Patrick Stewart article regarding Violence Against Women speech given to the UN on 8 Mar 13.
Why does it take a famous person to make something seem like a legitimate cause? Why does it take a famous person to step up at all in an instance like this?
This shouldn’t be something that HAS to be addressed – if you love someone, you don’t hit him or her; I don’t see a simpler logical connection than that.
What I mean to say is simple – It’s common human decency to not force violence on another. When you ‘lose control’, you’re no longer “human”, but have reduced yourself to being an animal. There are difficulties enough in life, and violence will continue in our societies. It’s almost hard-wired into our biology… but we are not slaves to our biology. The fact that violence can and does occur will not change, but we are thinking beings with an immense capacity to overcome so many obstacles and limitations. If we let our bodies control our actions, then we are nothing but animals.
It is wrong to use violence against another. I preface this with the mitigation that unfortunately sometimes it is the only way to stop violence against another, to which I will admit I am guilty of multiple accounts.
Yet I have never relished, nor have I sought out violence as a preferable course of action. And every time I have used violence to stop violence, I have always reviewed my actions and realized where things went south… every time. I prefer peace and communication, and we are creatures capable of so much greatness that hearing about violence against women – the stories of domestic abuse and rape and how much women have to deal with in cultures beyond our own, and their coping mechanisms to be able to come to grips with these atrocities – hurts me in powerful ways.
There is nothing that makes me want to be violent more than hearing about someone who abuses his or her loved ones. It’s not the answer, but reciprocity does occasionally have an educational effect in some cases.
I have stopped incidents of domestic abuse – knocking on a neighbours door when I hear them fighting and then a thud against a wall… a simple action of bringing attention to the situation, and shaming the guy into the realization that they are being heard and that their actions are not right.
Nobody likes to hear that they are in the wrong, so he directed his attention to me; which was good, to a point, but it meant that violence still ensued. I don’t know how they are doing now, but I hope that she wised up and left the insecure bastard.
i am not saying that I won, because there are no winners when violence is the mechanism of reconciliation of the issue.
The only way to address the issue of violence against women is to address the root issues behind the violence. Unfortunately there aren’t simply one or two… there area myriad of issues ranging from culture to culture, and likely to the micro society level as well.
Ultimately, we are better than this. Men aren’t just rage and piss and vinegar… we’re not just sex obsessed and testosterone-addled machines. We can control our urges and are not slaves to violence. It’s an emergency-only tool that can be in our defence toolbox, but should not be pulled out unless absolutely necessary… and I hope to live in a world where that tool is never necessary…
Why does it take a famous person to stand up and say what should be common decency? Why must there be illumination on a subject that should never have been an issue in the first place?
Because it only takes good people doing nothing for evil to flourish… Let’s not let this evil flourish.
