“Women are taught on how to behave in a particular manner in order to fit the needs of men while doing nothing concerning the internalized misogyny that enables the aggressors.”
Do all genders sit at the same table of rights and entitlement?
The current naming of the act, “gender-based violence” allows people to dismiss it as a “women’s issue”.
While it’s true that both men and women experience gender-based violence, the majority of the victims, however, are women and female-bodied individuals.
Violence against women is targeted intentionally, mostly done by male offenders.
But why point the blame at women for the problem they have not created?
Women are taught on how to behave in a particular manner in order to fit the needs of men while doing nothing concerning the internalized misogyny that enables the aggressors.
The sad reality is, men who engage in gender-based violence are not extraterrestrial beings from another planet, but are perhaps our close relatives, partners, best friends, or even the neighbor next door.
Unfortunately, there has been a drastic rise of violence abuse since the widespread of the COVID-19 virus, for that reason, most victims are trapped with their abusers. This is a reminder that “home” is not a safe space for everyone.
Even though victims get the chance to speak up, they are not seriously heard, and yet get abused by the power of law enforcement. Women are more likely to spend life sentences for killing or attacking their abusers in the act of self-defence.
Rather than serving us protection, our corrupt system heeds way to pursue revenge over seeking whats just, this is an on-going cycle of failing our women’s needs.
There should be acknowledgment toward women who come across ableism, classism, systemic racism, homophobia, transphobia, and queerphobia, since being a “women” does not limit to an accustomed biological characteristic.
We must not make these conversations solely cis-centric, it is essential to address the violence against transgender women, gender non-confirming, and non-binary people for being exploited by patriarchal abuses which is hardly not talked enough.
The barbaric death of Donna Nierra, a 23-year-old transgender woman was found floating in Caloocan river. This reveals the apparent and persistent violence against trans-women in our homeland.
Even the Macho-feudal system that was built under the Martial Law of the Marcoses still exists to this day, which normalizes gender-based violence rooting from the patriarchal paradigm in modern-day society.
Since gender is evidently a tool of oppression, women are taught at a young age to be weary of ALL men on a daily basis, as a survival tactic.
As I got older, it became clear to me that women who are fighting for human rights are eager to be liberated from the internalized misogyny set by patriarchy, rather than have equal privileges as they do.
Convincing women to be conditioned more like men is not the goal. Handing us equal powers and positions that allows us to oppress others is not a solution.
We don’t want a seat at the table, we want to dismantle the table at its root.
Liberation for our women can only be recognized when we collectively join together as human beings in order to end gender-based violence.
