The XX Factor: What women really think.

Domestic Violence: Are Girls Just Asking for It?

Domestic violence being an atrocity, I have tried to ignore the rather disgusting “Crihanna” tit for tat that’s competing for shelf space beside Michelle Obama on newsstands across the country. But this new study out from Boston University spun my head:  

Nearly half of the 200 Boston teenagers interviewed for an informal poll said pop star Rihanna was responsible for the beating she allegedly took at the hands of her boyfriend, fellow music star Chris Brown, in February.

Of those questioned, ages 12 to 19, 71 percent said that arguing was a normal part of a relationship; 44 percent said fighting was a routine occurrence.

The results of the survey, conducted by the Boston Public Health Commission across the city and equally among boys and girls, are startling for local health workers who see a generation of youths who seem to have grown accustomed, even insensitive, to domestic violence.

"I think you'd have to be pretty jaded if you weren't startled by it," said Casey Corcoran, director of the health commission's new Start Strong program.

 Maybe. But I have to say I’m not that surprised: In college, I participated in a program called “Community Health Educators” (the founders have scaled up their model via a national nonprofit called “Peer Health Educators” that I strongly endorse). The idea is that, because many local school districts don’t have a budget for health education,  kids not too much older than high school students would travel to local schools—in my case, an urban setting with a mix of white, black and latino students—bearing lectures and props and index cards for awkward questions. And that this would fill the gap. I taught different individual subjects for two years, and in my senior year I had the chance to participate in a pilot program where I’d see the same kids every week, teaching the entire curriculum over the course of ten weeks.

 This preamble is by way of saying that I saw the way 17-19 year olds (in a “second chance” high school, where some of the kids had dropped out or been through the juvenile justice system) absorbed the range of topics we discussed, from contraception (the wooden penis was a hit), nutrition (“sugar is not a food group”) to drug and alcohol abuse (one kid asked us, in the throes of senior spring, if we had ever been drunk). They were on the whole receptive, if restless and often skeptical of our preachy tone. Learning about hallucinogens certainly livened up what could have been an afternoon of trigonometry.

But, far and away, the subject that penetrated the least was our unit on “relationships and abuse.” This dealt with date rape, molestation by adults, domestic violence and bullying. It never sunk in. Worse, while the guys were boorish in the extreme—one male student in one class said if a girl “snitched” on him for sexual assault, “I’d kill her”—the girls, I found, were even more likely to say that a male-on-female altercation involving kicking, punching and hitting was a girl’s fault. (“Why’d she make him mad?” etc.) Even kids who could rattle off the ins and outs of contraception without shame (one girl in my class had a toddler already) regressed mightily when it came to the issue of gender and violence. It was, honestly, chilling. What's that about?

Is This the Message: Kick Me, Beat Me, Tie Me Up!?

Where's the Honor?

Catherine Price's Broadsheet post about a recent article on honor killings has been haunting me all week, not because the subject is new but because, like her, I can't get past the idea of a father stomping, stabbing and suffocating his 17 year-old daughter to death, with the help of his sons, and of her uncles then spitting on her grave in disgust. Why? Because the girl had a crush on and spoke to a British soldier in Basra.

I know many of us have heard these horrific stories before. Still, i never cease to be amazed, and repulsed, at the level of violence toward women and girls that is tolerated in countries across Africa and the Arab world, in East Asia and Eastern Europe, in China and throughout Latin America and the Caribbean.

Yes, we have plenty of violence against women at home, but I think it's safe to say that the level of violence against women and girls here, doesn't even compare to what takes place overseas. In many cases it is not only tolerated, or ignored, it is officially sanctioned by governments that claim they can do nothing to stop violent practices that occur mostly in tradition-bound enclaves ruled by male elders, or taking place in war-torn countries in states of perpetual anarchy.

Gang rapes, revenge rape, war rapes, punishment rapes, beatings, honor killings, genital mutilation, forced prostitution, the sale and marriage of little girls to grizzled old perverts. It's enough to turn the stomach. As American women we can march and speak  out, we can give money to organizations working hard to prevent and hopefully end these ugly practices, and it will still continue unless the international community comes together to address it head on. We need formal, international treaties that attach sanctions and penalties against countries that tolerate this form of gender terrorism. 

Too bad the United Nations can't take the lead. Its credibility on this issue is very comprised given that hundreds of U.N. peacekeepers working in troubled countries have been implicated in shameful sexual abuse scandals involving coerced sex with girls as young as eight in exchange for food and empty promises of jobs, or payments of a single dollar. Some of the U.N. workers are from the very countries where violence against women is an ingrained part of the culture. How sad that they are importing the worst of their values rather than their best, spreading disease and despair instead of the goodwill the UN is supposed to foster.

I know these traditions date back to past generations and are culturally institutionalized. I know too that the perpetrators are not usually enlightened or educated men, but barbaric and backward—yes backward—men. Still, this doesn't mean the larger society has to accept it. Nor do official government leaders who are usually educated men who know better.

How ironic that the term "honor killing" even exists. There is certainly no honor when men attack the most defenseless, least respected, less protected members of their society. And there's definitely no honor when world leaders, like the U.S., that are not shy about imposing their values on other countries in other ways, do so little about it.

The first sign of societal breakdown is when the male members of a society turn on their women and children. Seems to me that the affected countries were broken long ago.