in the Tages-Anzeiger on Tuesday, September 15, 2009
In conflict situations, men are sometimes unfairly stigmatized as perpetrators!
In the past four weeks, five women have committed murder in Switzerland. In Aldiswil, a woman strangled her partner. Another slit a man's throat . In Schwyz, a woman stabbed her mother's partner to death, and in Schwamendingen, a policewoman shot her partner dead.
It's a law of the attention economy that female murderers generate significant publicity, as they contradict the stereotype of women as peace-loving life-givers who, at most, fall victim to the aggression of others. These crimes may have increased by chance, but they demonstrate a sharp rise in the propensity for violence among women, a fact confirmed by crime statistics. In 2006, twice as many women were reported for assault as in 2002. Increasingly, it's not just boys but also girls who are involved in fights on school playgrounds. And experts assume that in cases of domestic violence, women now perpetrate violence just as often as men . But are these brutal "Brünhildes" truly a consequence of feminism, as the tabloid "Blick" suggests? Or is that the wrong question?
It can be assumed that female murderers will remain a marginal phenomenon in the future – female aggression, especially in relationships, certainly is not. Particularly in conflict-ridden partnerships, its more subtle, psychological forms often come into play, which are, of course, difficult to prove. And so, feminism has indeed shifted the balance of power in favor of women – at the expense of men. This is the thesis put forward by criminologist Michael Bock . Women, he says, now have a monopoly on victim status and dominate the discussion, especially regarding domestic violence, on both an ideological and an institutional level. As a result, men are severely disadvantaged when it comes to victim protection. Not only do men quickly lose face due to our gender roles when they present themselves as victims of violence by women – and especially when it comes to custody disputes – they are also not believed. In the event of conflict, men are stigmatized as perpetrators from the outset and unjustly, while women immediately have the legal tools at their disposal to dispossess and get rid of "disruptive" partners.
Bock's theses are provocative, especially since he accuses women's networks of cronyism and nepotism. This may be somewhat short-sighted – but his demand for a closer look at society's handling of domestic violence is justified. The proportion of women in conflict-ridden partnerships must not be ignored, and it should be a primary responsibility to address the shared history of such a relationship without ideological blinders .
What do you think? Is our society turning a blind eye to domestic violence? Or is the problem of violent women, in contrast to male violence, so marginal that it's acceptable for individual men to be treated unfairly?