Topic 3 Is it easier to accept?
If we imagine a young couple starting an affective relationship we may have an idea of what could happened if in the first dates the boy hits the girl or the boy try to physically force the girl to do something she doesn’t want to… We’d say the odds of the girl saying NO, STOP, WHAT THE H**** ARE YOU DOING, GO AWAY… are pretty good, don’t you think?
But is it that easy to imagine the girl being so straight, so reactive, so clear and chose what she really thinks she should, in a situation when the one she loves is doing something not that obvious, not that grave, not that violent?
If we remember all we’ve seen through modules 1 and 3, we’ve been “told” since we’re born lots of stuff about what is a man, what is a woman… but we have been told, as well, what is a “perfect” relationship.
The well spread idea of romantic love is not neutral, it has many consequences. And one of them is that it has become a dangerous weapon for those boys and men who want to have power, control or poses girls and women.
This are just some pictures we all may have seen when we were little…
And that is not to mention all those children stories where the knight saves the princes by killing the dragon (while she is scared and passive), or all the romantic movies we have seen later, as teenagers…
A patriarchal idea of love (we’ve talked about patriarchal power in Unit 1) is within those stories and they’ve become, most of the time, our role model in that matter.
