Women who Hit

WHENEVER there is talk of domestic violence, a common standing joke is of women who beat their husbands up. Definitely a very uncommon phenomenon, there is every possibility of seeing a rise in the phenomenon in our society in the near future.Reasons attributed for this include lower tolerance for male aggression on the domestic front on one hand, and by the society in general.
With women taking on bigger economic roles in our society, they are not only in better positions to seek redress in domestic violence situations; they are now more empowered to defend themselves. Many times, this defence takes a violent form and in extreme situations result in death.
In such situations, it becomes difficult to determine who the victim is, particularly given the inadequacies of our local domestic violence laws. As a result, women who have suffered silently in the hands of violent men in the domestic situation for long end up behind bars for killing the same men in self defense.

Ngozi accused of killing her husband Ademoye

The emotional trauma of having killed a person is often compounded by the incarceration. If it is a marital situation and children are involved, they are now orphaned as a result, and equally suffer psychological disturbances.
On the other hand, there are genuine cases in which women, whether by acculturation or superior strength, play the bully to the extent that life is endangered. The norm is for male victims of domestic violence to be in denial or to suffer in science.
Psychologists say if denial in male to female domestic violence is rampant, it is even more so with female to male violence. “Chances are, a man would not want to complain in order to appear sissy or appear less of a man”. A piece of research showed witnesses to female on male violence looking bored, while witnesses to male to female aggression look frightened.
This ought not to be so, since both men and women have a right to not be subject to abuse, the right to leave it, and need sources of healing for it.
With so much access to arms, this is a somewhat more dangerous situation than male to female violations with regards to the possibility of seeing a rise. When we ignore male victims of domestic abuse, we also ignore their children, who continue to be damaged by witnessing the violence regardless of how severe it is. We cannot break this intergenerational cycle by ignoring half of it.

Vanguard