Til Death Do Us Part

It seems every day on the news we hear two or three stories of men abusing their wives. Even worse we hear about the Drew, Michael, and Scott Peterson’s (maybe any woman out there should think twice about marrying a guy named Peterson), Chris Colman’s, or the deluge of cases that end with a dead wife.

I didn’t realize until last night just how desensitized we as a society have become to men hitting women.

Last night I met a fantastic woman. She was absolutely beautiful. More important she was twice as smart as she was pretty. This woman could talk me under the table with ease on any topic from the role of Hamas in the west bank to domestic politics and every subject in-between.

We started discussing the Chris brown Rihanna case and I mentioned how I have never laid my hands on a woman in anger. I don’t think she believed me. She kept presenting scenarios in which it might be permissible for me to hit a woman.

If a woman this smart is desensitized to this issue how desensitized must the rest of us be.

Abuse of women takes many forms. Not every abuser kills the woman he’s involved with but that doesn’t make it any less serious a problem.

It makes me wonder just what we have to make even a small dent in this problem, let alone wipe it out completely if we could. I don’t know what the answer to that question is? Before you can solve the problem you have to create a reaction in the general public that goes beyond a here we go again attitude.

If any of you reading this know of a way of re-sensitizing the general public to this problem I would not just love to hear it but I’d like to do what I can to help.