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Breaking the Silence

By Pat Bakalian on March 10, 2009 at 3:30 PM in Women

“Turning a person into a thing is almost always the first step in justifying violence against that person.”-

Jean Kilbourne, lecturer and keynote speaker focusing on violence, women, and the media.

Chris Brown’s brutal beating of Rihanna reignited talk about domestic violence in this country. That is a good thing! We need to have more honest conversations about this epidemic. Battering is the single most common cause of injury to women in the United States, more common than car accidents, mugging and rape combined.

Much to the misconception of many, victims of domestic violence come from all races, classes and ethnic backgrounds. Of all women murdered in the U.S.—an average of three a day—about one-third were killed by an intimate partner. According to the National Organization for Women , women experience about 4.8 million intimate partner-related physical assaults and rapes every year.

I found this recent article by Megan Twohey and Bonnie Miller Rubin disturbing. 1 in 10 teens suffer from dating violence, yet their reaction to Rihanna’s beating is that she deserved it!

The Need for Education

What is the answer to this gross misconception? According to Twohey and Rubin:

In recent years, some schools and youth organizations have started educating teens about the dangers of dating violence. Rhode Island and Virginia have adopted laws requiring such instruction in the public schools. But most states, including Illinois, don’t have such a mandate and education on the topic remains in short supply, experts say. Two of three new programs created by the federal Violence Against Women Act in 2005 to address teen dating violence were never funded.

Not only are we not doing enough to educate youth about domestic violence, but the media (a prime source of information for today’s youth) doesn’t give domestic violence its due coverage. We barely heard anything about the woman in New York who was recently beheaded by her husband after she had filed for a divorce. Where is the outrage? I know it’s not a pretty story, but if we don’t talk about domestic violence, and, more importantly, learn about its roots and causes, we will never eliminate it.

Women in Boxes: How Abusers Control Women

Battery, whether emotional or physical, is about power and control. Some examples of the different ways violators keep women in line from Dr. Bettina Aptheker’s outstanding DVD collection Introduction to Feminisms .
are.

Emotional – putting her down, making her feel bad about herself, calling her names, making her think that she is crazy.

Economic – trying to keep her from getting or keeping a job, making her ask for money, giving her an allowance, or taking her money.

Sexual – making her do things against her will, physically attacking the sexual parts of her body, and treating her like a sex object.

Using children – using the children to give messages and using visitation as a way to harass.

Threats – making and/or carrying out threats to do something physically or emotionally, threatening to take the children, and threats to commit suicide.

Using male privilege – treating her like a servant, making all the big decisions, acting like the master of the house

Intimidation – putting her in fear by using looks, actions, gestures, loud voices, smashing things, destroying her property.

Isolation – controlling what she does, who she sees and talks to, and where she goes.

Perhaps many readers here do not experience these confinements, but a great many women in our own country still live this way. These patterns of domestic abuse and domestic violence are all about power and control.

To stop the epidemic of violence against women that exists in this country we must break the silence. We must put adequate funding into educating the next generation of girls and boys about violence against women and its root causes. We must have honest conversations about domestic violence and pressure the media to change its portrayal of women as objects.

Pat Bakalian is the Executive Director of the Campaign for Gender Equality a non-profit 501c3 organization focused on raising public awareness of the benefits of gender equality, regardless of age, race, class or sexual orientation, through education and advocacy.

http://www.hillaryorbust.com Hillary or Bust

We also need to look at the broader cultural context and how the images we put out often denigrate women. I just wrote piece one one of PETA’s latest ads – nude cartoon women:

http://hillaryorbust.com/2009/03/id-rather-wear-clothes-than-support-peta/

The left has been particularly open to misogyny in recent years, all in the name of being “sexy.”
barry bums a ciggie

Sheesh, I just read this article from The Times (I think it’s British) and my jaw dropped!

Women Should Be Hit for Dressing Sexy in Public, 1 in 7 Believe

One in seven people believe it is acceptable in some circumstances for a man to hit his wife or girlfriend if she is dressed in “sexy or revealing clothes in public”, according to the findings of a survey released today.

A similar number believed that it was all right for a man to slap his wife or girlfriend if she is “nagging or constantly moaning at him”.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/crime/article5875108.ece

The findings of the poll, conducted for the Home Office, also disclosed about a quarter of people believe that wearing sexy or revealing clothing should lead to a woman being held partly responsible for being raped or sexually assaulted.
tricia spiegel

Thanks, Pat, for reminding us about what we don’t like to think about. Good post.
JohnnyB

Great recap, Pat, and thanks for your hard work at the Campaign for Geneder Equality.

I found this article quoting UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon:

Mr. Ban noted that “Death, injury, medical costs and lost employment are but the tip of an iceberg. The impact on women and girls, their families, their communities and their societies in terms of shattered lives and livelihoods is beyond calculation.”

To change the mindsets and socially ingrained habits of generations will not be easy and will take the collective force of individuals, organizations and governments, added the Secretary-General.

“We must work together to state loud and clear, at the highest level, that violence against women will not be tolerated, in any form, in any context, in any circumstance,” he said, adding that “We need a positive image of women in the media. We need laws that say violence is a crime, that hold perpetrators accountable and are enforced.”

Full story here:
http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=30118&Cr=women&Cr1=secretary-general

Men must stop this violence against women. Keep up the good work.
Magic Puzzle Box

The UK? Take a look at Germany, too, because I read in their English-language press that the encroachment of sharia is leading to even psychologists claiming clinical evidence that wife beating is good for the woman.

However, let me note from my own experience that this sort of violence doesn’t have to me male-female. It can be any family or partner you live with, and when I went through it, the shelter noted there was a spike in the parent-children dynamic rather than husband-wife. But even today it’s typical to blame the victim for the whole thing. One of the most appalling stories I remember from the shelter was that one woman was shot point-blank in front of her children by her husband, and the police just laughed it off. I knew one woman beaten so many times in the head that she lay around alot staring at the ceiling. Progress hasn’t been made nearly as far as even these reports would lead you to believe.
C.S.

So what were the numbers of those believing that women should slap, hit, punish men for this kind of behavior.

It’s like in the Civil Rights era when they were telling us that we should speak up and chastise anyone who told a racist or bigoted joke. Until we quit phrasing questions about female behavior in the negative and start asking for judgment on the behavior rather than the gender attitudes will not change. What do you think the poll would say if women punished men for dressing in “sexy or revealing clothes in public”?
Ani

Pat, thank you so much for this article. We seem to be going backward, not forward to in the fair treatment of women. We do need to break the silence and keep reminding our representatives about the misogyny existing in our own back yard. Education is key. Enforcement, too. And if law enforcement and the legal system do not equally respect the rights of women, there is no hope.
NoBamaNoWay

of course they would never ask that question because it’s absurd in our society; men are the gatekeepers of women’s sexuality, not the other way around. however, violence against women is just one aspect of cultures which freely accept the use of violence in situations that are not cases of self-defense.

let’s face it, americans, and most of the world, accept the use of violence in all kinds of non-self-defense situations, no matter how much they may deny it. from the day kids are born, they learn that the bigger person can and will beat them up if they don’t do what they want. some parents teach against the use of violence strongly, but others don’t, and it permeates our society so much, how could kids NOT think it’s acceptable?

i work with a lot of young (teenage) people, and the young males already know that the biggest male is “The Man,” and everyone else has better not defy him. i think that (especially at that immature stage) they think that naturally females should be under their (male) authority, since they are smaller and could be beaten into submission. sadly, young females often go along with this arrangement because of low self-respect and because they see quite correctly that “that’s just the way it is.”

most people grow out of this stage and develop a sense of right and wrong, but a lot of people don’t.
NoBamaNoWay

Violence in general is far too widespread and easily accepted by a lot of people. i would be more surprised if violence against women *wasn’t* a problem in most societies.
Portia Elizabeth

Magic Puzzle Box — were you by any chance in Denver? I volunteered for awhile at the Gateway Shelter for Battered Women and remember a woman who had been shot to death by her husband when she tried to go back to her house to gather some clothes. Her children were in the car and saw it all. Another woman at the time was put in the hospital twice by her abusive husband who had kidnapped her from her job, taken her up into the mountains, raped her, smashed her face and left her for dead.

The women who came to the shelter crossed all class, race, age and educational lines. One was wife to a Baptist minister. One was married to a deputy DA. One was married to a doctor, another to a scientist on faculty at the university.

But one thing they all had in common: they believed it was their fault. We have to get the message out that NO ONE deserves to be beaten.
Linda Anselmi

Thank you very much Pat for an Excellent post!

My fear is that as our worldwide economy gets worse, acts of violence and aggression against women, children and animals will increase. As individuals increasingly feel the loss of power and control, some will seeking to regain it by turning against the weakest and most vulnerable.

I think education alone is not enough about domestic and date violence. Many of our youth lack a core confidence in their own worth, strength and abilities. They have not been allowed to really challenge and test themselves. Parents seem to have seen their job as protecting children from even the smallest of routine daily failures .
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