Hard News: Cultures and violence
464 Responses
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BenWilson, in reply to
Sounds crazy and shouldn’t be needed but we don’t live in a perfect world and never will.
Certainly never will if we never try.
It is child like magical thinking to believe that if we declare somewhere a gun free zone, that everything will be wonderful.
No, but it's also child-like thinking to construct that as the aim. A reduction in gun related killings would also be worth having, and can and has eventuated from stricter gun controls elsewhere.
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DexterX, in reply to
Actually, no
Actually Yes - look at this particularly from "Of Interest .........."
Analysis of the data of the Dunedin Multidisciplinary Health and Development Study, "a longitudinal investigation of the health, development, and behaviour of a complete cohort of births between 1 April 1972 and 31 March 1973" (Moffitt, Caspi, Rutter, & Silva, 2001) of more than a thousand New Zealand babies of predominantly European ancestry confirmed that sex differences are the largest for violent crimes and smallest for drug- and alcohol-related crimes. Of interest is their finding that "inside intimate relationships and the privacy of the home, females [in this normative sample] are just as physically aggressive as males" (Moffitt, Caspi, Rutter, & Silva, 2001, p. 69), which could not be explained by the hypothesis of self-defence.
Other reserach particularly in the USA and Canada shows that sex differences for rates of violent offending are closing - this reflects a range of factors - not necessarily that women have become more violent but that the problem is more reported than it was previously.
Female violence inside intimate relationships and the privacy of the homes is I consider substantially under reported and not recognised by Police and other professional acting in the "field".
A recent example being a male friend whose partner would often resort to violence and abuse when in domestic matters - which also involved her picking up a knife and waving it about - when they wre in counselling with relationship services - the advice from the counselleo was for him not to walk into the kitchen when she was angry.
IMHO Female violence agaisnt children and partners is masively under reported to the degree that it almost doesn't exist. - which is what I am saying to you - if you don't hear it then that is fione - but it doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
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David Cormack, in reply to
Unsure if you've already seen this Danielle, but in response to your question of gender, I give you: http://www.salon.com/2012/12/17/why_is_the_shooter_always_male/
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DexterX, in reply to
If you mean "they tend to be killed by their partners a lot less" then yes, I suppose that could be considered "more resilient".
No, that is not what I mean and you know it - I wouldn't say you are witless; sarcasm is the lowest for of wit. You prevent yourself from recognising a valid perspective on the extent of domestic violence and abuse – I can’t see your sarcasm serves any purpose.
By all means go hard out to ignore the problem in your response and don't forget to feel self-righteous doing so.
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BenWilson, in reply to
Female violence agaisnt children and partners is masively under reported to the degree that it almost doesn't exist
It's not a matter of no consequence, but part of the reason it's under-reported is that the consequences of it are less fatal by orders of magnitude. Men can easily kill women with blows alone, or choking them. The reverse is not true. I never met in 17 years of martial arts training any woman that I would fear in a physical unarmed confrontation, and that's including the self-selected strongest and best trained, naturally aggressive ones, definitely not your average random woman. Armed, it's a different matter, but domestic violence is something that erupts, rather than being planned. The women die a lot more, and are obviously a lot more intimidated by it as a consequence.
A guy I know has been the victim of domestic violence quite a few times, for reasons I won't go into. But the one time he fought back, the woman was skittled. He was never really in anywhere near as serious danger as she was.
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yanking our chains...
Could it be the American culture that is the problem?
Or at least aspects of it - what a shame that the University of Canterbury saw fit to close the American Studies department, at this point in time. I guess future Canterbury students will never have the chance to know now... -
Graeme Edgeler, in reply to
Of course historically, the Supreme Court has tended to feel that the 2nd ammendment applies to militias, not individuals.
My understanding is that the Court rather assiduously avoided the issue for a very long time.
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Martin Lindberg, in reply to
Could it be the American culture that is the problem?
Certainly aspects of it. Again, I recommend Warrior Dreams and Gun Control Fantasies on paramilitary culture and what it means to be a man in this culture.
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Lucy Stewart, in reply to
It’s not a matter of no consequence, but part of the reason it’s under-reported is that the consequences of it are less fatal by orders of magnitude. Men can easily kill women with blows alone, or choking them. The reverse is not true.
And, bluntly, men *do* kill their partners, frequently. Women do at much lower rates – even in the US, where, theoretically, if female-on-male DV was happening at the same scale as male-on-female DV, they could access weapons allowing them to kill them. And yet that doesn’t show up in the homicide statistics. Funny, that.
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B Jones, in reply to
Armed, it's a different matter, but domestic violence is something that erupts, rather than being planned.
To a point. Some people resort to violence (physical or verbal) as a loss of control; others use it to maintain control. Abusers are often calculating enough to hide it - not leave bruises, not do it in front of witnesses etc.
There are a bunch of cases of women killing their abusive partners and being unable to use a provocation defence because of the amount of planning they had to do to be sure of success - acquiring a weapon, poison or the like. Provocation as a defence is more designed to let people off for losing it than to let people off for escaping from a slow-burning life-threatening situation. There's an argument that provocation is functionally sexist in doing so.
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Lindsay Perigo has weighed in. And it's awesome: http://www.solopassion.com/node/9505
If it's TLDR for you I'll summarise:
Women are sluts! Even Fox news women, can you believe it? Not ALL blacks and hispanics are bad. It wasn't like this in my day. You kids are so f*cked up. Ayn Rand.
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James Bremner, in reply to
Leaving children in a vunerable position is hardly working towards a better world. Taking sensible precautions is the sober juducious thing to do.
My understanding is that over the last few years gun sales have increased quite dramatically while crime has fallen. Cause and effect? I'm not sure, I know that there is plenty of discussion that there is a link. The "guns always bad" line of thinking isn't necessarily accurate.
The last time I looked at the stats, NZ had a higher rate of home invasion crime that the US, and I would attribute that to NZ's strict gun laws and the fact that if you were to defend yourself from a home invader, you would probably spend longer in jail than the invader. Is that such a sensible approach? A number of defenseless people in NZ have meet horrible ends as result of that approach.
We don't live in a perfect world and we have to make sensible decisions within the framework of what is possible to try to arrive at the best solution. Some of those decisions require a clear eyed view of reality and some hard decisions about the course of action that leads to the least harm. -
Danielle, in reply to
By all means go hard out to ignore the problem in your response and don’t forget to feel self-righteous doing so.
You're reading an awful lot into my one-sentence post reporting a, um, fact.
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Lilith __, in reply to
No, that is not what I mean and you know it – I wouldn’t say you are witless; sarcasm is the lowest for of wit. You prevent yourself from recognising a valid perspective on the extent of domestic violence and abuse – I can’t see your sarcasm serves any purpose.
By all means go hard out to ignore the problem in your response and don’t forget to feel self-righteous doing so.
If you're being misunderstood, please explain so we can understand. If you don't like people being sarcastic, don't be sarky to them, eh?
If you think women are hurting their partners in equal numbers to their male counterparts, can you find us some links to support that view? PAS has a lot of respect for evidence over anecdata.
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Danielle, in reply to
Taking sensible precautions is the sober juducious thing to do.
You are seriously suggesting arming primary school teachers, aren't you? Yes. Totally sensible. I can't believe American society hadn't considered it previously.
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BenWilson, in reply to
There's an argument that provocation is functionally sexist in doing so.
Totally. Just as martial training can be considered equivalent to carrying a weapon, so should having a massive size and strength differential. But law changes are only a part of reducing domestic abuse. A social attitude of accepting that it even happens on the scale that it does is a huge step.
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Martin Lindberg, in reply to
My understanding is that over the last few years gun sales have increased quite dramatically while crime has fallen.
Yes, I believe both those statement are true. However, another factor in that mix is that the number of people owning guns is decreasing. So you have fewer people owning more (and more) guns.
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BenWilson, in reply to
Is that such a sensible approach? A number of defenseless people in NZ have meet horrible ends as result of that approach.
Yup, it's extremely sensible. Home invasion is generally for the purposes of property theft, which is a minor crime, not worthy of the death penalty, certainly not worth risking your life over. The weapon to reach for in your house is the phone, if you think you've been broken in on. Then you shout out that you've called the police, and they're on their way. Open a window and scream for help, or fire or anything to gain attention. Against the theft, your weapon is an insurance policy.
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Bart Janssen, in reply to
I don’t buy “the hormones made him do it”
That isn't what I said. I said that testosterone make males different from females and is almost certainly the difference that make males more violent than females and almost certainly the difference that means men commit these crimes more than women.
I entirely agree it isn't an excuse for violence. But I do think any attempt to address violence in society, particularly by males, must take into account the effect on behaviour of this hormone. The numbers are too stark to simply dismiss it as failure to raise boys properley, which is not what you said but if you ignore the biology then you are putting it all on the parents and society.
I am in no way suggesting it is an appropriate excuse, nor am I describing it as a particularly good trait.
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Lucy Stewart, in reply to
. Provocation as a defence is more designed to let people off for losing it than to let people off for escaping from a slow-burning life-threatening situation. There’s an argument that provocation is functionally sexist in doing so.
Insomuch as it reflects a view of society that privileges loss of control in what are perceived as masculinised ways - i.e. losing your shit - yeah, it totally is. But we ditched provocation recently, right?
Some of those decisions require a clear eyed view of reality and some hard decisions about the course of action that leads to the least harm.
I want to thank you, James, for perfectly epitomizing that counterfactual American view that guns make you safer to which I referred earlier in the thread. I could not have illustrated it better myself.
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Bart Janssen, in reply to
It is up to the courts, ultimately the Supreme Court.
Yes. But the court can only rule after a law is made and then challenged. Thus far none of the laws made by states to limit access to semi automatic weapons have been overturned by the supreme court.
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Lucy Stewart, in reply to
I said that testosterone make males different from females and is almost certainly the difference that make males more violent than females and almost certainly the difference that means men commit these crimes more than women.
And also makes men between the ages of about fifteen and twenty-five really good at getting themselves killed in various ways, compared to their female counterparts in the age cohort. Which makes the social stuff - how and what they learn about masculinity and acceptable social behaviours and being good to themselves and other people - all the more important.
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Bart Janssen, in reply to
weren’t generally aggressive, testosterone types
Most folks assume the effect of testosterone is to produce big bulky males eg TV wrestlers. That is the effect of externally applied drugs. Endogenous (self produced) testosterone is much more complex in its effects. There is no question that the increase of testosterone during male puberty alters brain development. Decision making shows distinct male/female differences.
Again the question was why is it always boys? If you seriously believe testosterone has no role in this then we will simply disagree.
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Danielle, in reply to
But I do think any attempt to address violence in society, particularly by males, must take into account the effect on behaviour of this hormone.
Here’s my problem with this idea: let’s say we all agree that testosterone is partly “why” men are more violent than women. Yet we also agree 99.9% of men can squash the urge to go around beating the crap out of things and shooting a bunch of people because: reason; socialisation; humane qualities; not being monstrous. You know, average pleasantness. If most men can do this, why not these men? And if, as Russell says, most mass shooters are not actually all that heavy on the testosterone and were, in fact, tormented at school for not being “manly” enough… what then? What I mean is, the testosterone-explanation really doesn’t get us very far, because isn’t this more fundamentally a *social* problem?
ETA Or, uh, what Lucy said. Frankly, let's just assume I say that whenever she posts. It'll save us all a lot of time.
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B Jones, in reply to
And also makes men between the ages of about fifteen and twenty-five really good at getting themselves killed in various ways, compared to their female counterparts in the age cohort.
I'm in the stage of my life when the majority of my peer group is procreating, and the consensus seems to be, for some reason, that girls will be the hard ones to raise. Maybe it'll be different after 20 years experience, but the amount of worry in advance seems disproportionate since girls are by and large more likely to make it into adulthood.
Perhaps there's something to that - we worry less about boys doing dodgy stuff, and we therefore do a worse job of protecting them.
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