"Four out of 10 Irish women who have had sexual relations have experienced domestic violence," this newspaper declared last week. Apparently, the situation could be far worse, for some 70 per cent of women reported controlling behaviour by their partners, which is adjudged to be a precursor to violence: all appalling, if true, writes Kevin Myers
Is it true? The figures were compiled by the Department of General Practice and Community Health in Trinity College. But how did they find these women, only 60 per cent of whom were free from violence, and worse, only 30 per cent free from its potential? Did they get them at random? No. The women surveyed were all attending general practitioners' surgeries.
Excuse me, Department of General Practice and Community Health, Trinity College Dublin, but is this statistically not rather like putting a finger on the scales? Surely women attending their GPs are more likely than the rest of the population to be experiencing physical and health problems; while the majority who are not might well be dwelling on the sunlit uplands of domestic harmony - no?
So what we learn from those who attend surgeries applies only to those who attend surgeries; just as we may make no extrapolations about how the entire male population passes Saturday afternoons from what happens in hospital casualty wards on Saturday evenings in the hour or so after rugby matches have ended. It's not that figures have no use, merely that their use is empirically limited.
What is violence?
For the purposes of this survey, what is violence? Actual physical contact? Or is it emotionally intimidating, coercive behaviour, which by implication threatens violence? Well, as it turns out, the TCD survey includes a number of things as violence against women. One of them is for their partner to have punched walls or furniture.
Ah. So now the act of sublimation of rage against the inanimate is to be interpreted as its genuine enactment against the animate. Is there a single human being who has not kicked a stone or a car tyre or a wall in rage? Or one who has not slammed his - or, dare I say it, girls, her hand - on the table in rage, or slammed a fist against a chair-arm in frustration? Such is no more than the socialisation of potentially dangerous emotions, a passing spasm which releases anger.
For this to be represented as the same as actual, personal violence is the kind of ideological claptrap that is possible only within the unreal confines of academe. So a political perception which makes a woman a victim every time a wall is punched or a table slapped not surprisingly helps create the largest single category of "violence against women" in the entire survey - some 26 per cent. Another category of violence against women is for the partner to have shouted at or threatened her (their) children; that comes to nearly 20 per cent.
Terrible fates
Ah well, in that case, my father unquestionably was violent towards my mother, because not merely did he shout at all six of his children as we brawled during the car journey to our summer holidays, but actually threatened us with the most terrible fates unless we behaved ourselves. And he was violent towards my mother on another occasion when he caught me pummelling my younger brother into oblivion, and he gave me a hearty swipe for my trouble.
On reflection, I think my father should have (a) evicted us all from the car and made us walk the rest of the way, as he threatened; and (b) walloped me even harder for bullying my baby brother. All of which would have enabled my mother to have reported that she was victim twice over of violence.
There are other categories in the survey which are not so easy to understand as bruised walls and wailing furniture, such as "forced you to do something"; it doesn't mean sex, because that is covered in another category. What does "force" mean in this case, and what is this "something"? And what does the category, "demanded sex", mean? We know that it is not the same thing as "forced to have sex", which is covered elsewhere. So if an emphatic statement of sexual desire is rejected by the woman, are we nonetheless to conclude that there has been an act of violence by the woman's partner? Is that it: a kicked chair and a rejected overture are placed in the same broad category of violence as a battered woman, or a raped one?
And is violent oppression to be perceived in any male conduct which differs from the politically correct standards in TCD's leafy purlieus? Moreover, we are told, violence is incipient for some 70 per cent of all women, because of evidence of "controlling behaviour" by their partners. Why? And what is controlling behaviour, anyway? Well, inter alia, we are told that it is limiting a woman's social life, checking on her movements, being personally critical, or keeping her short of money.
Feminist point
Ah me, how the head buzzes. So if a woman tries to restrict her husband's excessive social life, if she wants to know what her husband been up to because he's away from home so much, if she criticises his domestic laziness, or if she tries to limit his expenditure on alcohol, are these examples of controlling behaviour? Of course not. For these surveys have a feminist point to make, and they unfailingly make them.
And now, I suppose, I should put myself on the side of the angels by adding the usual male disclaimer, querulously deploring violence against women, etc., etc.
Sorry. Nothing doing.