It's been interesting, lately, talking to my brothers about gender differences and imbalances. It's also been somewhat worrying to talk to them about some of the facts and statistics. Both are anti-violence, both are on the side of not taking advantage of the incoherently drunk.
I've given them the links for Man Up Campaign, for WhiteRibbon, for Profeminist Bro, for Project Unbreakable. And I've talked to them, for the first time, about being sexually assaulted myself, in an attempt to humanise the cold data. For me, their reactions were the real shocker.
When I was attacked at knife-point, they were barely 4 years old. They didn't witness the attack, but saw me in the immediate aftermath. One had convinced himself it must have been a nightmare, as no-one in the family ever spoke to them about the day I walked into the room with my shirt ripped to shreds and blood everywhere. The other remembered it as real. Both remember wanting to take their toy swords and go after the villain of the piece, and that I'd managed (however vaguely) to sort it out myself.
This level of detail gets to me, because they were so young at the time, and it's never exactly been a conversation starter in our family. I always knew I'd been a random target, and my assailant didn't succeed in raping me. I never thought it was about me, or that I'd done anything wrong, and my parents agreed that therapy could wait until I exhibited signs of trauma. (I haven't to date, unless you count the vilification of rapists).
But if a 4 year old can remember so clearly a single afternoon, just the sight of a bloodied sister; an incident which hasn't been discussed at all then or since, then how much do children register of parental arguments, gender discrimination or violence and abuse among the adults in their lives? How much damage does it to them even if they're not the victims themselves?
