Strategies for Survival
Fri, 2002-08-09 11:33
#1
writer
Strategies for Survival
Fri, 2002-08-09 11:33
#2
writer
According to the [url=http://www.swc-cfc.gc.ca/dec6/facts-e.html]Status of Women[/url] (using outside data):
quote:
Half of Canadian women (51%) have been victims of at least one act of physical or sexual violence since the age of 16.Nearly two-thirds (64%) of women reported feeling somewhat or very worried while waiting for or using public transportation alone after dark, more than double the proportion of 29% for men.
About 29% of women reported being somewhat or very worried if they were home alone in the evening (compared to 12% of men).
18% of women felt somewhat or very unsafe when walking alone in their area after dark (compared with 6% of men).
In 2000, 40% of female victims of sexual assault were assaulted by a friend or casual acquaintance, 23% by a stranger and 23% by a family member (including a spouse or ex-spouse).
In 2000, 67 persons were killed by a current or an ex-spouse in Canada. Three of four victims of spousal homicide were female (51 women compared to 16 men).
Can these statistics change? What are the measures we need?
Fri, 2002-08-09 16:21
#3
quote:
What are the measures we need?
Education, education and more education. For a start.
I'm surprised by the stat that
quote:
Half of Canadian women (51%) have been victims of at least one act of physical or sexual violence since the age of 16.
Depending on what you use as a definition of physical or sexual violence, it's more likely that ALL women have been victims.
Fri, 2002-08-09 22:18
#4
Yes, education indeed! But it must be the sort of education which enables males from a very early age to learn socialization and relationship skills with the female of the species. We simply don't do that for boys in their formative years and then we wonder why so many males are violent or abusive, why many males are never able to develop healthy relationships. So, education indeed! But spare boys all that claptrap in the classroom with a quiz at the end of the hour and a lifetime to never develop normal relationships. I don't know what the educational process must be but what we have now is not working well. Schools have life management courses and these may be effective for some boys but obviously they are not working. I believe the whole system of "schooling" is wrong. Unfortunately, there are still too many people (alas, even, on Babble) who actually think that "schooling" and "education" are synonyms.
Fri, 2002-08-09 22:36
#5
Oh, it's worse than that.
School is the least of a person's practical education - and, if kids today are anything like they were 15 years ago, the life-management course is a goof-off class where nobody learns anything.
We're not going to have healthy, responsible people of any sex, until we have a sane society.
By the way, does anyone have sexual abuse and violence stats for Norway?
Fri, 2002-08-09 22:40
#6
What strategies do we need? An underground women's militia, who deal out their own brand of feminist justice!
(I always thought that would be a cool idea for an action novel.)
Fri, 2002-08-09 23:36
#7
I think that's a simple solution, Michelle. Just send out the militia and kill all the guys. How stupid of me not to think of that. My male(volent) apologies.
Sat, 2002-08-10 03:17
#8
quote:
An underground women's militia, who deal out their own brand of feminist justice!
Why be underground? I'd get a publicist.
Sat, 2002-08-10 09:25
#9
Well, minimal, it was (somewhat) tongue-in-cheek. But for a brief time in my life, I had that fantasy (still get it occasionally). I've seen and heard of too many date-rapes, I've heard one too many slaps or screaming through the apartment windows where I've lived, I've seen one too many black eyes on women I've known...
Well, you know what I mean - I'm sure you've seen it too. And I've seen way too many men get away with it.
That's why I've often thought, if the police won't help us and the law won't prosecute the guys who do this, then obviously there isn't much incentive for them to stop. So maybe that's when it becomes time for women to get together and work up some incentive.
A woman is being stalked? Police doing diddly-dick-shit about it? Call up the militia, have this sweet fellow first of all paid a visit, and then have him tailed.
A woman gets raped or sexually assaulted, gets no police action on it? Provide support to the woman so that she can exhaust all legal channels of getting the SOB prosecuted. Nothing happens to the guy through legal channels? Well then, time for a visit from the militia.
Of course, this is only a fantasy, one I used to dream years ago. I know all the reasons why it wouldn't work and why it would (possibly) be immoral - vigilante justice and all that. But geez, sometimes I think short of doing something like that, violent men just won't get the point, you know?
Sat, 2002-08-10 19:23
#10
for one, i think discussions such as this one ought not to surround the question of survival, but the question of flourishing.
i found this interesting:
quote:
How we articulate a problem can determine the kinds of remedies we seek. For example, if we describe homelessness as the result of insufficient affordable housing, we seek very different kinds of solutions than if we describe it as the logical outgrowth of the inhumane distribution of wealth. Different frames result in different solutions. So when we describe our efforts to end male violence against women in a way that shields the reality of who does what to whom, we ascribe causality to everybody and everything but the perpetrator. This is exactly what happens when we use gender-neutral language such as "domestic violence" to describe violence that is gender-based, i.e. male violence against women. Gender-neutral language, while making access to those in power more likely, can transforms our opposition into collusion. In our effort to strike a balance between influence and alienation we may achieve the appearance of influence at the cost of our social change agenda.
full text [url=http://www.menstoppingviolence.org/articles/choosingourwords.html]here[/...
quote:
Feminist analysis of violence against women has maintained that such violence is illustrative of a general devaluation and objectification of women (Dworkin, 1982; Brownmiller, 1976; Coveney et al., 1984) that is expressed most extremely in acts of violence.
full text [url=http://www.wits.ac.za/csvr/papers/paplv&ge.htm]here[/url]
our efforts, therefore, cannot be myopic or single-focused, but must address the oppression of women (and the symbolic order generated by asymmetrical power relations) more generally.
[ August 10, 2002: Message edited by: anna_c ]
Sun, 2002-08-11 13:54
#11
It is inexcusable for any man to use violence on any woman and we must find ways to stop it. But why stop at that? Why not address conflict and "objectification" leading to the brink of violence inflicted by anyone against another human being?
Gawd help us if we tried to address things through a campaign based on attempting to reform men, or, worse, just blaming them.
We all, male and female, must take equal responsibility, as parents, teachers, neighbours, voters who set the societal stage which affects the conditions for our children to become either peaceful or violent.
Too many details are left out of the feminist spin on issues like this (which is one reason why "feminism" as a movement is no more). For example, the figures on female-initiated violence against children and men. Or the role of physiological and behavioural gender differences in explaining why conflict ends so often being as well as reported as being male violence.
Ultimately, any education campaign of this sort must engage men and women as equals and not play moral upmanwomenship.
We need societal education based on an understanding - of root causes, of ways in which we (both men and women) deal with conflict and our emotions and "objectify" fellow males and females. (We can each start right now.)
Such education must aim at ultimately making it inexcusable for any man or woman to demean as well use violence against any other human being.
Sun, 2002-08-11 17:04
#12
We could begin very modestly, by refusing to rent slasher flicks for our teenaged children.
Violence is everywhere in our society: we celebrate it and reward it. We're not setting a great example for the impressionable young.
Mon, 2002-08-19 18:26
#13
spring hope:
quote:
"feminism" as a movement is no more
i have no idea what you are referring to here.
as a matter of fact, the figures belie your contention. for example, in the u.s.a.,
quote:
Women are 10 times more likely than men to be victimized by an intimate
. this is health canada's account of the current situation:
quote:
Statistics Canada's 1998 report Family Violence in Canada: A Statistical Profile, which analysed data provided by 154 reporting police agencies, shows that:
women continue to outnumber men nine to one as victims of assault by a spouse or partner;
in 1996 half of all family homicides involved spouses;
between 1977 and 1996, three times as many women were killed by their spouses as were men killed by their spouses;
girls are at greatest risk of sexual assault by a family member while between 12 and 15 years of age
source sites:
[url=http://www.now.org/issues/violence/stats.html]NOW u.s. stats[/url]
[url=http://www.swc-cfc.gc.ca/dec6/facts-e.html]status of women canada[/url]
while some individual men are victimized by some individual women, your claim that both men are women are equally responsible for violence on a societal level is problematic. that is not to diminish the experiences of an abused man, it is to set it perspective. as this excerpt argues,
quote:
It is an ongoing struggle to separate the wheat from the chafe, to find the truth locked within the pain of men's experience of violence. While we wish to sincerely tell the stories men who have been abused by their female intimate partners, there also exists a culture of denial that seeks to blame women, especially feminists, for the pain of changing and old stereotypes in which some men have found safety.As a pro-feminist men's group it is a challenge to reach out to our brothers who are involved in this backlash against women's progress. Ironically, these men on a political level use the same tactics that abusive men use on a personal level.
source: [url=http://www.chebucto.ns.ca/CommunitySupport/Men4Change/index.htm]men for change[/url]
(the website of a group that formed after the montreal massacre, a horrific instance of misogynist violence against women, which is part of our cultural inheritance as canadians)
more important than the statistics, however, is a theoretical perspective to make sense of them with. your claim
quote:
Gawd help us if we tried to address things through a campaign based on attempting to reform men, or, worse, just blaming them.
shows a wilfull ignorance of the facts and the absence of a coherent politics.
Fri, 2007-06-15 14:07
#14
writer
rape and statistics
Fri, 2007-06-15 20:29
#15
remind
quote:
Originally posted by anna_c:
[b]spring hope:men for change
(the website of a group that formed after the montreal massacre, a horrific instance of misogynist violence against women, which is part of our cultural inheritance as canadians)more important than the statistics, however, is a theoretical perspective to make sense of them with. your claim
...shows a wilfull ignorance of the facts and the absence of a coherent politics.[/b]
People should really read this and think about the implications.