Imagine having a Sunday dinner with your family at the dinner table. Your kids are laughing and teasing each other, perhaps even launching peas at each other with their little spoons, as you and your spouse grin and turn up the volume to the TV. Not to mention that the food is delicious and your favorite show is on. Overall, a pretty nice night for you and your family, right? That is, until the current channel runs the commercials and an advertisement for donations to a domestic abuse shelter appears on the screen, women describing their hardships in far too much detail to be comfortable. Your children glance downwards to their food, or maybe they don't even understand what’s happening on the television and continue their play. However,
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Let’s be honest here; no one likes hearing the wails of bruised and battered women over the television. Why? Because we can all agree that domestic abuse is a tragedy, makes everyone feel uncomfortable,is a dark and disturbing topic, brings down the mood of the environment, and is now appearing in the media more often. Now, this is the part where I usually hear, ‘But it’s underreported! Not only that, domestic violence counts for fifty percent of all ‘hates crimes’ against women, too, doesn’t it!’ First of all, no. DV isn’t a hate crime against women, it ‘is an issue of power and control in a relationship’ and second, if we’re talking about domestic violence being underreported, then let’s we talk about domestic violence against men. But before some of you go waving your megaphone and yelling out into crowds about how ‘women don’t commit domestic violence!’ and that ‘those men had what was coming to them!’, just hear me …show more content…
However, even as lopsided the numbers are for domestic violence against men and women, the cases of men being victims are far too underreported, even for their lowered percentage, which, in truth, is far higher than the rumored ‘5%’. Large scale studies, done over several years by the National Institute of Justice and and the Center of Disease Control in America, Canada, and the UK state that, “Men were the victims of DV 38-50% of the time..” and “...835,000 men are the victims of domestic violence each year” (MenWeb). Even with the number of female victims being 1.5 million, 835,00 men a year is not very far behind and is tragic in itself. However, there are still almost no reports whatsoever against women acting out with serious violent toward their male partners. Even at that, the ones that are, are littered with derogatory comments on how the man likely did something wrong and/or the act of serious violence by the woman was justified, even, and that she likely didn't do too much damage because, according to society, women have no strength and/odor cannot be aggressive whatsoever (which, in itself, is a very wrong statement for another day).But wait, let’s bring
Let’s be honest here; no one likes hearing the wails of bruised and battered women over the television. Why? Because we can all agree that domestic abuse is a tragedy, makes everyone feel uncomfortable,is a dark and disturbing topic, brings down the mood of the environment, and is now appearing in the media more often. Now, this is the part where I usually hear, ‘But it’s underreported! Not only that, domestic violence counts for fifty percent of all ‘hates crimes’ against women, too, doesn’t it!’ First of all, no. DV isn’t a hate crime against women, it ‘is an issue of power and control in a relationship’ and second, if we’re talking about domestic violence being underreported, then let’s we talk about domestic violence against men. But before some of you go waving your megaphone and yelling out into crowds about how ‘women don’t commit domestic violence!’ and that ‘those men had what was coming to them!’, just hear me …show more content…
However, even as lopsided the numbers are for domestic violence against men and women, the cases of men being victims are far too underreported, even for their lowered percentage, which, in truth, is far higher than the rumored ‘5%’. Large scale studies, done over several years by the National Institute of Justice and and the Center of Disease Control in America, Canada, and the UK state that, “Men were the victims of DV 38-50% of the time..” and “...835,000 men are the victims of domestic violence each year” (MenWeb). Even with the number of female victims being 1.5 million, 835,00 men a year is not very far behind and is tragic in itself. However, there are still almost no reports whatsoever against women acting out with serious violent toward their male partners. Even at that, the ones that are, are littered with derogatory comments on how the man likely did something wrong and/or the act of serious violence by the woman was justified, even, and that she likely didn't do too much damage because, according to society, women have no strength and/odor cannot be aggressive whatsoever (which, in itself, is a very wrong statement for another day).But wait, let’s bring