Last week in Toronto, the 25-year-old Alek Minassian rented a truck and drove it up Yonge street and killed ten people, eight of them being women and two of them men. And according to the Globe and Mail, that means fifty-seven women have been murdered this year in Canada.
It’s a huge tragedy, for sure, and what comes next in this article is not trying to minimize that in any way. Moreover, what’s written here does not necessarily apply to this individual case, but to the article from the publication noted above, as well as a notion I’ve observed in culture, in general, and in circumstances that are far less heinous than the Minassian incident.
Myrna Dawson, who works at the University of Guelph, said that it’s a “girl every other day that’s being killed” in Canada.
An organization, CFOJA – the Canadian Femicide Observatory for Justice and Accountability – released the new data on homicides for the sake of “understanding why women are killed” and how these deaths can be avoided.
The G & B goes on to give the statistics from Stats Canada on homicides in 2016, 148 of the murder victims that year being women.
Although from the same report read directly from the website, the number sits at actually, 151. I figured if we’re going to talk about it, we might as well get it right.
Curiously enough, in the article from the Globe, th
ere is no mention of the total murder toll that year which was 611. So, I wonder: who were the remaining 460 murder victims that year?
I spent my entire morning today wondering just who could the other 75% of the murder victims be?
But you know, I think I stumbled upon the truth. Is it possible that the other 75%, the other 460, are men?
Cue the applause. Nobel Peace Prize time.
I’m joking around but I understand their point for emphasizing the fact that women are the victims sometimes. The problem is that its men who are doing the killing of women. Which is 100% true.
However, they claim it’s due to misogyny, which it is not.
The “experts” in the study cited by the Globe state that “misogynistic attitudes” are one of the primary reasons for domestic violence leading to the death of women.
But, it doesn’t take a “study” for anybody – who’s seen this kind of situation play out in life, and by that, I mean, domestic violence and not murder – to know that this line of reasoning is garbage. Many people have seen domestic disputes play out in between men and women time, and time, again throughout their lives.
And you know what’s never mentioned? It’s almost never, like what’s shown in the Hollywood movies, a guy walking up to a girl for absolutely no reason and smacking her around just for fun (Although, I know this does happen sometimes).
And you know why? In addition to the fact that most men are actually kind individuals, guys actually don’t believe that beating women is a good thing.
Being a misogynistic douche who hates women isn’t “cool.” In fact, I’ve thought to myself many times throughout life that the opposite – the tendency to over-protect women – is the problem.
Men are far too eager to gang up on an innocent man and kick his ass just because they “heard a rumor” that he hit his girlfriend.
It’s even worse when women are bullying some poor kid who doesn’t know what to do about it because they’re women and he has no means of fighting back.
Moreover, a couple of times in my life, I’ve witnessed women punching their boyfriend in the face.
And he literally just stands there taking it because he’s afraid to defend himself, for not only the surrounding men who are waiting like vultures to go to town on him for even laying a finger on the girl, but also for the damage done to his reputation, as well as the simple fact that when the police show up, they inevitably will take her side in the dispute.
These “experts” are always delusional about it too. They think that there are “patriarchal cultural norms” that permit this kind of behavior, and there just isn’t.
It’s the exact opposite.
If we really want to diminish domestic violence in society, a much better way of dealing with it is a less sexist and one-sided approach.
(And by domestic violence, I mean, fighting between men and women, which I feel is often portrayed like men are savage brutes who hit unsuspecting and innocent women for no reason).
The foundational theme of such a philosophy is basically this: “We have to continue teaching men that violence is not the answer; we need to teach men how to handle their anger, and we need to teach women that they should not intentionally antagonize men because they know it’s not permitted for men to hit them.”
The truth is that women know their position, and they use it to mess with a guy until he explodes.
They antagonize him, yell at him, spit at him, call him “worthless,” slap him in the face until one day he snaps out and hits her. Sometimes they even kill her.
If we really want to stop domestic violence between men and women, we have to treat both parties as being responsible for the situations that go down. And obviously, by the “situations,” I don’t mean the Minassian case.
We also have to look at things on a case-by-case basis, and avoid taking sides with women simply for the sake of showing off one’s moral righteousness and commitment to valiantly protecting women.