#YESALLTHETHINGS

An odd thing in my life has always been that I don't understand my fellow males.  Out of the friends I acquire in my travels, few are guys.  I don't mesh well with my own gender. 

Put me at work, I'll have a great time with the women.  We'll tell jokes, swap stories, be morons at play. 

The guys will sort of... acknowledge me.

I like girls, and not just the drooling staring way.  I enjoy spending time in groups of women.  On my birthday, I ended up having long conversations with two fifteen year old girls.  One was about dying because the vacuum exploded and killed us with bright sparkly stars, and the other was about boyfriends and tennis.

Seriously, it's not even me creeping on young girls, I just find these things funny. 

In school, I sat at the "girls" table for most of my life.  I only left when I made a single guy friend who wanted to move, and a few of the girls followed.  A few of the guys I knew figured out this magical talent I had for simply speaking to girls, and quickly recruited me.  By the way, guys table conversation was usually them pretending to be as stupid as possible, as to not be "smart".  Girls table conversation was about sex, how to do it, what they thought would be fun, and that guy who's shorts showed off his junk in gym class.

Girl talk was never about ponies, unless that was slang for some horrifying sex act.

I enjoyed those days, and I remember thinking to myself when I joined the "guys"; this lot has literally no idea what the hell the other side is.  The notion that girls could think was beyond most of them.  It was not some form of anti-women hate, but mostly pure ignorance.  They were guys, guys talked about cars, how tough they were, and made vague attempts to show they noticed girls.

There's so many problems with that mentality, because it leads to a constant surprise set up later on.
"Whoa, this girl knows about something I like..."
"Whoa, this girl can do things I do..."
"Whoa, this girl doesn't like something I don't..."

You like giant robot movies, because they're awesome.  You can ride a dirt bike, because dirt bikes are fun.  You don't like bad romance movies, because they suck.  It should not surprise you that someone else might feel the same way, just because they're a different gender.  This creates a rift, it leaves people believing they're different on a base level.

I've taught young girls to protect themselves, because the world has plenty of people who'll harm them for no reason.  I taught young boys for the exact same reasons.  Some people just hate women, because some people are fucking stupid.  A similar amount of men are attacked and beaten because someone hated them.  We're not unique in this.  Bad things happen regardless of gender.

Instead of putting women on this alter where we proclaim we'll protect them, why don't we put everyone up on that alter?  Why don't we teach children to not be shitheads when they grow up?  Teach them not to beat their spouses, because 40% of domestic abuse is against the man, and that doesn't include the men that are either ashamed to report it, or who literally don't know they can be abused.

Imagine if a woman did not know rape was wrong, and just something she hated, but oh well, these things happen?  Boys are told to never hit girls, I know grown men who still act like even trying to stop a woman from assaulting them with a weapon is wrong.  I watched a guy get beaten up in school because a girl just wanted to, and no one would let him live it down if he did anything.  That sort of mentality creates a feeling of powerlessness that festers, and eventually grows into a hatred of those that hold it over you. 

If girls could beat you up when you were younger because they felt like it, how hard is it to believe they wouldn't falsely accuse you of assault when you're older, because they feel like it?  You remember that feeling of injustice, where they hurt you in some way, and the world laughed when it happened, and then shamed you for even thinking of defending yourself.

... and they wonder where a "rape culture" comes from. 

By teaching this to young boys, we practically groom many of them to fear and resent girls.  To expect a woman to abuse power of them.  We spend hours telling a boy to never lay hand on a girl, but spare the girl a passing "don't hit him either".  Children are shits, they'll abuse any power you give them (seriously, tell a child it's ok not to like a kind of food, and they hate everything), we train girls to use this against boys... but the girls can grow out of that power.

Sure some don't, some just become horrible people, but that's just the world: some people suck.  It's these boys that still hurt.  Victory is easily forgotten as the real world sets in, but injustice festers.  Adults push this on the young, and punish them accordingly.  They create a future for the boys where they fear and resent women, and a world where women have to wonder if behind each face is a little boy who hates girls.  Is that smile hiding the time a girl abused him?  Was his father beaten by his mother?  Does he view her as a "thing" because he spent his life being told she was different?

If you want to fix the problem women face today, because they face a hell not of their own making, you have to start with the kids.  Tell them that abusing each other is not acceptable.  That they're people, regardless of gender.  Teach them real respect, not the kind that comes due to "oh, they're just too weak...", but the sort where they understand that we're all weak and strong. 

Teach your little boy to think little girls are awesome, and your little girl the same, and you might not have to watch another generation pass by in a world where either of them can have their lives ripped away because of something you did.