Domestic Violence
By Katie Llanos-Small, November 27th, 2006
Yesterday was the International Day Against Violence Against Women, something that the Spanish government supports. And how, exactly, does it support it? By making a radio advertisement featuring famous (male) soccer players encouraging women to leave a violent domestic situation.
Imagine it: suave, radio-friendly male voices purring that you’re worth more than that, you should get out, you don’t have to tolerate domestic violence. Like All Blacks going on TV telling women to leave their abusive husbands. I guess I should be glad they’re making the effort, but if you ask me, they’ve seriously missed the mark on this one.
For a start, it’s patronising. Not all men beat up their wives, but on the whole it is men who beat their wives, and not vice versa. Thus, it’s all very well for a man to tell a woman to leave such a situation, but it’s difficult for him to understand the women’s position. Just like I would feel like a fraud getting up and announcing that all abused women should leave their partners, given that I have no personal experience or knowledge of domestic violence.
Obviously, I’m not saying that I think women should stay at home and take it – I’m saying that these situations are complicated and it’s clearly a really difficult place to get out of.
But personally, I think this goes beyond patronising. As I see it, here men are way more soccer-obsessed that women are. Way more. Thus these futbolistas are going to be heard by men, including abusive men. And if you ask me, by telling women in such a facile manner to leave an abusive partner, the subtext is that women who stay are making a choice to stay. Which legitimises the violence in a way.
Saying “just leave now” doesn’t take into account all the complexities of a situation, it simplifies it way too much. And for a man – sorry guys, but in this case it really is the symbol of the abuser – to be telling a woman to leave if she doesn’t like it, it gives the impression that taking such a step is easy, which it clearly isn’t, or we wouldn’t have so much domestic violence in this world.
Why couldn’t they get former abused women to make the ad? Or get the soccer players to tell guys who hit their girlfriends/wives that that really is not cool?
Other posts by Katie Llanos-Small
November 29th, 2006 at 9:04 pm
Hey Katie, that was a really interesting read! Over here we just had a white ribbon campaign with a sports personality (I think that’s what he is) urging guys to wear the white ribbon to show they are against violence towards women. So at leat over here it was a male-targeted campaign. http://www.whiteribbon.org.nz if you’re interested.
I agree absolutely with what you said about targeting the women being patronising. It fails to take into account that when a women leaves, it is the riskiest time for her (i.e. she is most likely to be killed by an abusive partner), and the possible (I’d say probable) inadequate support she might receive, financially and emotionally also make leaving difficult. As well, the complexities of each situation and issues around children and custody matter too.
Telling women to leave could also implicitly be seen to blame women when they have not created the situation they are in. It isn’t women not leaving that’s the problem, it’s the abuse. Also, my friend who has worked a lot in the Domestic Violence area says that it takes women an average of 7 attempts to leave an abuser for good, so leaving is often a process rather than a simple action.
Thanks for the perceptive post!
December 5th, 2006 at 9:24 am
There was a very interesting article in (I think) the Dom Post a couple of weeks ago, which quoted two of the researchers involved in the Christchurch longitudinal study. They were highly critical of the White Ribbon campaign’s approach at targeting only men. Apparently the data from the longitudinal study shows that (can’t remember the exact figure) somewhere around 80% of households with domestic violence involved partners who were mutually abusive. Apparently their data showed that the stereotype of the angry husband / partner beating his wife / female partner is a myth; domestic violence is in most situations is a two way street involving abuse - it’s just that the male partner has a predilection to use greater degrees of violence. Interesting stuff.
J