Don’t Blame the Culprit!
An article on the ACLU blog this morning caught my attention, reporting that in Norristown, PA., the state has introduced legislation to force landlords to evict tenants if the police are summoned to their address. Such ‘nuisanceordinances’ might seem reasonable if your neighbour’s a drug dealer constantly getting raided – but what if your neighbour’s [...]
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Kate
(new)
Apr 27, 2013 08:48AM
But there's a difference between evicting the residents of a crack house and evicting a woman who called the police because her boyfriend assaulted her, I assume you'd agree?
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Why? Does it inconvenience you to have to listen to her being abused? Do you perhaps think it's her own fault it happens? Never mind if she loves him and he's the father of her children and she's nowhere else to go, no money and no ability to start over. That he cries afterwards and tells her he'll change and never hit her again. That he says if she runs away he'll hunt her down and kill her, or harm the children. Noooooo, you'd rather see her thrown out on the street, effectively guaranteeing that she'll become just another sad statistic. How would you feel if it were you? Not every victim of domestic abuse is an underprivileged, ill-educated female being beaten by her boyfriend. It seems easy to look down and sneer from your position of white male supremacy, but men form a significant proportion of all domestic violence victims, and it's usually their wives/girlfriends doing the beating. They're less likely to admit to what's happening than women, ensuring more intervention is required to help them leave their abuser. By your thinking, they'd be homeless long before they reached that point.
I've never been in an abusive relationship in my life, so it's hardly personal experience I'm talking from. Fact is no-one can say what they'd do in that situation unless they were in it. But as human beings we owe each other a basic amount of compassion. Who says it's her calling the police? It could just as easily be neighbours, friends or relatives. You say there's hundreds of shelters out there: there's also hundreds of women to fill them. You think there's a bed for them all? And what about the male victims? How many shelters do you think are available for them?
Perhaps you'd have been better reading the whole post before commenting, as it was actually about the (American) culture of victim-shaming, which right now you are perfectly exemplifying.
