Man, Woman and Violence

04, Oct 1999
Dependency on anything other than one's own ability and capacity leads to insecurity and is quite dangerous, and in many instances causes women to accept or tolerate abuse.

It is not the abuse itself but far more the social moulding and conditioning that women undergo...from the institutions of church, school and home that deter women from standing on their own feet.

Responses to our last column have forced us to return to the issue. And moreover the crimes of passion have continued unabated. It is as if a season of irrationality and brutal silliness has descended upon us.

. We sought last week to make it abundantly clear to women in particular that they must strive to be quite decisive in their relationships with men, that "love, like mathematics must make sense" and that the airy-fairy, "Mills and Boon" sentimentality must be disregarded for the crap that it surely is.

Once hooked in to such abnegation of reality, women tend to fail to inculcate the understanding that every human being must develop within herself or himself the required tools with which to master existence.

Dependency on anything other than one's own ability and capacity leads to insecurity and is quite dangerous, and in many instances causes women to accept or tolerate abuse.

One woman in response expressed the view that "some women cannot leave abusive men because the abuse leaves them psychologically incapable of doing so." We wish to disagree most strenuously with this.

It is our view that it is not the abuse itself but far more the social moulding and conditioning that women undergo in society from the institutions of church, school and home that deter women from standing on their own feet, grasping their own security within themselves and from strengthening their resolve to leave abusive relationships and face the challenges of being truly independent.