Deaths from Domestic Violence

[Mugwump]

David, when you write that the term evil is “inaccurate”, I think you are still locked into the idea that there is some kind of natural science here. And that, I think, truly is inaccurate.

In truth, these are just terms that we use to label behaviour and patterns of behaviour. The subjective experience of an individual is fundamentally enigmatic to us, so we cannot usually tell the difference between mad and bad.

As an example, Josef Stalin was pretty clearly one of the most wicked men that ever lived ; but no truly sane human being is indifferent to the infliction of hideous suffering on other people, as he was. So was he mad, or bad ? He was not psychotic, as far as we could tell : his thought processes were very linear. But his cruelty was not, in some sense, rational. So it is fair to say that he was both mad and bad at the same time. The point of this is that the language is trying to get at something that it cannot access, which cannot be properly observed. Hence we can only look at the social use of these labels, and choose the one that seems to us conducive to positive human social life.

At a certain point, most arguments come down to the problems identified by Ludwig Wittgenstein - a kind of Einstein or Bohr among philosophers. In essence, he recognized that language simply cannot do what we try to make it do most of the time. Because his texts are dense, he is not widely discussed or taught outside formal philosophy courses, but his critical insights should be a vital text in our educational curriculum, for it would avoid a lot of wasted breath and conflict.

[thesoretoothsayer]

It's all about teaching men to respect women.
Oh, wait a sec:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-07-12/lgbt-domestic-violence-revolutionary-programs/9978680

[think positive]

It’s about everyone respecting everyone else.

It’s akso fact that the stats are heavily weighted to female being assaulted by males in domestic violence cases.

[Skids]

Yeah, it really is a man's world...

85% of homeless... are men
76% of suicides . ....are men
70% of murder victims .... are men
92% of workplace deaths .... are men
97% of war deaths .... are men

14% of men get custody after a divorce.

[Wokko]

Women are more likely to commit child abuse of a biological child than men are, and yet we don't hear about 'teaching women not to abuse children'.

One of the groups that is consistently found to have the highest domestic abuse rates is lesbian women. Teach lesbians not to abuse?

Women kill their own children more often than men do. Teach all women not to kill their children?

[stui magpie]

Getting defensive doesn't really help though. The fact is that the vast majority of those killed by someone close to them are killed by males, even though an Australian male is 40 times more likely to kill himself than his partner.

We need to somehow reframe the discussion to remove the finger pointing and the resulting defensiveness because while 99.9% of men don't abuse their partner, that defensiveness provides a screen for the 0.1% to hide behind.

[Mugwump]

I don’t think it is any great news that testosterone is associated with aggression, increased tolerance for risk and sexual promiscuity. Human beings were designed by an evolutionary background where these things were necessary, and it’s probably true that these qualities lie behind a lot of high achievements in society today. Equally, men were designed to live in social groups, so most men have the human capacity for empathy and cooperation. albeit a bit less than the average member of the more oestrogenated half of the population.

Some men struggle to control or profitably channel their edgier instincts, especially when young. Most men do not. It’s really not hard to grasp, unless you want to avoid grasping it because that will afford you social power or advantage over others.

Much of this nonsense would go away if people had any ready understanding of the idea of the bell curve. We are all part of a population distribution. The aggression of the average male is higher than that of the average female. The population distributions, however, overlap greatly, so many women are more aggressive than many men.

[stui magpie]

^

I'm not that sure it's that simple. I've posted before about the chemical difference, but I'm starting to think it's more of a personality thing.

In hindsight, I knew 2 men who both bashed their wives when I was a kid. I didn't know then, I found out later. Much later in one case and I was surprised particularly in the latter case as my parents were friends with him and I liked him.

As a hypothesis, I think these men were missing something. A feeling of control of their lives, self esteem issues, pick a number of similar things. Being the bid dominant man at home, putting the missus and kids back in their box with a smack, was their way of boosting their own self esteem and regaining control, despite knowing that what they were doing was wrong. Basically about control and power. It's related to the why people bully others scenario.

Side note, I went to primary school with one of the sons and high school with the other. The former joined the navy at 15 as an apprentice chef and committed suicide in his 40's. His dad committed suicide in his 60's. The other pursued a footy career for a while, then was a diver with the police, then "died suddenly" in his late 40's early 50's, around the same age his dad died of a heart attack

[Mugwump]

[stui magpie]

I wonder if there's a correlation with height. Little mans disease.

Both guys I mentioned above were about 5'6"

[David]

[think positive]

[think positive]

[David]

[roar]