Shot In The Dark: Notable By Its Absence

September 26, 2005

Notable By Its Absence

The Strib wrote a piece about domestic violence today.

In and amid its usual demands to have the issue treated as a public heath matter, there was one thing unstated that was shocking almost to the point of epochal.

Read the article and see if you can guess what it was before you read the answer.

Go.

You read it, right?

Note that nowhere in the piece are "Men" or "Women" mentioned. The words don't even occur in the piece.

Usually when the local media and chattering classes (excuse the redundancy) refer to domestic violence, they do so in the form of a men vs. women issue; women victims, men bad.

Is it a slip-up, or is it a sign that the Strib is learning that there is more than one side to the issue?

Posted by Mitch at September 26, 2005 12:11 PM | TrackBack

Comments

What struck me was that not a mention was made of the abuser not being punished.

Without addressing the root cause (the abuser abusing), and taking steps to punish and prevent, it seems to me that the whole AVA program is kind of like putting a cast on a broken leg after it's already healed up out of alignment.

Posted by: FJBill at September 26, 2005 02:32 PM

Hey, I got it! :) I noticed that gender was nowhere mentioned, which struck me as remarkable in this kind of piece.

And, like FJBill, I thought it interesting that it is not mentioned that domestic violence is a crime.

Posted by: Bridey at September 26, 2005 11:38 PM

I was looking for the key fact always left out: there is no one safer than a married woman vs singles and vs men. There is always this false equivalence between the "boyfriends" of undemanding females and wives who sought out honorable men.

Posted by: R-Five at September 28, 2005 06:49 AM