Men Need to Stop Using Women as Pawns in their Quarrels

‘Feminism is the radical notion that women are people’. This concept should be straightforward but in practice is a hard nut to crack. I have had conversations with male friends who insist that they do treat women as people and that the idea that women aren’t people is one carried by the ignorant and/or malevolent. There are many erroneous assumptions with that theory as it assumes that misogyny is a class issue which has been disproven by the abuse women with class privilege face. It also assumes that adequate education erases misogyny, yet some of the worst misogynists are highly educated persons.

One of the most dangerous ideas around women and empowerment is the notion that only certain types of violence are valid, though even that is up for debate, and that the ‘softer’ kinds of violence aren’t a big deal. Men use women as pawns in their quarrels all the time and it is a form of violence. The fact that a man will make a joke about sleeping with another man’s mother as a way to embarass or hurt him is a good example.

Situations where women are raped or married off as a way to pay off the debts or as a punishment to the men they are related to by other men, are a more extreme manifestation of this type of thinking. How is this any different from my educated male friends who will manipulate a rival’s sister/cousin/girlfriend/wife/ex as a way to punish their rival? Women in both cases are seen as weapons and pawns in the quarrels of men and not human beings.

I remember a conversation with a man who told me he wouldn’t give me a job because he didn’t like the man I was dating at the time. I was incredibly shocked because I wondered what my dating life had to do with my career and why exactly he would be punishing me because he had a quarrel with another man. I have also experienced subliminal attacks on Twitter from a man that was a business rival of a man I was dating. Why do men use women as pawns in their quarrels?

I want to scream a cease and desist. I am not a toy or a tool. I am a person. I will not take kindly to manipulation and infantalization. I am not an appendage. I am not an extension. Women aren’t weapons or pawns to be abused at your leisure. If you have a problem with another man, handle it with that man and leave us the hell out of it.