Just watch this video and then I'll comment on the subject:
The biggest problem facing our society today is the lack of good treatment by parents towards their daughters, and the lack of respect that daughters have for parents because of it. We've empowered women over the years to make them more equal to men. Many barriers have been broken, admirably, by superior women. Just like young boys must earn the privilege to be called a man, women have earned the privilege to be equal to men on many accounts; and on what remains it is only likely that women will overcome those barriers too.
But when you start to talk about the problems facing this world--not the quantitative problems such as sickness, but the problems that limit our quality of life-- there is a clear wire connecting those problems and the treatment of women in general. Anger, revenge, fear, threatenings, vile behavior, incivility, and disrespect to name a few, can all be tied to the way in which young women are raised. When a young girl is treated with disrespect by her mother or father, when her parents fight all of the time, when parents take advantage of her timidity, or they use her for a scapegoat--she will not only be repelled from her parents, but she will also carry the cycle on to the relationships she has with other people and eventually to her children.
Culturally, men are different. For hundreds of years young boys have been taught to be tough, to not be emotional, to act and defend themselves and to be proactive. Tales from the bible, greek, roman, and norse mythology, and american cinema have always portrayed the male protagonist as violent, tough, and commanding and because of such a long history of this culture, when men are mistreated, they fight rather than flight, they prove themselves, and if they fail they accept their losses and their insignificance.
Recently, the female protagonist has split into two categories: The sexually powerful, commanding goddess, just like Madonna and Lady Gaga or Katy Perry, Angelina Jolie, Ke$ha, Britney Spears, all female super heroes, Desperate house wives, the princess on Avatar, the women of Star Trek, and many others. OR, the shy, timid, unlucky girl who gets a good life handed to her for no reason, such as Anne Hathaway, Julia Robberts, Bella, any Disney Princess, etc.. The problem with this is that whereas the male figure teaches men to be tolerant and to stand firm to what they believe and to go after what they want and be proactive, the two female figures teach women that it is okay to control other people using their body, that in order to get what she wants she has to be confrontational rather than suave, that it is okay to be emotional and angry and to run away from situations if she doesn't get what she wants, that revenge is perfectly justified, and if not any of those then that in the end luck will always prevail to help her get everything she wants in the end whether she deserves it or not.--It culturally enforces the stereotypes men apply to women: that they're emotional, grouchy, unrealistically demanding, controlling, and that they control the sexual aspects of a relationship and if a man wants to have sex he must assert control over her/tame her, and that she will still always possess these irrational traits and that man just needs to deal with them and no run away.---------------This is nothing new. Thousands of people have presented this argument, and my job is to present further argument in line with this one, not restate old arguments.
When a young girl feels like she isn't loved at home, she retreats from home.--she may still live at home, but she despises home and she finds things to do that her parents wouldn't approve of simply out of subconscious revenge for being mistreated. She disregards simple advice of her parents because her parents' ethos has been damaged to the point where she subconsciously believes that what they say might be the opposite of what she should do. She ventures into the world too trusting of outsiders and not trusting enough of insiders, then she gets burned by someone who she thinks she loves and who loves her, when in reality she has no idea what love is because she hasn't ever experienced it before in her life--not even by her parents. Granted, this is an over simplified story--there are many variations of this scenario, nevertheless they all conclude that if the parents would have treated their daughter with a little more respect and formed an actual relationship with her rather than an obligated relationship, the daughter might have gone to them for advice, might have recognized what true love is in the first place and avoided the charms of others who claim love and have other motives in mind.
Just like John Mayer sings, "girls become lovers and turn into mothers"--that's pretty simple, but she only becomes a mother like her mother if she decides to be a mother at all. If she never knows what true love is like, how is she going to love her daughters (or sons) that way?
Many young girls go down dark paths and make stupid decisions because no one loves them. --This is not gender specific, young boys do the same until they realize how to follow the culture of the man and they stand up for themselves and suddenly it becomes okay for them to go in and out of the dark paths of life because that's part of being a man--Taking drugs, getting pregnant, having abusive relationships, breaking the law, all of these things come about when people don't feel loved or lose track of how to love other people even when those people don't love them back.
And let me present a counter argument in case anyone tries to point out the painfully obvious: Men can love too. Men can love women and break the cycle of a woman not being loved. They can have children and even though the woman doesn't know entirely what a loving relationship is (other than the one with her husband) her husband can love the children and correct any maladies in the cycle. [[how does biology correct defects in one person's gene line? It takes the good genes from both sides and tries to eliminate the bad ones--love can work the same way and hopefully correct the bad characteristics]]. However, even though our society is on the verge of equalizing man and women, the women typically get the kids, even if the man has a better job and could raise those kids, and even if the man might be the one who knows how to love better than the other--the woman gets the kids simply because of the cultural implications that men are supposed to be a certain way and women another way (unless the woman has done something terribly wrong that would make her place unsafe for kids).
The only thing I can see that would correct our society and make life "fair" is if parents loved their kids--really loved their kids. And knew how to love those kids. And if they didn't know how to really love and respect and care about their kids and show their kids how to love and respect and care about other people, then those same parents would LEARN how to do these things. --I don't think there is any excuse for not figuring out how to have a good relationship, people make excuses because they're lazy. The truth is, you can have an amazing relationship (friends, lovers, parent-children, mentor, etc) with ANYONE if you really want that. And THAT is what can improve the quality of life (as opposed to quantity of life).
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