Violence Against Women

#1

Felson examined the gender perspective and the violence perspective in her article. The motivations of men who assault women are not sexists, but criminals. Also, violence against women is much more frequent when women have lower status and the rates of violence against men and women are comparable. However, Felson surprised me with the point that no matter where, men are much more likely to be victims of violence than are women. However, men are eight times more likely to commit violence against men. Felson concluded that sexism is one of the several reasons that may lead to violence against women, but this remains as an untested hypothesis. Also, much evidence points toward the theory of men raping women due to sexual motivations as well as the theory of men treating women as sexual objects.

I believe that the society tend to sympathize with female victims more than male victims due to the fact that female lack the physical power to defend themselves. I also believe that woman are more demanding in relationships and probably use violent force as much as men, but I don’t think that the degree of abuse against men will be as severe as the abuse done on women.

#2

Jones used a very powerful example to illustrate her point about why battered women don’t leave. She talked about Karen Straw who was repeatedly harassed, battened, and raped by her husband. Straw wanted to file divorce but couldn’t afford it; she moved to a welfare hotel with her two children, but the husband still found her and did the same things to her. One night she finally stopped it all when she got hold a kitchen knife and stabbed him. She was up for trial for murder. Jones wanted to illustrate how it has been unfair to battered women and what they had to put up with all this time. Battered women are not sufficiently protected by law and they continue to suffer this kind of treatment despite of what they do. Many women don’t leave because of dependence on the men, the feeling of helplessness, low self-esteem, masochism and psychological.

Women who are battered suffer the most unimaginable. They thought they married the loves of their lives but they did not have a clue that the men they thought they would spend the rest of their lives with would abuse them in this manner. Over time, it is not surprising to find these women to lose confidence in themselves, don’t know what to do anymore and feel dependent on their violent husbands.

I think that many women don’t leave because they believe that they need men in their lives and are dependent on them. They simply don’t know where to go or what to do. For the women who do leave, I believe that men will try to find them. I watched this movie by Jennifer Lopez about her and her child getting abused. She tried leaving with her daughter, but the husband found her and abused her. The police wasn’t able to do much.

#3

Ptacek provided some explanations for batterers which he classified as denials and justifications. The most common excuse is their acts are due to a loss of control influenced either from alcohol or drug use or from a buildup of frustrations. Another common excuse is blaming the victim, claiming that they were provoked by the women and denying the responsibility of their actions. Those who use this excuse claim that they are most commonly provoked by the woman’s verbal aggressiveness. On the other hand, there are two main groups of justifications. First is denial of injury, where batterers try to make their actions more neutral by denying or minimizing the injuries they have caused on the victims. The second type of justifications is where men find some type of fault in women and that becomes the reason for the battering.

From the justifications and denials provided by batterers, it seems like men do not want to take responsibility for their faults. They either deny it one or the other or they try to find ways to lessen the damage they have done on their victims.

Ptacek’s findings mentioned both the gender and violence issue in her article. It seemed like both gender and violence are reasons for battering. Men seem to hold the traditional view where they must be the dominant ones in the relationship and by battering the woman demonstrates their power in the relationship. On the contrary, men blame women for their frustration and violence is the result of their frustration, which became the reason why women were assaulted.