Violence, What do we do about it?

Tuesday morning  between 4 and 5 am, while most people were fast asleep, on the University of Missouri campus, a young woman was assaulted and raped. To me, this violent act is terrifying.  The reasoning behind her late hour stroll doesn’t matter. She became a victim either way.

            After the lection on Teen Dating Violence one fact became all the more clear to me. Males seem to see some sort of dominance over the female body. Seen as weaker, fragile, they seem to claim ownership over something that is not theirs to claim.

            I’m sure there are cases of male abuse in a relationship, even on this campus. I’m sure there are males that have been verbally and possibly even physically abused. But in most cases, it is females.

            Females are the victims of rape, control, intimidation. All listed on the PowerPoint on TDV.

            Teens face more pressures than young adults in college. The social environment of a high school can clash with a home environment and parental values. High schools have always been riddled with issues of social status and power, just look at Mean Girls. Parents have always been seen as figureheads of families and uninvolved in their teens life. And to be fair, most teens think that they know it all and no one can tell them differently. This, as we have discussed in class, makes for a huge communication issue. Parents can’t talk to their kids about sex, kids can’t talk to their parents. What if the issue is no longer sex, but verbal abuse?  Mean boyfriends would be forbidden, reputations would be ruined, and so most victimized teens, who don’t get out on their own, stay trapped.

            Granted, this can be the case with adult dating violence. People can often feel locked into an unhealthy relationship.  Violence and victimization just makes things worse. So many issues stem off these two interacting factions.

            The websites and videos we watched in class may have been cheesy, they may be 100% ignored by teens and they may still need some work. Regardless, I thin it’s important there is an issue at least being addressed.

                        But what about the rape on campus? Walking around and hearing people’s reactions, I realized, most people think it’s just a urban myth. That stuff like that doesn’t really happen. And until they received an email from the campus police, they forgot.

            There’s a lot of violence that has taken place on our campus in my four years here. From destruction of property to now, in my last semester, a rape. Are women just supposed to lock themselves inside their apartments and dorms as soon as the sun goes down? How are we supposed to be safe without losing all freedom? What gives these men the right to be violent and controlling? Their size? Physical dominance can be a huge factor in violent acts. Society has given men dominance over women for years, it is an idea that would be almost impossible to change.

            The other day I overheard a conversation between two girls at the library. One girl was talking about how rude her boyfriend was to her. And while it wasn’t as extreme as the video, she talked about how he let a door slam in her face, he called her names and spoke down to her. And I realized, I have some of the same issues with my male roommates. I’m all for equal treatment of women in the workplace, home, society, anywhere. But I don’t think this gives any one the right to speak down or rudely to anyone else, man or woman.

            Is this where the deeper issue behind violence stems from? Society’s downfall into a world that lacks manners and cares about the protection of people? What do y’all think?

Samantha Brayer