I'm sure some of you have seen the front page story that says women are more likely to abuse their domestic partners than men.

I am not sure on the validity of the study at hand. The story is brief and gives less than an abstract of the academic paper it references. For the purposes of this rant, let's say it is true, that women can be aggressive and abusive at the same rate, if not at a greater rate, than men. On the surface, this would seem like a Men's Rights issue. After all, it appears that men are not getting the help they need and resources that are available to women are not necessarily available to men. From my own experience, rape crisis centers and domestic violence shelters usually cater to women and children almost exclusively.

From an early age, I was taught that women are inherently different from men. As a girl, I was taught that I should hit back if a boy hits me , but my brother was taught that he should never, ever, under any circumstances, hit a girl. Already, as a preschooler, I was not only taught to hit boys, I was encouraged. Teaching a four year old girl to hit a four year old boy is ridiculous. At that age, there are only slight anatomical differences. Speed, agility, and strength are not significantly different between genders at that age. In fact, I was often taller, bigger, and stronger than most boys until I hit high school and the boys caught up.

The idea was that girls are weak and need all the leverage they can get. Girls and women can simply not be abusers because they aren't strong enough to hurt anyone. A women is a victim and a man is an abuser. Period. End of story.

All of society perpetuates these stereotypes, including both men and women. Think of the stereotypical father of a teenage daughter, him sitting at home with his shotgun, ready to scare the living daylights (and possibly cause bodily harm) to any boy "who touches a hair on his little girl's head". The boy didn't even do anything and yet, he is the abuser in the father's eyes. The father in this situation expects the boy to be a scumbag, but at the same time, he also believes that his daughter isn't capable of making her own choices. In that instance, it is her father who victimizes her by making her play the role of the victim.

Since it is the women's place to be a victim, a man must be effeminate if he is the victim. A man victimized by a woman might as well don high heels and lipstick for his all of masculinity will be gone in the eyes of his peers. If the dad sitting on his porch with his shotgun, waiting for his daughter to get back from the school dance with her date, heard his son crying and sobbing over the girl who killed his goldfish, that dad would probably cuff his son over the ears. It's not cool for guys to act like girls or do anything too feminine. The reason why some men hate transgender women is because they have a deep, underlying misogyny. Men should not act like women in their minds. Period.

I want to help all genders, but I call myself a feminist because I think the advancement in women's rights and how society views women will help every single person in the world. If men can confidently express "feminine" traits without being harassed, then that means they can get the help they need in the instance of assault, rape, and abuse. If society can reconcile with that fact that not all women are docile little lambs, then women can get the help they need if they feel like they are going to become violent or abusive.

TL;DR Eradicating gender roles = Reducing Domestic Violence