November 24, 2005

Domestic Violence a "Worldwide" Phenomenon

Hatched by Dafydd

The statistic (and accompanying headline) sounds grim, from a feminist standpoint:

One in 6 women suffers from domestic violence: WHO
Nov 24, 2005
By Patricia Reaney

LONDON (Reuters) - One woman lost twins after being hit in the stomach by the father of her unborn babies, another sleeps in a locked bedroom to protect herself from the partner who has threatened to shoot her.

They are among the one in 6 women worldwide who suffer from domestic violence. In some communities up to 2 in 3 females have been harmed by their husband, live-in partner or boyfriend, according to a World Health Organization (WHO) study.

"Society has condoned this for far too long," said Joy Phumaphi, assistant director-general of Family and Community Health at the WHO.

And then, in mounting alarm, one reads to the end of the article... and discovers that this massive survey was conducted among women living in Bangladesh, Brazil, Ethiopia, Montenegro, Namibia, Peru, Samoa, Serbia, Tanzania, Thailand -- and Japan.

Ka-thump. That is the sound of your heels slamming back to earth. It is hardly a shock to the system to discover that famine- and flood-stricken Bangladesh, war-torn Serbia and Montenegro, and impoverished third-world countries like Peru, Namibia, Tanzania, and -- well, all the rest except Japan -- would have a high level of abuse of women. That is why (please forgive the politically incorrect assessment) those other countries, including Germany, Canada, Great Britain, and yes, the United States, make up what we call "Western Civ."

Japan is the lone exception... but even here, one abruptly realizes we have been told nothing: one out of six, with a base pool of 24,000 respondents, means 4,000 women in the sample claimed they had been violently abused. But we have no way of knowing how many (if any at all) of those women live in Japan. It's entirely possible that the domestic violence rate in Japan may be way, way below that "one in 6" ratio, and that Japan is just a "beard" for the real result.

Newsflash: Impoverished, war-ravaged, disease-ridden countries in the Third World have domestic violence rates comparable to their tribal, ethnic, religious, and criminal violence rates!

Hm... somehow, that just doesn't flow the way the headline they actually used does.

The particular fallacy here is called dropping context: if you knew at the outset that they were talking about domestic violence in the "developing" nations (developing what -- Rickets?), you would be considerably less interested in the article. It's hardly surprising that countries that have a higher homicide rate than literacy rate also have a lot of violence against women. But by dropping that context, headline-perusers are misled to believe the scare-stat refers to countries like (say) the United States.

Context dropping is a favorite fallacy of what Christina Hoff Sommers calls the "gender feminist" movement: radical feminists whose idea of feminism is simply to be pro-women and anti-men. (Sommers contrasts gender feminisim with "equity feminism," in which what is sought is equality of opportunity, not the gynocentric view that girls are good and boys are bad.)

Gender feminists are fond of reeling off statistic after flawed statistic, with wild abandon, to show how rotten men are. Another infamous fallacy used by the high-feminist cadre is what I call the all-inclusive final term:

Did you know that more than 50% of American woman have, in the last year, been murdered, beaten, raped, tortured, flayed alive, crucified, run over by a steamroller, fired from a circus cannon, hit on the head by a piano, or yelled at?

In this case, of course, virtually all of the women who fit the frightening percentage fall into the final term. The real statistic is that half of all women have been yelled at; the other dire fates in fact contribute almost nothing to that 50% figure. They serve only to alarm the reader, who might come away thinking that 50% of all America women are murdered.

A third fallacy is the eternally unchanging statistic: had you heard that women, on average, earn only "fifty-seven cents" for every dollar men earn? It's a discouraging statistic to a working woman, a seeming synecdoche of everything that is wrong with the patriarchal world. And it may even have been true -- back in the 1970s.

But the figure is never updated, though decades have passed. Once calculated (or made up out of whole cloth), the number assumes a life of its own, surviving many years of steady progress for women in the workplace. In that way, it remains a rallying cry long after it has ceased to be even vaguely correct. But no worries -- it may be fake, but it's still accurate -- in the meta-sense of conveying an important feeling that is part of "women's ways of knowing."

Between these three fallacies, you find about 99% of all gender-feminist Weltansicht. So the next time you see a feminist statistic that is just incredible, bear in mind that the word "incredible" literally means "not believable."

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, November 24, 2005, at the time of 5:16 AM

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» WHO Are You? from Big Lizards
Commenter KarmiCommunist, in the comments to my previous post, kindly provided the URL to the actual WHO report itself: WHO Multi-country Study on Women's Health and Domestic Violence against Women. A deeper look into this document both confirms my ear... [Read More]

Tracked on November 24, 2005 3:28 PM

» While You Were Shoveling... from Big Lizards
...partially oxidized domesticated fowl into your maws.... For those of you who decided, funnily enough, to focus on "family," "friends," and "football" this holiday weekend, rather than do the manly thing and read your favorite blogs right there at th... [Read More]

Tracked on November 28, 2005 3:20 AM

Comments

The following hissed in response by: KarmiCommunist

Figure 5, on page 20 of the Summary Report looks interesting. In Ethiopia, almost 70% of the women believe that a wife deserves a beating if she "does not complete housework", and almost 80% believe a wife deserves a beating if she "disobeys her husband".

Ummmmmmmm...the Ethiopian women sound quite interesting; however, humble me shall stick to hermit hood since the whole WHO report may be yet another feminist trick...so to speak.

The above hissed in response by: KarmiCommunist [TypeKey Profile Page] at November 24, 2005 11:20 AM

The following hissed in response by: KarmiCommunist

i think that i have found why the WHO Report does not include women's violence against men in Western Civ..

1) What happens when men are abused. "Called the police because she attacked him, usually with a weapon, and the police came and arrested him, or made no arrest at all.

2) Stories Of Abused Men In in...in...in.

3) Battered Men - The Hidden Side of Domestic Violence 835,000 men battered each year, silent too long....

The Bible offers some advice to battered men:

It is better to dwell in a corner of the housetop, than with a brawling woman in a wide house. Proverbs 21:9

Of the thirteen wives that i was once married to, 3 pulled firearms on me, 1 hit me with a baseball bat, 5 hit me with various other types of clubs (frying pans included), 9 cheated on me, 13 lied to me, and all 13 yelled at me. Ms. Viki threw a radio at me, and then followed me (she was butt-naked) from our home as i was leaving it...she then ripped the truck's radio antenna off as i was backing out of our driveway.

In my humble Low and Ignorant Insane swamp hermit opinion, American women have *WAY* too much freedom, and they abuse such. These same women, along with the WHO seem to ignore the plight of women in the Arab, Muslim, and Islamic world. Afghanistan, Iraq, and Iran are just 3 examples. They see nothing wrong with what Bill and Hillary Clinton did to Chelsea...

Yes, Hillary also, since she tried to cover for her cheating husband whilst they both were raising Chelsea.

Anyway, American women are too violent and too much trouble, and hermit hood works quite well...

KårmiÇømmünîs†

The above hissed in response by: KarmiCommunist [TypeKey Profile Page] at November 24, 2005 1:33 PM

The following hissed in response by: D

Excellent post on feminist fallacies. To your 3 I would add a fourth: "THE FLEXIBLE DEFINITION". This means that terms like "abuse" expand or contract flexibly, depending on the use feminists want to put it to. Hence Hoff-Sommers pinpoints shocking accusations of "abuse", which includes such things as "verbal" abuse- i.e. argument with boyfriend or spouse. "Rape" may include plying a woman with alcohol to obtain consensual sex, only it may not be defined as consensual afterwards.

Strangely enough, feminists seem to find NO documented cases of women plying men with alcohol to obtain sexual attention. Oh no.... perish the thought.. women are just too virtuous... and if it did happen, well, isnt' it "his" fault? Keep up the good work!

The above hissed in response by: D [TypeKey Profile Page] at November 25, 2005 10:30 PM

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