As in “recently”? No, I don’t think so. Bear in mind, humanity’s numbers dwindled to around 10,000 strong on the horn of Eastern Africa thousands of years ago and the only way we survived was by taking care of one another’s young; childbirth was deadly, and to continue to reproduce obviously we took great care of females and children especially.
As for society on the whole, I just think women are the main consumers of media and corporations have figured this out and tap into their swaying emotions and complexes, which is why it’s very “shocking” to people to consider that someone like Jon’s fiancee is no clueless, sheepish victim of circumstance but rather the Alligator attendant that didn’t think she’d get bit by the monster.
Jon, to any reasonable person, is absolutely a monster, and he finally turned on his handler. Hard truth for a lot of people who grew on media that told them women don’t have autonomy over their own actions and the consequences of those actions, let alone that choices and consequences are not a black and white paradigm of who is solely right and who is solely wrong. Jon is 99% at fault here, no doubt, but that 1% Jesse has contributed is enough that, if she were to wise up to this guy earlier, she would have prevented this situation completely. You have to take that kind of ownership as a mother.
My girl is into MMA and I got her perspective on it as someone who was in some really bad situations when she was younger, and her take in regards to Jesse was “don’t give women any type of complex that will make you think that they’re not responsible for fixing their own lives, because they will attach to it til they die”
funny enough, my mother lives in Vegas as well and called me to ask about all of this after seeing it covered very benignly on the news yesterday morning. She’s worked with situations like this for almost 20 years now and was dumbfounded that Jesse has stuck by this guy.
These are two women who are of verrry European descent that grew up in households very different than the average “princess and barbie” stereotype we have out here. I think it’s very hard for a lot of modern women to break that mindset, because it’s so comforting and a default you can go to as to illicit sympathy, but that doesn’t save you preemptively or fix your problem once it arises. A rule for everyone, but i think it gets especially ignored for a specific gender in 2021.
So to answer your question more directly, I think the impulse is instinctual but I think we have mainlined it in a very harmful way that casts women as helpless idiot victims, so that when they are victimized by guys like Jon, there’s something about it that feels very familiar and “right” after consuming 3 decades+ of media that has told you there is inherent value in letting someone, men specifically, do bad things to you. Apologies for the broad answer, it was just a good question I had to flex out.
