In a sane and balanced world, hitting a woman is never acceptable. However, we live in tumultuous times, and gender has become a nebulous concept. So I got to thinking, has it become okay to hit women because hitting men is fair game? This led me to question men’s proclivity towards violence and why it’s so inherent and if it is as one-sided in regards to gender-based violence as many modern talking heads suggest.

I’ve stayed out of the argument about the nuances of gender, yet I have no conflict regarding male and female emotions: we all have the same hardware. We all get angry, and we seek revenge. We might be wired up a bit differently, and women cause as much harm as men. Ask any divorced man. For a few years now, society has been awash with the idea that men are responsible for everything wrong with the world. Yet, if you know anything about history, and if your aim is not to gravitate your sex or gender above the other, you’ve kind of got to admit that men were the leaders in the dance that was survival of the fittest. Sure, isn’t there that old saying, which every woman once proudly uttered whenever a man got credit for his achievements, “Behind every great man is a great woman.”

Women will often applaud and encourage severe violence, even when there is no threat, if they encounter something they deem morally or socially wrong. Just look how these women cheered and applauded when this drunk asshole was put into a coma for saying something unsavory.

If we were so dissimilar; if men were so obtusely dominant over women, humankind would not have evolved to become a super species. Mankind would still be clubbing each other over the head and sitting around, drinking beer, eating meat, and trying to get laid. Everything men did throughout history was inherently driven by a need to impress and gain, today as then, a woman’s approval. It’s a huge driving force (I am one, and I know many… too well). No woman worth her salt would suggest women were benign observers while men shaped history out of pure ego and pride. For hundreds of thousands of years, humankind carved out a crude and lawless life, and whilst women may not have done the bloody deeds, their natural protectiveness towards their families was integral to society being violent and lawless. You only have to take a cursory look at any relationship today to see how often a woman directs a man.

There are differences in how men and women go on the attack, however. Women choose tact over bluntness; white lies over brutal honesty; a long game over a more direct and efficient means to results. Hence, men are geared to solve problems quickly because of epigenetics (I believe). To them, violence negates harmful emotional scars that can take much longer to heal.

I’m not condoning violence, but I am endeavoring to explore society’s understanding of it, or lack thereof. Throughout history, women have played their part in violence. In the Germanic Barbarian tribes, pre and post-Roman Europe, women fought in battles alongside men. Women started the French Revolution when the brawny fishwives of Versailles took their knives to the bellies of the aristocracy. Women today often lash out because of the fairly new idea that men and women are equal in every way, an idea which schools are, in my opinion, recklessly proliferating. Even if modern women do not strike first, they often push the buttons of men, getting in their faces and screaming. That, to me, is violent behavior. To me, provoking violence makes you equally guilty. Which leads me to a recent case in the Irish press.

RTE’s analysis of the Natasha O’Brien v Cathal Crotty case describes how Crotty viciously assaulted O’Brien after she asked him to stop shouting homophobic slurs. Taken from that point of view, Crotty deserves jail, yet a judge gave him a fully suspended sentence. Since then the incident has been labeled gender-based violence. If you’ve ever been out into the A.M. on a weekend, you have seen countless drunken arguments that get violent and sometimes women get hit back (rarely if ever do women get hit who aren’t in the heat of the argument). To spin that incident as gender-based violence is pushing an agenda. Natasha O’Brien set up a GoFundMe page for herself asking for €10,000. She hopped up on a stage at a music festival to yell at revellers about hate crimes and LGBTQ rights. To me, it all seemed a bit opportunistic and even political.

I believe in free speech. I also know there are assholes in the world. I believe you have to develop a thick skin and not think my ideals make me a better person. I think stoking the fires when an incident like this happens, attaching tropes and labels and controlling the narrative, pours fuel on society’s simmering fires. It draws attention to gender based violence and LGBTQ rights alright, negative attention. It’s better to learn the nuances of human psychology and learn/advocate common sense ways to handle situations rather than arbitrarily painting all men as monsters.

Drugs, alcohol and men go hand in hand nowadays. It’s a hyper competitive, stressed-out world and men who are suffering need to find other ways to cope: open up, read books, exercise and develop strong bonds. Truly aggressive males are usually handled by other males (that’s often why men fight, we keep our house in order. Honestly, women support other women even when they’re out of order, and it’s embarrassing to witness). Truly aggressive males will never work on themselves because they aren’t disciplined enough. Discipline is why Crotty probably joined the army, so it’s baffling and one can only assume there was more to the incident.

Elements of the attack also seem to have been omitted, if you believe Gript Media (whose integrity as a news outlet is one I consider intact, for the most part). CCTV footage does not always tell the full story. According to Gript, since getting off, Crotty’s friends have claimed they have video that broadens the story of the attack to show O’Brien verbally and physically assaulting him, which Gardai warned would affect the trial (which left me thinking, well, yeah, that’s what evidence is supposed to do).

If O’Brien did provoke Crotty, she did not deserve what she got. Crotty should have been a man and walked away. However, far too often these days, videos pop up on social media showing women provoking men to hit them or swinging punches, and in return getting hit back, often with devastating results. Is this a symptom of a generation that has grown up believing the foolishness they’ve been fed about gender and sex?

UPDATE: The Court of Appeal has sent Crotty to jail for 2 years for beating Natasha O’Brien unconscious on a public street after she asked him to stop shouting homophobic abuse. He deserves every second of that time and more in my opinion. I hope that teaches him to be a man and walk away.

As much as I believe a man must manage his impulses and walk away from provocation, perceived or real, I believe he has a right to self-defense—irrespective if it’s a male or female. Not all cases are as cut and dry as an angry boy thinking it’s manly to show how violent he can be. Men are getting a bad rap, and men are beaten down daily because of the idea that men should never hit a woman back. Society loves to talk about all the bad men do, but rarely about the good men do. Most of us would risk our own safety and jump in to protect anyone getting attacked in the way Natasha O’Brien did—and often long before letting it get so serious. The number one trait I define males by is protectiveness.

So why do so many men become violent towards women? You have to dig deeper.

I worked as a hairdresser for a few years in my youth, and I know how good women can be. I also know they have an ego when it comes to how they see themselves. A sense of entitlement and superiority over men. It’s their dark side that they keep hidden. There was one woman I worked with who didn’t hide it. Let’s call her Michelle. She spent the greater portion of her working week belittling and degrading men with a long checklist of the little things that annoyed her about men. Being young myself at the time, I assume she saw me as a boy and hence immune from her vitriol. We often went for lunch, actually, because beneath that nasty side, she was funny as hell—when she was off the subject of men. She would often pass remarks, however, like she was Dublin’s own working-class version of the Dalai Lama. Yet she was far from accurate or fair, I remember thinking. She’ loved to pick apart the characters of strong men—loved to see confidence toppled. Confident men were arrogant to her, and shy ones were weirdos and losers.

She is not alone in those viewpoints! And that’s been at the core of our ever-changing modern society (circa 1920’s to present). The womb of independent womanhood births the idea that strong women, who need to prove they’re strong, take apart strong independent men.

Michelle was a strong and independent woman, and she was particularly nasty about her husband, let’s call him Mike. Mike was a complex shy sort who probably needed a bit of encouragement and support from his strong wife, but instead got reminded how he was not up to her level. She would talk and laugh about him when he came to pick her up, on time, every day. One day Michelle came into work with a black eye and split lip. Colleagues rallied around her to call Mike every name under the sun. Yet, nobody suggested she call the Guards. In fact, afterwards there was a sense of ostracization towards her, like she had finally said or done something to push Mike over the edge.

Many of those hairdressers were feminists. Strong, opinionated and non-bullshit women. Modern feminists, as far as I can tell, don’t seem to weigh up the nuances of relationships between men and women when it comes to those relationships spilling into domestic violence. It’s always the man’s fault, and women are always innocent victims—even if the woman strikes first. I’d ask modern feminists, what do you suggest a man like Mike do in that situation? He could have left Michelle, but he would have been abandoning his kids, which I know he loved more than life. He could have given Michelle a taste of her own medicine: be horrible twenty-four-seven and make a joke of it all afterwards—Michelle was an expert at destroying people’s lives and making herself seem like the victim. Mike didn’t have that type of darkly clever mind.

Lashing out during emotional, tense, claustrophobic situations may feel like the only solution to certain individuals—which I believe does not explicitly make them the bad guy. Not to excuse violence, and not to paint it as the worst crime in the world either, as emotional and mental scars don’t heal nearly as quickly. (Mike should have gotten a divorce. I would have and bore the brunt of the hell that courts put men in. I’d make sure to fill up the little moments with my kids.) Yet, in that situation, Michelle was the higher earner, and Mike took care of their kids, and she didn’t respect him. He needed her, and she, although there’s no way in hell she would have admitted it, needed him. He made her a nicer person. Without him, she’d have been unbearable and probably unemployable and living on benefits.

I wonder what modern feminists would suggest a typical, self-confident man should do if he was stuck in an environment dominated by unhappy, nasty, vindictive women like Michelle, who derive pleasure as a pack and get energy from taking men down? I have been in that situation more than once. Women used to bicker about men; now they gang up, driven by the media.

If you demonize all men and make women the perpetual victims, you remove the nuance and emotion from life. Humans, particularly men, become agitated and potentially aggressive in those circumstances. Those whose mission it is to bring attention to gender-based violence, and who see that as a symptom of inherent violence found in the XX chromosomes, need to pull back and look at the bigger societal picture. If you really want to help women, remove the idea that women can say and do what they like with impunity (as long as they’re not hitting anyone). Remove the idea that men are somehow emotionally stunted. The fact is, many boys learn early in life to manage emotions. We learn to avoid getting too deep into them because they’re a hindrance. Lashing out is, oxymoronically, a way to prevent anger. Anger is a problem. Men prefer calm and functional environments. When you throw a woman in there, with a media-fed, pseudoscience-driven sense of female emotional superiority, with a loud mouth and aggressive manner, men don’t like that; they become frustrated.

Yes, a man must learn to manage his emotions differently around women, and the same applies to women around men. I would advise women to exercise caution and never test a man, particularly to breaking point and certainly not on a night out when alcohol is involved.

As a strong supporter of women, I believe in full equality; in that females must understand that their behavior throughout the day may have knock-on consequences (no pun intended). Not to say women should tip-toe around men, quite the opposite, actually. Men prefer honesty but do not like constant judging, hypervigilance and triviality. Women who have those tendencies should avoid indulging their nature for too long around men, particularly aggressive or emotionally unstable ones. Learn some tact, come on girls, we men have to do that for you.

The truth is, most men are decent and if they saw a man hitting a woman, would deck him and ask questions later. But if we keep driving society towards the idea that women are inherently victims and men inherently cruel, it’s only going to make men more frustrated. Frustration leads to stress, and stress leads to rage, which leads to violence.

If you really want to help women, stop judging men and be more inclusive and try to understand why they do what they do. Arbitrarily judging men widens the divide and makes us enemies, which puts women in danger! Emotionally mature men are protectors. Immature males must be managed better until they can mature. That’s always been the way, and human nature; how our bodies and minds are wired together, is still the same as they were thousands of years ago. People don’t really change, so maybe it’s time to go back and see how they did it in the past. A bit of good old common sense.

For now, if you want to protect women, make it your mission to teach men how to handle the Michelles of this world. Show young women the markers of an emotionally unstable male and the little ways women have developed over the years to navigate them—ask yer granny.

KEEP YOUR HOUSE IN ORDER.

Men attack violent men to keep them in check. Women need to keep the Michelles of this world in order. If you want to be a responsible, strong, independent woman. Responsibility comes with power. People like Michelle cause trouble every day of their lives and, for the most part, act their way out of it and are fawned over when they put on a sweet innocent act—which frankly makes all women look like a bunch of brainless idiots.

Absolutely, it is not acceptable to hit a woman—but we can no longer say never. Women who are being beaten should speak about it and seek help in getting away from that abusive relationship. The same applies to abused men. Some of the blame for that violence must lie at society’s doorstep. We excuse the ways that we cajole, belittle and diminish each other; we look down on those we perceive as losers or weak; we don’t often understand complex relationships, mentally and emotionally abusive marriages and the nuances of how they disfunction; we destroy men and forgive women; we overlook sex stereotypes, how some women defer all responsibility for what happens to them; we proliferate the idea that men are always the problem and women are blameless for the wrong they do. Modern society’s talking heads, who spin the complex psychological relationship between the sexes, as a way to raise womanhood and diminish manhood, are why some men feel misunderstood and left behind, and why violence against women is on the rise.