Battered Women And America's Secret Shame

It's effortless to be smug and protected in our own preconceptions about our country and culture. We're, in the end, America - that shining city with a hill, as Ronald Reagan called it. That beacon of existence, liberty and justice for all. That bastion of freedom and equality inside a world filled by extremism, socialism (irony alert!), and inequality.

But the reality is always that America is even now quite very much an inequal society. And you do not have to appear any deeper than the statistics on battered women on this country to determine that inequality take on shape.

According to many various battered women rescue projects, about one in ten American women have been battered by their partner. With regards to verbal or mental abuse, that percentage rockets skyward to virtually forty percent.

To place it another way: A woman is physically battered women by her husband after each 10 seconds on this nation. When each 10 seconds one more women is additional towards the lengthy list of battered women in America.

It goes more. Initial, in order to shoot down an alarmingly misogynistic trend within the media, women aren't far more often battering their male partners than at every other point in history. 19 out of 20 victims of spousal abuse are still women, and that is some thing that hasn't altered given that records happen to be kept. Why particular media outlets - Fox News becoming first and foremost among them - wish to pretend otherwise is beyond the comprehension of anyone with any decency. Although I could make a fairly scalding guess at their motives.

Ok, now that we've set up that battered women still constitute the lion's share of abuse victims, it is time to determine who these abusers are. And it really is apparent that 95% of battered women are battered by their partners. This is not some situation of total strangers beating up women; it really is a situation of males who'remarried, or in an intimate romantic relationship having a woman, beating that woman up. It's sickening.

Women battered by a husband or wife or significant other constitute completely thirty percent of all emergency room visits by women of all ages. And what's even worse, numerous of those women are already there before: Violence towards women is chronic. After it starts, it's almost a guarantee that it's going to occur again.

So in case you discover your self in a scenario exactly where you are making excuses for a husband or boyfriend who has hit you, just end. You are a battered woman, and you require to obtain away from that situation as soon as is possible. And let the authorities know, to boot. Do not be a victim.