shuyung wrote:
Diamondeye wrote:
This is something we're frequently told by anti-domestic-ciolence groups with a political interest in portraying women as helpless victims, but the reality is that violence by women has been on the rise for years, and women are not at all disinclined to fight back. Some women (and some men) are indeed conditioned not to fight, but they are not the most common occurance.
I haven't heard any anti-domestic violence groups espousing this viewpoint. Of course, I don't really pay any attention to them. I was merely relaying observations I've made from years of martial arts. It is the rare female with the ingrained inclination to violence. It is also the rare male without it.
You won't hear them espouse the viewpoint overtly, but the general message of most of them is "women are helpless and can't defend themselves.... therefore they need our shelters and we need to keep getting money for them." Most anti-DV activity is really not oriented on reducing DV at all; reducing it would reduce the need for anti-DV services. This, as an aside is why "treatment" programs for male abusers focus on lecturing them on how awful they are for being men with a sense of entitlement, not on anger management, or other problems they actually have. Many domestic violence advocates will avoid any discussion, for example, of alcohol problems because they have esposued so deeply that DV is a male-on-female problem, and a problem of the basic mentality of men, and if alcohol dependancy is part of the problem that calls both assumptions into question.
Of course, DV is anything but a male-on-female problem (it is one of the more common types, but far from the overwhelming majority that many DV advocates claim) and it frequently involves alcohol abuse.
I understand generally what you are talking about with an "ingrained inclination to violence" but I would point out that the ingrained inclination of females to violence has been rising sharply in the last 10 to 15 years, and not (most likely) among the same population that goes to your dojo. Female gang membership and violence, for example, has increased significantly. More importantly, martial arts training is a controlled environment where one is (hopefully) not angry at or emotionally invested in one's sparring partner. It is more similar to a sports event in that regard, and males are far more likely to have played a spot where physical contact is encouraged and acceptable as part of it, and therefore more likely to translate that experience to the dojo. Females are less likely to have done so.
There's also the fact that the same acts are often excused as harmless or nonviolent by females when they would be unacceptable by males. This is common even on TV and has been for years; for example Claire Huxtable demonstrating what a tough, strong woman she is by putting Cliff in an armlock because she's mad over something having to do with her picture if she were to die. Had the situation been reveresed there would have been outrage, not amusement, even though the scene portrayed the armlock as quite painful.
The most gruesome (thankfully nonfatal) DV call I ever went to involved 4 females, no males, and a kitchern knife.