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The second most important cause of violence is gender abuse, the unequal and inequitable treatment of the genders. This occurs in the context of patriarchy, which is a cultural system of male supremacy, that is, the domination and oppression of women by men. In patriarchal cultures, males inordinately control wealth, political power, and have higher prestige and status, all to the detriment and disempowerment of women.
Endemic to patriarchy is misogyny, the fear and hatred of women and of character traits culturally identified as feminine, such as nurturance, emotional expressiveness and accessibility, vulnerability, sensitivity, sensuality, and gentleness. Misogyny afflicts patriarchal males, but many women may suffer from it also through false consciousness, which is the internalization by the oppressed of the negative value judgments of the oppressors. An example of such false consciousness is seen again and again in cases of battered women who believe their mistreatment is their own fault. Their low self-esteem derives from and perpetuates the trauma of having been abused, neglected children when the false consciousness of believing themselves unworthy of respect and love was first instilled. Many women say they have never been treated abusively until they met the male abuser in adulthood, but I believe they are in denial. A woman with high self-esteem would have left an abusive relationship very early or not gotten into it in the first place. In reaction to misogyny, as well as to child abuse, the most insecure males develop traits of hypermasculinity. They are the macho, aggressive, violent, sexually predatory, feelingless males who will do anything to prove they are not like women, and that they have no needs for nurturance and dependency. Their hypermasculine facades mask their underlying sense of inadequacy. As children, these males were unloved. Their parents were cold, rejecting, dominating, and abusive. This gave them abysmally low self-esteem and led them to doubt their own masculinity. They compensate through aggressiveness and violence in a culture which identifies maleness with these very rough traits.
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Cultures that are rife with child abuse, gender abuse, and social stratification also justify their direct and structural violence through myths, religions, ideologies, histories, vocabulary, symbols, songs, art, and stories. Together these symbolic justifications constitute cultural violence. Shamed individuals compensate for their humiliations through group identities which give them the illusion of being superior to others.
Myths legitimize the domination of one category of people by another, such as the domination of women by men, children by adults, people of color by whites, unbelievers by members of the "true religion," the poor by the wealthy, one ethnic group or nationality by another, and other animal species and nature by humans. Survivors of child abuse unconsciously project their own stories onto the myths, which contain references to threats and traumas, real or imagined.
Fundamentalist Jews, Christians, and Muslims justify male domination of women with literal scriptural interpretations from earlier misogynist cultures. References to god as male imply men are more godlike. At weddings, priests quote St. Paul's statement that just as men must submit to god's will, wives must submit to their husbands. The biblical commandment to "honor thy parents" and phrases such as "spare the rod, spoil the child" justify adults' forceful subordination of children. Fairy tales such as Hansel and Gretel, Cinderella, and Snow White depict parental cruelty in the personae of jealous stepmothers or wicked witches. While these stories give imaginary happy endings, they reflect the cultural reality that children are at the mercy of dangerous adults who abandon them in the woods, abuse them, or even try to cut their hearts out...