When they ask the livestock
A United Nations Population Fund report finds that more than half of teenage girls in Pakistan think men get to beat up women if they’re married to them. The Independent reports:
Refusing sex was just one of the reasons girls aged between 15 and 19 believed a husband would be justified in beating his wife, while more than 30 per cent of girls of the same age had already experienced physical or sexual violence in Pakistan.
The web of beliefs that must underlie that one is so depressing – that men own women, that marriage is the ownership of a woman (or women) by a man, that women are passive objects meant to be owned by men, that women have no right to a will of their own, that women have no right to say no to men, that women are essentially slaves, that girls and women deserve to be beaten for attempting to have a will of their own.
The report, entitled ‘Sexual and Reproductive Health of Young People in Asia and the Pacific’, also included data from Cambodia, India, Bangladesh and Nepal which revealed similar attitudes about violence against women among teenage boys, the Express Tribune reported.
Between 25 and 51 per cent said that wife beating was justified.
It isn’t really surprising, I suppose…except that when it’s put into stark words like that, as opposed to just being how life is, it does seem surprising that the underlings say yes, we deserve to be subject to violence by our oppressors.
It looks like the girls are more accepting of wife beating than the boys. Perhaps because many girls would not do the things they think justify beating and thus think that those who do deserve it. Or maybe it’s easier to accept such treatment than to dish it out. I don’t know why but I’ve seen similar statistics before.
Come to think of it, I’ve often observed that women are sometimes more accepting of sexual harassment than men are. Many men are pretty shocked to hear of the way some other men behave so less tolerant of it. Women get used to it as something that happens.
Years ago I read the story of a subsaharan (male) slave from a culture which has had a slave class for centuries. He was eventually freed (which is why he was in a position to be interviewed) but he was born into slavery and lived in it for decades.
He said the same things. The owners have the “right” to do anything to their “property.” That was just how things were supposed to work as far as he was concerned. It took him years after liberation to actually feel he was worth more than that. That he was human.
Most women never get an emancipation proclamation.
The wording is unclear. We cannot know if the girls think “have a right to” means “should have a right to” or “can do it, no one’s going to stop them”.
I’m pretty sure black Americans would be more likely to say “A policeman can kill a suspect during a traffic stop” than white Americans.
Yeah, I think not everyone understands the concept of “justified” to mean “justified by my personal values”. I think many understand it to mean “accepted in my society”. Just my speculation though, and I don’t mean to minimize the extent to which people do internalize such ideas.
Trying to see the silver lining in how alien these ideas can seem to us. But that does nothing for them.