On gender and me being ethnocentric

[tko_ak]

This isn't LGBT related, but it does relate to gender roles, religion, and violence, so I thought I would share.

First, we see that a 75-year-old Saudi Arabian woman is to receive 40 lashes and four months in prison, for having the audacity to mingle "with two young men who were reportedly bringing her bread." Here's another story for the

Comments

[beautyofgrey]

I really need an angry rage icon.

[tko_ak]

I have a several under my "pissed off" set, but none that quite fit this post.

It's all pretty galling, huh?

[a_tergo_lupi]

Clearly that's the 1 in 7 who are Muslim.

*looks at community tag*

Sorry. Wrong place to snark at specious religious discrimination.

Honestly, I'm not surprised, though. I'm sure you could find much stronger numbers here.

[tko_ak]

Did you not see the first part of the post that deals with Shariah? That is, Islamic law? I think Islam is an appropriate tag. Jesus.

The numbers may be similar in the U.S. Maybe higher, maybe lower. I won't assume. But if you are, I'd challenge you to back that statement up. The U.S. isn't this evil place.

[a_tergo_lupi]

Yeah, I did. I meant that it isn't the Atheism community and all the responses wouldn't be about how especially evil Islam is.

[anarchys_savior]

You're so on edge! Understandably so, though. :P *hugs*

[tko_ak]

And that's true. And something I thought of when I pushed that out there, for discussion purposes. I think what you're saying is entirely plausible, because the dynamics of domestic violence are complicated.

Still, if someone is predisposed to violence (especially against someone they supposedly care about), especially if it's related to proving their manliness, I can see the logic in thinking that could translate into projecting violence toward others who might make them uncomfortable or call their masculinity into question.

[beautyofgrey]

I have been involved with domestic abusers and victims, and I would tend to agree that abusers, in general, lack respect for women overall, and respect for most people, really. Then again, that's just my anecdata.

[randomguy3]

It's intruiging that nearly twice as many men thought that it was OK ("in some circumstances but not others", whatever that means) to hit or slap their wives or girlfriends for wearing sexy or revealing clothes in public as for cheating on them. I wonder why.

The other thing is that while the responses from women saying that it was acceptable (again, "in some circumstances but not others") were consistently lower than those for men, the differences generally weren't significant. The differences in responses between genders were only statistically significant for two out of the five questions.

Personally, I wouldn't trust the survey. A poll with so many unexplained anomolies, and with a sample size of less than a thousand, isn't really useful for anything other than pointing the way to where further research needs to be done.

From the introduction to the results:

Please note that this research is not part of the Home Office National Statistics programme but is exploratory work. Results should be seen as indicative and

[randomguy3]

Oh, and I recommend reading the rest of the survey, even if I wouldn't trust any of the numerical figures. Particularly interesting are the entries that are zero (which are not rounded - values strictly between zero and a half are represented by a *).

[tko_ak]

I think we always have to be skeptical of any poll results. The article doesn't get into many specifics, about its margin of error. But it did say that the sample size was 1,065, which while not massive is larger than most U.S. presidential polls (which are typically pretty accurate).

[randomguy3]

Huh. The article says 1065, but the PDF poll results says 915 people were questioned.

Anyway, a good rule of thumb is that a sample size of less than 2000 shouldn't be trusted, because the error is too great.

I suspect they pull some tricks to get accurate results in voting polls with smaller sample sizes. The result is dependent on the whims of the swing voters, whereas most voters will always vote the same way.

[fabfemmeboy]

While these are disturbing and disheartening, I would question the fact that you're linking intimate partner violence and hate crimes. They're generally perpetrated by different categories of people, and it's not just about having rage. That's only one small part of it. The British guys you were talking about, for instance - they're beating their wife/gf/so because they're overly possessive, not because they are disgusted by her. I've known of a lot of people who were capable of (or actually did) assault someone they loved in some way, shape, or form, but would never hurt a person they didn't know. It's disgusting and sad, but true.