檳榔嶼

- Awareness of domestic violence as well as the changes that must happen in our thinking and action if we are to see its end.
- Initially feminist focus on domestic violence highlighted male violence against women, but as the movement progressed evidence showed that there was also domestic violence present in same-sex relations, that women in relationships with women were and are oftentimes the victims of abuse, that children were also of adult patriarchal violence enacted by women and men.
- Patriarchal violence in the home is based on the belief that it is acceptable for a more powerful individual to control others through various forms of coercive force.
  - it continually reminds the listener that violence in the home is connected to sexism and sexist thinking, to male domination.
- For too long the term domestic violence has been used as a "soft" term which suggests it emerges in an intimate context that is private and somehow less threatening, less brutal, than the violence that takes place outside the home.
  - This is not so, since more women are beaten and murdered in the home than on the outside.
  - Often children suffer abuse as they attempt to protect a mother who is being attacked by a male companion or husband, or they are emotionally damaged by witnessing violence and abuse.
- Yet when they are told that domestic violence is the direct outcome of sexism, that it will not end until sexism ends, they are unable to make this logical leap because it requires challenging and changing fundamental ways of thinking about gender.
- The fact that many violent attacks on children are perpetrated by women is not equally highlighted and seen as another expression of patriarchal violence.
- So far feminist movement has primarily focused on male violence, and as a consequence lends credibility to sexist stereotypes that suggest men are violent, women are not; men are abusers, women are victims.
  - This type of thinking allows us to ignore the extent to which women (with men) in this society accept and perpetuate the idea that it is acceptable for a dominant party or group to maintain power over the dominated by using coercive force.
- Clearly most women do not use violence to dominate men but lots of women believe that a person in authority has the right to use force to maintain authority.
  - A huge majority of parents use some form of physical or verbal aggression against children.
- In a culture of domination everyone is socialized to see violence as an acceptable means of social control.
  - Dominant parties maintain power by the threat (acted upon or not) that abusive punishment, physical or psychological, will be used whenever the hierarchal structures in place are threatened.
- Since masses of unemployed and working-class men do not feel powerful on their jobs within white supremacist patriarchy they are encouraged to feel that the one place where thy will have absolute authority and respect is in the home.
- Men are socialized by ruling-class groups of men to accept domination in the public world of work and to believe that the private world of home and intimate relationships will restore to them the sense of power they equate with masculinity.
- Until they unlearn the sexist thinking that tells them they have a right to rule over women by any means, male violence against women will continue to be a norm.
- As long as sexist thinking socializes boys to be "killers", whether in imaginary good guy, bad guy fights or as soldiers in imperialism to maintain coercive power over nations, patriarchal violence against women and children will continue.
- Women and men must oppose the use of violence as a means of social control in all its manifestations: war, male violence against women, adult violence against children, teenage violence, racial violence, ... etc.
  - Feminist efforts to end male violence against women must be expanded into a movement to end all forms of violence.
- Masses of people are concerned about violence but resolutely refuse to link that violence to patriarchal thinking or male domination.