Is domestic violence all about gender inequality?

Nov 24, 2016 by

by David Quinn, MercatorNet:

If we are really concerned about violence against women and children we cannot be silent about family structure.

November 25th is the United Nations International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women. From then until December 10, International Human Rights Day, UN Women runs a 16-day campaign against gender-based violence, which this year focuses on raising money for that purpose.

Although women often perpetrate violence, especially in the domestic sphere, the culprits in this campaign are implicitly men. But which men? What makes it more likely that a man will inflict violence on a woman or child? This is a question that is seldom addressed in an objective, scientific way, as David Quinn of the Iona Institute notes in the following comment.

conference was held in Dublin last week called Safe Ireland. The intention was to draw attention to, and find ways of reducing, violence against women and children. One issue it appears not to have gone near is whether there is a link to family structure. That was a big oversight.

Broadcaster Olivia O’Leary warned that “traditional family values hide a great deal of cruelty”. This is true if by “traditional family values” she means a tendency to regard the family as “sacrosanct” and pretend nothing bad can ever happen when a child is being raised by its married biological mother and father.  Apart from that it is not a very useful thing to say anymore as it seems to completely overlook the issue of whether or not  domestic abuse is more or less likely to occur within certain family structures.

This is a very delicate subject. No-one wants to appear ‘judgemental’, and therefore almost no-one goes near the topic. But this is the same attitude that caused the authorities in English towns like Rotherham and Rochdale to cover up sexual assault and rape of white girls, often underage, by mainly Pakistani men because of a fear of inciting racism. So perhaps politically correct sensitivities can “hide a great deal of cruelty” every bit as much as “traditional family values” can.

Read here

 

Related Posts

Tags

Share This