is often palpable, and I’ve heard many women use the word man in a way that indicates they consider the entire gender beneath contempt, and men innately weak (which is amusing, because many men think the same of woman.) Of course, very few women use that contempt as an excuse for battering, raping and killing men.
