…and this is a 
There must be violence against women
Category: Feminism • Religion
Posted on: January 4, 2008 10:14 AM, by PZ Myers
Those darn human rights organizations keep meddling in people's personal affairs — for instance, they think fathers and brothers shouldn't be allowed to beat or kill their wives and sisters if they have been dishonorable, and that women ought to report abuse to the police. Don't they know that violence against women is a good thing? There are perfectly good reasons for it.
Relationships between fathers and daughters or sisters and brothers also provoke argument from human rights organizations, which propose the suggested solutions for all relationships. Personally, I don't think fathers or brothers would undertake such behavior unless there was a reason for it.
Of course, if you actually read the article, the author just rambles about and never tells us what these good reasons might be. If women are naughty, you have to do something about it, after all, and why not kick and hit them?
Fathers are responsible for their daughters' behavior, but human rights organizations deny this too. Brothers also should take action regarding their sisters' behavior, especially if their parents are too old or dead. If a daughter or sister makes a mistake - especially a moral one - that negatively affects the entire family and its reputation, what's the solution by such organizations?
According to them, women should complain to the courts about any type of violence against them. Likewise, should fathers and brothers complain to police if their daughters or sisters violate moral, Islamic or social norms?
Fathers should handle their daughters via any means that suits their mistake; thus, is it better to use violence to a certain limit or complain to the police? Shall such women then complain to the police against their fathers or brothers? It's really amazing to hear this.
It really is amazing. How about talking with them, treating them with respect, and finding out what their reasons for their behavior might be…and how about finding a solution other than stupidly hitting them?
It's also peculiar because all of this violence is only excused against women — as if fathers and brothers do not ever violate moral, Islamic, or social norms. It's all so blindly one-sided. And here's the interesting reason why:
Dear readers - especially women - don't think that I hate or am against women; rather, I simply mean to preserve the morals and principles with which Islam has honored us.
I hope my message is clear, since it's really quite relevant to the future of our societies, which must be protected from any kind of cultural invasion.
That last bit is legitimate — of course there is a fear that outsiders will destroy one's culture, especially the valuable, useful, loved parts of one's historical tradition, so there is a natural tendency to bunker up and defend everything with equal zealotry. But no culture is perfect and every culture has some ugly relics creeping about in the basement; in this case, the mistreatment of women is one such horrid little vestige of a barbaric society. Perhaps instead of arguing in favor of the indefensible, it would be better to encourage the culture to change from within, and recognize that there is injustice in Islam.
Unfortunately, there will also be people who will argue that because Allah wills it, it must be so.
Politics
Comments
Posted by: Kristine | January 4, 2008 10:41 AM
For men, it begins with abandoning the marital bed, by opting to sleep elsewhere in the house. After this, they may discuss the matter with any respected person for the husband's or the wife's family, who could be in a position to advise the wife. If this also does not work, then the husband yields to beating the wife slightly. They do this because of a misunderstanding in the Quran, as the word says Darban, which is commonly understood today as beating. However, in Classic Arabic it means to set examples or to announce and proclaim. The more accurate meaning of this last one is that the husband finally has to set forth, to make a clear statement or proclamation, and if these measures fail, then divorce is preferable.
Similarly, wives may take actions such as abandoning the marital bed, following by leaving the husband's home for that of their parents, brothers or any other relatives. They may do this more than once, but if such action fails, they may not continue to live with their husband and via their relatives, they may request a divorce.
See, ladies? It's not about "beating women," it's about the man being dominant, as Allah dictates! Feel better now?
In this manner, the same culture that once was civilized while Europe was bogged down in the Dark Ages continues to engage in pointless and barbaric theological quibbling while destroying what's left of its ancient art (including its dance).
Posted by: Carpworld | January 4, 2008 10:49 AM
From the article:
"Will it be a better society once we see wives, mothers, sisters and daughters going from one police station and one court to another, complaining against their husbands, fathers, brothers and even sons?"
It will be a better society when disgusting bronze-age laws justifying violence against women are finally abolished.
Posted by: Fossilbob | January 4, 2008 10:59 AM
...Advocating the philosophy of the insane.
Posted by: Ric | January 4, 2008 11:04 AM
PZ said: But no culture is perfect and every culture has some ugly relics creeping about in the basement; in this case, the mistreatment of women is one such horrid little vestige of a barbaric society.
Mistreatment of women only? The fact is that the entirety of Islam is a horrid vestige of barbarism.
Posted by: Matt | January 4, 2008 11:04 AM
"Dear readers - especially women - don't think that I hate or am against women; rather, I simply mean to preserve the morals and principles with which Islam has honored us."
So what he's saying is "Don't think that I hate women just because I hate women"...makes sense to me.
Posted by: MAJeff | January 4, 2008 11:04 AM
I don't know why the "Human Rights" organizations want to get involved. Women aren't fully human after all.
Their bodies make great currency, though.
OK, I just need a shower after typing that.
Posted by: pixelfish | January 4, 2008 11:05 AM
I'm just amazed that the author admits that the beatings are due to a mistranslation of the Qu'ran, but hey, it's okay to proceed and slightly beat the wife.
*boggles*
There's a difference between knowing that this sort of behaviour is propagated and SEEING somebody actively defending it. (But then I shouldn't be so shocked, considering that here in the US, we have Mike Huckabee telling women to be "submissive". The degree is not too far removed.)
Posted by: Olaf Davis | January 4, 2008 11:11 AM
"According to them, women should complain to the courts about any type of violence against them. Likewise, should fathers and brothers complain to police if their daughters or sisters violate moral, Islamic or social norms?"
Violation a social or moral norm is the business of the courts if, and only if, that norm has been made law. So, it makes sense to involve the courts if someone assaults you, but not if they violate some perceived 'norm' which the law has not seen fit to legislate on. He seems to be ignoring this entirely, suggesting that courts are equally applicable to every circumstance: if it's inappropriate to go to a court over someone wearing immodest dress, it must be inappropriate to do so over theft, murder, or assault.
Posted by: Tex | January 4, 2008 11:19 AM
Whoa! He lost me right at the first step. Talk about your unreasonable approaches. Is there no end to the lunacy these guys will undertake?
Posted by: Comstock | January 4, 2008 11:21 AM
Really? This fear is more legitimate than fearing women's sexuality? To me they are both fear of otherness/unknown on the part of the patriarchy. If your kids want to pick up parts of another culture and abandon yours, sorry, that's how the world works. I can understand being afraid of that, but I wouldn't call it more legitimate than other fears that are based in lack of control over other people's behavior.Posted by: danley | January 4, 2008 11:21 AM
Sounds like Promise Keepers to me.
Posted by: MAJeff | January 4, 2008 11:22 AM
Sounds like Promise Keepers to me.
Couple of my uncles were in that.
*shudder*
Posted by: Scrofulum | January 4, 2008 11:27 AM
It's like they're a different species, it really is. Unfortunately, they're (mostly) not, which is depressing.
I tried domestic violence once. I hit the fridge.
Posted by: Interrobang | January 4, 2008 11:28 AM
It's vaguely unsettling to realise that, if you stripped the Islam-specific language out of this article, it's only about 60 years out of date in North American culture. In North America, they used to call the exact same thing "home correction." Different idiom, same bullshit patriarchal meaning.
The significance of which statement is to tell all these "Islam is stuck in the Middle Ages" types not to get too up on themselves, because by that criterion, the Middle Ages ended around 1965 hereabouts. (At least in Islamic cultures in the actual, [post-Islamic] Middle Ages, women could get divorces, albeit not easily.)
Posted by: Frenchdoc | January 4, 2008 11:30 AM
I'm with Danley, this would fit right in with the "family values" crowd.
Posted by: schmeer | January 4, 2008 11:41 AM
So his argument can be summarized as:
"Don't judge moderate misogynist wife-beaters by the actions of the extreme misogynist wife-beaters."
Ok, got it. You're a trogolodyte.
Posted by: Kseniya | January 4, 2008 11:46 AM
1965? Don't be ridiculous. Everyone knows that that Middle Ages ended when "I Wanna Hold Your Hand" hit the charts in '64.
Posted by: CrypticLife | January 4, 2008 11:49 AM
Horrible, horrible.
"I simply mean to preserve the morals and principles with which Islam has honored us."
Because clearly, that's more important than personal dignity. Allah forbid any personal autonomy is allowed.
Islam needs to change. I'd far prefer it just vanish, but it definitely needs to change.
Posted by: Colugo | January 4, 2008 11:49 AM
Cultural relativism has long been used to justify any and all "traditional" cultural practices, no matter how inhumane and embedded in relations of domination and exploitation.
Edge.org: What Have You Changed Your Mind About?
http://www.edge.org/q2008/q08_3.html#taylor
Timothy Taylor, archaeologist, University of Bradford:
"Relativism
Where once I would have striven to see Incan child sacrifice 'in their terms', I am increasingly committed to seeing it in ours. Where once I would have directed attention to understanding a past cosmology of equal validity to my own, I now feel the urgency to go beyond a culturally-attuned explanation and reveal cold sadism, deployed as a means of social control by a burgeoning imperial power.
In Cambridge at the end of the 70s, I began to be inculcated with the idea that understanding the internal logic and value system of a past culture was the best way to do archaeology and anthropology. The challenge was to achieve this through sensitivity to context, classification and symbolism. ...
But what happens when relativism says that our concepts of right and wrong, good and evil, kindness and cruelty, are inherently inapplicable? Relativism self-consciously divests itself of a series of anthropocentric and anachronistic skins -- modern, white, western, male-focused, individualist, scientific (or 'scientistic') -- to say that the recognition of such value-concepts is radically unstable, the 'objective' outsider opinion a worthless myth.
My colleague Andy Wilson and our team have recently examined the hair of sacrificed children found on some of the high peaks of the Andes. Contrary to historic chronicles that claim that being ritually killed to join the mountain gods was an honour that the Incan rulers accorded only to their own privileged offspring, diachronic isotopic analyses along the scalp hairs of victims indicate that it was peasant children, who, twelve months before death, were given the outward trappings of high status and a much improved diet to make them acceptable offerings. Thus we see past the self-serving accounts of those of the indigenous elite who survived on into Spanish rule. We now understand that the central command in Cuzco engineered the high-visibility sacrifice of children drawn from newly subject populations. And we can guess that this was a means to social control during the massive, 'shock & awe' style imperial expansion southwards into what became Argentina.
But the relativists demur from this understanding, and have painted us as culturally insensitive, ignorant scientists (the last label a clear pejorative). For them, our isotope work is informative only as it reveals 'the inner fantasy life of, mostly, Euro-American archaeologists, who can't possibly access the inner cognitive/cultural life of those Others.' The capital 'O' is significant. Here we have what the journalist Julie Burchill mordantly unpacked as 'the ever-estimable Other' -- the albatross that post-Enlightenment and, more importantly, post-colonial scholarship must wear round its neck as a sign of penance.
We need relativism as an aid to understanding past cultural logic, but it does not free us from a duty to discriminate morally and to understand that there are regularities in the negatives of human behaviour as well as in its positives. In this case, it seeks to ignore what Victor Nell has described as 'the historical and cross-cultural stability of the uses of cruelty for punishment, amusement, and social control.' By denying the basis for a consistent underlying algebra of positive and negative, yet consistently claiming the necessary rightness of the internal cultural conduct of 'the Other', relativism steps away from logic into incoherence."
Posted by: Kristine | January 4, 2008 11:53 AM
Similarly, wives may take actions such as abandoning the marital bed
Lost me right there, too. ;-)
When is the human race going to abandon the martial bed?
Posted by: Lago | January 4, 2008 12:01 PM
Sounded like the Islamic Bill O' Reilly
Posted by: Oy | January 4, 2008 12:06 PM
"But no culture is perfect and every culture has some ugly relics creeping about in the basement; in this case, the mistreatment of women is one such horrid little vestige of a barbaric society."
In this case, in that case, in a all cases. Name *one* sociecty that doesn't have this particular creature in its basement.
Posted by: J-Dog | January 4, 2008 12:07 PM
"Sounded like the Islamic Bill O' Reilly"
Excellent! I can even hear his outraged cries about the War On Fatwas... while being caught on tape talking dirty to his camel.
Posted by: MAJeff | January 4, 2008 12:12 PM
"Sounded like the Islamic Bill O' Reilly"
And falafel would make a bit more sense than it does for an Irish boy from New York, at least for one that's surprised black folks know "how to act" in a restaurant.
Posted by: Lago | January 4, 2008 12:25 PM
""And falafel would make a bit more sense than it does for an Irish boy from New York, at least for one that's surprised black folks know "how to act" in a restaurant.""
I always loved how Bill tried to play his response down, but let's face it, his reaction was little different from one who might have been surprised by getting full service from well-mannered Aardvarks ...
Posted by: Spaulding | January 4, 2008 12:40 PM
On the bright side, it's nice that the author recognizes how separate these three things are.
Okay, I'm sure he really doesn't...but at least this one phrase implies the difference.
Posted by: Moses | January 4, 2008 12:53 PM
Nothing like flexing one's unthinking, blind belief in one's cultural superiority with the commonly ignorant and intolerant "Islam is all bad" to prove the point... Thanks.
Islam isn't all bad. Not all Muslims are bad. No matter how much you denigrate and dehumanize them.
Posted by: Moses | January 4, 2008 12:59 PM
Sixty years ago? How about James Dobson? How about Promise Keepers? How about the leadership of the Southern Baptists? They're their today. Beat your kids. Beat your wife. Raper her if you feel like it. You're the head of the house and it's their duty to submit.
Personally, I don't think we have much to say about what the fucktards in Islam do when they use their moldy book to justify their behavior. After all, the same crap is still endemic to huge swaths of our own country.
Posted by: beccarii | January 4, 2008 1:08 PM
I found it interesting to compare this article with the article "The Queen of Oranges" in the same issue of the Yemen Times. It seems that progress is possible, though all of this sort of progress should have all been made long ago. Here's a link to the Queen of Oranges article: http://tinyurl.com/2cnkmk
Posted by: WTFWJD | January 4, 2008 1:11 PM
Women should bone up on their kitchen skills, such as putting a razor edge on a knife blade. Then, the first time her father or brother gets high-handed with her, she will act meek and wait for the bastard to be stupid enough to sleep under her roof after he's raised his hand to her.
Since their behavior shames her, she can see these as honor killings, right?
Posted by: Karey | January 4, 2008 1:14 PM
"Will it be a better society once we see wives, mothers, sisters and daughters going from one police station and one court to another, complaining against their husbands, fathers, brothers and even sons?"
Um, yeah?
Posted by: daedalus2u | January 4, 2008 1:51 PM
Actually there was some good advice there.
As the proverb goes, "If the speaker is mad, the listener should be mindful." This proverb is good advice for every man and woman not only to keep their ears open, but also to avoid the misleading propaganda of such organizations, whose surface aims hide other destructive ones...
I think there may be several evolved reasons for violence against women. In these cases it is mostly perpetrated by her male relatives. I suspect that they include violence during pregnancy causing low birth weight and so reducing the chances of cephalopelvic disproportion (certainly fatal for the fetus, likely fatal for the mother during evolutionary time). Her male relatives have a motivation to maximize her total reproductive capacity by preventing her death during childbirth even at the expense of the current fetus she might be carrying (her current husband has more motivation to protect this specific pregnancy, even at the cost of future ones where he might no be her mate).
Another reason might be to trigger the epigenetic pathways that mediate the cycle of violence to "program" the developing fetus to better cope with a violent environment.
Note, "evolved" does not mean the same as "good", or "desirable". Evolution would work to minimize the sum of deaths due to cephalopelvic disproportion and deaths due to honor killings. If killing 1% of women for "honor", saves 5% of women from cephalopelvic disproportion, it is a fabulously successful evolved "feature", reducing deaths by 4%.
I discuss some of these things in my blog on infanticide and acute psychosis.
Posted by: Thony C. | January 4, 2008 1:52 PM
I wonder how the author of the piece would react if I told him that I found his moral behaviour unacceptable and so I was going to slap him around a bit but it OK because there was an angel who dictated a book to some guy in a cave 1400 years ago and in there it said that I should do it. Seems OK to me!
Posted by: Phoenician in a time of Romans | January 4, 2008 2:52 PM
Their bodies make great currency, though.
Not fungible enough, and it's difficult to make change.
There is an alternative to women traipsing from police station to police station and court to court. That would be women going to one police station, and a few high profile cases where the book was thrown at domestic abusers. In this case, I think legal codes have to lead social change.
Posted by: Skeptic8 | January 4, 2008 2:53 PM
The wise COLUGO (#19) has touched a sensitive area of self-examination amongst scholars. "Cultural relativism" is a useful tool that offends cultural our authoritarians, on one hand, because it exposes the cruelties of "cultural truths" accepted in more than antique examples. On the other hand some scholars seem to accept the tool as "truth". This happens because there is a feeling of guilt for the actions of our ancestors with regard to bringing "salvation" to so many indigenous cultures in a prescription that rarely worked without many fatalities.
The tool of analysis works & we can now doubt ourselves while we remind US that those past are dead. The "cowboy" prescription of killing for righteousness needs the same cultural analysis. Living culture reform can come from within if it is motivated from a humane motive. Rabbi Wise diddit.
Posted by: Lago | January 4, 2008 2:58 PM
""Personally, I don't think we have much to say about what the fucktards in Islam do when they use their moldy book to justify their behavior. After all, the same crap is still endemic to huge swaths of our own country."""
Bullshit...
Yes, in a free country there are going to be many people with contradictory ideas on what is moral and what is not. The fact is, despite your pretending not to see the obvious, is that we do not endorse such crap as a society. For example, there are people who believe in having sex with children that live in the US. No one would claim this is an endorsement for such a view. Just as with child-molesters, many nutbag right-wing religious folk do believe in crazy shit, but that does not mean we let them get away with it. If a woman went to the police and said her husband beat her and forced her to have sex with him, that man would be arrested in a heart beat and jailed. Here is the key freakin' differences guy. Can you grasp this?
Posted by: Marcus Ranum | January 4, 2008 3:10 PM
Moses writes:
Islam isn't all bad.
Sure, it is. Unless I missed something, someplace, it's a bunch of religious nutbaggery some whackjob made up in an attempt to justify some worldly power. It's just as bad as any of the other religious absurdity people poison their brains with.
Put another way - any theoretical benefits that islam might have would be equally achievable without it. So, like all religion: "who needs it?*"
mjr.
---
(*Other than suckers who like getting ripped off, pushed around, and have their heads filled with bullsh*t)
Posted by: synthesist | January 4, 2008 3:43 PM
Its not just Islam that advocates hitting women :-
The Bible is God's inerrant Word and
we will honor it as literal and valid for all time.
The wife is to submit to her husband,
and the husband is to love the wife.
CDD is practiced between a man and a woman.
In CDD, the husband has authority to spank the wife.
The wife does not have authority to spank her husband.
http://www.christiandomesticdiscipline.com/Home.html
Remeber folks "slap yo bitch up"
Posted by: tinyfrog | January 4, 2008 3:45 PM
I figured out pretty quickly that this was written by a Muslim. It reminded me a lot of the "justification" a Muslim gave me a few months ago justifying the Islamic practice of killing Muslim apostates. By the way, this article was in the Yemen Times. I recall a poll done in Yemen a few years ago - approximately *half* of all Muslim clerics in Yemen believed death was the proper punishment for Muslim apostates.
Posted by: anonymousat2:20 | January 4, 2008 4:20 PM
http://www.christiandomesticdiscipline.com/Home.html
PZ- i would love to see your take on this little gem- found through greta christina's post on the skeptics circle last nite. i was digging around her posts and came upon this- and wanted to puke.
There are a lot of people out there who will do anything to put women in their place in the name of religion.
yuck
Posted by: Azkyroth | January 4, 2008 4:28 PM
I think the point that was being made was that it was outlawed ~60 years ago, not that it wasn't still practiced.
Posted by: Ichthyic | January 4, 2008 4:30 PM
nutbag right-wing religious folk do believe in crazy shit, but that does not mean we let them get away with it.
oh?
seems like they "get away with it" quite a lot.
or have you missed every battle fought in the culture war of late?
Chris Comer comes to mind as a very recent example. there are literally thousands of examples of "nubtbags getting away with it" if you go back over the last couple of decades.
Huckleberry just won the rethuglican caucus in Iowa.
or, use the war as another example.
all the poll data show that most americans support us getting our asses out of there, and yet, we're still there.
sure, other countries can look at that poll data and think that most americans want this to stop, but there's that old addage:
actions speak louder than words.
frankly, i don't see how you can make the conclusion you did, if you try to view the US from an outside perspective.
Posted by: Ichthyic | January 4, 2008 4:33 PM
If a woman went to the police and said her husband beat her and forced her to have sex with him, that man would be arrested in a heart beat and jailed.
this entirely depends on the state and county you happen to be in, unfortunately.
most domestic violence cases go unreported. do you know why?
I rather think you have a far rosier view of the current sociology of the US than is warranted.
Posted by: MAJeff | January 4, 2008 4:37 PM
this entirely depends on the state and county you happen to be in, unfortunately.
It can even depend upon which officer.
I used to work in the DV field. Let's be honest, in general, American institutions deal with the situation far better today than they did 40 years ago. While there are still serious issues, for the most part, we no longer institutionalize violence against women as a property crime against her owner. That's worth something.
Posted by: Ichthyic | January 4, 2008 4:49 PM
It can even depend upon which officer.
indeed.
it's just easier to show variability by state/county than by individual.
While there are still serious issues, for the most part, we no longer institutionalize violence against women as a property crime against her owner.
true, from most legal standpoints, but we all know that "institutionalize" means different things to different people.
many still hold their [local] church as the highest authority.
I agree, that similarly to racism, domestic violence issues have made progress (especially, as you mention, over the last few decades), but we certainly are a long way away from saying the US is "cured" of such things.
Posted by: Kseniya | January 4, 2008 4:51 PM
Yup. It depends. "Marital rape" is still considered an oxymoronic fiction in some areas.
Posted by: MAJeff | January 4, 2008 4:52 PM
I agree, that similarly to racism, domestic violence issues have made progress (especially, as you mention, over the last few decades), but we certainly are a long way away from saying the US is "cured" of such things.
I would never make such a claim, particularly as someone who teaches the sociology of both race and gender.
Posted by: Ichthyic | January 4, 2008 4:53 PM
I would never make such a claim
not saying you did, just to be clear.
Posted by: Lance | January 4, 2008 5:06 PM
Culago,
Excellent post. As PZ's remark "That last bit is legitimate -- of course there is a fear that outsiders will destroy one's culture..." demonstrates there is a rich vein of cultural relativism running through post-modernist thought.
Culture is nothing sacred, or at least it shouldn't be. It is just a set of behaviors and customs practiced in a population. Even if those behaviors are completely benign or even beneficial they deserve no special insulation from interactions, and hence modification or elimination, with competing behaviors and customs of other populations.
Just as languages are being "lost" so to will idiosyncratic or redundant cultural practices as advances in communication and travel bring about greater and more frequent contact between previously isolated populations.
The arbiters of these changes will be the individuals of each population. Artificial and compulsory impediments used to preserve static cultural artifacts should be condemned as acts of coercion.
Posted by: GuLi | January 4, 2008 5:40 PM
Meh :) "Resistance is futile." I beg to fdiffer.Posted by: Janine | January 4, 2008 6:02 PM
Here is a fine example of a father reacting badly to his daughter's behavior. This occurred in a suburb south of Chicago within the last week.
http://www.suntimes.com/news/metro/721685,oakfire10108.article
Have to love "family values".
Posted by: mathyoo | January 4, 2008 6:30 PM
Wrong. Fathers and brothers are responsible for their own behavior, and no one else's.
Daughters and sisters are responsible for THEIR own behavior, and no one else CAN be truly responsible. I guess it's just typical of religion that you have to force your own viewpoints, morality and behavior on others, rather than just taking care of an being responsible for your own behavior.
Posted by: Lago | January 4, 2008 7:00 PM
I still see no legit examples have been given that shows the US as a society endorsing the beating, rape, and murdering of women for religious and/or moral reasons. Instead some posters have pointed to where individuals have done stupid things that show no signs of large support by society in general, and claim this is the same as what we see in Islamic countries where it is socially accepted as the norm when a woman, "acts in an immoral manner."
Please show me where there is a woman, or women crying out to be saved in the US from religious oppressors, who are harming her/them (rape, beating, and so on) and he cries are going unanswered?
Posted by: Ichthyic | January 4, 2008 7:07 PM
Please show me where there is a woman, or women crying out to be saved in the US from religious oppressors, who are harming her/them (rape, beating, and so on) and he cries are going unanswered?
you could always try looking at the statistics estimating the amount of unreported domestic violence in the US, before concluding there isn't any.
here's a starting place for you:
http://www.motherjones.com/news/featurex/2005/07/sources.html
domestic violence in this country is still a HUGE problem, and by saying "society doesn't support it" you really do have to be entirely specific.
your point glosses over the reality, is what I'm saying.
Posted by: Ichthyic | January 4, 2008 7:14 PM
...more:
http://www.abanet.org/domviol/statistics.html
Posted by: Lago | January 4, 2008 7:27 PM
Ichthyic...
Where the hell is your response? You gave examples of hidden violence where we, as a people, are actively trying to fight, despite the walls that slow such down. My girlfriend manages a store, and one of her employees was having trouble with her abusive boyfriend. Everything was done to try and help the girl, including banning the boyfriend from the store, and even calling in the police. They took his guns away, and offered her all sorts of support. In the end the girl turned on my girlfriend claiming, despite earlier requests for assistance, that she should mind her own business. A few weeks later, her boyfriend killed her.
These situations are extremely complex but have NOTHING to do with the subject we are discussing at all. The fact that you see the two as the same freakin' amazes me..
You have shown NOTHING of what I asked for, and have so missed the point by giving these as examples that it makes me wonder, do you have an extra chromosome that we should know about?
Posted by: Alverant | January 4, 2008 7:54 PM
Ric: The fact is that the entirety of Islam is a horrid vestige of barbarism.
I wouldn't say that. During the Dark Ages Islam helped preserved old knowledge and even advance science. Who do you think invented algebra? (Which I'm sure will be used by math-phobes to justify attacking the whole religion). Their food isn't too bad either. I'd rather have turkish than italian any day.
Posted by: Lago | January 4, 2008 7:58 PM
""I wouldn't say that. During the Dark Ages Islam helped preserved old knowledge and even advance science. Who do you think invented algebra? (Which I'm sure will be used by math-phobes to justify attacking the whole religion). Their food isn't too bad either. I'd rather have turkish than italian any day.""
You are referring to the Islam of Old, not the one that won out in the battle for control. The science, religious-tolerance version was actively suppressed and we were left with what we have now...
Posted by: Ichthyic | January 4, 2008 8:10 PM
despite the walls that slow such down
walls like the very acceptance of such violence in many communities throughout the US. just because the people you personally know fight against it doesn't mean that all do, by any means.
the same issue could be said of creationism in the US, for that matter.
over 60% apparently still hold essentially a YEC viewpoint, or sympathize with it.
it doesn't do to sweep it under the rug with a generalization that "america doesn't support" something, when it runs rampant.
actions louder than words?
that you could miss such a point "freakin' amazes me."
Posted by: daedalus2u | January 4, 2008 8:11 PM
The incidence world-wide is discussed in this paper
http://www-wds.worldbank.org/external/default/WDSContentServer/WDSP/IB/2005/06/28/000112742_20050628084339/Rendered/PDF/wps3618.pdf
It is not small, and in no way is it limited to Muslim countries.
Posted by: Ichthyic | January 4, 2008 8:14 PM
You are referring to the Islam of Old
i am dubious of your understanding of the "Islam of Old", having now seen you use such a term, frankly.
Posted by: Lago | January 4, 2008 8:28 PM
"walls like the very acceptance of such violence in many communities throughout the US."
Bullshit claims not backed by anything. There is no signs that society is accepting anything. If a woman wants to get out, and it is known, society backs her getting out and backs her rights to do so. Show where this is not the case, and not by simply claiming that violence exists, which we all know,...
Next, "Islam of Old" refers to the days when Islam was probably the most tolerant religion in the world, and was filled with reason as a way to interpret the world around us. This version of the religion was actively attack by other aspects of Islam, and the reason-science version did not win...
Posted by: daedalus2u | January 4, 2008 8:55 PM
Lago, it isn't a "bug", it is a "feature". A major cause of death for women over evolutionary time was cephalopelvic disproportion. Having a boyfriend who is abusive and causes low birth weight is a "feature". A feature that might save her life.
Having the crap beat out of you is a trivial price to pay for living through a first pregnancy. Dying isn't a trivial price, but during evolutionary times, boyfriends didn't have guns.
Over evolutionary time the average woman had 2 children survive and reproduce. No more, and no less. If more had survived then the population would have reached levels we know didn't happen. If fewer, then humans would have gone extinct. How many pregnancies would a woman go through over her lifetime? Surviving a first pregnancy where everything gets streached out and she gets used to being pregnant might be a reason why young women tend to pick guys that are complete jerks and put up with being abused.
Similarly, if a new mother finds herself in metabolic stress such that she can't sustain lactation, what does she need to do? She needs to shed metabolic load. Over evolutionary time, the only way to accomplish that was via infanticide. If her boyfriend would do it for her, then evolution can allow her to be a better mother, division of labor and all that, he could be the "bad guy". Of course in that case she needs to pick a guy who will do these things for her, beat the crap out of her while she is pregnant, and then will have a lower threshold for killing her child if times become too difficult for her to survive.
I discuss a lot of this in my blog on the physiology of acute psychosis and infanticide.
http://daedalus2u.blogspot.com/2007/08/low-nitric-oxide-acute-psychosis.html
Posted by: Colugo | January 4, 2008 9:00 PM
Extreme misogyny, male control over the sexuality of female relatives, sometimes female infanticide, and other horrors like female genital mutilation and forced prostitution is normative in many "traditional" societies throughout the world - Muslim, Hindu, Christian, Sikh, China, Melanesia, the Buddhist world (Thailand...) etc. This is true to varying degrees - and the more traditional/reactionary the more true - in virtually all pastoralist and sedentary agricultural based societies and their successors.
Only in the post-Enlightenment West - with its succession of social and political revolutions, civil rights and feminist movements - is the situation different and is female control over their own reproduction, gender parity at least an idealized norm and mostly enshrined in law, and "traditional" practices such as violent wife abuse is widely negatively socially sanctioned.
True, there are serious problems in contemporary Western society - sexualization and pressure on girls and women, body image, pornography. But the Western gender parity ideal - not yet fully realized of course - is still preferable to the superficial and phony patriarchal piety overlaying widespread prostitution, exploitation, and horrendous abuse of women that typifies much of the nonwestern world.
Even in some parts of Western Europe they are decades behind the US on sexual harassment policy.
The reactionary, theocratic patriarchal mentality associated with rural areas of the US Bible belt is the norm in much of the "traditional" (nonwestern) world, except often in far worse manifestations. In that sense, the ideals of the post-Enlightenment West are worth emulating. Because these are not really Western ideals, but universal human yearnings - to be free and equal.
Posted by: JohnnieCanuck, FCD | January 5, 2008 1:25 AM
Lago,
The most obvious answer would be in the communities of the Fundamentalist Latter Day Saints. This meets all your criteria.
I don't believe the conviction of Jeffs has stopped the abuse. The trial was the first significant response to the problem in many decades.
I hope no-one argues that because many of the women have come to accept the abuse such that they would not make a complaint, that that makes it ok.
I don't know what the solution might be. If there were only a few involved, taking away the children might have worked, but it would have been difficult for many reasons.
The claims of freedom of religion have trumped the protection of the childrens' civil rights, along with those of most of the adults. Girls learn only to cook, clean, sew and submit. Boys work for slave wages and most of them will be kicked out with nothing to their name, not even an education or social skills. The Patriarch may reassign wives to other, more loyal men if he becomes displeased with someone.
Posted by: Tulse | January 5, 2008 2:40 AM
daedalus2u:
You have got to be kidding me -- a "Just So" sociobiological story to justify domestic violence? What is your evidence? Do you have anything apart from vague speculation? What was the prevalence of death from cephalopelvic disproportion in "evolutionary time"? What is the death rate for women from domestic violence? What is the relative fitness advantage for the male (since he's the one you're presuming has evolved this behaviour) to attempt to cause low birthweight by violently attacking his partner and risking her death, as opposed to a) simply abandoning the partner and her clear overall biological risk (since I presume a woman is prone to having large birthweight kids), or b) risking the birth without intervention?
This is why it is so hard to take evolutionary psychology seriously -- it is rife with this kind of wildly speculative bullshit justifying distasteful behaviours.
daedalus2u , call me when you're a real scientist who does real science.
Posted by: truth machine | January 5, 2008 3:06 AM
... is normative in many "traditional" societies .... Only in the post-Enlightenment West ... is the situation different ....
Modal error.
Posted by: truth machine | January 5, 2008 3:11 AM
Surviving a first pregnancy where everything gets streached out and she gets used to being pregnant might be a reason why young women tend to pick guys that are complete jerks and put up with being abused.
And you might be talking out of your ass.
Posted by: Thony C. | January 5, 2008 3:20 AM
Alverant asked:
The Babylonians!
Posted by: truth machine | January 5, 2008 3:40 AM
Some jackass wrote:
Cultural relativism has long been used to justify any and all "traditional" cultural practices, no matter how inhumane and embedded in relations of domination and exploitation.
And yet in this case the justification is coming from inside the culture and no one outside is defending these practices.
Posted by: Lago | January 5, 2008 4:01 AM
""Lago,
The most obvious answer would be in the communities of the Fundamentalist Latter Day Saints. This meets all your criteria.""
No they do not fit. Should they? Yes, but they do not.
I have seen too many interviews with the women from those towns to think they are all being held against their wills. May there be women in there that want to leave? Sure, but unless they tell us, or express that they do in some way when asked, we can't do crap. Do we suspect? Sure we do. Despite this, when we go in an ask them if they are OK, and take them aside, and so on, and tell them we can get them out yaddah yaddah yaddah, what is it we usually get for answers? I think you know,
Are there some that do get out and say they were being held to do things against their wills while living there? Yep, you bet. Do we say, "Oh sorry, but you need to go back because you are the property of that town or cult?" Of course we do not. We go in, as you know and have stated above, and arrest the people suspected of being involved in any such repression...
In short, you have not shown in ANY way that we, as a society, are endorsing the the suppression of women's rights. You are only showing it is a complex issue when finding the line between cultism (well, religion in general), and brainwashing. The rights of a person, even to live in stupid ways, is protected...
Posted by: Azkyroth | January 5, 2008 4:49 AM
Daedalus2u:
Keep going, would you? I'm almost there...
Seriously, do you have any evidence to back this up? And most specifically...
Do you have any evidence to offer that the present socioeconomic and cultural explanations for the tendency of a subset of young women (is it really just young women? Any evidence there?) to make very bad relationship choices, in our culture (how prevalent is it in others?) is less satisfactory than your borderline Rube Goldberg evo-psych speculation?
Posted by: Azkyroth | January 5, 2008 4:54 AM
Just found this little gem:
...are you actually contending that the "cycle of violence" is a result of some kind of biological effect and not of learning by example (possibly coupled to a greater genetic susceptibility to substance abuse and other mental illnesses)?
Posted by: truth machine | January 5, 2008 6:40 AM
Keep going, would you? I'm almost there...
And From the people who brought you Libertarian Troll Bingo too. They nailed them both.
Posted by: D | January 5, 2008 9:17 AM
I have to note that by Lago's apparent standards for an abusive misogynist society, those reviled Muslim countries don't meet the requirements either.
Posted by: daedalus2u | January 5, 2008 9:31 AM
The "cycle of violence" has to be via a "biological effect", even if it is "just" learning. All learning is via "biological effects". Virtually every organ in the body is known to be programmed in utero, including the liver, heart, vasculature, kidney, pancreas, endocrine system. Is it a reasonable default position to assume that the most important organ, the brain, is not programmed in utero? No, that is an unreasonable default position. The brain is probably the organ that is most programmed in utero but that programming is difficult to appreciate because is it mostly tied up in neuroanatomy.
No doubt the "cycle of violence" is affected by genes. MAOA1 happens to be a good candidate. It happens to be on the X chromosome and so is sex linked. Why is a gene associated with violence sex linked?
Data on the incidence of cephalopelvic disproportion during evolutionary times is sparse. Can we assume it never happened? No, we can't. Is a reasonable default position that it occurred at similar rates to what is observed today? Yes.
In the absence of c-sections, the death rate for women giving birth is about 1 per thousand births.