GENDERED

GENDERED.  WHAT DOES THAT MEAN?

Well, it does NOT mean that all men think one thing and all women think the opposite.

We need to be clear about this. 

Lots of men have been active in opposing aerial culling and ground shooting of wild horses.

SO WHAT DOES IT MEAN IF AN ISSUE IS CALLED GENDERED?

It is more a way of thinking about the world.

Our histry tells us that men ‘discovered’ various countries.

Men also invented things that make our lives better.

A lot of men developed various medicines that cure various diseases.

As you think about it, you’ll realise men have done a lot of incredibly wonderful things.

HOWEVER…

Men have also perpetrated the fiction that women only had roles to support the endeavours of men.  Therefore women, are not rational, scientific, or logical, etc.

Today we know that is NOT the case.

One of the insidious things about this way of thinking is the gender roles.

Men had to be strong and not give into emotions.

This has had disastrous effects on mental health for men. Women were the nurturers so they are allowed to have empathy. But society generally doesn’t think that men should be empathetic.

We often see the hangover of this way of thinking.

We see it again and again in the wild horse issue because the various people that want horses to be shot from helicopters have portrayed themselves as scientific, rational, logical while people that are opposed to the cruelty of shooting are supposedly irrational, unscientific, and they hate native animals.

Really? Yes, really!

According to the supporters of brutally massacring wild horses who are okay with them suffering long drawn-out deaths…

People that think shooting is cruel and who advocate for non-lethal alternatives are emotional.

AND they seem to think men don’t have emotions. We say pfft.

Supporters of slaughtering wild horses claim that people only support wild horses because they are cute, or have featured in various iconic classics such as Banjo Paterson’s Man from Snowy River, the famous movie of the same name or the Silver Brumby series by Elyne Mitchell.

I’m guessing that like me you have seen how empathy is squashed in boys — and to be accepted by male peers — a boy often has to eradicate any feelings of empathy.

The whole issue of Brumby culling has been framed in a gendered way trying to make out that people that support the cull are objective, rational, etc. while Brumby supporters are irrational and emotive.

This binary is how men have often portrayed women and their qualities – such as empathy – and how women are often dismissed as emotional and irrational.