I’m a feminist, I love women, but I’m really disturbed by stuff I’ve read lately about how women, women’s relationships, women’s spaces, are all magically naturally pure and free of oppression from violence.
The thing about feminist analysis we need to remember is that when we talk about men and women, we’re talking about statistical probability that’s not able to accurately predict life every time.
A randomly-selected man is more likely to be taller than a randomly-selected woman. A randomly-selected man is more likely to earn more money than a randomly-selected woman. That does not mean that any man is taller or richer than any woman, or that every man is richer or taller than every woman.
So many times in debates about sex and gender, these probabilities get hammered out into flat declarative sentences. We know it’s wrong when sexists say, “Men are stronger than women, so women could never play sports against men,” but somehow give it a pass when a feminist says “Women are less violent than men, so it’s not in a woman’s nature to be abusive.”
And as a feminist who’s worked in women’s shelters, I’m beyond disturbed by how feminists twist statistics about violence into the claim that women just don’t have the capacity to be violent or cruel.
Because what that really says is: Women aren’t fully human. We don’t fully exist in the world; our womanhood renders our anger and our aggression invalid. We’re not capable of the kind of moral choices men are.
That isn’t just bullshit, that’s dangerous bullshit. You know who makes that kind of argument?
A woman who wants to hurt other people and get away with it.
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