There are two sides to whether shelter locations should be kept secret. On the secret side is to prevent enraged, over-the-edge abusers from tracking down their partners and hurting or killing them. But this happens very rarely. Like being killed in an airplane type frequency.
On the “not secret” side - Keeping the location a big secret may prevent some women from finding it. If they know were it is, they have a place to go to. Also, most abusers put on this very civil public face and deny abusing anyone. If he’s arrested for tresspassing because he’s pounding on the door of the shelter - well, he’s pretty much broadcast for the world to know that he is, in fact, abusive.
I work with my local women’s shelter and the location is the worst-kept secret in town. That seems to be working for us.
The town up the road from here recently moved to a brand new facility that cost millions. The building was sold almost immediately as the phone company accidentally printed the address in the phone book. They are supposed to just print the number.
last time I helped some one get in one, all they needed to do was call the shelter, and an arrangment was made to meet in a public place near where the woman was. not knowing where it was beforehand was absolutely no problem whatsoever.
Hold on a second, please. I thought that women were equal to men. That’s what we’ve been told these last 40-odd years. So why would women need “protection”?
“Equal” does not mean they cannot still be vulnerable to violence from someone stronger and more vicious than they are, and determined to do harm. People in such situations need protection, and i don’t give a flying fuck whether they’re women, children, or men. I’d be just as happy to extend this sort of protection to a gay man who was the victim of abuse, or to a straight man in a similar situation.
The fact is, though, that while men and women are equals, they are not always equally strong, and the incidence of man-on-woman violence in relationships is far more prevalent in our society than vice versa. The existence of the types of shelters discussed in this thread is evidence of that.
Now crawl back into your hole and leave the grown-ups to discuss this issue.
There’s “equal” in terms of worth as a human being - worth to take a job, be paid the same as anyone else who does that job, own a house, buy a car, vote etc. etc… And then there’s equal in terms of sheer physical power. Women are equal to men as people. Men, due to evolution, still often outweigh and are taller than women in many circumstances.
If you’re being battered by someone who outweighs you by anywhere up to and over 20kg, and is taller than you by several inches then that’s a pretty good case for needing protection IMHO. Not to mention the need to protect your children. If a man’s abusing his children, even if he’s not abusing his wife, he’s not going to take it kindly if she just leaves with them. Sometimes they need somewhere anonymous to go, where he can’t find them. It’s nothing to do with her being equal to him, it’s to do with the safety of herself and her children from someone who is physically more powerful than they are.
(On preview, mhendo has also said the same, so I’ll be quiet now)
I know this is totally off topic (well not totally, but you know), but are there shelters for battered husbands and children? I mean, I know the occurance is much less frequent and the necessity is probably much lower, but I’m just curious if such places exist?
I should hope so.
Before this starts into a hijack, MY theory as to why we hear more about battered women, and why it was always seen as worse to hit women than men is simply because men tend to be PHYSICALLY stronger than women. Not all the time, but the majority.
Take my parents, for example. If my mother were to slap my father across the face, using all of her strength, she’d probably leave a pretty good bruise on his cheek. On the other hand, if my father were do the same, again, using all of his strength, my mother would probably end up with a dislocated and/or broken jaw, and probably lose most of her teeth.
Guin, I fully agree on the strength thing- I don’t see how anyone could disagree, really. Of course, I also think we hear about battered women more often than battered men because or society has a stigma against men getting “beaten up by a girl.” I’d imagine it’s much more rare for a man to come forward (and be taken seriously) about such abuse than a woman.
Which is why I was curious about the shelter thing.
I don’t know if there are shelters for battered men & children, and I hope that there would be. But from a totally realistic point of view, unfortunately (or fortunately as it may be) with the instances of battered husbands being so much lower than that of battered wives, it may not be economically feasible for them to be opened much left kept open for the few cases that come across their doorstep.
Of course, if I’m wrong someone please can feel free to correct me.
Oh, for the love of Og! No one, in any discussion of women’s liberation or equality of the sexes, has ever made the claim that men and women are absolutely identical in all possible traits, physical or mental. The only people who have ever made that assertion are the people who want to set up their precious strawman so they can “catch” the other side in a “slip”.
Yes, men are, on average, stronger than women, physically. And women, on average, are stronger than men, endurance-wise. And men, on average, are taller than women. And women, on average, have a lower center of gravity than men. In terms of how society should be treating each gender, these are meaningless.
As I’ve always understood it, the incidence isn’t lower at all. It’s just that men do more damage bare handed; men are ashamed to admit it; and the authorities ignore woman on man violence unless forced. And when they do, they tend to arrest the man unless specifically commanded otherwise by the law; when I was a kid, a man on my street was arrested after his wife cornered him and nearly beat him to death with a sledgehammer. She was unhurt, but he was arrested.
I also recall a minor furor some years ago, when some feminists managed to push through laws some places forcing the cops to arrest the perpetrators of domestic violence whether or not the victim pressed charges. They had the idea that the cops were ignoring the plight of abused women, and the result would be more male abusers in jail; instead, the result was a wave of women being arrested, since their abuse was no longer ignored. I recall some of the feminists interviewed about it claimed that the men were just beating and stabbing themselves to make women look bad.
I don’t know how widespread the practice is, but I’ve read that shelters will sometimes make alternate arrangements to protect male victims of domestic violence, such as arranging for them to stay in a motel.