Reply To: The New Modern and Family Violence as a Political Crisis
Family violence is a political crisis. More women are killed in family violence than in acts of domestic terrorism
Yes this is true. Here in Spain there s a constant stream of news items about women being murdered or horribly raped somewhere in Spain. In the latter case there was a huge publicity over a recent rape that occurred during the famous (or infamous) Pamplona bull run which, I think, highlight a certain connection with a macho streak in contemporary Spain as elsewhere (although in some respects Spain is more advanced and progressive than in most other countries, including in Europe). There is also the drip effect of the sexualisation of advertising and the like that occurs everywhere.
I am not quite sure what we socialists can do about this other than give voice to our strong opposition to these things. We are not in the business of advising capitalist governments on how they should spend their state budgets but we emphatically are in the business of changing values and changing ideas.
One encouraging sign, at least in Spain, is that protests against violence against women do not just involve women. A great many of the protestors are men. Sexism is a scourge like racism or national chauvinism. It separates workers from workers and needs to be combatted with all the might at our disposal