Condoning Domestic Violence? TV, Books, & Silence - Why We All Should 'Tell Somebody'

This week Glamour magazine published the results of a national survey conducted to measure the extent of relationship violence against women. The survey concluded that 60 per cent of young women in America have been subject to some form of relationship abuse or violence. Moreover, 24 per cent have not told anyone they've been abused and 37 per cent of women who know someone in an abusive relationship never said anything to that person or law enforcement authorities about it. In lieu of these results, Glamour has kicked off a campaign called 'Tell Somebody' to raise awareness of domestic violence in America and to encourage friends to keep tabs on friends in potentially violent relationships.

Violence against women is a phenomena that transcends culture, race, and religion. If 60 per cent of women in a country that has made significant social and legal advancements on their behalf are subject to relationship violence, one can only imagine the actual statistics in countries lacking any such protections or support for women.

To make matters worse, recent publications of teen fiction are equating love to violence, not to mention certain controversial episodes of TV series based on the books that seem to highlight misogyny. Two years ago, criticisms were launched against the vampire Twilight series, noting that the protagonist Bella was engaged in an abusive romance with vampire Edward. More recently, Jezebel writer Margarett Hartmann, reported on the criticism the most recent episode of Gossip Girl garnered for equating violence as romance. Gossip Girl is another teen book series made into a TV show. In the most recent episode aired on May 2nd, a male character, Chuck, lunges a punch at his ex-girlfriend, Blair, misses and smashes the window behind her cutting her face. "Yet this isn't a story about relationship abuse," Hartmann reports, "the writers say it shows how much he loves her."

Yes, you read that right, the Executive Producer of Gossip Girl is defending the scene not as abuse but as the intensity of love. "The way we viewed it, I think it's very clear that Blair is not afraid in those moments, for herself. They have a volatile relationship, they always have, but I do not believe—or I should say we do not believe—that it is abuse when it's the two of them. Chuck does not try to hurt Blair. He punches the glass because he has rage, but he has never, and will never, hurt Blair. He knows it and she knows it, and I feel it's very important to know that she is not scared—if anything, she is scared for Chuck—and what he might do to himself, but she is never afraid of what he might do to her. Leighton and I were very clear about that." Let's backtrack for a minute and note that Chuck's character doesn't have a brilliant record. In the Season 1 pilot he attempts to rape two other female characters.

If this series is about love then love has gotten mixed up with all the wrong messages to girls and it is desensitizing them to relationship abuse and essentially 'normalizing' bad behavior as 'romantic.' To be fair, a lot of paperback adult romance novels have carried similar themes of rape and initial abuse as romantic.  However, if these shows and books are targeted to teenagers parents should engage their children in discussion drawing the line between fantasy and reality. The reality is 4 women a day die at the hands of their abusive partners in the United States, according to the 2011 Glamour survey.



Now let's consider domestic violence in countries outside the US. In 2008, NPR did a segment called Domestic Violence: A Silent Crisis in Russia. The Russian government estimates 14,000 women die at the hands of their partners each year but Russian police don't even classify abuse as a crime. Because it is culturally considered a 'private matter' no support systems exist in Russia to rehabilitate or protect women who are the victims of abusive relationships. A US Report on Human Rights Practices published in 2006 added that in Brazil domestic violence is 'widespread and underreported' although the government now appears to be taking legal steps to protect women. Spain has one of the highest rates of domestic violence in Western Europe where reportedly 73 women died at the hands of their partners in 2010. Similarly, in Portugal 15,904 complaints were registered concerning domestic violence in 2009, including 16 murders, according to Amnesty International. In 2004, Saudi broadcast journalist Rania al-Baz breached the social taboo and spoke out against domestic violence in Saudi Arabia after sustaining horrific injuries perpetrated by her husband. Her audacity and courage launched public debate in the Gulf on domestic violence.

Violence against women should cease being condoned whether by TV, books, movies, the passivity of governments, and the act of silence. Tell Somebody! Women (and enlightened men) need to fight back not just in the United States but in countries around the world.

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Glamour Tell Somebody: Text TELLNOW to 85944 to make a $10 donation, and the Avon Foundation will match every dollar you donate to the National Domestic Violence Hotline. In 2010, 83,027 calls went unanswered by the hotline due to lack of funding— more than 1,590 calls per week. Glamour, in partnership with Avon, is seeking to raise $200,000.

Burlesconi's Women: On Fidelity, Monogamy, Sex, & Power

Italy's Prime Minister, Silvio Burlesconi, has been under a lot of fire over his extramarital affairs with and gift-giving to beautiful younger women, and recently for allegedly having sex with an underage prostitute. Italian women are rallying against him and accusing him of demeaning women through his "bad boy" behaviour and "bunga bunga" sex parties.  The protesting women have put up some fabulous signs such as "We Like Sex, Not Bunga Bunga!"

The Burlesconi scandals highlight fascinating contradictions of Western culture, society, assumptions about morality, and also emphasizes the dynamic of how democracy actually instituted monogamy (fact). Italian women declare they 'like sex' but view Burlesconi's conduct towards women as demeaning. Yet, sexuality is intrinsically tied to this view of 'demeaning' and Burlesconi's mistresses are portrayed as victims of his 'predatory lusts' rather than willing agents in their affairs with him. The traditional and popular view of women as the sexually passive victims of male lusts prevails. It would be funny if news stories, rather, portrayed Burlesconi as being a victim of women's overpowering beauty and unable to control himself which is probably closer to the truth.

Bill Clinton escaped his scandals by claiming to have an uncontrollable sexual addiction. I say, if that's the case, then all men must suffer this incurable fact of nature. Should we so admonish men for their natural weaknesses, and should we display women as victims of male lust? Should we curse nature with such public outcries against natural human urges, against the facts of human sexuality? True, instinct can be controlled and these men should know better given their offices, but it's the fact of their offices, of their power, that they have the option to stray outside their marriage beds. I am not condoning the practice, simply stating a fact. And I hardly view women as passive victims. I'm skeptical of the way the media paints mistresses, either publicly scorning them or viewing them as helpless. My view of feminism is that human sexuality, in all its splendour, is precisely what gives women power and plenty of it.

Consider the following hypocrisy: Burlesconi's current wife Veronica Lario was formerly one of Burlesconi's mistresses back in the 80s before marrying him after his subsequent divorce in 1990. Truly, hell hath no fury like a woman's scorn and Lario has incited a serious public shaming of her husband for his flirtations, affairs, and mixing and mingling with underage minors. I truly admire Lario's candor, courage, and lack of mincing words although part of me finds it difficult to be sympathetic to her given that she began her relationship with Burlesconi under dubious circumstances. She knew what she was signing up for, a man with an obvious weakness for women. I am not supporting Burlesconi in crap behavior but I think deeper issues of sexual evolution, politics, religious morality, need to be considered before sending him to the scaffold.

It is a fact of nature that a man who has money and power, essentially resources, will have access to many women and women will willingly gamble their hearts (and sex) for a powerful man, married or not, than for a weak one. Polygamy was the status quo of ancient societies because powerful men would have a monopoly over beautiful young women who would bear their offspring in exchange for his resources and protection. The moral impetus to monogamy was first seen with the establishment of modern democracies. Matt Ridley writes the following in The Red Queen: Sex and the Evolution of Human Nature - 

... the long interlude of human polygamy, which began in Babylon nearly four thousand years ago, has largely come to an end in the West. Official concubines became unofficial mistresses, and mistresses became secrets kept from wives. In 1988, political power far from being a ticket to polygamy, was jeopardized by any suggestion of infidelity. Whereas the Chinese emperor Fei-Ti once kept ten thousand women in his harem. Gary Hart, running for the presidency of the most powerful nation on earth, could not even get away with two. 

What happened? Christianity? Hardly. It coexisted with polygamy for centuries and its strictures were as cynically self-interested as any lay man's. Women's rights? They came too late. A Victorian woman had as much or as little say in her husband's affairs as a medieval one. No historian can yet explain what changed, but guesses include the idea that kings came to need internal allies enough that they had to surrender despotic power. Democracy, of a sort, was born. Once monogamous men had a vote against polygamists (and who doesn't want to tear down a competitor, however much he might also want to emulate him?), their fate was sealed.

My Chinese grandmother once told me that when a woman picks a man she should do so wisely. She was frank in noting that if a man is too handsome and has too much money he's "no good" for the fact that he'll have many women on the side. A woman who marries a man of this calibre will have to spend a lifetime defending her prize or be willing to look the other way to his extramarital affairs in order to maintain her marriage. Power and monogamy are rarely bedfellows.

If anyone should nail Burlesconi on anything, corruption is a more substantial place to start, but his affairs with women, similar to the Clinton scandals, are rather trifling. If you're going to send Burlesconi to the scaffold for sex, then send all heterosexual men with him because as one old wise cabbie noted to me earlier this week quite frankly: "My dear, men don't stop looking [at and for women], if they stop looking they're dead. Sex is the most powerful force in the world, my dear. If you are a beautiful woman with a brain you can take down the most powerful men in the world." Fact. Women are not the victims of powerful men, powerful men are victims of beautiful women.

The Arab-Jewish dating divide: thoughts on relationships, ethnic identity, and pluralism

Earlier this year, a story came out of Israel of a Palestinian man accused of "rape by deception" after having consensual sex with a woman who believed him to be a Jew. According to different news reports the man denied misrepresenting himself. Nonetheless, he was sentenced to 18 months in prison in a plea bargain.

The story appears to have come down to a classic case of he-said/she-said:

According to the complaint filed by the woman with the Jerusalem district court, the two met in downtown Jerusalem in September 2008 where [Saber] Kashur, an Arab from East Jerusalem, introduced himself as a Jewish bachelor seeking a serious relationship. The two then had consensual sex in a nearby building before Kashur left. When she later found out that he was not Jewish but an Arab, she filed a criminal complaint for rape and indecent assault. Although Kashur was initially charged with rape and indecent assault, this was changed to a charge of rape by deception as part of a plea bargain arrangement. Handing down the verdict, Tzvi Segal, one of three judges on the case, acknowledged that sex had been consensual but said that although not "a classical rape by force," the woman would not have consented if she had not believed Kashur was Jewish. The sex therefore was obtained under false pretences, the judges said. "If she hadn't thought the accused was a Jewish bachelor interested in a serious romantic relationship, she would not have cooperated," they added.

Remember, the Palestinian man denied misrepresenting himself as a Jew; he is currently appealing the sentence. One of the judges on the case, Tzvi Segal, asserted somewhat ridiculously: "The court is obliged to protect the public interest from sophisticated, smooth-tongued criminals who can deceive innocent victims at an unbearable price – the sanctity of their bodies and souls. When the very basis of trust between human beings drops, especially when the matters at hand are so intimate, sensitive and fateful, the court is required to stand firmly at the side of the victims – actual and potential – to protect their wellbeing. Otherwise, they will be used, manipulated and misled, while paying only a tolerable and symbolic price."


I would contend with Segal: In that case if a man lies to a woman about loving her and she sleeps with him and he leaves her after is that rape by deception? If a man lies about his profession or misrepresents his income to get women to sleep with him is that also rape by deception? If the man promises the moon and the stars to bed a woman and doesn't deliver can a woman bring that to court as rape by deception?

I don't know the exact details of the case, what evidence was offered or if there was any evidence presented. My opinion is this entire case is moot and should have been dismissed. The politics of the case, the bias through which the judges were ruling on it was the fact that the man in question was Arab and the woman Jewish and therefore a "victim." If these judges lived up to the standard of justice that the philosophy of law required of them they should have been blind to the ethnic identities of both parties and ruled according to the facts of the case which to any outside viewer is clearly absurd. The ruling concerned itself more with symbolic politics than with any ounce of common sense.

Dating across cultural, racial and religious divides is still a touchy subject even in the most modern countries. I don't mean to pick on Israel specifically, but given the political nature of Jewish identity, that of individual and state, it makes it an interesting case on the interracial dating divide. In that the character of the state identifies itself as Jewish; that the apparent "demographic threat" of low Israeli birthrates places pressure on the government to give Jewish women incentives to start families; that in essence woman is constructed as being symbolic of the nation and its future: relationships between Arab men and Jewish women are taboo not simply for political and religious reasons but on symbolically national-cultural grounds.

In a community in Nazareth, a special team has been established by the local authority to prevent Arab-Jewish dating relationships and "rescue" women from Arab men. Other privately-funded groups have also sprung up for the same purpose. This is a radical intervention of local government and very conservative communities in the private lives of individuals. A 2007 poll claimed that nearly half of Israeli-Jews believed that interracial relationships amounted to "national treason." As of today, there is no such thing as civil marriage in Israel, the status quo being that marriage is relegated to the individual religious communities. There are no provisions for gay marriage or interfaith marriages.

As an aside, I don't think early political philosophers foresaw democracies based on the cultural character of the nation, that culture would define the state or that public policy, or even justice, would be meted out and informed through a cultural lens and the problems it would engender. Where individual identity, taken collectively, defines these governments often any claims to minority protections are marginalized or even ignored in the face of bias or even blatant racism. There's a wide gap between what's in the law books and what happens in practice due to social and cultural norms.

I question anyone's interference in the private lives of individuals, especially in matters of love and marriage. The desperate necessity to preserve identity at the expense of humanness or greater interaction between different groups is willful ignorance at worse and paranoia at best. Anyone who claims that ethnic identity is eradicated due to intermarriage or "miscegenation" also fails to appreciate the complexity of individual identity and the fact that identities can be transformed and multiple identities acknowledged and that's not necessarily a negative thing. Perhaps global conflicts would be readily resolved through the establishment of more pluralist institutions so that petty conflicts which arise over something as absurd as dating or intermarriage don't have to be the reflection of the general absurdity of greater political conflicts.