Gendered and Racialized Violence?

When you search "men and violence" in the news section of Google a variety of articles pop up, some discussing how men perpetrate violence, some discussing how men are victims of violence, most discussing domestic violence, and some discussing gang violence. When you search "women and violence" in the news section of Google almost all of the articles discuss women as victims of domestic violence. Some discuss women fighting against domestic violence, however these still frame the women as victims (or survivors). Interestingly, searching just "violence" brings up a variety of articles on gun violence, gang violence, domestic violence, and crime. I think this reveals two societal assumptions about gender and violence: first, women are seen primarily as victims of domestic violence. Second, only domestic violence is gendered.

When the issue of violence is framed around women, the message is that women are primarily victims of domestic violence. This is statistically true, and domestic violence is an important issue that needs to be dealt with. However I worry about building a movement based off of shared victimhood. None of the articles mentioned race, sexuality, or ability in their headlines, all of which are important factors when thinking about domestic violence. If we have a mainstream anti-domestic violence movement that assumes everyone's experiences are the same or similar but is actually basing that assumption off of just one group's experiences, important factors will be ignored and lots of women will continue to experience abuse.

The fact that only domestic violence and, in the case of men gang violence, is discussed as a gendered issue brings up many questions that I don't have the answer to. What does this say about how we treat domestic violence versus other kinds of violence? Does it mean that domestic violence is seen as a secondary issue to other kinds of violence because it's a "special interest" "gendered" issue? Why is gang violence the only other kind of violence to be gendered, and why is it gendered masculine? Is it perhaps because we see gang violence also as a racialized issue? This would mean that violence perpetrated by white men is standardized as "just violence" because white men are seen as race and gender neutral. This is supported by the fact that when you search just "violence", articles about gun violence, which is more closely associated with white men than are other kinds of violence, suddenly pop up. This leaves more questions than answers but is a very interesting peek into the way we think about violence as gendered and racialized (or not).