Domestic abuse does not know cultural boundaries. This is the introduction Deepa Mehta gives
for her film "Heaven on Earth".*
Definition of Abuse:
The US Office on Violence Against Women (OVW) defines domestic violence as a "pattern of abusive behavior in any relationship that is used by one partner to gain or maintain power and control over another intimate partner". The definition adds that domestic violence "can happen to anyone regardless of race, age, sexual orientation, religion, or gender", and can take many forms, including physical abuse, sexual abuse, emotional, economic, and psychological abuse.**
** "About Domestic Violence". Office on Violence Against Women. Retrieved 2007-06-13.from <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domestic_violence>
Abuse is not cultural, but the normalization or acceptance of abuse
can be.
I remember a time when I was accompanying a small team of women to a
remote village where we were going to teach about HIV and AIDS. Ironically, I was also going to talk about
domestic abuse. Enroute, we stopped in a
city for a couple of nights. On the
first night I became alarmed when I heard yelling between a male and a female
voice on the street. We could only see
bits and fragments from our window, but evidence strongly suggested that the
man was beating the woman. None of us
knew the number for the local police, and I was advised that we should stay
inside. I felt completely helpless.
What horrified me more was that this was taking place in the early
evening, right outside of a busy bar, on a populated street. Families, couples, pedi-taxis passed by
ignoring the spectacle. No one seemed to
care. Later, when our host came in to
see how we were settling in for the night, she noticed we were distressed, and
tried to reassure us that this couple behaved like this all the time.
I don't think it is fair to blame culture, or for that matter,
religion, for abuse. Just as there may
be some who will use culture or religion to justify their own behaviour, there
will be others from that same culture or same religion who will abhor such
behaviour. Abuse is psychologically
driven, by those who feel they need to manipulate and control others in order
to feel better about themselves. People
who have a broken view of themselves and a broken view of the world can be
found in every culture.
Systemic acceptance of abuse is another issue. To tell ourselves that "That's just the
way it is", or "It's none of our business to get involved", or
to think that perhaps the victim deserves that treatment, is a degradation to
our humanity. Because the abuser is
usually someone intimately connected to the victim, and because the victim is
often emotionally degraded, physically afraid and resource deprived, it is easy
for the victim to become trapped in a cycle of abuse. It is essential for the victim to be
empowered to end the cycle, and for society to provide the resources to get
them through the transition. That is, if
you care enough to take a stand against the degradation of another human being.
Happy International Women's Day.
***
Next week, I will attempt to share some ideas on what you could do
when you are a visitor to another country, and you are witness to domestic
violence or suspected domestic violence.
(Yup, scary topic). I hope I can
spare some people from the helplessness I felt.
**********
*In the movie, Chand moves from India for an
arranged marriage in Canada. There, she
is ignored, controlled, isolated, beaten and blamed, to varying degrees by her
husband, by her husband's family, and by society at large. What I found particularly interesting was how
the mother-in-law would villainize Chand in order to maintain her prominence in
her son's affection. Abuse does not
always have to come from a spouse. Chand
increasingly turns to the myths told to her in her youth to help her come to
terms with and understand her circumstances.
I wonder, though, if the systematic acceptance of abuse IS sometimes a cultural issue. The scenario you mentioned above -- the woman being beaten in public, outside a populated bar during the early evening in full view of her fellow citizenry, and with police intervention a problematic issue -- strikes me as something that would be less likely to happen in Canada than in places like the one you described. The odds are much higher in Canada that someone would intervene, or that the local police would be more receptive to a report of violence, and that they would act to help the woman, regardless how well you knew them or how small and remote the town. And those things strike me as an extension of the culture. The nature of the local police, who are very much an institution intimately tied to the culture that created them, to the appropriatness of intervening on behalf of a stranger, are all extensions of the common culture around which the event was surrounded. I agree that the man in question bears sole responsbility for his actions, and his decision to beat this woman is rooted in his own psychological make-up. He solely perpetuated this violence on someone. But the response of those around him seems tied to cultural values. If beating a woman is something that we consider universally wrong, regardless of culture, then would it not be fair to criticize a cultural atmosphere that discouraged others from preventing this wrong? Would a portion of blame for this tragie event lie with the culture in which it took place?
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