Violence Against Women @ MindSay

_{Allison Stevens, Women's eNews}
^{January 15, 2007}

When it comes to domestic violence, Sen. Joseph Biden likes to compare the federal government to a lawnmower.

"Combating violence in the home is like cutting the grass," the Democrat from Delaware is fond of saying. "You can't just do it once."

In other words, the scourge of domestic violence can't be cured with one piece of legislation or one round of federal spending, he says. It's a persistent problem that needs to be addressed year after year, one congressional session after the next.

That is why Biden -- author of the 1994 Violence Against Women Act, which created and funded federal programs to help victims of domestic violence -- keeps thinking about new ways to reduce violence against women. And now with his party in power in the House and Senate, he is in position to find more support.

His current plan involves legal assistance.

Only 170,000 low-income domestic violence survivors have legal representation each year, less than 20 percent of at least 1 million victims who experience it annually, according to a 2005 report by the Institute for Law and Justice in Alexandria, Va., and the National Center for Victims and Crime in Washington, D.C.

Creating a Legal Network

To address this need, Biden, an attorney, has written a bill that would create an electronic network of 100,000 lawyers willing to do volunteer work on behalf of victims of domestic violence. The bill would also set up a fund to help a separate group of lawyers -- those who spend a majority of their time working on behalf of domestic violence victims -- pay back their school loans.

The median salary for a lawyer who joins a private firm is $85,000, while the average entry-level public sector salary -- such as a lawyer who works at a legal aid clinic -- is $35,000, according to Biden. Most lawyers graduate with a combined debt from undergraduate and graduate school of more than $80,000, according to the American Bar Association in Chicago.

Biden's proposal comes at a time when the amount of domestic violence in the United States is dropping, although assaults and other crimes at the hands of intimates has remained at about 10 percent of all violent crimes over the past decade.

A report released last month by the Department of Justice indicated that the rate of intimate partner violence in the United States fell by more than half between 1993 and 2004, a finding that paralleled an overall decrease in violent crime during the same period. The rate of homicides, rapes, assaults and robberies against women fell from 10 in 1,000 to 4 in 1,000, according to the report.

The report is a sign of success that the VAWA programs are working, said Allison Randall, public policy director at the National Network to End Domestic Violence in Washington, D.C.

Economists Studied Earlier Drop

In 2002, in an analysis of a decline in domestic violence during the 1990s, economists at Colgate and the University of Arkansas concluded that the availability of legal services, improvement in women's economic status and higher levels of education explained why women's risks of being battered had dropped. An aging population was also cited, because older women are significantly less vulnerable to this kind of abuse.

Economists Amy Farmer of the University of Arkansas and Jill Tiefenthaler argue that although shelters, hotlines and counseling services provide critical crisis-intervention services, they do not give women the ability to permanently leave their abusers. Legal assistance gives victims the tools -- such as protective orders, child support and public assistance -- to achieve financial independence and freedom from harm.

Under Biden's bill, lawyers who devote more than half of their full-time caseload to low-income domestic violence survivors for more than two consecutive years will get a 20 percent discount on their student loan bill, paid for by the Department of Justice. Lawyers who serve four and five years in their practice will get a 30 percent break.

"There is a wealth of untapped resources in this country, lawyers who want to volunteer," Biden says in a one-page written summary of the bill that goes on to say that law-school graduates are saddled with tremendous debt that can become unmanageable in lower-paying fields of law.

Biden is also working on legislation to combat violence against women at an international level. Called I-VAWA, for International Violence Against Women Act, the bill would, for the first time, commit the United States to ending violence against women around the globe.

The measure is expected to involve remedies in the areas of public health, the global economy, foreign law, international conflicts and humanitarian crises, according to Esta Soler, president of the Family Violence Prevention Fund in San Francisco.

She said in a statement that the bill -- based on the premise that financial independence helps protect women from domestic violence -- will include provisions to promote more equitable property rights, teach women how to build credit, improve women's access to education and job training programs, provide training and sensitization programs for judges and judicial officials, raise awareness of gender violence in the workplace, increase women's access to reproductive health services and incorporate domestic violence and sexual assault screening into HIV/AIDS programs.

Follows 2005 WHO Report

The legislation follows a 2005 study by the World Health Organization that found that domestic violence is common worldwide and its effects devastating.

The WHO report indicated that between one-fifth and three-quarters of females around the world had experienced physical or sexual violence since age 15. As a result, women are more vulnerable to exposure to HIV/AIDS and are subject to greater health risks during pregnancy, when violence often continues or escalates.

"This report reveals a global picture of the treatment of women and the statistics are appalling and egregious," Biden said last year in response to the WHO report. "In some communities, women are safer in the streets than they are in their own homes."

Biden, the chief anti-violence advocate in the Senate and a contender for his party's 2008 presidential nomination, now holds a seat in the majority party and, as a result, has greater sway in Congress. Even so, prospects are uncertain for the two bills, which he plans to introduce this spring.

Some advocates fear objections to the price tags of the two bills, especially as lawmakers are tightening the fiscal reins in response to a high federal deficit and the prospect of increased spending on the war in Iraq.

"The deficit is a problem," said a nationally recognized leader in the domestic violence advocacy community on the condition of anonymity. "The content is not the barrier. But any bill that requires new funding streams is going to have a hard time of it."

The Congressional Budget Office has not estimated the total cost of the lawyer bill, but a Biden staff member expected the loan forgiveness portion of the bill to be about $20 million in the first year. An additional $8 million would be needed to recruit volunteer lawyers, operate a referral system, launch a pilot program and roll out a national program.

The international bill to combat domestic violence could be trickier than the domestic legal services legislation because lawmakers are generally more reluctant to spend federal money on foreign programs than on domestic ones. The bill does not yet have a formal cost estimate.

Allison Stevens is Washington bureau chief at Women's eNews.

© 2007 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.

So this is the post that I thought others might enjoy.  I worked on this nearly all weekend (not so I could post it on here though... hehe).  I had a presentation I had to give this morning.  The topic is the Effects of Violent Pornography.  I found the topic quite interesting and hope that at least one other person also finds it intriguing.  Here goes...

“Pornography” is derived from the Greek words

            pornē: “whore”, specifically and exclusively the lowest class of whore

            graphos: writing, etching, or drawing

While in some sense, most pornography is degrading to women, it is violent pornography that is the most detrimental.  In fact, in 1985 the Attorney General’s Commission on Pornography found that “there is a causal relationship between exposure to sexually violent materials and an increase in aggressive behavior towards women…”  Violent pornography is also becoming more widespread; while it used to be limited to depictions of sadomasochism, there are often some aspects of violence within normal pornography that is not meant to be sado-masochistic.  Men are the primary consumers of pornography, and most women who do use it only use it with a partner.

Impacts creation of masculine and feminine identities.

Masculinity:

• Somewhat dependent on sexual prowess
• Pornography has become a source for men to define “normal” masculine behavior during sex
• They see men in pornography controlling women, dominating women, sometimes hurting women, and learn to believe that normal sexual relations should include those same behaviors

Femininity:

• Pornography can be seen as an extension of the “beauty myth” into sexual domain
• It creates expectations of how women should look, sound, and act during sexual interactions
• Through pornography women form an opinion of what is expected or desired by men, and may imitate those behaviors in order to be seen as desirable by men
• Women may be more willing to participate in behaviors they normally would not do in order to please their men, this could lead to physical or psychological pain

In her article, “Pornography Causes Harm to Women”, Diana Russel explains her theory on the effects of pornography and the ways in which it can increase aggression towards women, particularly the occurrence of rape.  She says that Pornography:

1.   Predisposes some males to want to rape women and intensifies the predisposition in other males already so predisposed--it does this by:

§         Pairing sexually arousing/gratifying stimuli with rape

§         Increasing males’ self-generated rape fantasies

§         Sexualizing dominance and submission

§         Creating an appetite for increasingly stronger material

2.      Undermines some males’ internal inhibitions against acting out their desire to rape

3.      Undermines some males’ social inhibitions against acting out their desire to rape

Here is a quote from a convicted rapist (gathered during a series of interviews of rapists)

“I went to a porno bookstore, put a quarter in a slot, and saw this porn movie.  It was just a guy coming up from behind a girl and attacking her and raping her.  That’s when I started having rape fantasies.  When I seen that movie, it was like somebody lit a fuse from my childhood on up… I just went for it, went out and raped.”

The focus of my research is on the impact of violent pornography, but that seems like a vague notion that sometimes make it hard to decide what constitutes violent pornography.  It can include the depiction of rape or other forms of sexual assault, as cited by the rapist, it can include unwanted acts of S&M including bondage, restraints, and use of foreign objects; even something as simple as spanking might be considered violent pornography.  The way I think of it, it is violent pornography anytime a woman no longer controls her own sexual actions.  The most dangerous aspect of violent pornography is that the woman is often depicted as fighting back and resisting in the beginning, but eventually comes to enjoy it and often orgasms as a result.  This is dangerous because it is likely that the positive consequence of the forceful action is the reason men enjoy it, and leads men to believe that most women really want to be handled this way and will eventually grow to like it.

To further demonstrate what is meant by violent pornography here are some examples.  First I have a few examples that Diana Russell presented which she found in Hustler magazine:

• A cartoon showing a jackhammer inserted into a woman’s vagina with a caption referring to this as a “cure for frigidity”
• Photos and descriptions of a woman being gang raped on a pool table, described as an erotic turn-on for the woman
• A boss having sex with his secretary while beckoning his colleagues to come into the room to have sex with her also, with the caption referring to this as her “Christmas bonus”

And to demonstrate the effects violent pornography can have, I have some excerpts of testimony from the Hearings on Pornography that were held in Minneapolis, Minnesota in 1983

• “[a man] brought pornographic magazines, books, and paraphernalia into the bedroom with him and told her that if she did not perform the sexual acts in the “dirty” books and magazines, he would beat her and kill her.”
• “He held up a porn magazine with a picture of a beaten woman and said, ‘I want you to look like that.  I want you to hurt.’  He then began beating me.  When I did not cry fast enough, he lit a cigarette and held it right above my breasts for a long time before he burned me.”

As the availability of pornography has grown through technological advances, specifically the internet, pornography has been reaching a younger audience, one which is made up of people who are still forming their sexual identities and criteria for what constitutes “normal” sexual interactions.

Research compiled by Family Safe Media indicates that:

• There are 4.2 million pornographic websites (12% of all websites)
• Of adult pornography site visitors, 72% are male, and 28% are female
• The largest consumer of internet pornography is the 12-17 age group
• The average age at first internet pornography exposure is 11 years old

In another study regarding the age of pornography users, Jennings Bryant conducted a phone survey of males in age categories of junior high, high school, and adults.  It showed that:

• 2/3 of males surveyed said “exposure to x-rated materials had made them want to try something they saw”
• The younger the respondent, the higher the desire to imitate what they had seen
• 72% of junior high boys said they had a desire to imitate
• 31% of high school boys reported having tried something they had seen, within a fiew days of viewing
• A larger proportion of high school students (84%) had seen x-rated films than any other age group, including adults

The study that included some of the most disturbing statistics, in my opinion, was conducted by James Check in Canada (but was later replicated in two states in the United States, with similar findings).  The study found:

• 39% of children watched pornography at least once a month
• 29% of boys said that pornography was the most significant source of information about sex in their lives (more significant than parents, peers, schools, books, and magazines)
• 43% of boys and 16% of girls said it was at least “maybe okay” to hold down a girl and force her to have intercourse if the boy had been excited
  • Even more disturbing, only 35% of boys said this was “definitely not okay”

With evidence showing that there is a correlation between watching violent pornography and increased aggression towards women, it is especially disturbing to find that more and more adolescents have access to pornography and are relying on it as a reliable source of what sexual relations should be like.  As the proportion of pornography that includes violence increases, it means more minors viewing violent pornography.  This will have detrimental effects on the way that men feel they need to prove they are masculine, by asserting power over women both in the bedroom and in other social interactions.  Women will become more sexually repressed, losing the gains that have been made by the feminist movement and women in general through the sexual revolution.  Women could become playthings of men, and risk substantial physical harm as well as psychological damage in the process.

As I have said before, a good friend of mine is leaving to go teach English over in Japan for a year or more. I definitely want to go visit and when we were talking about the trip and what books I could get to check things out, he mentioned "Lonely Planet guide to Japan" which I went and picked up shortly there after.

I have been reading through it, and highlighting some websites and points of interest. Our original thought was that I would travel Japan for a few days at a time while Michel is teaching, and then head back to Utsunomiya where he is for a few days. This way I can see more of Japan than just Tokyo! I love the idea!

Until now...

The "Lonely Planet guide to Japan" clearly states the following:

"Japan is one of the safest countries in which to travel - if you are a man. Japan is not as safe for women travellers. The primary dangers faced by women travellers to Japan are of a sexual nature: sexual harassment, molestation, attempted rape and rape."

It then mentions that you should walk alone on any abandonned streets, and a bunch of what I thought would be common sense for anyone travelling in a foreign country.

Then:

"It is the rare (or unusually lucky) woman who stays in Japan for any length of time without encountering some type of sexual harassment. Jam-packed trains or buses during rush hour, or late-hour services heaving with the inebriated masses, can bring out the worst in the Japanese male. When movement is impossible, the roving hands of a chican (men who feel up women and girls on packed trains) are sometimes at work. A loud complaint may shame the perpetrator into withdrawing his hands ... They are, however, unlikely to be shamed into stopping by merely a stern look or even yelling. Other Japanese men engage in the all-too-common handshake scam, where a friendly man pretends to want to shake your hand Western-style, then fondles your breast at the same time. When in doubt, refuse to shake hands and bow instead. "

It then states that statistics show low rates of violent crimes against women. So which is it people?!

"Be forewarned that police and medical personnel can be quite unhelpful, even accusatory."

OH MY GOD! Here I was all excited about the prospect of having my first foreign travels, about seeing one end of Japan to the other, and about being "a strong independent woman on her own in a new place" and no, all my hopes and dreams have totally been washed down the drain from 3 small paragraphs.

I am SO not travelling alone!