Marjchaos

“Domestic violence is an area where the law is still being dragged into the real world. The argument that violence against women is an abuse of their human rights is now being understood but there is an increasingly vocal claim of equivalency - that women also hit men, that men are being abused by women but tell no one out of shame. We are being led to believe that battered men are suffering in silence just as women once did. While there are no doubt such cases, they are not the norm, and they distract us from the really serious problems which blight women’s lives and make equality impossible. At public meetings, the police and officials often talk about ‘people’ who experience domestic violence, using language which disguises the reality that in our society it is women who are most often battered, women who are killed by their partners at a rate of two a week, women and their children who are all slain by a vengeful partner who then turns the gun on himself, girl children who are disproportionately the victims when we read of cruelty and neglect leading to death. According to Home Office statistics at least a quarter of all violent crime is domestic violence and it is perpetrated overwhelmingly against women. The refusal to acknowledge the gendered nature of violence is a continuing problem.”