97 Which is not to say it wouldn’t benefit women too. Three women a week are killed by men in England and Wales. Women are given a litany of supposedly ‘preventive’ measures, the effect of which is just that some other woman, not them, is the victim of the wandering sadist on the street: don’t walk on the streets after dark; don’t wear tight clothing. But how about this: Teach every girl self-defence at school, from the age of five to 16. It’s infinitely more important than netball. Give these lessons at least some of the time in the curriculum devoted to team sports. The skills of hurting a larger opponent enough to (8) should be second nature to all women by the time they leave school. And, on the subject of women being raped, I’ve given up watching any television that includes a posed female corpse or starts with a naked, bruised woman – ruling out a surprisingly large number of shows. I wouldn’t censor; creators must be free to create, and we viewers can (9) . But I’ve heard people defend shows such as Game of Thrones for showing women being raped on the grounds that this “would happen” in their pseudomedieval worlds of constant warfare. Well, fine. But estimates are that in one in six rapes the victim is a man. If we’re talking about what “just would happen” in war …, Jaime, Tyrion and Theon would have been raped, as would many male characters in other shows. Sometimes men (10) by saying, “Oh, but symbolically these characters are raped.” But women don’t get to have ‘symbolism’ in these shows. They get the real thing. Either be ‘realistic’ or don’t. But let’s not pretend that women are always beautiful victims and men can never be. That’s the essence of it all, really, and why I started by talking about emotions. In so many areas, we still insist that women are ‘weak’ and men ‘strong’. Men work and women care. Women are kind and men are violent. Personality, inner life and life experiences don’t divide neatly into ‘boys’ and ‘girls’. Denying that simple truth hurts us all, in a million ways, and we need to meticulously unpick each and every one of them. 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 D A are more likely than women H wonder whether they should take on a woman B told there’s anything they can’t do, or must do I buy you time to get away C have responded to my pointing this out J cut off or excised because “boys don’t cry” or “girls aren’t funny” D feel as if we’re getting further away from living K have to think about who should go part-time E are not as likely L believe the work men do is more important F take the need for fathers in children’s lives seriously M introduce the expectation that disputes are to be solved with words G make our own choices Nur zu Prüfzweck n – Eigentum des Verlags öbv
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