Are they going to provide housing and income for the women they target as victims, too? Keep their stalker boyfriends and husbands away, and convince their family that the nice, stable husband is a bad bad guy? Convince the kids that daddy is a bad man? And what about the men in shit relationships who need to get out? There's almost no services for men, straight or gay. You can't solve a problem by shaking a stick at it.
A screening of this sort would not have helped me. Had a doctor of mine asked me about one of my bruises and whether I was being abused or not, I would have lied, then I would have changed doctors.
What would have helped me? Healthy self-esteem, a stepmother who didn't mentally - and sometimes physically - abuse me, a realistic (read, not informed by movies or TV) understanding of what abusive and healthy relationships look like.
I appreciate that they are looking for concrete solutions to the issue of IPV, but I think it will take something much more profound than just screening the women for abuse and raising doctors' awareness.
Way back in college, I went to my student health center 4 times in 6 months following beatings from my ex. Twice with broken ribs, once with a broken wrist, and once with a concussion. Any further examination would have shown defensive marks and faded bruises and cuts.
I was in denial. I was in shock. I was humiliated. I was not going to raise the topic on my own. A couple of sensitively worded questions from a doctor or nurse may have turned the light bulb on for me. A simple review of my chart may have raised some red flags. No one ever asked.
A few months ago, I fell down the stairs and banged my head. The first question out of the nurse's mouth after taking my vitals was "Sweetie, is anyone hurting you. This is a safe place, and you can tell me." I stood up and gave her a hug and thanked her for asking. I may not have answered her back when I was being abused--but at least she tried.
Not every abused man or woman will go to the hospital. When they do, we've got to be ready to ask the uncomfortable questions and help.
...it's legal in 8 states and D.C. to deny insurance coverage based on the "pre-existing condition" of domestic violence, could a doctor's suspicion of abuse affect a woman's ability to pay for health care?
Urgh. How about raising boys and teaching men to see women as human beings and not walking, talking punching bags who need to get in the kitchen and make their damn dinner?
Also, I did not know that in eight states domestic violence can be used to deny insurance coverage. Now I'm enraged. Excellent.
@Highsmith: That's a brilliant idea. And it might give men an incentive to police each other's violent, misogynist behavior (since basic human kindness isn't enough).
@Highsmith: That is truly ludicrous. Do you believe that women should have higher health care costs because we get pregnant? Do you believe that black men should be taxed at a higher rate because they are statistically more likely to go to prison which costs the state money?
@staryberry: Cheers. @Highsmith: How much would you tax? Where would the funds go? What metrics would you use to raise or lower it? How do you delineate "male violence" from class-based violence, or incidental violence? What if men treat it as a sunk cost and keep up the violence? Do you expand violence to emotional distress, or just physical abuse?
@SarahMC: See, if you would have gone to my barbecue, you would have known those points because I printed them out on little lists and stuck them in the patties, like fortune cookies.
@staryberry: not all men are violent or criminal but way too many. Did you READ that between 1 to 1.5 MILLION women are victims of domestic violence/sexual assault THIS year alone? These aren't small numbers. Let men pay to fix the damage they cause is all. I don't see why this would be sexist.
Pay "the poor" a livable wage and they will use less state services, for one thing, give them universal health care. Btw, why do you single out "the poor"? Wall Street criminals cost the US more than "the poor" ever will.
Let me point out another thing about "the poor". Many of them are single mothers, they and their children live in poverty because deadbeat dads won't own up to their responsibilities.
@Highsmith: Did you READ that there are approximately 100 million adult males in the United States? (2000 Censes data) That isn't a small number either. Let's say, for argument's sake, that there was one abuser for every abuse victim in the US. If the tables were turned, would you honestly argue that all women should be taxed at a higher rate for the bad actions of 1-1.5 percent of the female population?
I single out the poor to show how ill thought out your argument is. As a society we do not tax people according to how much we think they cost society because this, at the core, violates basic concepts of fairness. Instead we tax according to who is most able to pay taxes. As a result, Wall Street execs pay about 35% of their income for taxes while the lowest quintile of income earners receives about 10% of their income earned income tax credit, regardless of their sex.
Olowokandi is right, there are ways to try to fight violence against women through the tax system by supporting organizations that help women, or even providing tax deductions or credits to women who are extricating themselves from abusive relationships. Taxing half the population for the actions of a few bad-actors is not the solution.
@staryberry: "Taxing half the population for the actions of a few bad-actors is not the solution."
Hell yeah, it is. Smokers get harassed & penalized because of the damage they cause to themselves & others. Why not the gender that brutalizes & terrorizes its own gender and especially the other?
@Highsmith: First, smoking is a choice that government has chosen to discourage. People can quit smoking. No one can quit being male or female. And my brother and my father simply are no more responsible for the actions of abusive men than I am.
Second, there is nothing focused about a tax based on gender. What you are advocating is not the equivalent of a smoking tax, it is the equivalent of taxing all people over the age of 18 because some people over the age of 18 smoke cigarettes and cause damage to themselves and others.
There is nothing fair about taxing 50% of the population. If you cannot see the inherent unfairness in that, then this conversation is a lost cause.
I read an article in the British Medical Journal today about some research which analysed 3 safe sex education programmes (atleast one was from the USA) and none of them had any effect on the teenage boys who participated in them and why would they, when the culture of rape is so pervasive?
When when when are we going to change the wording of these studies to "Studies show X in Y boys has committed an act of violence in a relationship". Please note-- I am not blaming Jezebel's wording, but the people who keep doing these studies.
I think it's great that we want parents to learn how to protect their children. However, it smacks of blame the victim mentality - should there not be an equal or greater focus on teaching children, tweens, and young adults how to interact in a non-violent and non-manipulative manner? In the case of domestic violence situations, it's not the victims fault that the person s/he's with is abusive, it's the abusive person's fault that they are abusive. That is the source of the conflict, yet most approaches to domestic violence are to help people escape, not address the root cause of the situation.
@LoganChicken: That's a great point. I wonder if people can more easily conceive of ways to "protect" children from abuse than they can ways to stop abusers from acting in the first place. As a result, that's what we're hearing in this discussion.
@LoganChicken: I mean, what are girls supposed to do when their boyfriends pressure them into sex? We can't empower our selves out of rape. (Can we? I would love to be wrong about this).
England has a lot of social problems. This doesn't surprise me too much. Amazing that 90% of teenagers have been in intimate relationships though. No one I grew up with was in a relationship until 18, 19, many took longer than that. To me 90% seems awfully high.
But what can you do about a guy or girl who accepts abuse because they desperately don't want to be alone? You can give them all the advice in the world, but if they choose abuse over lonliness, what can you do?
Of course that's not the case most of the time, and I agree that education should deal with relationship issues. But it's hard to pry details of a teenager's personal life from them without stealing a diary or some such (which isn't cool) so these are difficult problems, as you can't solve what you don't know about.
@Agumen: I think this study is about the UK, not England, and although the UK is not near the top of the best-place-in-the-world-to-live... charts, to say 'England has a lot of social problems' I think is to lower it unnecessarily beneath the many other western countries that have similar social problems.
@Asmo: Those numbers make no sense. I wonder whether they described rape in the question or used the word "rape."
A lot of girls and women won't call their rapes "rape."
@SarahMC: I thought the same thing, too. I am willing to be the numbers would be pretty different if the girls being interviewed did not have to specifically use the word rape.
@Jack_Burton: It is unfortunate that so many girls are pressured into having sex, but I wouldn't call finally caving into the demands rape. Now if a boy is holding the girl down and won't let her get up and she decides to just give up fighting him off than that is rape.
I'm always skeptical when viewing survey statistics because the results could always look different depending on how a question was worded.
@checkyaself: It bothers me that you would phrase it that way. There are of course different degrees and one may be more traumatizing than another, but that type of attitude is part of the reason that woman are afraid to come forward. They don't want their experience to be trivialized. IMO any sex that is not consented to and fully participated in by both partners is rape.
@Elizabth_Bennet: At the point that there is coercion or threatening someone, it equals rape, to me, anyway.
And I think this stresses the importance of education and consensus on concrete definitions.
That's why I asked - to bring up a discussion on the specific definition. Whether people agree or not, it is vital that people understand that opinions vary widely.
Since the studies' definition (of a non-rape category(?!?)) was provided, I wanted to seize on it and compare it to my own and others'.
This is why we need to repeal all child labor laws. If teenagers spent their days toiling at textile mills, maybe they'd be too tired to sexually abuse each other by the time they got home at night.
Oh Jezebel has quoted Digitalspy , my occasional home from home when I am not on here. Jezebels of a nervous disposition should hesitate to venture there as the moderators allow commentors to venture periously close to libel and certainly downright nastiness on occasion about people in the public eye.
@Penny: I will always remember decades ago, a fellow schoolgirl proudly displaying painful bruises inflicted by her then boyfriend. Then as now, far too many girls and women believe it is far better to have a man who batters you or in other ways undermines your self esteem than to be single. Now that really would be tragic or so the warped logic goes.
@Penny: I read that a lot around here, that commenters wouldn't want a daughter because they just don't want to see somebody else go through all that shit-- but I really think that any Jezebel type would provide a better home for a girl than almost anybody.
Jordan’s popularity has taken a substantial nose-dive amongst her fans in recent months to the extent they have been booing her in public. Now she announces she has been raped several times. It smacks of a desperate and rather questionable attempt to win back those fans.
@Rare Affinity: I don't know her very well but that is a very serious accusation. Even if Heidi Spencer were to say something like that I would be more inclined to believe her because I would hope no one would ever lie about such a serious crime (even though it does happen). The only thing that would not make me believe her was if evidence were to come out that she had been misrepresenting the facts/lying.
@Rare Affinity: I feel a little dubious about it too. I want to stand up for the sisterhood, but when we're talking about one of the most shameless self-promoters alive, I'm not sure I can take her word for it.
@Lana Leigh loves Meryl Streep: Most people here in the UK are not saying she wasn't raped (many are sympathetic in fact as Rare Affinity seemed to be), but everyone seems to be questioning the timing of the announcement. Why not when she was happily married and popular and could have given money to support rape crisis centres for example?
I think a lot of people are are uncomfortable with the idea of her using her rape to bolster her public position. It could be seen as disrespectful to other rape victims and to trivialise the issue as mere gossip rag material.
@KLondike5: It is the timing from a woman who has never ever held back from revealing any aspect of her private life before now that makes me a shade cyncial about her motives. In the same way, when Danielle Lloyd needed to be rehabiliatated in the public eye, she suddenly revealed that she had been the victim of domestic abuse. Just as the late Jade Goody led the way in profitting from her private life, revealing her personal tragedy became the only way she was too was able to climb back into public favour again.
@Lana Leigh loves Meryl Streep: I am not questionning if she had been raped. I am questionning her motives for revealng her story now. She has made an extremely lucrative living from selling every aspect of her private life to the tabloids.Her fall in popularity means she needs to rehabilitate her image. Ever since Jade Goody, being depicted as a victim is a tried and tested way of gaining public redemption in the UK tabloids.
@Rare Affinity: I'm with you on this. I don't question that she was raped, but the only reason she has revealed it on this occasion - as she states herself - is because her cage fighter/Z-list actor boyfriend has been criticised for being in a sleazy film which allegedly glorifies sexual violence. Way to trivialise a traumatic experience, Katie.
09/16/09
09/16/09
What would have helped me? Healthy self-esteem, a stepmother who didn't mentally - and sometimes physically - abuse me, a realistic (read, not informed by movies or TV) understanding of what abusive and healthy relationships look like.
I appreciate that they are looking for concrete solutions to the issue of IPV, but I think it will take something much more profound than just screening the women for abuse and raising doctors' awareness.
09/16/09
I was in denial. I was in shock. I was humiliated. I was not going to raise the topic on my own. A couple of sensitively worded questions from a doctor or nurse may have turned the light bulb on for me. A simple review of my chart may have raised some red flags. No one ever asked.
A few months ago, I fell down the stairs and banged my head. The first question out of the nurse's mouth after taking my vitals was "Sweetie, is anyone hurting you. This is a safe place, and you can tell me." I stood up and gave her a hug and thanked her for asking. I may not have answered her back when I was being abused--but at least she tried.
Not every abused man or woman will go to the hospital. When they do, we've got to be ready to ask the uncomfortable questions and help.
09/16/09
ZOMG WTF? That makes me vomit.
09/16/09
09/16/09
09/16/09
Also, I did not know that in eight states domestic violence can be used to deny insurance coverage. Now I'm enraged. Excellent.
09/16/09
09/16/09
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09/16/09
Government enforced inequality is always wrong.
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09/16/09
kidding...OR AM I?!?
09/16/09
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09/16/09
Male violence/criminal activity is an OPTIONAL act, it serves nothing, it only is costly both in humanistic and economic terms.
Black men are not more criminal than other men, due to institutionalized racism they are convicted more often.
09/16/09
Not all men are violent or criminal, but you don't seem you have a problem instituting government sexism.
09/16/09
Pay "the poor" a livable wage and they will use less state services, for one thing, give them universal health care. Btw, why do you single out "the poor"? Wall Street criminals cost the US more than "the poor" ever will.
Let me point out another thing about "the poor". Many of them are single mothers, they and their children live in poverty because deadbeat dads won't own up to their responsibilities.
09/16/09
I single out the poor to show how ill thought out your argument is. As a society we do not tax people according to how much we think they cost society because this, at the core, violates basic concepts of fairness. Instead we tax according to who is most able to pay taxes. As a result, Wall Street execs pay about 35% of their income for taxes while the lowest quintile of income earners receives about 10% of their income earned income tax credit, regardless of their sex.
Olowokandi is right, there are ways to try to fight violence against women through the tax system by supporting organizations that help women, or even providing tax deductions or credits to women who are extricating themselves from abusive relationships. Taxing half the population for the actions of a few bad-actors is not the solution.
09/16/09
Hell yeah, it is. Smokers get harassed & penalized because of the damage they cause to themselves & others. Why not the gender that brutalizes & terrorizes its own gender and especially the other?
09/16/09
Second, there is nothing focused about a tax based on gender. What you are advocating is not the equivalent of a smoking tax, it is the equivalent of taxing all people over the age of 18 because some people over the age of 18 smoke cigarettes and cause damage to themselves and others.
There is nothing fair about taxing 50% of the population. If you cannot see the inherent unfairness in that, then this conversation is a lost cause.
09/01/09
09/01/09
09/01/09
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09/01/09
But what can you do about a guy or girl who accepts abuse because they desperately don't want to be alone? You can give them all the advice in the world, but if they choose abuse over lonliness, what can you do?
Of course that's not the case most of the time, and I agree that education should deal with relationship issues. But it's hard to pry details of a teenager's personal life from them without stealing a diary or some such (which isn't cool) so these are difficult problems, as you can't solve what you don't know about.
09/01/09
09/01/09
09/01/09
A lot of girls and women won't call their rapes "rape."
09/01/09
09/01/09
Would you call that rape?
09/01/09
I'm always skeptical when viewing survey statistics because the results could always look different depending on how a question was worded.
09/01/09
09/01/09
And I think this stresses the importance of education and consensus on concrete definitions.
That's why I asked - to bring up a discussion on the specific definition. Whether people agree or not, it is vital that people understand that opinions vary widely.
Since the studies' definition (of a non-rape category(?!?)) was provided, I wanted to seize on it and compare it to my own and others'.
09/01/09
09/01/09
09/01/09
The last few weeks have me seriously questioning this desire.
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09/01/09
I think a lot of people are are uncomfortable with the idea of her using her rape to bolster her public position. It could be seen as disrespectful to other rape victims and to trivialise the issue as mere gossip rag material.
09/01/09
09/01/09
09/01/09