Gender and American Violence...

[Justine]

It goes something like this: flip through your TV Guide, electronic or paper, and you'll notice that every other listing is either a CSI show, made-for-tv-movie drama, or murder case file depicting the most horrific of murderous crimes on people, mainly American people.
Now, I'm no Neilson rater, and I am certainly not a tv critic, but I do know writing and what is reasonably deemed to be a relevant, tightly constructed plot. Needless to say, the CSI series of shows -and infinite spin-offs- do not posess any of these traits. In fact, neither do any of the other genres descrbed above. They are all menial dribble at best. So why do they continue to rake-in stellar ratings from the so-called Neilson and Family viewers?
Now let's be truthfull here. It's not fascination. It's not the voyeur factor. It's not even sheer boredom with American Idol and the rest of the happy-go-lucky reality programs.
It is fear. We watch because we fear that someday, somewhere around the corner, or possibly in our own homes, a perpetrator of evil will fall upon us. Maybe it will be upon our children, in their very own schools or on their campuses. Perhaps while they break from their studies on a tropical island. Or it's the nanny, the sitter, the Au Pair, the Day Care... the possibilities have become endless.
And so we watch. To learn. To know our enemy. To perhaps be ready for the event, should it occur, in our own realities. The question becomes then, what can we as a society really do to stop this evil? If we want to move beyond preparation and in to prevention, then as Americans, we need to make some collective and difficult decisions.
The first of these involves answering the age old question: how much are we prepared to give-up? Since it is always easier to tackle a complex problem from the top down, or from the general sense to the specific, it becomes important to self-examine in the broadest of scopes first.
What are we prepared to give-up: Constitutional rights, freedoms, a mixture of both? If we understand that as a nuclear nation we will always crave the ability to defend our own borders without the assistance of others, then is it really wise to consider governments that have the autonomy of arms and weapons?
If we think it unwise, then where and how do we draw the line...that line between those who should bear arms, and those who should not? And what about Homeland security? In our Airports, our schools and other institutions. Are we to bear digitally encrypted cards along with our arms? And if so, then by whose criteria shall we be adjudged? Where would it all end...and more importantly, how would it all end -Biblically? Catastrophically? Or menially -as in we suck all the life out of what is the randomness, the spontanaeity, the mystery of ourselves- of being human.
I have laid this foundation in order to hear from you, the feminist housewife and mother. For my say, I'd like to suggest that while these problems have never in our history as United States been solved to any non-violent standard, there still may be a way. The way I propose is, like many things in life, a gamble. For let us try to elect our leaders as a kinder, gentler, less testosterone-filled persons. Let us in great number put our brightest, most imaginative thinking and most compassionate souls into office.
In short, let us be led by our women. From the top down, w-o-m-e-n.
What say you?
And one more thing. My husband who -and please don't ask me how I married him- says that no self-respecting man will allow himself to be mostly governed by women. He tells me that men are physically endowed with the better parts of raw strength and that they would not hesitate to use it upon a female ruling-class. And don't kid yourselves. I will tell you one of the reasons why I married my husband is that he is for real. He dispenses with the 'good guy' bullshit and deals with me as if we were two men in a bar. Deep down, your man is the same way.
Now,,,What Say You?