Domestic violence: A worldwide issue

By: Furrah Qureshi

Posted: 5/9/08

It was Wednesday, and the latest issue of Vogue was out, so I was at the grocery store picking it up when a woman brushed against my shoulder as she skimmed across the open pages of a glossy tabloid magazine. We exchanged quick smiles, hers from behind her sunglasses - when suddenly her apparent husband grabbed her arm, called her an awful and explicit word (unfit for even an R-rated movie), and literally dragged her away while she staggered behind him in agony, silently, from behind her big sunglasses.

And I must admit, I felt decidedly stupid watching the couple disappear as I stood holding the unopened Vogue, all the while developing a stomach ache.

I feel like sunglasses are the perfect metaphor for how hard it really is to be a victim of domestic violence. These women are able to see the world, but only through their darkened and distorted shades of reality. They hide behind these sunglasses, sad and tired, not revealing their eyes, which I imagine reveal just how sad they really are.

The hardest part about this issue is that it is so pervasive. It can happen in a place 10 minutes from you, 10 miles from you, in any house on any continent at any time.

When the "Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act of 2005" was passed in India it was a victory for all Indian women. But in Jharkhand, the police aren't making use of this new shield against domestic violence. Raj Kumar's article, "Lazy police ignore new law to protect women," published May 2 in The Telegraph - Calcutta, reported that the Jharkhand police have "yet to book a case under the new law." Kumar states, "Even the all-woman police station is yet to book a case under the new law."

Part of the problem is that women that are being abused do not know about the legal protection they have. Kumar also reported that, "at some police stations, the use of the law was discouraged as those manning them felt the law wasn't needed in the first place."

On April 22, a Seattle woman was stabbed to death with a kitchen tool by her husband in front of their two children. Some people would say that that was inhumane. Sadly, I would say that that type of brutality is something that only a human is capable of.

One of the catastrophes of our time, Darfur, has deep roots in this issue as well. The "Janjaweed" (loosely translated to mean "devils on horseback") is a blanket term to describe the armed gunmen responsible for the genocide and violence in Darfur, and now even eastern Chad. These gunmen have gained control over civilians, not merely by killing the able-bodied men of the area, but by using rape as a terrorist tactic to silence the women of Darfur. And so young girls, their mothers and their mothers' mothers', live in fear for their lives not solely because of their ethnicity, as the quickly declining male population does, but also for their sex.

And so I, a young female, am burdened with thoughts of my own identity.

This is an issue that affects women from different countries, and of different races, all coping with the same brutality. It's not about class, culture, ethnicity, geography, intellect, capability, vulnerability, money, drugs, poverty, post-colonialism, socioeconomics or even gender. We can't ignore it. And we can't dismiss it - because it is a reflection on our value as a species. Think about how many things differentiate you from anyone in Calcutta, Seattle, or Darfur. Language? Skin color? Climate? Do you want to go on knowing that what we all have in common as individual societies is an acceptance of violence against women?

Too often, from too many respectable sources and respectable people, I have heard the idea that women's equality is no longer an issue. They think the 19th amendment settled that.

To these people, I say that history has shown us all one thing: that change is always slow. In the never-ending struggle for civil rights we have seen - from the 13th amendment (1865) all the way to Brown v. Topeka Board of Education (1954) - that it took 89 years to validate the ideology of equality. And it should be noted that the 1954 landmark case may have changed the law of the day, but the individuals of the day ignored the law. We should regard women's rights the same way we regard civil rights, because in reality, aren't they the same thing?

We do in fact live in a world that is unequal.

We live in a world where social commentators think it's appropriate to mention Sen. Hillary Clinton's menstrual cycle as a hindrance to her campaign. We live in a world where domestic violence is a pervasive and strikingly common issue. Isn't it fitting that we also find this world fit to live in?

Furrah Qureshi is a freshman majoring in English. She can be reached at ed-op@thetriangle.org.