Posted on 02/23/2008 7:54:50 PM PST by buccaneer81
No excuse for violence against women
Wilfred Langmaid DAYS BETWEEN Published Friday February 22nd, 2008 Appeared on page C10
You deserve so much more than this.
So don't tell me why he's never been good to you.
Don't tell me why he's never been there for you.
And I'll tell you that why is simply not good enough.
- Good Enough by Sarah McLachlan
In the early 1990s, very shortly after my ordination as a priest, I attended a seminar with a group of Anglican clergy. That day, I was told more than one in 8 women was a victim of abuse.
As such, I could make that very assumption as I looked out at my Sunday morning congregation whilst standing in the pulpit.
I was shocked -- and hard-pressed to believe that.
Five years ago, I interviewed Rev. Joanne Barr for an article. Barr, who recently retired as a United Church minister and part-time minister at UNB, was speaking about her work on a course on behaviour and abuse.
She said, "One-third of the women who sit in the pews on Sunday mornings are victims of abuse."
Nearly 20 years after my ordination and having been exposed to all manner of evidence of our fallen creation, I accept Barr's statistics.
Accept? Actually, that is the wrong word.
I concede this sad fact is all too true.
In fact, it is this fact that troubles me more than any other as I reflect on this week's Silent Witness project which this year is for Shaila Bari.
Bari, a UNB student, was killed in July 2003. Her estranged husband is serving a life sentence after being convicted of her first-degree murder.
On Wednesday, the New Brunswick Silent Witness Project with the University Women's Centre, the Multicultural Association of Fredericton and Global Union held a Silhouette Dedication ceremony in Bari's honour.
I never knew Bari, but I know many colleagues and students who were touched by her during her far-too-short life.
I also know I am a member of a privileged lot. How would I say that I am privileged? Well, I am educated, white, Anglo-Saxon in descent and gainfully employed.
And I am male.
Through no particular merit of my own -- in fact, simply because my father contributed a Y chromosome to the genetic mix that led to my birth -- I am part of the privileged gender.
However, I keep being haunted by that one in three statistic. It reminds me of the pained expressions and flimsy excuses I used to see and hear when a female parishioner would appear with obvious bruises or heavy makeup.
It reminds me of boorish, sexist comments I have heard from members of my
gender.
It reminds me of less enlightened times in my own life when I lacked the courage to speak up.
It also reminds me of a horrific discussion I had with a female parishioner when I worked in congregational ministry. She came to me sheepishly even though her husband had been verbally, physically and sexually abusive to her for some
time.
Her reluctance to speak up stemmed from her experience the first time she spoke up to a clergy member. Then, she was told her calling was to be a good wife and be faithful to her husband.
It is our collective responsibility as a civilized society to promote gender equality. Violence against women is wrong on every level.
Pretending it is not an issue or dismissing it as a private matter is immoral.
There is no excuse for the behaviour. There is no excuse for us buying our heads in the sand. We are all part of the problem.
Shaila Bari, at the very least, deserves that attitude adjustment on our
part.
She serves as a silent witness to a clear wrong.
Wilfred Langmaid is the student advocate with Student Affairs and Services at UNB and a lecturer in biology at UNB and STU. He regularly writes on popular music and religion for The Daily Gleaner.
Good point. The word "gender" is not properly applied to people, but to words. Mostly, it's a consideration in languages other than English. Amicitia, is Latin for "friendship," and is a noun of feminine gender—you can recognize it as feminine by its ending, since most Latin words ending in "a" are feminine.
Homosexuals, and the people who are beholden to them as part of the Lefty pantheon of victims, such as academics and journalists, have started using the word "gender" to apply to people, to avoid saying the word "sex." For them, this is in obedience to a whole feminist-homosexual-rights theory that sex is not a profound distinction—as if maleness or femaleness were something that you could choose or alter with a thought or a keystroke, like the ending of a word.
This notion, called "Gender Theory," is a little shared lie that grew out of a desire to protect psychologically wounded people from any obligation to deal with their problems adjusting to the world outside themselves. This brand of reality-avoidance has metastasized into a political agenda. The agenda encompasses things like an attachment to abortion—because women "need" to be able to kill the evidence that their sex is the one that gets pregnant—and bizarre "speech codes"—to prevent others from telling inconvenient truths about normal sexual behavior, marriage, and children. As the writer of the article excerpted shows, the agenda also encompasses a hatred for husbands and fathers—the men who offend the "gender"-benders by performing duties as unique to their sex as child-bearing is to women. Gender-benders are always trying to find ways to dismiss marriage as rape and wife-beating.
In the name of truth, literacy, freedom, and psychological health, let us avoid asking "gender" to perform tasks of which only "sex" is capable.
White Christian males are evil. That’s all there is to it. Once we come to understand that, then we can move on. /sarcasm if anyone really needs to know.
(and I DID see the sarcasm tag, btw.)
But I REALLY fear that we are heading there as a planet....
If you got the kids you won. Good for you bud. To hell with the rest of it.
What about men? Violence against men justifiable?
Far as I’m concerned gender is about pronouns, but I used his lingo to be polite.
Hey, maybe he’s going to take on those who are trying to impose Sharia law in his country. I guess the test is whether he takes it to the Muzzies
Women are more likely to TRY to abuse physically, but they are simply less effective on the average. Many, many, many studies have show that women are more likely to initiate violence by a wide margin - though because of ineffectiveness, it gets categorized as emotional abuse. That is certainly not to say that violence by women is never a serious threat to a man - it most certainly can be, especially if pursued long enough or with weapons, even without the unusual case where the woman is stronger than the man.
Nicely written.
Wilfred might be a wife-beater.
Oh, I don't doubt that. I just view the deliberate abuse of language (in general) as starting the conversation with a lie. I was just teasing to make the point. :)
Let the fireworks and popcorn begin.
Cheers!
Sooner or later, the libs are gonna have to confront the jihadists.
Cheers!
He's a profiteer in human misery (i.e. a lawyer who deals with domestic law.) So excuse me if I disagree with you.
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