Pakistan: When Is A Husband Justified In Beating His Wife?
A poll. The graphic is a little funny. You can switch it from male to female, and if you aren't paying attention it looks like men are more likely to think they are entitled to beat their wives under certain circumstances. But notice that when you swap the sex, the scale at the bottom of the graph changes. It looks like less than a fifth of men believe they are entitled to beat their wives for any of these causes, but nearly a third of women agree that wives should be beaten for most of them.
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"When Is A Husband Justified In Beating His Wife?"
I'm just guessing here, but I'd say when he's up by two and she can't hit the three-point jumper to end the game.
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Aye, if she can hit the two point shot she's likely to beat me. Never did have much talent for basketball. Now if she wants to play checkers or chess, or shoot a game of pool...
It looks like less than a fifth of men believe they are entitled to beat their wives for any of these causes, but nearly a third of women agree that wives should be beaten for most of them.
That shouldn't surprise anyone - it's a well documented fact that abused women blame themselves for their partner's violence. Abused children tend to believe they're bad and deserve to be abused.
Being hit and believing it's your fault aren't exactly unconnected.
The right answer, of course, is never.
This is one of the dangers of allowing Sharia law into our courts or our society. See, for instance, SD v MJR, a State appellate decision which overturned a New Jersey trial court's ruling holding that, applying Sharia, a husband is allowed to rape his wife. The trial court's opinion, itself, is hard to find because that case has been more or less "sealed" for the protection of the woman.
Eric Hines
"That shouldn't surprise anyone..."
It does surprise me, though. This is a very traditional culture, with a religion that specifically says that a husband may beat his wife under certain circumstances (Koran 4:34). That specific circumstance is one of the ones listed.
So it is surprising to me that less than one in five men believes that wife-beating is justified under any of these circumstances.
Your suggestion of why women express greater support for beatings is interesting. I wonder if it correlates to the percentage of women who experience beatings, which your suggestion would seem to imply.
I wonder if it correlates....
It accords with my experience with abused wives. The two that I've successfully helped had, by the time I encountered them, begun to recognize that something was wrong, though. The one I haven't been able to help has not reached that recognition.
An n of 3 is not very dispositive, but there it is. And just to parse the n further, one of the two was raised in Chinese culture, and emigrated in her 20s, the other was raised in middle America. One was subject to beatings, the other to emotional abuse. One more parse: one was in her early middle age when she began her realization; the other was a woman in her 70s.
Eric Hines
Your suggestion of why women express greater support for beatings is interesting. I wonder if it correlates to the percentage of women who experience beatings, which your suggestion would seem to imply.
I don't know, Grim. You wrote once about whether there were people who were sort of natural slaves. I've thought of that question often.
I think that women in general, for whatever reason: culture, nurture, biology, even selective breeding (or natural selection if you prefer - that's probably a more accurate description) are easier to subdue than men-in-general.
I don't think most men want to be brutes. I haven't been able to avoid noticing that there's something in male nature that wants to dominate others. And there's a fairly sizeable group of men who seem to think they "own" their women even today. These are the guys who stalk/terrorize their exes. I got a bellyful of that during one of my first jobs at the Navy Exchange. In a fairly small group of cashiers, there were 2 or 3 whose ex-husbands had literally broken into their apartments and beat them up after they moved out. One was 8 months pregnant with her husband's child.
And I saw a lot of that during the brief time I worked in family law.
I'll never understand that mind set, but I don't think it's typical of all men.
No man has ever raised a hand to me, or even vaguely threatened to do so. I can't imagine tolerating it. If I couldn't find another way to protect myself (or any children he was holding hostage), I'd wait until he was asleep and shoot him in the head. Or, if I thought the police would take his side, I'd come up with something more discreet.
The whole thing is a mystery to me--but then I've never lived in a culture that took it for granted that he had the right. To the extent that there are pockets of culture like that in this country, I've somehow never touched them. Protected life, I guess.
"I don't think most men want to be brutes. I haven't been able to avoid noticing that there's something in male nature that wants to dominate others.
...
I'll never understand that mind set, but I don't think it's typical of all men."
All men are brutish in their nature, and most men (hopefully) at least get a harness on that nature and control it, at least most of the time. I just think we should be careful to understand that it's not that some men are and some men aren't that way- a genetic issue almost- but that there's the animal in us that demands satisfaction, and the soul that asks more of us than mere satisfaction, and hopefully we are able to harness the power of that animal to better ends than the quenching of desire. To the extent that a man was shown that better way and some means of controlling the animal side, and doesn't he's clearly culpable. To the extent he was never given the tools and made to practice the skills to handle that beast, he may not be. That's for God to judge.
To be fair, women too have an animal to tame- but theirs doesn't exhibit itself in physical violence so much, but exercises it's power with words more often than not.
To the extent that a man was shown that better way.... To the extent he was never given the tools....
I disagree with the phrasing, at least. Who showed the first man? Who gave to the first man? A man figured this stuff out. Likely with God's help, but not given to us whole and entire; a man had to help himself.
That a man figured this stuff out eliminates all excuse for any other--sane--man not figuring it out. Certainly it'll be harder for some than for others. Hard means possible, though. Certainly it'll go easier and more efficiently with teaching, but that's not a necessity.
Eric Hines
If I couldn't find another way to protect myself... I'd wait until he was asleep and shoot him in the head.
Good.
I'd kill any man who thought he could beat me with impunity. Doesn't matter who he was, or what he took to be his justification.
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