Why do many men abuse women?                    

It is a sad commentary of our times that many men are cruel and mean to their wives and girlfriends. Of course, this problem has been with mankind ever since men began walking on their two feet. We as human beings live in a society that is steeped in male narcissism (interested in only themselves), a society that is deeply entrenched with male aggression towards women.  For many centuries, men believed that women were the inferior sex and were treated as such. It was only when the Twentieth Century arrived that men and women began to realize that woman are just as bright as the men are and that a great many of the women  have capabilities that far exceed a great many men in this world.

         

Violence is a widely used tool for manipulation and control over another person. It is a form of expression that forcefully puts another person to physical, emotional or sexual harm. Reports have shown that the most common victims of abuse are children, the elderly and women. And to add to this, domestic abuse is the most common form of maltreatment that has occurred and is occurring to almost all parts of the world. There are many factors for violence to occur and reports can highly prove that it is frequently the men who abuse women.

Unfortunately, there are also a great many men who can’t or won’t accept this premise and prefer to treat all the women they meet as being inferior to them. It is one thing to treat them as inferiors; it is quite another thing to mistreat them. Physically assaulting them and/or raping them are examples of the kind of rage these unfortunate victims of these men subject them to. And usually, the assaults and rapes are accompanied with expletives and demeaning statements used for the purpose of making the women feel even worse. But what kinds of men act in this manner towards women? 

Rape is the most underreported crime around the world. In Westernized nations, the victims of rape are for the most part interviewed by male police officers who in many instances; express their doubts that the rapes even happened. It isn’t long before the victims concluded that it is pointless to report the rapes. In backward countries like Pakistan and Afghanistan, women reporting their rape to the police could find themselves being shunned by their families and even being murdered by the rapist’s friends. Although the treatment of rape victims in Westernized nations today is vastly different from three decades ago but many victims still do not receive the assistance and treatment they need.

The National Women’s Study found that approximately 13% of adult women had been victims of completed rape during their lifetime. That also means that the same number of men were and are rapists. These are frightening statistics.

Many of us are very conscious of our personal space. When this is invaded, we can feel uncomfortable and even violated. However, when this invasion turns into full assault, it can leave us physically and emotionally scarred. 

Sometimes, this assault on our personal safety can come from someone close to us whom we trust. Such is the case with domestic violence. Domestic abuse can come from a parent, sibling, or wife or girlfriend. Often, domestic abuse is difficult to move past because the victims keep wanting to forgive and forget the persons that they love. But in a great many instances, that love is reciprocated with more physical assaults and demeaning remarks.

Nearly one in ten men in Alberta, Canada believes it’s OK to physically assault a woman if she does something to make him angry. That means that one in ten women in that province have been assaulted by men.  Figures like that are scary to say the least.                                                                                                    

Some of the other results, however, are more disturbing. Fifty-two per cent of men surveyed said they believe a woman can leave a violent relationship if she really wants to, while only 52 per cent disagreed with the statement, “If a woman wears provocative clothing, she’s putting herself at risk for rape.” Both conclusions arrived at by those interviewed border of the realm of stupidity. Many wives who are assaulted by their spouses have nowhere to go to in order to escape the assaults and why should a woman who wears provocative clothing have to change into something less enticing to escape the ravages of a man who is on the prowl to rape a woman?

 Thirteen per cent of the survey respondents said domestic violence is not as serious if it results from people getting so angry they temporarily lose control. And eight per cent, nearly one in 10 of the men surveyed, did not agree that it’s never acceptable to physically assault a woman if she did something to incite the anger. 

       

My message to these twerps is; “Try those arguments during your trial for assault while in court and see how fast you are sentenced to prison.”

The Calgary Police Service (in Alberta) responds to 14,000 domestic calls every year, and that many more incidents of domestic violence go unreported. It’s easy for people to tell a telephone surveyor that if they saw domestic violence occurring, they would intervene. It’s a lot harder but just as important to stand up to a friend who makes derogatory remarks about women in general or slings insults at his wife.

On the one hand, some of the responses are cause for optimism — for example, 56 per cent of men say they are more aware of domestic violence issues than they were five years ago, and 91 per cent say they would intervene if they knew someone in a violent relationship.

Some of the other results, however, are more disturbing. Fifty-two per cent of men surveyed said they believe a woman can leave a violent relationship if she really wants to, while only 52 per cent disagreed with the statement, “If a woman wears provocative clothing, she’s putting herself at risk for rape.”

Now I will attempt to explain why many men rage against women.  There are many theories behind what makes a man want to abuse women, all of which are very negative, and other conditions which make a man more likely to abuse women, but the actual causes are very simple One of the reasons is because many of them think that is their right and so they do it. This is absolutely not true. Men are not allowed to abuse women since it is illegal, especially in Westernized nations. One stupid man actually believed that he could rape his wife if she wouldn't give him sex. The judge that sentenced him to prison thought otherwise.

Conditions that bring on abuse are those that affect the stress levels in the household such as chemical and substance abuse, any sort of economic hardship, family disturbances and dysfunction, lack of religion or spirituality and lack of good communication skills.

Many men abuse their wives or girlfriends because they want to keep control over them because to these brutes, it is a very effective method to induce fear in the women as an incentive to make them subservient to the men.  

 There are also many characteristics in many men that make them more likely to abuse women. However, characteristics that are common amongst violent women abusers are not education level, ethnicity, class or other such demographics, because abusers come from all sorts of backgrounds. Instead, a typical abuser sees women as objects, and often only as sexual objects, made to serve their needs. They have low self-esteem and thus abusing women gives them a feeling of power.  They will find excuses for their behavior, and blame it on other factors other than themselves. Such abuse will often extend to other parts of their lives, shifting the blame away from themselves. They may even be very charming and likable outside of the home but a brute inside the home. There are men who treat everyone in a brutish manner. I knew one such person who was a lawyer who was brutish to his family and treated his friends in the same manner. After a while, he had no friends.

One of the most frustrating things in the world is the fact that domestic violence happens every day with no signs of ever slowing down. It happens because there are a lot of angry and uncontrollable people out there who thrust their rage out on the people who they are supposed to love the most. It’s not as simple as just pointing to one particular thing as the reason for this, but for the most part, it comes down to just a couple of things such as during the abuser’s early years when he was yet a child, he lived with an abusive parent in which he believed was normal.  As soon as that child becomes an adult, he may be psychologically influenced with his past experiences thereby turning him also into abuser. Taking the role of an abuser in a family setting puts him in control of situations not to his liking and he gains emotional strength and control of his spouse and family whereas when he was a child, he was a victim. The cycle of violence may continue for generations. I say may because not all victims of abuse pass their horrible past onto their own families.

Spousal abuse can also be committed when the abuser’s mental health is not normal.  He can suffer from anger management issues or has a drinking or drug problem. He may even be diagnosed with a intermittent explosive disorder. Empathy deficit may be another cause an abuser abuses because of brain damage and empathetic capabilities of the individual hasn’t developed because in an early age, he has been subjected to worst forms of abuse. All of these are possible reasons why abuse is committed.

Despite the pain, the suffering and the tragedy of being abused, it is a puzzle to many people as to why these abused women choose to remain with their abusers. The reason is that it is not easy to simply pack up and leave. The thought of leaving comes into their head but the act itself is often never done. One reason is they have no money or someone who will take them in. Another of the reasons is often an abused woman remains in an abusive relationship because they don’t have an established self-image. They see themselves as dependent on the abuser, with the hope that the abusers can still change. Another reason cited is that they are afraid of retaliation. They are afraid of what the consequences may be when they try to escape and leave the perpetrator. Moreover, some of these unfortunate abused women tend to unfairly blame themselves for the acts of their abusers.

One reason why domestic violence occurs in a relationship is because when two people who are together, whether it is just a simple girlfriend and boyfriend relationship or a marriage, they simply don’t belong together and therefore they clash constantly over everything. It starts out as verbal arguments but can often lead to much worse scenarios. The worst part about these situations is that once the domestic violence starts, chances are that it is going to continue until either someone gets badly hurt or the cops get involved or the woman is able to escape from the abusive relationship.

In some relationships, domestic violence isn’t a regular occurrence in a home and it just happens once, but this is as serious as any of the other cases because it’s dangerous and in most cases can lead to depression or worse. These situations usually occur when a man or a woman have all of their rage build up and then they can’t contain it anymore so it comes out as physical aggression. Shiela Copps when  she was a young legislator in the Ontario Legislature,was raped by the man she was going out with. She went to the police who told her that there was no point in charging him as it would come down to his word against her's. They did speak to him however and warned him to stay away from Ms. Copps, which he did. 

There is however nothing new about men being violent with women and there is nothing new about women being abused by kinky men such as in bad dates and bad relationships, be they marital or platonic.

I should point out that wives and girlfriends also abuse their spouses and /or boyfriends although this is fairly rare when compared to men being abusive to their partners. I knew a woman who was abusive to everyone but she was great in bed. Eventually I had enough of her abuse and walked out of her life forever. She was alone when she died since no one ever visited her. 

Abuses against women also take place in the workplace. Even the hallowed halls of parliament in Canada are places where some members of parliament are sexual predators. That doesn’t surprise me one bit considering that in a recent poll of Canadians, members of parliament were considered the least trusted professionals in Canadian society. Sexual harassment on Parliament Hill whether among politicians or staffers, has often been the subject of whispers or occasional rumours heard about the marbled halls. Even as I write this article, two members of parliament have been turfed out the caucus of the Liberal Party because of allegations by two women who claimed that they were allegedly sexually harassed by these two men. Women staffers in the Canadian parliament are vulnerable to the sexual misconduct of politicians. A newspaper columnist recently wrote in her column that she remembered how woman staffers and woman reporters knew that when they were in a committee bus with a certain politician, they should never sit with him as he would grope them,A  People associated with parliamentary pages dropped hints that their protégés had to interact with certain MPs and senators whose hands tended to wander where they shouldn’t have wandered.

 

Sometime between the afternoon and the evening of October 26, 2014, women began contacting the Toronto Star with stories of abuse by the star of a popular CBC radio show called Q. He was fired for sexually harassing women, (see my article of November 5, 2014 re this man). The news flashed all over the world. An astonishing 8 million tweeters from far-flung places as India and Saudi Arabia joined Canadian women by saying that enough is enough. I am sure that a great many of those who tweeted were also men. Within a day, a tsunami of indignant outpouring rushed across the seas of the world. The clarion call was directed to this man— “The shame is yours, not ours.”

Workplace abuses are costing companies a whopping 7.43 billion a year in losses of personnel.

The Toronto Star conducted a study in 1996 of 133 men who had battered women. After they were convicted, 35 were later recharged for battering women again. That is one in four. The battering of the women by the 133 consisted of anal rape, slammed head against a wall, almost severed an ear, choked, kicked ribs, raped with a wine bottle, did cigarettes burns, etc. Those who re-offended again did similar abuses against their victims. The trouble was the judges didn`t punish the re-offenders enough the first time they were convicted.

The family is called the social atom which unfortunately is often split as a result of the abuses heaped upon the wives by their husbands. The main source of the problem is that young people are getting married to one another without truly getting to know one another. My wife and I lived together for nine months before we were married. At the time of this writing, we have been happily married for 38 years. Of course we have our occasional spats but so do all married couples. But we don’t abuse one another nor did we abuse our two children. And our two daughters don’t abuse their spouses or their children. That is because we all have patience and an understanding of the feelings of our mates and our children and the respect that is due to them as fellow human beings.

For centuries, women were treated as servants to their husbands by religious, social and legal concepts that held them to be materially inferior to their husbands. Even today, there are men who believe that these concepts hold true. It was even in the 19^th century that women still believed that their role in the family was to be subservient to their husbands.  But after the 20^th century emerged and especially after the Second World War was over; women began to believe and rightly so that they were equals to their husbands and expected to be treated by their husbands as equals.

What kind of man beats his wife or girlfriend? Is he mentally unstable, is he a psychopath, or is he emotionally disturbed? Research shows that men who beat women come in all sizes with all forms of temperament. Men who are rich and men who are poor are no different. They beat women. These beaters cone in all colours, all faiths, all ages and all income levels that are on both sides of the tracks. And their motives? The worst one I have heard about was the man in Maryland, USA who jumped on his wife’s spine and crippled her for life. His motive? She accidentally left the door partially open and the air-conditioned air escaped through the opening.

However, the poor and less educated and even the middle class men are more likely than not to beat their wives or girlfriends and yet the middle class men are more prone to beat the women than the men who are poor. Middle class men have recourses to friends and professional counsellors and that is why their abuses aren’t reported to the police as often as those men who are poor. The most frequent ages of wife beaters are between 19 to 50.

The famous are no exceptions to wife beating. The wife of Japan’s former Prime Minister, Sato who won the Nobel Peace Prize, beat his wife. The late Humphry Bogart regularly beat his third wife.  Former football star, Jim Brown beat his wives and girlfriends. 

Wife beaters come in four categories; alcoholics, psychotics, psychopaths and plain bullies. Further, the more immature the husband is, the more likely he will physically abuse his wife. In the study titled Men Who Assault Their Wives by M. Frank, categorized the husbands into five types. They are; (1) dependent and passive, (2) dependent and suspicious, (3) violent and bullying, (4) dominating or (5) stable and affectionate. The first two categories represent the men who are prone to beating their wives.

Of course, there are the weirdoes who fortunately are rare. I am referring to the kind of men such as the former CBC radio star, Ghomeshi who has been said to suddenly and without any warning whatsoever, strike a woman he has just met and choke her until she is almost unconscious. Who can understand what his motive was? I doubt even a psychiatrist could put a handle on that kind of behavior. And these kinds of men are extremely dangerous. I would be less than honest however if I didn’t mention that he has not been as of yet, convicted of any crime with respect to the women who made such claims against him.

Women who are searching for a mate have to be very careful about who they go out with. The kind, thoughtful and generous man they marry may very well be a fiend in disguise. The trouble is that the man’s disguise is so good, not even a woman’s mother can detect the real man her daughter has fallen in love with until it is too late.