Domestic Violence And Dedovschina

While dealing with some socially conservative cultures, I have encountered the argument that violence against women by their husbands makes them stronger. It is time that this argument be seriously addressed.

In the Russian army, there is a phenomenon known as the dedovschina. The second-year recruits brutally haze the first-year recruits. Dedovschina causes the death of 5,000 people a year, many of whom are Russia's best minds. The people who do such a thing thinks that it makes people stronger. Instead it vastly weakens Russia. It results in the loss of 5,000 of Russia's best mind per year. Consider the whole student body of Harvard slaughtered each year. This is the effect that dedovschina has on Russia.

There are many ways to make people strong without involving disgusting behavior. It takes absolutely nothing for a man to beat up on a woman. A man in Afghanistan can do that. It takes a lot more for a man to be good to a woman and to treat her rightfully. There are all sorts of ways to make women strong. It does not have to involve yourself acting like a scumbag.

In rural Mexico, some people believe that only the strong survive. Toward that effect they have worked out an arrangement. A man would come home from work and beat up the woman. She would in turn make super-spicy food for him and tease him as he would tear up. To the best of my knowledge, rural Mexico does not run the world. In fact they constantly complain about gringos and multinationals. And complaining is not a behavior of strong people.

Do some women become stronger as a result of facing domestic violence? Some do in fact; but there are any number of others who end up dying as a result of it, and many of them are the best apples in the whole bunch. A man who thinks that women are stupid or weak will be most threatened by women who are neither. Which means that it is these women who will face the most serious violence.

The situation here is therefore the same as what we see in dedovschina. It results in the loss of the best minds in the country. That does not make the country stronger. It rids it of its best contributors. And it is time that people who care about such things as their country's well being to recognize this situation and see it for what it is.