Does it Boil Down to Sex?

TW: Mentions of suicide, self-harm, abuse, sexual assault and abuse In my Advanced Nonfiction course, the basis of this blog and also the purpose of my topic being abuse showing up in art--we've had several discussions that I find relevant to what I'm talking about.

First, one peer is writing about different Judicial cases on those who are convicted falsely or there's bias against their gender and their sentencing.

Men get the harsher punishments regardless of severity and intent.

Women are the predominant victims of violent crimes--especially domestic violence.

Another essay a peer wrote about, a good friend of mine, wrote about his male friends who struggled with suicide.

Now, this took me by surprise and I don't even know why. Hearing someone talk so openly about not only their emotions and be male--and talking about two men that attempted suicide should not be surprising. It's something I argue about whenever I speak on mental health--men are just as affected if not more. Yet, because the topic of conversation is still a new experience and isn't talked about as much as it should be--it's still shocking somehow.

There shouldn't be bias on male/female violence and mental health issues as well. Yet there is, regardless of even researching how it's still just as impactful but different.

This ties back to another phenomenon I want to write about some day. It's always about sex--gender and more--but it always is.

A statement my peer said the other day was, "when a woman commits a violent crime, their first question [usually] is 'well, what was her mental state at the time?'" and that is so very true. There's an entire TV series called Snapped where women "snap" and commit the crime.

Why do women "snap" but men are just inherently violent?

I'm not arguing that there aren't evil men. I know plenty of evil men--but I also know plenty of wonderful men who are great people. One major point is my dad is a fantastic guy, he would never hurt a fly. Well, maybe a fly, but not a human or an animal.

But my birth father was, by definition, pretty evil in a lot of circumstances.

I have so many questions why there's this separation and bias between male and female victims and offenders--excluding other gender identities just for the sake of my vague focus (I want to explore the differences between cis-male and cis-female first--then go into what the differences might be throughout different gender identities but I have to go into it all slowly or I'll drown in information).

And maybe that's what I'm going to dive into here next.