EC#1

Watching YOU THE MAN was very good to watch but I think it was more a performance targeted to students in 9th and 10th grade but it still had benefits for me. A performance where there is a speaker stating facts to listeners about whatever the given topic only holds there attention for so long. The actor that did YOU THE MAN did a great job of keeping everyone interested and alert which helped get his point across to the viewers. I realized during our discussion that a lot of the younger men in our discussion group became more open and did not mind sharing things because they had just heard an actor share his stories which gave the students something to relate to. The problem with YOU THE MAN was that he did not show any aspect of the bad side of beating women. Because of the fact that he did it in such a way that he was getting props from his friends, it made it difficult to understand that in fact it was really bad to hit women and although it may have seemed obvious to others, I dont think some people understood that. I Definitely think this presentation should be done again next year not so much because of the presentation but because of the discussion groups that happened after. During the discussion, at least in my group we all shared personal issues and felt like we could trust one another to not share what was said. The members of our group were all different ages which is what made the discussion so helpful because we all had different experiences to share with the group. Having someone come in and talk to teens about this topic is a lot more effective than when parents attempts to talk to there kids about it because it makes the kids feel very uncomfortable.
One of the primary reasons for violence in the performance was the aspect of jealousy. Jealousy is something I see very very often in relationships and although the statistic said that it is primary men that beat women I do also think that many women provoke men. I am not saying that it is ok in any form to beat a woman but I think this is evident a lot. Men often get very attached to there "woman" and therefore protective. When they hear or see there girlfriend with another guy they immediately get very tense and angry which triggers violence. Another factor leads to aggression and violence is Alcohol. Many males become very aggressive when they drink too much.
After doing a little reading online I noticed that a lot of women that have actually been beaten by there husbands explain why it happens. Most often though it is because a man often feels like he is powerless in his world and thinks that beating a woman shows that he has power over other people, in this case the woman. Another reason was that when a man is beat as a kid by his father, they kid usually becomes one of two people. Either he is very compassionate and sweet or he is very angry and physical because of what happened to him as a kid.