by Steven Macpherson

Created on: December 28, 2008

Guns and violence do not equal empowerment. Action movies that portray women in roles that highlight the use of weapons or hand to hand combat serve more to sustain a stereotype than to demonstrate a role model that is empowered.

Even the most superficial thinkers among us should be able to perceive how little violence has achieved in terms of the assertion of social justice, equality, or positive systemic change in our world today. Yet, Hollywood continues to make millions by promoting a worldview that violent reaction to perceived or real social injustice is somehow a valid and viable corrective.

Weapon use and physical violence have long been used as a means of stimulating male machismo whether expressed in a military context, in sport, or simply in the imagination. All one has to do is briefly peruse the most popular video games to see how this mindset continues to be propagated primarily among young males today. Much of this focuses on stirring the imagination in a manner that personalizes violence in a manner that allows the viewer or player to imagine himself or herself in the role of hero or heroine. The most powerful and proficient warrior is the hero - justice is relative and might equals right.

I was a bit of a rarity when in the fall of 1973 I began university as a single parent of two children. What made me a rarity was that I was a male. There were few single parent fathers who were university students in those days and this made me somewhat of a curiosity to others but I believe at the same time it gave me some perspective on issues I might otherwise have missed. The following story puts a context on why I am mentioning this in this article.

In my first year psychology class, the professor was discussing and we were reading about Freudian psychology. The topic of penis envy came up one day. I remember this succinctly because when I went home that night, I found my little two year old girl standing at the toilet. I asked her what she was doing and she pointed at her vagina and called it a no-penis. I would have found this simply humorous if it had happened apart from the Freudian discussions. My son had only recently graduated from the po-chair to standing at the toilet "like a big boy" and this had gained him significant acclaim in our household. My daughter seemed truly astounded that she could not repeat the same marvellous feat and it took a little bit of gentle persuasion and sagely feminine advice from my mother to explain to her how peeing

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