Violence Against Women and Children

[Thanda]

Around the world from 25th of November to the 10th of December there is a campaign titled 16 Days of Activism for No Violence Against Women and Children. During this time awareness is raises about the abuse faced by women and children in society. This is a worthy campaign as any effort to reduce the violence present in our communities (especially us over here in South Africa) is most welcome.

During last year's campaign I noticed a couple of things that concerned me:

1. About 70% to 80% of the coverage for the campaign focused on the violence against women leaving the subject of violence against children with very little airtime.
2. Since the campaign is focused on violence against women and children the perpetrators who are focused on during this time are that group that is not included in the title of the campaign: men. The logic then follows that if we could only stop men being abusive then violence against both women and children would be eliminated.

These are two separate points but they are in fact interconnected. The concern over the little airtime given to the subject of violence against children is obvious. However when you consider the fact that in my country the month of August is dedicated to women and the range of issues and challenges they face, it seems rather odd that they could not afford children's issues at least equal consideration during this campaign.
Furthermore the grouping together of the topic of violence against children with that of violence against women under one campaign implicitly perpetuates a fallacy that the primary perpetrators of violence against both women and children is men. This is in contrast to research which shows that women play a significant (and in some categories a leading) role in perpetuating violence against children.

The following article details some perhaps little known facts about women's role in violence against children:
http://what-when-how.com/interpersonal-violence/female-perpetrators-of-violence-against-children/


Among other things it notes that mothers alone make 40% of perpetrators of physical violence while women as a whole are involved in close to 70% of incidents. They also make up a significant minority of sexual abuse perpetrators at 25%. Also women make up 58% of percent of those responsible for the death of children through neglect (72% of child deaths in the US were as a result of neglect). Women are also the primary perpetrators of the crime of deliberately causing children to become sick.

When taken together these statistics show that women cannot be left out of the conversation when discussing interventions to prevent violence against children. It also highlights the confusing nature of lumping together women and children in violence campaign. It is akin to having a campaign focused on the rights of rape victims and convicted felons and then spending 70% of the campaign duration focusing on the plight of convicted felons.
Compounding the above is the fact that society is generally reluctant to view women as violent making victims of their violence less likely to be believed by authorities. This bias extends even to courts where women receive far lighter sentences for violence against children than men.

I believe there is a need to decouple violence against children from violence against women in order to allow for a broader and more complete discussion of the threats children face from both the male and female adults entrusted with their care and protection.

 

[RRex]

Sniff, sniff . . .

Smells like misogyny.

 

[Thanda]

Sniff, sniff . . .

Smells like misogyny.

Care to explain?

 

[Revoltingest]

Sniff, sniff . . .

Smells like misogyny.

Why not misopedia?

 

[RRex]

Care to explain?

Well, to be honest, you come off as whiny.

The majority of abuse victims are women and children. You sound like that really irritates you.

* My apologies for any delays and/or errors in replying. I'm having difficulties with my usual browser. I'm rotating between browsers until I resolve the problem.

 

[RRex]

Why not misopedia?

Had to look that up.

I don't think it's intentional that children were left out or got less air time. I think it is just an error.

 

[Thanda]

Well, to be honest, you come off as whiny.

The majority of abuse victims are women and children. You sound like that really irritates you.

* My apologies for any delays and/or errors in replying. I'm having difficulties with my usual browser. I'm rotating between browsers until I resolve the problem.

That doesn't irritate me since that is quite logical. Women and children make up the majority of human beings so, all things being equal, I would expect them to be the majority of victims. But this is irrelevant to the point I was making. The point I was making is that very little progress will be made on the subject of violence against children if we keep pretending that the sole or main perpetrators of that violence are men. I was further making the point that grouping the violence against women and children together has the effect, intended or not, of ignoring the perpetrators of at least half of the abuse against children.

Do none of these issues worry you?

 

[RRex]

That doesn't irritate me since that is quite logical. Women and children make up the majority of human beings so, all things being equal, I would expect them to be the majority of victims. But this is irrelevant to the point I was making. The point I was making is that very little progress will be made on the subject of violence against children if we keep pretending that the sole or main perpetrators of that violence are men. I was further making the point that grouping the violence against women and children together has the effect, intended or not, of ignoring the perpetrators of at least half of the abuse against children.

Do none of these issues worry you?

You restating your position has clarified your opinion to me. I understand what you mean now.

My apologies.

 

[Revoltingest]

Would you two stop behaving like adults....this is RF, dammit!

 

[RRex]

Would you two stop behaving like adults....this is RF, dammit!

 

[Sunstone]

Quite unfortunately, Thanda, your idea to consider women and children separately will be despised, feared, and fought blindly against both by some folks on the right, and by some folks on the left. By which I mean to say, your idea strikes me as a good one.

 

[SomeRandom]

I happen to agree with you @Thanda!
I would also add that there should be more awareness raised for women who are abused by their same sex partner (not that I'm saying anything against gay people of course.) But I feel like the issues of domestic violence focus almost exclusively or even flat out exclusively on heterosexual couples leaving many vulnerable victims in the LGBT community without support.

 

[Thanda]

Quite unfortunately, Thanda, your idea to consider women and children separately will be despised, feared, and fought blindly against both by some folks on the right, and by some folks on the left. By which I mean to say, your idea strikes me as a good one.

Why do you think they would fight against? What benefit is derived from clumping together violence against against women and children? You strike me as someone who has some insight into the social sciences circles - do you have any idea what inspired this, at least to me, bizarre grouping?

I'm genuinely interested because I plan on bringing it up when the campaign begins again this year and I would like to anticipate what kind of arguments will be brought forth to defend the status quo.

 

[Thanda]

I happen to agree with you @Thanda!
I would also add that there should be more awareness raised for women who are abused by their same sex partner (not that I'm saying anything against gay people of course.) But I feel like the issues of domestic violence focus almost exclusively or even flat out exclusively on heterosexual couples leaving many vulnerable victims in the LGBT community without support.

Indeed, it appears to disrupt the dominant narrative in society which currently tries by all means to classify women as victims and men as perpetrators of crimes. The power of this narrative lies in the fact that both conservatives (who believe in gender roles) and liberals (who have a dark view of masculinity and a glowing one of femininity - and who further have a binary view of gender relations of men as oppressors and women as oppressed) have a stake in the continued belief in the inherent victimhood of women.

In fact, even in the very article I have quoted from the authors felt a need to give "context" or explanations for why women commit these crimes when quite often society doesn't feel the need to have any explanations for similar crimes by men.

My personal view has always been that most incidents of violence happen in the context of a violence society. For example in my country we have a very high sexual assault rate but also a very high murder rate. And whereas the vast majority of rape victims are female, the vast majority of victims of murder and physical assaults are men. And while the perpetrators of these crimes are mainly men, we have know that the main perpetrators of violence towards children are women. And the same children who were abused as youngsters are likely to grow up as rapists and murderers themselves. And thus you have an entire ecosystem of violence that continually reproduces violence and everyone is involved, men and women. So it serves no good purpose to pretend inflicting violence is the province of one gender and while the receiving of violence is the province of the other.
Of course I expect that the this is well known by the experts who deal with these issues which makes me wonder why they would ignore these facts and continue pursuing a clearly faulty narrative.

 

[SomeRandom]

Indeed, it appears to disrupt the dominant narrative in society which currently tries by all means to classify women as victims and men as perpetrators of crimes. The power of this narrative lies in the fact that both conservatives (who believe in gender roles) and liberals (who have a dark view of masculinity and a glowing one of femininity - and who further have a binary view of gender relations of men as oppressors and women as oppressed) have a stake in the continued belief in the inherent victimhood of women.

In fact, even in the very article I have quoted from the authors felt a need to give "context" or explanations for why women commit these crimes when quite often society doesn't feel the need to have any explanations for similar crimes by men.

My personal view has always been that most incidents of violence happen in the context of a violence society. For example in my country we have a very high sexual assault rate but also a very high murder rate. And whereas the vast majority of rape victims are female, the vast majority of victims of murder and physical assaults are men. And while the perpetrators of these crimes are mainly men, we have know that the main perpetrators of violence towards children are women. And the same children who were abused as youngsters are likely to grow up as rapists and murderers themselves. And thus you have an entire ecosystem of violence that continually reproduces violence and everyone is involved, men and women. So it serves no good purpose to pretend inflicting violence is the province of one gender and while the receiving of violence is the province of the other.
Of course I expect that the this is well known by the experts who deal with these issues which makes me wonder why they would ignore these facts and continue pursuing a clearly faulty narrative.

While I can kind of sympathize with what you're saying, perhaps it runs a little deeper than merely "social engineering?"
Now I ain't any kind of expert on science at all, but maybe it's a reflection of evolution?

Men had to be the protectors. That's the way our species worked (excepting a few examples in history.) So there's this inherent expectation that men physically "man up" when faced with the prospect of engaging in a fight, either through a random mugging on the way home from the club or just some ******* being an ******* in public. A man will either back down not wanting to risk danger to themselves or feel pressure to "be a man" and protect themselves and possibly even their partner. Almost instinctively. (Flight or fight response.) So it would make sense that they face more physical danger. The whole "oh this is just toxic masculinity" argument for that, I don't really buy. To me it's a consequence of evolution, albeit a potentially unfortunate one, at least socially. Could be wrong, though.
A woman has a bit more leeway socially. They can get in a man's face and if he physically responds, society, often even mostly men will mock him for it. That could be a mixture of societal expectations (a "real" man does not hit a woman) and even evolutionary. A perceived show of weakness, ie striking something clearly not physically threatening could result in other males wanting to mock said man because he is being weak. You could even argue it's kind of an instinctive protectiveness for potential breeding partners.
We kind of think that this is a relatively modern phenomenon and that the past was nothing but wimmens abuse. But there are a few interesting perspectives that perhaps maybe it wasn't always totally socially tolerated. Perhaps legally tolerated, but not socially. Like for example in Wuthering Heights, Heathcliffe physically abuses his wife, to the horror of the narrator and we are clearly supposed to find such behavior unbecoming. True it was written by a woman.
In one of Wilde's plays or perhaps Picture of Dorian Grey or Lady Windermere's Fan there's an exchange between characters that kind of calls out physical abuse of women and even suggests that to abuse a woman publicly is completely unacceptable. Course that doesn't mean it wasn't happening behind closed doors. But it is interesting that perhaps they weren't entirely pro beating women in the distant seeming past, at least not openly.

Women are pretty inherently associated with nature and fertility in our species. That could be why it's so easy to spin a narrative that suggests that abusive women have to have something "odd" about them. Difficult childhood, outside factors, mental issues etc. Because for humans it's just easier to accept an abusive woman is just an aberration, not really the "general rule." Again tying into our instincts. A woman is usually a caregiver to an infant, perhaps more equally shared in modern times though.

Of course that's just my random odd unscientific musings.

As to why experts are seemingly ignoring this rather damaging "narrative" (and I happen to dislike this narrative as well) perhaps you should check out the thoughts of a lady called Erin Prizzey?
She's the lady who set up the first battered womens' shelter during the 70s only to be literally harassed out of her endeavors (and possibly her home) because radical feminists took over her little set up after she tried to start a battered mens' shelter. I don't know if I necessarily agree with her, but she's an interesting lady with some interesting discussion points/viewpoints on domestic violence and why it's handled the way it is.

 

[Thanda]

The 16 days of Activism for No Violence Against Women and Children starts today. The google news feeds on the topic prove my point about this how women dominate the this period even though this period is ostensibly about violence against both women and children.

There is not a single article about violence against children - this is even though children are easily the most abused group of people in the world.

 

[Kilgore Trout]

Please. We all know that men are bad and women are good. Particularly, white men. Every one of them is a rich, privileged, racist, homophobic wife beater who may or may not be a serial killer and baby seal clubber.

And, I'm sure if there are women abusing children, it's somehow the fault of a man.