Conrad Liveris is sick and tired of the ways our society minimizes violence against women.
When gender-based violence occurs, blame often falls to the offender. We miss an opportunity to reflect upon our own attitudes and society’s expectations.
Violence against women occurs when people fail to recognise social standards and lack respect for human dignity. It is a form of deprivation of liberty.
Recently a friend of mine was assaulted by a man. She’s young, confident and intelligent. It has now impacted her professional life. Like many other victims, she cannot take time off from work due to a number of pressing projects. She is also of two minds about alerting the police.
During this, I have thought long and hard about my role. Where can I support her? Where can I minimise violence against women? It is a real struggle, for I am but one person.
Apart from asking her to seek professional advice, I felt a bit useless. As a type-A personality I was hoping to try and help her more.
It can be uncomfortable to call out gender-based violence, but it is better for me to deal with it now rather than waiting until it gets worse.
35% of women globally have faced physical or sexual violence, while some nations report statistics as high at 70% – to call this anything less than an epidemic would be side-lining this issue.
Of female murder victims in the United States and Australia, somewhere between 40-70% are due to partner violence.
If a woman lives in an urban region, she is twice as likely to face violence. It has been found that 83% of girls in the United States aged 12-16 have experienced sexual harassment.
Arguably, it is becoming harder to be a woman. That is not what anyone should want, it impugns on the dignity of life.
♦◊♦
A true 21st Century man does not perpetuate violence, he shuts down sexism and misogyny, he supports women and does not deprive anybody their liberty or independence.
I get frustrated in these conversations. The expectation shouldn’t be on men to stand up when they think about their wife, mother, sister or daughter. That is not a call to arms. Men should stand up for any and all women, not just the women in their lives. After all, every woman is a person and nobody should be subjected to violence.
Domestic violence, apart from being a stain of morality and decency, costs the economy $8.3 billion. $2.5 billion of that is in losses to productivity.
I am becoming sick and tired of calling men out on making sexist comments. When we allow innuendo to exist it then pushes the line on what we think is acceptable sexually and physically. I won’t ever accept sexism, even if only because it fails the morality test.
Everyone, every man, has a role to play in this conversation. Whether our workplace is in the army barracks or on Main Street nobody should be an enabler of violence.
–
Photo: Flickr/Department of Foreign Af
I think it’s problematic whenever these topics focus on sex or gender. I remember being outright beaten in public by a female classmate when I was growing up and ultimately I let it happen in large part because of the public awareness campaign to eliminate volence against women. Given the numbers at which males are treated like this, it’s not useful to focus on one sex, gender or socio-economic grouping because that just serves to send the message that if you’re not a member of a group we’re advocating for, you’re not as important. It’s somewhat ironic that it wasn’t… Read more »
Conrad Liveris: I get frustrated in these conversations. The expectation shouldn’t be on men to stand up when they think about their wife, mother, sister or daughter. That is not a call to arms. Men should stand up for any and all women, not just the women in their lives. After all, every woman is a person and nobody should be subjected to violence. — Let me do a quick gender flip and play this back to you: “I get frustrated in these conversations. The expectation shouldn’t be on wpmen to stand up when they think about their husband, father,… Read more »
This is rubbish. Appart from the tired and manufactured statitics you repeat along with feminists. BringBackOurGirls is evidence against this entire article. 100s of boys have been killed by the Boko Haram over the last 12 months. Media nor Politicians could care less. Then they kidnap 200 odd girls and the media, government, and public go mental. At what point or what relationship does a boy have to have to you Conrad before you will stand up to the rights of these boys safety. VAWA is evidence against this entire article. If we minimised violence against women why does media… Read more »
The message is so convoluted that at best it can only be partially effective. People want a certain result, but the total of their ideology won’t allow them to ask for what’s required. And so, we crawl forward…
When you talk about violence against women in particular, the thing that gets missed is that probably most of the violence or at least a real large part is perpetrated by a guy that she knows and cares about. I went out clubbing with two friends. We stopped by a friends house to see if he would like to join us as we hadn’t see him in years. His girlfriend who we hadn’t previously met was visiting. To make a long story short. He wanted to go. She didn’t. He took her car and when we met them at the… Read more »