The roots of the current U.S. culture of violence extend back to the unprecedented violence unleashed on this continent by European settlers in the 17th century. With the impunity that came with access to guns, belief in a God who favored them over others, and readily available justifications for violence, the settlers undertook a genocide of the native peoples.
The heavy hand of this culture of violence has always descended more heavily on some victims than others—not just on the native peoples but always on whoever the more recent immigrants are, on people of color, on non-Christians, and on women and children.
Consider the following facts about violence against women from the “National intimate partner and sexual violence survey (2011): data on abuse by intimate partner”:
- 32.9% of women reported physical violence from an intimate partner in their lifetime
- 24.3% of women reported severe physical violence in their lifetime
- 4% reported physical violence from an intimate partner within the past year
- 40.3% reported psychological aggression
- 10.4% reported psychological aggression in the past year
Growing up in a culture of violence, with its constant images of and justifications for violence and inhumanity, affects everyone. Children growing up in such a culture and women surviving in such a culture may respond to their experiences in ways that prolong their misery and make it easy for the more privileged segments of society to abuse them further.
Consider these facts about women in prison:
- Over 90% have experienced violence in their lives
- 33% report childhood sexual abuse
- More than 50% of the abused women report rape or attempted rape
Efforts to stop violence against women, which now extend worldwide, will be considered in later posts, but for now join us in this inspiring anthem from One Billion Rising.
Join your voice with proponents of an end to violence against women, which in turn would strengthen the resistance to violence against children and other living things.
Kathie Malley-Morrison, Professor of Psychology
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Your article in Engaging Peace made me think about all the violence towards women in Afghanistan. My family is originally from Afghanistan and I just had a phone conversation about the topic with my father just now. He is good friends with the human rights director of Afghanistan, Sima Samar. He was telling me about how, as you many know, women in Afghanistan are abused very often and usually by their spouse. What I found so disturbing and interesting was that women would use self-violence to combat violence. What I mean by this is that my father was telling me how Sima keeps reports on women who report being abused and how a lot of them commit suicide because of the lives they live. Sometimes they burn themselves to death or poison themselves. He informed me that women do this because of a lack of support from the government. The government usually hands the women back to her husband and it’s a vicious cycle that continues until she takes her own life.
This blog post made me question how and why our culture has been developed with violence being so prevalent. Even now, we are constantly surrounded by fears. Hand sanitizers for fears of getting sick from the germs in the air, fear of getting on a plane, snakes, bugs, you name it. All these fears that have been developed and recognized shape our future actions and our thoughts. This also reminds me of another blog post [http://engagingpeace.com/?p=5874] where Tony Marsella writes “The foreign policies and actions of the U.S. over the past 100 years are rooted in intentions to control and dominate the international order of nations and cultures.” Violence has grown out of fears and with a culture that shows this as “omnipresent” is truly absurd. Even with our advances in education and technology; we are still in a culture developed 100 years ago. However, it makes me also question why violence can be such a difficult act to define. For example violence is defined “…as the intentional intimidation or abuse of children, adults, or elders by a family member, intimate partner or caretaker to gain power and control over the victim” (Hines & Malley-Morrison, 2013). It seems awfully similar to what Tony Marsella writes as how the U.S has been rooted in intentions to control and dominate. Although it seems absolutely hopeless to try to break out of the cycle and culture of violence which has been rooted so deeply, there are many organizations and people that can make a difference. Whether it’s one child a time or one woman at a time, understanding and realizing that with every action comes a reason and cause is very important. With facts stating that 90% of women in prison have experienced violence in their own lives only proves that it’s an action that can be psychologically ingrained in your life for a long time. Knowing and joining more organizations that can help bring battered women back on their feet and rise to their oppressors is what we need to strengthen and perhaps even change our culture.
What a nice comment, Tina. You did such a great job of identifying themes across several posts and making connections between those posts and the reading you are doing in Family Violence in the United States, 2nd edition. I am glad that you recognize that even though the United States has a long history of violence and there is much to be concerned about today, many people are working to end violence.
I couldn’t agree more with the opening statements about violence being embedded in our culture, especially against women. At this point in time, it seems to be most evidently rooted into our social media driven pop culture. It isn’t uncommon to see violence against women in many categories of pop culture media some people see and interact with on a daily basis. We see violence in music, movies, video games, online videos, and internet sites dedicated to violence and intolerance. With more and more exposure to recreational violence against women, and people in general, we become far more de-sensitized to the damaging effects violence can have not only on an individual, but on families and communities as well. This leads me to ponder how we could possibly change something that has become so commonplace in everyday life? While the problem has undoubtedly improved over the past 100 to 50 years with the human rights movements and feminist movement pushing the government to pass legislature to help prevent violence against women, it is still a problem that is far from being resolved. Unfortunately, as a college student, I see it on campus and around campus, whether it be attempted rape or physical violence on the street. Education and awareness are no doubt the starting point in the effort against violence against women. Although it must become as commonplace to prevent violence as it has been to see violence in order to mend the society’s attitude and actions toward the subject.
Your points made regarding how violence has become so common in many of the media outlets in todays society is one of the most angering disadvantages that have followed with the technological movement. Growing up these were the types of behaviors that my parents so desperately tried to shield me from and I cannot help but think about how I will do this when I have children. Violence towards women is often a cycle within families, meaning if it happened to a mother it is likely to happen to her daughter at some time in her life. This was found to be true in my family. My biological father abused my mother until she eventually had the courage to leave him. Although I was aware of this and I swore to myself I wouldn’t let it happen to me, it did. When I was 17 I found myself in a dating relationship with a man who began to abuse me physically and sexually. It was the worst and most embarrassing time in my life and I feel the society often criticizes women who stay in relationships with abusers, but neglects to realize that it is not at all easy to walk away. I stayed in the relationship until the abuse reached the point where he held me hostage at a local park abusing me until 3 in the morning. When I went home and saw my mothers face, that was when I realized I was in too deep and I needed help. To me as a society we need to work on educating everyone about violence and giving them prevention tools to use if they ever find themselves in an abusive situation. It should be treated in a manner similar to how we teach prevention of drug use. I learned at a very young age that drugs were wrong and the negative affects that follow when using, and I have never used drugs. However, I was sheltered from the prevention tools of domestic violence and didn’t know what to do when I was in the situation. Therefore, the fact that 32.9% of women experience physical violence from an intimate partner in their lifetime is a red flag that as a society we are not doing enough to prevent situations like these from occurring.
Thanks so much for your comment, Lisa. And thanks for sharing your personal story. I think our readers will appreciate that greatly.
This post exemplifies some of the alarming statistics of abuse on women in the United States. Over 30% of women have reported physical violence by an intimate partner, indicating that violence and aggression often take place in the home. Men and women who maltreat their spouses are at a greater risk for maltreating their children too. Child abuse and exposure to violence can hold severe consequences on the life of a child. Being abused as a child leaves one at greater risk for becoming the victim of abuse later in life. In addition, children who grow up witnessing interparental forms of aggression are much more likely to maltreat their own children. This type of environment fosters aggressive tendencies of those living in it, therefore impacting the child’s future actions. Thus, a cycle of violence is perpetuated: interparental violence can lead to child maltreatment, that child’s likelihood of becoming an abuser or being abused later in life is increased, allowing for violence to exist later on within the family.
Violence is embedded in American culture and effects people at every stage in life. One major problem involving violence towards women and children is that it tends to be within the family or intimate relationships. Our culture fosters the right to privacy within the family, allowing many cases to go unreported or unrecognized. Parents often accept corporal punishment and other techniques involving aggression to be used against children as a method of “discipline,” which instills violent morals to their kids. The cycle must be broken, however much difficulty remains in determining an effective method that can interrupt any stage in this cycle and put it to an end.
The reality of our culture of violence is so evident in this post. This makes me wonder how this culture of violence, which has existed for so long, has been able to continue to exist. As the post mentions, the fact that children grow up and women survive in such a culture contributes to this culture. Had there been a shift in this culture, surely this culture of violence would not still exist today and the numbers would not be so high. However, the fact that our society is cultivating and contributing to this culture of violence, perhaps without even really being aware, is unfortunate and really sad. Perhaps not enough people are willing to bring about change in this state of violence because in some way they have benefited? Or perhaps it hasn’t occurred to them that it is possible to move away from a culture of violence? It makes me wonder how a shift in our culture can occur where violence doesn’t have to be part of it. Violence does not just affect the victims and abusers, but the society as a whole. I feel that if more people realized this truth, they would be challenged to help bring about change – this is not just a problem for women or children, etc. This is a problem with our culture, which we are all a part of and there must be a movement to end this. Additionally, since the more privileged segments of society tend to be the perpetrators, I wonder if there is a way to educate them to use their privileges for the greater good as well as programs for the less-privileged to not only find support during times of violence, but also to prevent them from being abused and attacked.
I think what is most sad about these facts is that they are not well-known! It seems we all realize that our culture is still highly paternalistic and that family violence continues to be swept under the rug. We are educated as children and adolescents about what healthy dating relationships look like and that we should use resources available to us if we ever encounter relationship violence. Unfortunately, the people who are most vulnerable to violence are young girls and women, setting into motion a cycle of violence that often lasts throughout the lives of women in our country. I feel that many women experience forms of violence in their lives that they label as acceptable or inevitable; probably because of the way we are taught to view violence in our culture. The fact that one in three women has experienced violence means that we all know more than one woman who has been or will be a victim.
I know from personal experience how this culture of violence we live in continues to be transmitted from one generation to another. A close friend of mine can trace violence against women in her family to more than three generations back. The majority of the women in her family were spanked, whipped with belts or suffered other forms of corporal punishment in childhood and then experienced domestic violence later in life. This would suggest that the behaviors of men are not the only factors in the issue; women can transmit behaviors, ideas and feelings about violence to their children which can add to the cycle of violence in women’s lives. We all need to take responsibility for this shocking statistic and learn how to better support victims and enhance prevention.
While I read this, I immediately thought about the cycle of violence that many women who are victims or abuse fall into. I believe that the justification of any type of violence is the root of the evil. For instance, oftentimes women who are abused by their partners exhibit the “symptoms” of what is called Battered Woman Syndrome in which they tend to gravitate back to a partner who is abusive despite the obvious and egregious reason why she should leave. Women are often brutalized and told by their partners that they “wish they didn’t have to do this,” and that they left no other choice. These beatings can be particularly brutal when there is alleged misbehavior involved, although we know that this is just a ploy. The partner will then shower the woman with gifts and profess his or her love in order to rope the woman back in. Many women start to believe that the abuse can be avoided if only she would stop behaving badly. The truth is, a woman who is forced to walk on eggshells has been robbed of her humanity and becomes nothing more than a pawn in her abusive partners game. A man begins by “teaching” a woman that she is at fault for his heinous actions, and the woman eventually believes that this is true. I think, most importantly, education for both women and men on partner abuse is what we need most. Since many families who experience this deadly cycle are from low-income areas, they may not have access to quality education. With this type of specialized education, I think we can eventually break the cycle of justification.