No on# mokes о commitment to a disadvantage
Laws that make one sex more powerful than the other boomerang against both sexes — no one makes a commitment to a disadvantage. And when one sex doesn’t commit, both sexes lose love. We can see this happening in Australia, for example, where domestic violence is now defined to include a man raising his voice to his wife — the domestic decibel rule. However, the opposite, a woman raising her voice to her husband, is considered an understandable defense to male dominance 92 These double standards have made men in Australia very fearful of getting married. However, Australian feminists are pressing for legislation to make all laws that apply to marriage also apply to couples living together. Laws like these have the effect of separating the sexes.
How can we decrease abuse and murder In the future?
If a woman murders her husband because she feels helpless, then perhaps the man also batters his wife because he too feels helpless. For both sexes, abuse derives not from power but powerlessness. Abuse is a temporary display of power that usually emerges from feelings of powerlessness and defeat.
The solution to abuse, then, does not come with creating artificial divisions between physical and emotional abuse. It comes with resocializing both sexes to listen in new ways — ways most of our parents never had the luxury to learn; it comes with resocializing both sexes to select partners who are secure enough to listen before they attack, and secure enough to leave if repeatedly attacked — either verbally or physically.
There are no guarantees of safety to one’s life, but the solution has more to do with avoiding the dangerous parts of town than selecting the dangerous parts of town and shooting the people who make us fear for our life.
The solution comes with requiring communication in school, not excusing murder in marriage. It comes with becoming as sensitive to the 20:1
ratio at which schoolgirls hit schoolboys as we are to the 1:20 times in which schoolboys hit schoolgirls.95 In brief, solutions to abuse start with counseling, not killing, with both sexes knowing how to protea themselves rather than permitting only one sex to use the government as a protector.