Domestic Violence discussion (split from On being pro-life)

[LMcC]

(02-20-2011 09:21 PM)Jenn Wrote:  I agree with everyone that violence against anyone is under reported. And that it's really really bad in every town in every country. I don't really understand how this issue is a heated debate. It's bad against women, against men, against children, the disabled, the elderly... babies in the womb and out of the womb. I'm not sure what to do about it. Does anyone know what to do about it?

The issue itself shouldn't be a heated debate. I would hope that all sane people, regardless of sex, religion, or anything else would agree that violence against another person is wrong (except in self-defense, of course).

Unfortunately, Fundamentalism is a hotbed of domestic violence, particularly against women and children, and the Bible is used to defend it and excuse the perpetrators. I'm not just picking on Fundamentalism. Even outside of Fundamentalism, domestic violence is occurring at high rates in complementarian evangelicalism, Islam, and homes where someone has an addiction issue.

There have been no real anti-domestic violence laws until sometime within the last 200 years. It took the efforts of the WCTU to get the first laws passed to help abused women. It took the efforts of activists using laws against animal cruelty to protect abused children in England because the animals were better protected then the kids. (Yes, I know about Ephesians 5:25-31 and 6:4, but a lot of good that ended up doing through history.)

Unfortunately, culture and poorly-written laws have gotten in the way of helping male victims of abuse. Unfortunately, acknowledging that has only made the men's rights advocates even more angry than if I had gone the "all men are evil" route, so I'm now unwilling to say much more about that. (Not the first time the men's rights activists have done that. Over the years, the men's rights activists have routinely been more vicious than even the most radical feminists, and I'm saying that as someone who was a sex roles traditionalist at the beginning of my involvement.)

What Greg said about certain women misusing the laws could not have happened 200 years ago, and it still could not happen in an Islamic country. Where the laws don't exist to protect someone, there's no way to work around the system. Just because some people abuse the rules does not mean they have not saved lives. Some loopholes need to be fixed, certainly, but they don't need to be trashed.

So neither Greg nor Elijah Craig can say I only care about female victims and don't care about male victims, let's make this blazingly clear:

ALL victims of domestic violence deserve proper help and support, regardless of sex.

Oh yeah, Greg can't understand my posts and EC thinks I'm just being dishonest, so that was a waste of effort, wasn't it?