| Violence toward Wives is a Crime
|
| Kawakita: |
Today's theme is violence from husbands and partners. In Japan, we have a
history in which domestic violence has been ignored. Outside the home, when you
hit someone that is a crime. When a husband does violence to a wife, that doesn't
matter because of the assumption that wives belong to husbands. |
| Nakamura: |
The image of a family assumed and fixated by the law makes it difficult to
examine individual lifestyles and to expose domestic violence. |
| Kawakita: |
Recently people have slowly recognized that domestic violence is not an escalated
family quarrel but a crime. |
| Nakamura: |
In the background of men doing violence to women, there seems to be stress,
discrimination against women, men's upbringing, or the social environment. It
is likely that such types are those who have a strong consciousness of masculinity
as a social norm. In the office, they have to be faithful to their superiors;
at home, there is no one superior to them, so they take it for granted that they
can have their own way. Home is their last fortress of pride. |
| Kawakita: |
The reason why men cannot control their feelings is that they are raised in
families where mothers take care of all their emotional needs. |
| Nakamura: |
That explains why men can only have one-way communications. |
| Kawakita: |
Men have acquired such patterns as they seek to fulfill their self-esteem
by making others submit to them. They make others give in by saying, "You
are to blame." Though the women make efforts not to get the men mad, the
men always find some reason or other to do violence. |
|
| Where to Turn? |
| Kawakita: |
Men taking to violence are apt to be sociable outside the home. They include
professionals such as doctors, government officials, and teachers. |
| Nakamura: |
Such men have strong self-respect and the desire to be recognized by others.
Another thing to consider is the difference between the women who can appeal for
help when they are battered and those who cannot. |
| Kawakita: |
The women who can appeal for help somehow keep the feeling that it is wrong
to be dominated by violence. In some cases, they are threatened to be killed.
When you don't have information or knowledge about counseling institutions, it
is also impossible to appeal for help. |
| Nakamura: |
The social welfare system has problems, too. For example, social welfare commissioners
have little gender perspective. They, contrary to the truth, tell battered women,
"If you put up with violence, everything will be all right." There is
also a public trend to blame the victims like is done with child bullying. |
| Kawakita: |
Some people say to battered women, "Why don't you get away from home?"
It is often the case that women haven't the strength left to turn to such action.
Husbands don't allow them to have friends or go back to their parents' homes.
They control what their wives wear, how they do their hair, even when they may
go to the bathroom. And, after they have battered and horrified the women, they
tend to apologize and become a little tender. |
| Nakamura: |
Women are grateful to them for still being alive. |
| Kawakita: |
When women do get away, there is no safe place. In Japan, a support system
hasn't been completed. There are only about 20 shelters, whereas in the USA there
are said to be more than 1400. |
|
| The Key is to Know Men's Emotional
Patterns |
| Nakamura: |
Husbands and wives are bound by systems, but lovers don't have legal bindings.
Why do they come in for violence? |
| Kawakita: |
Once they've had sexual relationships, men get the idea that women are their
belongings. I think the reason women don't break away from violent lovers is not
because of negative feelings that they are treated like things, but is because
through the illusion of romantic feelings, they mistake men's jealousy for love. |
| Nakamura: |
It is difficult to emphasize the importance of having a gender point of view
when people are in a romantic period, when masculine and feminine consciousness
is at its peak. My students remind me of that. The lover relationship makes it
all the more difficult to be gender-sensitive. |
| Kawakita: |
Actually, in the USA there are cases in which women were killed by lovers.
Such critical conditions might have increased educational programs to enlighten
the men and next generation, I suppose. |
| Nakamura: |
Men should know their emotional patterns so they realize when they get irritated.
In addition, it is effective to acquire the response "If I'm tempted to be
violent, I will go out." Now at our Men's Center, we are designing a program
to help men acquire the ability to express feelings directly through talking of
ourselves or doing role plays. Programs such as this already exist in the USA,
but we need one suitable for our culture. |
| Kawakita: |
Do make one. Women also need self-assertiveness training to defend their right
to self-decision and learn to speak directly. In the Dawn Center, in order to
do this, we are having a "Self-assertion seminar for women." |
| Nakamura: |
Men who turn to violence aren't happy, either. Their feelings are off balance,
and violence won't solve the problem. |
| Kawakita: |
"Violence from husbands and partners" should be regarded as both
a social and gender problem. In other words, women's economic dependency on men
or men's emotional dependency on women both need to be jointly addressed and solved. |
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