Some­where on a play­ground, a lit­tle boy will push a lit­tle girl to­day, and when she cries to her par­ents, they will laugh at how cute his crush on their lit­tle girl is. She will be com­fort­ed by the be­lief that when a lit­tle boy on the play­ground has a crush on her that's how he shows it.

Years lat­er that lit­tle boy will then ex­press jeal­ousy at the oth­er boys show­ing in­ter­est and her peers would wish that a boy paid them that kind of at­ten­tion. How cute is his jeal­ousy, he must re­al­ly like her!

At home, he is told that he should pro­tect his lit­tle sis­ter on the play­ground and he is well praised when he de­fends her ho­n­our by whoop­ing the boy's butt for try­ing to be cute (just as he did with the oth­er girl). Fight­ing for girls you love is ho­n­ourable, he is meant to be their pro­tec­tor. And of course, the girls are taught to re­spect a guy who would fight for you—nev­er re­al­ly un­der­stand­ing the dif­fer­ence be­tween de­fend­ing your ho­n­our, be­ing over­pro­tec­tive and mov­ing in­to the down­right ter­ri­to­r­i­al cat­e­go­ry.

All these mixed mes­sages taught at a young age and we won­der why it's dif­fi­cult for women in abu­sive sit­u­a­tions to spot it and run fast from it.

Then to top it all off, girls are be­ing en­cour­aged to do bet­ter and bet­ter at school while “boys will be boys” and "they take longer to set­tle". Si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly, we are still en­sur­ing that men know their right­ful role of provider—we en­sure they know it, we just for­get to equip them to ex­e­cute it. Leav­ing them frus­trat­ed be­cause the girls are out there soar­ing, and they are strug­gling to be "the leader". So they des­per­ate­ly grasp at the on­ly thing that al­lows them any sort of con­trol—their phys­i­cal strength, it's the one thing they still have over us. "Me man, me must show woman who is boss in this house."

Women are be­ing em­pow­ered and men are not be­ing equipped to han­dle the chang­ing times. They are ei­ther not grow­ing equal­ly as fast to re­main the tribe's leader or they are too proud to step aside and give up the role. On the flip side, these same em­pow­ered women are still be­ing taught to want a man that can lead, that will fight for you, pro­vide, and pro­tect. This, of course, leaves the new-found over­ly suc­cess­ful breed of women dis­en­chant­ed and stuck.

As a so­ci­ety, we have got to take stock of our play­ground be­hav­iours that quite frankly be­come poor bed­room be­hav­iour. If your son has a crush on a girl, pick a flower, don't pick a fight.

In ad­di­tion, if lead­er­ship is a male role in your val­ue sys­tem, then might I sug­gest par­ents, step your game much high­er up, be­cause to­day's women can vote, can dri­ve, can earn their own in­comes, and they aren't at the mer­cy of medi­oc­rity, so raise mighty men, oth­er­wise re­think the lead­er­ship role and do us all a favour and so­cialise them dif­fer­ent­ly.

Vi­o­lence against women is spi­ralling out of con­trol. The num­ber of women mur­dered due to in­ti­mate part­ner vi­o­lence has steadi­ly in­creased in the last five years and dou­bled in some cas­es. This has got to stop, and more leg­is­la­tion and polic­ing isn't go­ing to do it all. The au­thor­i­ties will say, and I agree, the cas­es are sim­ply too many for even the best of sys­tems to process ef­fi­cient­ly. This epi­dem­ic start­ed at home and this is where it must end!