Victim Blaming
Violence against women is a wide-ranging problem, not just in the United States. Some of these types of violences include: domestic violence, rape, incest, and even pornography (Shaw, 503-524). Many people make the mistake in thinking that violence against women is physical. Although most of the time the violence is physical, it is also much more than that. “It also encompasses sexual, emotional, mental, and even psychological and spiritual elements of abuse (Wood).” Even though the perpetrators of these types of violences can be committed by either males or females, research has shown that they are almost exclusively performed by men. This is the reason why researchers and scholars refer to violence against women as gender-based violence, due to the fact that gender is the largest factor in the probability of experiencing violence. Despite news of violence against women hitting the media and showing up on news channels on tv or in the newspaper, it continues to be a problem. A reason for this is victim blaming; shifting “the responsibility of the crime from the perpetrator to the victim (Wood).”
Victim blaming is so common that is has become widely accepted to the point where it is hardly noticed or the negative effects it has. People tend to blame the victim and ask why he or she didn’t try more or harder to stop the violence, rather than asking why the perpetrator didn’t stop or the reason behind what he did. Because of victim blaming, many women prefer the term survivor as opposed to victim. One way to end violence against women is “to consider men’s role in stopping violence against women since men are the primary perpetrators of such violence.” By involving men and getting them to understand more about violence against women, this can potentially stop the violence because men will know that what they are doing is considered violence. Another way presented by bell hooks is to “create and sustain greater cultural awareness of domestic violence as well as the changes that must happen in our thinking and action if we are to see its end (hooks, 61).” This goes hand-in-hand with Lesson 9: Women’s Education. By educating people, especially men, of the violence that women experience, such violence can potentially be prevented.
Patriarchal Violence
One important issue to bring up is patriarchal violence. As defined by the Asian & Pacific Islander Institute on Domestic Violence, patriarchal violence is “a system for maintaining class, gender, racial, and heterosexual privilege and the status quo of power”, is about social relations, and is the root of gender-based violence (“Logo”). hooks suggests that patriarchal violence is a better term than domestic violence because it reminds people that violence is connected to sexism, more specifically to male domination. This is why involving men and educating them on violence against women would be effective. By ending sexism and this commonly held notion that it is okay for men to demonstrate power and authority by the use of force, either physical or verbal, violence against women can also be ended. However, it will take more than just education.
The National Organization For Men Against Sexism (NOMAS) is a group of men who aim to end all types of men’s violence. They do not take pride in their authority in the household. Rather, they take pride “in being men who are trying to make a difference (“Why”).” It will take men like these to make other men lower their pride, their egotism, their sense of God-given authority over women and the household, because otherwise, violence against women will never been seen as a sexist issue, and the problem will continue. bell hooks states that many people in the US believe in “equal pay for equal work …[and] that men should not beat women and children.” But when these people are told that sexism is the cause of domestic violence, they cannot understand this concept because it makes them challenge traditional views on gender. This-therein lies the problem. People need to be educated so that they can see violence as the issue that it really is: sexism.
Sexism
Sexism as the underlying problem for violence against women is the reason why feminists are concerned with it. It is not just the fact that mainly women are targeted and that people tend to blame the survivors (the women) rather than the perpetrators (the men). According to hooks, unemployed and working-class men do not feel like they have power and authority in their jobs with respect to the white supremacist patriarchal. Because of this, they feel like the only place they can have power and authority is in the home. This thought leads to violence, physical abuse that will establish their authority in the household. This type of thinking needs to change, and by targeting sexism, it can. And so, feminists have targeted violence against women and continue to target it because of this issue. But many people don’t see violence against women as a sexist issue, and so the first step to solving this issue is education. By changing the norm and forcing people, especially men, to see violence as what it is, then the end to violence against women can begin to end.
Citations
Hooks, Bell. Feminism Is for Everybody: Passionate Politics. Cambridge, MA: South End, 2000. Print.
"Logo." Patriarchy & Power. Asian & Pacific Islander Institute on Domestic Violence, n.d. Web. 31, March. 2013. http://www.apiidv.org/violence/patriarchy-power.php.
Shaw, Susan M., and Janet Lee. Women's Voices, Feminist Visions: Classic and Contemporary Readings. Fifth ed. Boston: McGraw-Hill Higher Education, 2009. Print.
"Why Are Anti-sexist Men Confronting Violence Against Women? | NOMAS." Why Are Anti-sexist Men Confronting Violence Against Women? | NOMAS. National Organization For Men Against Sexism, n.d. Web. 31 Mar. 2013. http://www.nomas.org/node/165.
Wood, Jill. Lesson 12 Lecture: Violence Against Women. Pennsylvania State University, PA, 2013. Web.