They are not who you’d expect them to be …

We all think in stereotypes, prejudices and other departures from facts and evidence. Why? Because the human brain is designed to think in terms of fuzzy rather than purist logic. Our brains aggregate information, emotion, memory in order to guide us in our every day survival tasks. One of the side effects of this is we develop assumptions, beliefs, attitudes to guide our regular everyday activities – because the mind body system is efficient and elegant in its use of energy.

The down side of this, we can get stuff – way way way wrong. One of these ‘off course’ assumptions is gender, blame and the fault we can attribute to a range of crimes based entirely on what we know about gender. We can assume things like being male means you are – more likely to abuse, less capable of multi tasking or being aware of feeling states. We can assume thing like being female means you are – unlikely to abuse, and less capable of building say a Tiny House. Gender, race, religion aside – human beings are people, and in this we are all commonly flawed and just as likely as each other to avoid personal responsibility for the consequences our thoughts, words and deeds have for others and the collective, let’s summarize this and just say ‘The Earth’.

I have a provocative article to share about Domestic Violence that can, will and should challenge your assumptions about abuse and the complex causes of the damaging phenomenon that we refer to as Domestic Violence. Let the truth be your guide, and if you are truthful in your convictions, you will have nothing to fear, react to or defend yourself from – but if, on the other hand, you find yourself reacting … there is something to see, that your assumptions about this issue are preventing you from considering. Be slow to reach for retribution and quicker to ask more questions.

I wrote my first thesis in … um 1996? It examined, among other things, the role of gender in domestic violence. I recall reviewing a huge study with over 10 000 participants who were selected randomly, in manner of excellent research protocols and asked a series of pencil and paper questions about their experiences with domestic violence. The answers to the questions were mailed back to the researchers to allow for more privacy and therefore hopefully more comfort disclosing.

The results showed that gender was not a factor in terms of initiating a physical attack on a partner. It was a factor in terms of severity of physical injury. Said another way, this study found that men and women were equally likely to initiate a physical altercation with one another in a partner relationship. WTF! Yes Feministas, Tru Dat!

It is comforting to imagine women as gentle kind creatures who never hurt anyone and always care and grow things. It is. Are women really like this? I remember both my Grandmothers being women like this, but following the backwash and lash of Feminism – kindness, gentleness, nurturing, even mothering seems to have been replaced but … well, I am nervous to say … anger, resentment, outrage even rage? I see very few powerful women. I do see many women who are angry, hurt and confused waging sometimes private and sometimes public wars – with themselves, within themselves and with others.

So here is Le Article Provacatif … being research, it has attempted to translate the ephemeral in to the quantifiable, things have been counted – this means there is some proof of the claims being made and therefore worth considering and wondering “what is this all about then?”