Playing Catch Up

I have been woefully negligent in posting the last week but I do hope to make up for it. I will be taking a slight detour from my series on Children's Rights, but that subject is not to be forgotten.

Today's topic is not the latest breaking news in the country but it does raise an important point. I am talking about the Violence Against Women Act and you can review the general points of the debate here in an article by the Washington Post.

I will start off by saying that I find the Violence Against Women Act an important piece of legislation. Domestic violence is a very real problem and we have come a long way from the days when EMTs would say "she probably deserved it" or "she must have provoked him." To abuse someone you claim to love, even verbally, is a horrible breach of trust.

That said, I have one major issue with this legislation that the government, particularly Republicans, fail to recognize. The fact is domestic violence is not isolated to instances with women being abused by a male partner. Yes, reports of this type are in the majority, but women can be abusive to their male or female partners and a man can abuse his male partner just as easily as a female partner. Unfortunately, due to societal pressure, men vastly under report their own abuse. It isn't "manly" or "macho" to be beaten up by your girlfriend and men may feel ashamed to come forward about the abuse or shrug it off as nothing. I know a man who candidly told me how an old girlfriend smacked him in the head with a frying pan for staying out all night as if this were nothing to be concerned about. Focusing our domestic violence protection funds towards women only reinforces this idea that men are not being abused or that it doesn't matter if they are. To all the men out there, it's not okay, it's not nothing, and you should never tolerate an abusive relationship.

Another concern I have about this legislation is the image of women. I'm not a raging feminist, but even I cringe with the implication that women need a special congressional act protecting them from domestic violence but men don't. Either domestic violence is okay or it's not, we cannot play this game where we actively protect some segments of the population but not others, this is discrimination in action.

A more appropriate name for the act would be the "Domestic Violence Protection Act" with funding allocated to programs for men and same sex couples alongside female heterosexuals. We're all people, and we all have a right to live safe, happy lives without the fear of violence.