Domestic violence lessons

[Chris Worfolk]

Has everyone seen the story that children as young as 5 are going to get lessons on domestic violence?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8376943.stm

Obviously a reduction in violent relationships is a good thing. Though it seems a bit sexist it's targeted at protecting women which will being the most vulnerable group are far from the only victims.

[norman]

Has everyone seen the story that children as young as 5 are going to get lessons on domestic violence?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8376943.stm

Obviously a reduction in violent relationships is a good thing. Though it seems a bit sexist it's targeted at protecting women which will being the most vulnerable group are far from the only victims.

Totally agree Chris, I can't remember the stats off the top of my head, but there is a significant proportion of men who suffer domestic violence or abuse.

Education on relationships and violence is really important although I would like to think that they would balance this by emphasising that many relationships are happy and loving!

[AlexMagd]

It's always more complicated than that. As ever the papers led with the age of the kid and the most extreme example of what they'll teach them. The other week they were going to teach under-fives about transsexuality when in actual fact they were just going to teach them to be tolerent to people different from them.

I imagine what "teaching children how to prevent domestic abuse" translates as is something like "teaching children to respect other people".

Also I think the reason they're focusing mainly - although not exclusively according to the article - on domestic abuse against women is because women are overwhelmingly the victim, and are more likely to be killed - rather than "just" physically abused - by their partners than men. Makes sense to me; when 77% of domestic abuse is men attacking women, it wouldn't make sense to give equal focus on addressing both genders. The important thing is that they don't exclude either, and they don't appear to be doing.

Incidentally "Parents Outloud" is a total shill for the Mail, a bit like the Taxpayer's Alliance but worse. I suspect they were probably nudged into existence by the Mail and they're certainly not a long-standing professional body that deserves the column inches they get. As far as I'm concerned they can start criticising the quality of today's education when they correct the spelling and grammar errors that have littered their site for months ;)

[jimbob_barnes]

Does slapping your partners ass count as domestic abuse? Cus I do that almost every time she stands up...

[Chris Worfolk]

Na, that's just good old fashioned fun ;) .

Another reason I don't like this is because it's the one chance political correctness should be on my side but isn't. For example if this was say Islam, you can have 90% of all world major terrorist attacks perpetrated by Muslims (that isn't an accurate figure but probably fairly representative depending on how you define major) but we're not allowed to say, well it's a problem with Islam, all we're allowed to say is, well, we should teach people not to blow other people up.

Yet in this case a minority of men are beating their wives and suddenly we can say "well we must educate all men not to beat their wives." You can't hold all men accountable for what someone else who happens to be the same gender as me has done. What if we did it based on another variable, would we dare say "well, overwhelmingly the perportaitors have x skin colour so we're going to focus on them"?

[AlexMagd]

Well the difference is that domestic abuse is tied more closely to gender than it is to race. Centuries of men dominating women in relationships leaves its mark, and traditional ideas of what masculinity means encourages the kind of attitudes that can jump to domestic abuse. Statistically, the overwhelming majority of cases are violence perpetrated by men on their female partners. There isn't the same kind of correlation on race, or other factors. I think you're looking for victimisation here where there isn't any.

It's hardly political correctness to prevent physical abuse, is it? You have to teach all people - boys and girls remember - about this because teaching people it's wrong when they're adults and already abusing partners defeats the point of preventing it happening in the first place. I honestly don't see how people can have an objection to teaching children to respect their partners.

[Chris Worfolk]

Well I'm not sure if you can come up with a scale to measure how closely an arbitrary characteristic can be tied to the actions of a group of people in order for it to be considered a problem. At what point for example, if it just requires to be reasonably closely tied, would we say "right, this race of people is now a problem and needs dealing with."

Presumably we wouldn't, or at least I would probably hope we wouldn't, but we somehow find it acceptable to do with gender.

[AlexMagd]

It's not exactly arbitrary though. The predominant form of domestic violence is intrinsically tied together with ideas of masculinity, born from historical traditions of the husband or male partner possessing the wife or female partner. It's not so long since a wife was entirely subordinate to her husband, and acts of independence seen as defiance; going against the natural order. The reasons that people abuse their partners are complex but ideas of masculine physical superiority and marital dominance, and the longstanding - and I mean *long* - idea of wives/partners as subordinate to their male counterparts are obviously a major factor.

What the government is saying here is that domestic abuse is a significant problem (is it one in three women who will be beaten by their partners? I forget the exact figures). Tackling issues of respect at an early age is a good way to nip that in the bud. I haven't gotten the impression that the teaching is being tailored to either gender, but even if it were aimed more at preventing men from attacking their partners, it's hardly arbitrary. 75% of domestic abuse cases are men attacking women so why shouldn't the focus be on making sure that boys are given more teaching on why that's a bad thing? The teaching doesn't exactly sound like guilt-tripping and making people feel bad just because they're men! Teaching people to respect their partners as equals, and to never raise a hand to them (and again, this teaching is being given to boys and girls, so it's hardly targeted) is absolutely a positive step.