Guess that pop personality Rihanna's song was a little too close to home, the singer an alleged victim of domestic abuse by boyfriend Chris Brown. It is distressing for any woman to face this situation but brings home the fact that even the rich and famous are not immune. It is equally sad that the non-white community come under scrutiny again as the usual perpetrators of spousal abuse, remember OJ Simpson?
Spousal abuse is not limited to colour, class, marital status, economic background. It can happen to literally anyone.
Statistics across the globe point to an ever increasing trend of domestic abuse. Is that we're keeping better records, or that more women/men are reporting it or that the numbers are in fact on the increase is not clear. But they are going up. The types of violence vary; physical, psychological, related to power and control issues, sexual, verbal, drug & alcohol related, with related causes. Much research has taken place, papers presented, reports, articles, you name it, people are aware.
It is an academic exercise to wonder what drives people to these ends. Same kind of thing that breeds dictators, warmongers and serial killers. Ultimately it is about power. The question remanins, what do we do about it. Having seen domestic violence close up leaves me to conclude that there are no real answers, just individual solutions that people employ for their own survival.
2 comments:
I guess this a very deep rooted issue, thus very hard to erradicate.
In Peru we have the same problem, most of the time related to poverty, ignorance, alcohol abuse, male chauvinism, among others. And most of the time we also can find that many women, the mostly abused party, are simply resigned to this abuse.
To me, I see a lot of women being caught up in their ‘independence’ that they don’t wanna be seen as a victim. Abuse happens all the time, and women AND men really don’t wanna talk about especially in this day n age… again with social consequences and how the individual will look in the public’s eye: ‘Hmm, she man beat she?!’
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