Domestic Violence - BBC article

[Dis86]

Wanted to post this one as it is a cracking read.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-59064064

I really cannot believe the attitudes these women faced.

Additionally I also think it's great at highlighting the politicisation of the victim status.

 

[Lysander]

I like this woman. I thought this was going to be a sexist BBC feminist rant but it's not that at all, and she is a big advocate for men's rights as well.

"I have never been a feminist, because, having experienced my mother's violence, I always knew that women can be as vicious and irresponsible as men."

Her stance now on domestic abuse is that violence is a family issue, usually intergenerational, and men and women are equally capable and culpable of it.

She is now editor-at-large of the anti-feminist website A Voice for Men. She remains a passionate believer in helping families recover from violence but refuses to differentiate accountability by gender.

Awesome.

 

[Mason-]

BBC finally seems to be giving some different viewpoints/balance to certain subjects. Maybe they are listening. I'm sure similarly to hurfdurf with the Lesbian/Trans article on BBC some people will wet their beds over this but that's kind of the point.

 

[R.P.L]

Stay single and avoid all these issues

 

[Lysander]

Stay single and avoid all these issues

What if you hit yourself?

 

[Chris Wilson]

Stay single and avoid all these issues

Sage advice there!

 

[R.P.L]

What if you hit yourself?

Hit yourself back?

 

[BowdonUK]

Good post and link OP.

I feel very sad for the women that went through this. I know someone who was in a similar situation.

It frustrates me on how these men act. I think ultimately only other men can get us anywhere near to solving violence from the male side, through peer pressure.

A man attacking a woman (and children) should feel shame. He's not a man. He's a loser.

 

[Dis86]

Good post and link OP.

I feel very sad for the women that went through this. I know someone who was in a similar situation.

It frustrates me on how these men act. I think ultimately only other men can get us anywhere near to solving violence from the male side, through peer pressure.

A man attacking a woman (and children) should feel shame. He's not a man. He's a loser.

I just can't comprehend how individuals such as GPs, priests and even police officers just didn't care. Turned blind eyes or even sent the women back home. Unreal. Being in that situation with nowhere to turn is just awful.

 

[hurfdurf]

BBC finally seems to be giving some different viewpoints/balance to certain subjects. Maybe they are listening. I'm sure similarly to hurfdurf with the Lesbian/Trans article on BBC some people will wet their beds over this but that's kind of the point.

Not really, this article is well sourced… chalk and cheese to the disgraceful Trans panic one.

 

[Hades]

I just can't comprehend how individuals such as GPs, priests and even police officers just didn't care. Turned blind eyes or even sent the women back home. Unreal. Being in that situation with nowhere to turn is just awful.

I don't think it was that they don't care, it was that they couldn't do much about it. As the article reminds us there were almost no financial options available to women back then. Women could rarely get credit without their husbands co-signature, marital rape simply wasn't a crime, and women generally had far poorer paying jobs, if any at all. So they had nowhere to go and no way of supporting themselves. They were trapped. It wasn't like today when women are genuinely equal in society to men.

My dad was a policeman back in the 70's. He once told me that for really bad cases it wasn't unheard of for a bunch of coppers to visit the man and disuade him from hurting his wife by giving him what he deserved. As I said, I don't think it was that people didn't care.

 

[[FnG]magnolia]

... 1971 ... Yet it was still 20 years before marital rape became a crime; 10 years before a woman had the right to be served at a public bar; and three years before the Equal Credit Opportunity Act was passed, stopping lenders from requiring women to have male co-signers on loans.

This is incredible.

Having returned to England in the 1950s, Ms Pizzey's mother died. Rather than have his wife buried, Mr Carney arranged to have her laid out on the dining room table. He and his children would visit the body every evening for six days to watch the progress of decomposition.

My word.

 

[Dis86]

This is incredible.



My word.

I just didn't have the words when I read that. What the actual?!

 

[Dis86]

@Hades the article shows us that options were available. It just took someone that cared enough and had the strength of will to do it. She's an amazing individual and even though I've not knowingly known anyone who has benefitted from her work, I'm immensely thankful for it.

 

[Hades]

This is incredible.

It's amazing and shocking isn't it. When I tell my kids the world is a vastly different place than it ws when I was their age I don't think they can really understand quite how different it was.

 

[Hades]

@Hades the article shows us that options were available. It just took someone that cared enough and had the strength of will to do it. She's an amazing individual and even though I've not knowingly known anyone who has benefitted from her work, I'm immensely thankful for it.

Yes she's an amazing individual. But before she setup that refuge what options did the doctors and police have to help?

there was no legal provision to ensure a victim of domestic violence could remain in the family home and the perpetrator move out. There were no refuges, and it was difficult for a woman to rent a flat by herself - even if she could afford it.

What could a doctor do to help other than reporting it to the police (which I am guessing they couldn't do due to their hippocratic oath to preserve their patients privacy)? Where could the doctor suggest the woman go? Where could the police suggest a woman go? The police could probably have done more to prosecute the abuser for assult but that would need the victim to give evidence. But as the victim would end up living back in the same house with the abuser then they would have been reluctant to say much.

What should have happened was for there to be more political will and public drive to setup help for victims. This eventually happened but it took far too long and only really started because of the work of this amazing woman and others like her.

 

[Roar87]

There were more informal ways of dealing with men who beat their wives in those days I hear, the local community wasn't really over accepting of that type of behaviour

 

[potatolord]

A good woman, doing good work for people who needed urgent help.

It's amazing how much attitudes to domestic violence have changed. It's not seen as a private matter any more.

I'm not saying the problem has gone away- it never will- but that instinctive "it's just between them" response is not the standard response of most people/ official agencies now.

 

[glenimp617]

I can't get my head around why anyone, let alone a married couple, would hit one another.

My brain can't compute.

 

[GreatAuk]

Wow, serious stuff. Shocking how recently some of the legal changes have been, as well as the social changes. Hard for a younger person like me to imagine how different the country was only a couple of decades before I was born.

Some serious wtf moments like laying the mum's body on the kitchen table to decompose

Erin sounds like a great woman, who has saved and improved many lives through her work.

Really surprised (in a good way) to read an article like that in the BBC though. I was expecting some kind if snide comment or direct rebuttal in the article when it got to Erin's thoughts on her mum's abuse, or breaking with approved opinions, but it felt like it treated her fairly and respectfully.