Masculinity And The Institutionalization Of Violence Against Women

Melissa Tirado

WGS: Midterm Essay 6

10-23-2012

In almost every case, crimes against women are at the hands of a man. Especially in terms of rape, you will find that rape narrowly defines women as the victims and men as the offenders. This is because millions of incidents against women have been reported, and incidents against men have been underreported. Several surveys regarding sexual violence have shown that about 40% of these victims were men (slate.com). Because the population sees more violent cases towards women, this in a way, normalizes violence against them.

Interestingly enough, the mass amounts of violent crimes performed are male on male acts (Crime As Structured Action). Because violence against woman is normalized, it

In most cases, crimes are committed from an offender who is directly associated with the victim (Crime As Structured Action). Woman who have been abused are grouped with other women who have also been victims of violence. When in reality all of these women have specific subjects that are responsible for this abuse.

In order to fully understand or resolve violence towards women, violence towards men must also be understood. Gender violence should be analyzed as a whole. Violent crimes seem to be a way of expressing gender superiority. Violence is often associated with masculinity due to pre-determined gender roles and the disproportional amount of male offenders versus female offenders.

Gender violence appears to be about the offender emasculating the victim and placing themselves at the higher point of a gender hierarchy. With this hierarchy it’s easy to project a model of crime, and understand crimes against women. For example, this model would help show that crimes against women are due to a definition of femininity, and a hierarchy, the same goes for masculinity. When an inferior form of femininity shows a representative of a higher, more respective form of femininity, it can often present itself as