It seems that the government is planning on teaching children from the age of 5, that domestic abuse is wrong. And about time too! There is an absolutely horrific level of domestic abuse in the UK, which may or may not be better than elsewhere, but that is not what this is about.
Some parents are complaining that it is their job to teach their children about such things. Well obviously not all parents are doing their job properly, or the figures for domestic abuse would be far better! So this is a good initiative, or is it ?
Apparently the lessons are to emphasise that boys are to treat girls with respect and that girls are to expect respect. The reason for this sexism ? Because the overwhelming number of victims of domestic abuse are women. Well that is certainly true; the BBC article claims that in 2008/9 there were 293,000 incidents of domestic violence reported in England and Wales with 77% being against women. That leaves 23% being against men giving a total of 68,000 incidents.
Let us change the sex of those 68,000 victims of domestic violence to women. Would 68,000 female victims of domestic violence justify these lessons ? I would say so, so surely the lessons should also teach that abusing men is also wrong?
Another thing about those statistics is that it is known that domestic abuse is subject to a huge level of under reporting. With that in mind, and bearing in mind that women have been encouraged to report domestic abuse, it is perfectly possible that the statistics given above are inaccurate not just in the size of the problem, but in the ratio of victims – it may well be that men are as likely to be victims of domestic abuse as women! Perhaps you do not agree, but we simply do not know.
If we teach children the lessons exactly as expressed, children will learn a second lesson from them – that whilst girls should have respect, boys do not need be given respect. It is a short distance from that to accepting domestic abuse against men.
Domestic abuse against anyone is unacceptable.