The Fastest Growing Violent Crime In The United States

When asked what the fastest growing violent crime in the United States is, today, a large percentage of people don't know the answer to that question. Whereas, the first step toward resolving any real problem is the recognition and acknowledgement of it.
The featured question's answer is:
The physical abuse of women and children - including rape - by adult males.
(Susan Brownmiller, AGAINST OUR WILL: Men, Women & Rape. THE UNDECLARED WAR AGAINST WOMEN, Susan Faludi)

That fact, accompanied by a large percentage of adults who are unaware of it - the most serious domestic problem in the nation - is an indictment of the entire educational media in the country.
Take your own survey, randomly ask folks what Rock and Roll Band first performed 'Sympathy for the Devil' - the vast majority will not only know the answer, most polled people will be able to quote the various lyrics of that band for five minutes straight, without repeating themselves; whereas, that same approximate percentage of polled people do not know the fastest growing violent crime in the United States. Now, THAT'S ENTERTAINMENT (Draw your own conclusions?)
Can information such as that conveyed in this post do anything to provide more security for the cited victim's of the nation's most insidious domestic problem? Might more public education of this problem help alleviate it?

 

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Physical abuse of men against women and children? What, those women and children should be able to defend themselves with their fists. The police can stop it all as well! Physical unbalance is no excuse!

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This is why guns are a good thing. It would even the physical imbalance of women and children vs physically overpowering men. Oh, but violence would end if there were no guns, lol. Yeah, uh uh, that's why there's so many physical assaults that happen in one's home without a gun. And people wonder why many domestic crimes that involve guns happen in one's own home. It's because the abusing men deserve it!

- N

 

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Sorry about that James, please take note that all of the upper caps are relating to book or TV show titles.

 

CAPSLOCK, HOWEVER IS STILL CRUISE CONTROL FOR COOL!

 

a serious issue indeed - on a funny note: what do battered women have in common? They just don't listen.

Okay, to be serious now....

I hadn't a clue that domestic physical abuse was increasing at such a rate that it is now considered to be the fastest growing violent crime in the US - but i also recognise that a lot of conclusions can be drawn from or read into that loose statistic - some might suggest that in fact domestic physical abuse is not on the rise but is rather just an illusion created by the decline of other more prevelant forms of violent crime...or, one might read into it and suggest that perhaps male precipitated domestic abuse is more widely reported... nonetheless, I'll assume the statistic presented supports the claim made...

My perspective on:

That depends. Far too often public campaigns have unpredicted and unwarranted collateral effects due to a lack of research of the problem and planning of the solution. For example - I've seen billboards outside of small towns facing incoming traffic that read something to the effect of, "Domestic Abuse is a Crime in 'X' Town" - no doubt a public awareness/education effort that, in my opinion, does absolutely nothing to create awareness that might lead to greater security for those being abused but, rather, leaves me thinking the people in 'X' town are a bunch of women beaters.

On the other hand, a carefull examination of the problem and its root cause lends itself to the proper planning of a solution that most certainly can be supported by a public awareness campaign.

 

The taboo of violence against women was once such because of a status afforded women as "different". Women have attempted to subvert this status for the last fifty years and have succeded (at least in part). If women are truly equals, then, it is not at all a problem to beat them as we would beat eachother - for men have always subjected one another to violence with little claims to this as being immoral or unmanly behaviour to begin with - and women have been able to get away with smacking or otherwise striking men, specifically when overally emotional. Similarly, why not rape women if they are equals? If they are not objects to be protected and their chasity means nothing (what does a whore care if she has sex with another man?) what matters if they don't want it? If they are so equal, why not just "rape back"? Or "kick ass"? Or something else?

 

I should like to see some reference to government statistics, or some independent body, rather than two books written by persons with agendas and an intention to sell as many books as possible.
Now even if this crime were the fastest falling violent crime in the US it would not downgrade its importance, but I am suspicious of emotive phrases such as 'the fastest growing violent crime'.

By the way, your poll example stinks. Nobody I have asked has even heard of 'Sympathy for the Devil'.

To answer your final question. No. More public education about the problem would do little or nothing to address this issue. Two actions, above all others, would help. Firstly, teach women to have zero tolerance for acts of physical violence directed at them by a partner. The first time it happens, leave - with the children, if any. Secondly, legally require, in depth, ongoing counselling for any male guilty of such violence.

 

Very insightful comments, Theory...

From my perspective and experience, I'd suggest that environment also has as much influence, if not more on a persons choice to exercise restraint - and if this is true then one could conclude that a persons failure to exercise restraint in an environemnt where it is expected is a failure beholden on the one who failed to exercise restraint, not the other way around.

i think it's safe to assume that all forms of violence are spawn out of disagreement, lack of communcation or conflict in beliefs however, the environment in which almost all conflicts take place, violence is certainly regarded as the 'last resort' and acceptable only when appropriate.

I think that the domestic environment is one in which everyone accepts as being a violence free zone, that the credo 'violence as a last resort' does not apply and is definately never acceptable - its a principle of intimate relationships. I believe that when two people enter into an intimate relationship with one another they both expect this principle to hold true and be upheld by each other.

Neither a man nor woman should fear physical abuse by the other during moments of conflict, and if they do then there is a problem with the relationship long before physical violence manifests itself.

 

Footballers sometimes goad each other to provoke a violent reaction. Some women do this well. Restraint is generally exercised but anyone can be pushed too far.

There are men though who use violence to control unprovoked. Again it comes down to verbal ability, if some men feel they cannot fight verbally they resort to other means to return the power to themselves.

Each situation is entirely different, a violent male who cannot control his temper and uses it to maintain control is not the same as a generally well controlled male who has a single outburst of temper when 'pushed' and 'pushed' and 'pushed'.

NOTE: women do not just feel free to be as verbal as they like fearing no repercussion, they also assualt the male fearing no repersussion. Now this is plain wrong.

I am not in favour of wee timerous females cowering to males, but respectful communications from both parties.


So any judgement on domestic issues should be withheld in absence of all the facts.

 

Granted, that sometimes women physically attack men. By far, more often, men physically attack women. The operative word here is 'physically attack'. The way the law reads on such actions is that a physical attack must appear imminent, or already carried out, before physical counterattack is acceptable.

It's much easier to say that a physically abused woman should move out of the environment wherein herself and/or children are being endemically abused. It is not so easy to do. Case histories are witness to this dilemma.

Regarding 'conditioning'.
Of course their are positive facets to public access and cable TV. Depending on the programming, TV is a miraculous instrument of constructive education and recreation. Whereas, about 75% of the programming is only of little or no constructive value, it promotes an appetite for unredeemed violence and 'humor' that isn't funny. Repeat, the key to brainwashing is repetion. Draw you own (Columbine High School/McDonald's Massacre, post office and work place, drive-by-shooting legacied) conclusions.

('The climb rate is actually going down'. A popular American, Orwellian inspired prevarication. Combined with, "It only looks like it's going up, because the population is increasing, and, people are reporting crimes more."

A) As regards the 'increased population' premise. The false premise is that crime increases proportionate to population: The true fact is, Tokyo, Japan is the most - per demographic capita - densely populated location in the world; whereas, its violent crime rate is among the lowest in the world. Yes. It is a different culture (although it is rapidly becoming Americanized and it's crime rate is beginning to show it...); but, until if and when Japanese are proven not to be human beings (or the Japanese males are proven to have less or no testosterone), the premise that crime automatically and proportionately goes up with population is (racist tainted) bonkers.

B) 'People (female victims and children) are reporting crime more than they used to'.
Does this mean that the bodies use to be stacking up in the streets and restaurants and schools and post offices and work places and churches and homes just as much in the past as in the present, but, the piles of bodies weren't being reported accumulating in those locations, where the janitor just swept them up while people walked around the roped off area until it was tidied up?

The lowering climb rate would plunge to zero if the whiners and complainers and newspapers would just shut the flock up? STAMP OUT VICTIMS for a better Amerika! (?)
Moreover, The Fastest Growing Violent Crime In America abounds with case histories at least partially generated by the fact that the average 18 year old American youth has artificially experienced between 15,000 and 30,000 documentary video/filmed or realistically replicated events of extreme violence including rape.
Until the age of TV (and to a much lesser extent, movies, prior to TV), a person had to occupy approximately the same space and time of an event, in order to experience it. With the exception of high statistical spikes of warfare, the average person witnessed an estimated dozen or less acts of deliberate or inadvertent extreme violence in a lifetime.

This went on for about 99.99% of the three and one half million year age of the human species. The .01% is anamolous experience (since artificial reality laced with morbid preoccupation with death <Orwellian DEATHSPEAK> and recreational violence <Re: 'ElectroniColiseum'> which inevitably desensitizes and normalizes the healthy aversion from and avoidance of violence, and dilates the recreational indulgence in violence, as a passive, 'uninvolved' <physio-chemically barnstormed, impotent, popcorn & pretzel eating, coffee, tea, milk, beer or hard drink imbibing>) witness.
Refer: 'Desensitisation'.

Normalization of the anomalous.

Unredeemed violence as entertainment.

Encouragement of self-empowerment via disempowerment of others.

The universal icon of a caveman with a club over his shoulder while dragging into his lair a woman with a bump on her head has no evidence to support it. It is a case of modern man blaming 'instinct' for socially acquired behavior. We know some of the tools used by neandrathals, and some of their raimants and there is evidence that they did not abandon but rather cared for their ill and injured; we know some of their burial rites and hunting tactics. But we know very little about their behavior in general. Men are generally physically stronger than women to enable men to protect and provide for women and children. Times and technology has basically changed all that. Yet still, the neandrathal man with a club in one hand and a woman with a bump on her head being dragged by the hair in the neandrathal man's other hand is familiar to all civilized people. Until further notice, it is one of the biggest lies originating from the circle of male brutality towards women.

Steering the biological imperative of 'will to power' to the random, opportunistically advantaged occasion of unfounded self aggrandizement at the inappropriate, sadomasochistically motivated expense of others. Encouraging the bully mentality - as a rule, bullies do not target people who may best them physically, no, bullies are usually male and they characteristically target women and children. To acquire a feeling of self empowerment by disempowering others. The anomalous male oracle, the Amerikan way. Women who practice these methods are aping and endorsing amok male behavior. A well balanced adult male is generally very restrained about doing physical violence to women and/or children. It's about morality, nobility, self respect and common sense (downsliding values, to be sure...).

 

TheoryOfRelativity:

Your comments in regards to the invulnerability that women feel and their willingness to goad men on, feeling immune from being struck, are very thought provoking. However, that being said, I believe you misplace the notion of equality there, for it is actually an assumption of superiority - or at least protection - that women feel when they think are beyond being struck by a man, specifically when they often affirm a justification for striking a man, or doing as you said, insulting that man greatly.

You are also, once again, exceedingly correct in that women do not have an understanding that men operate amongst one another in a social way where there are boundaries as to what level of behaviour is acceptable before violence begins, and even the most timid of men eventually reaches a point where it becomes intolerable for him to accept the social circumstances and lashes out.

Kaiduorkhon:

Studies have shown that rape is not the exclusive domain of modern man, nor even of humanity as a whole! Rather, it is common amongst animals of all sorts, and as Neanderthal was likely close enough to do many things similar to ourself, and whom likely displayed similarities to our primitive cultures (where rape is certainly present) it is reasonable to conclude there was rape in that culture, too.

Consider this article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape

 

Prince James:
The URL you provided offered several definitions of rape, specifying no circumstances and offering no parameters. Instead beginning the discussion with the disclaimer:

This article or section does not cite its references or sources.
You can help Wikipedia by introducing appropriate citations.

You say that all sorts of animals rape. If you are talking about domesticated animals who overpopulate what would otherwise be guarded territory and boundaries, then you may certainly include dogs and cats. But their genus, in the wild, be they wolves or foxes or lions or tigers, etceteras do not rape, rather, there is an entire ritual of non-rape by elimination of competition. Moreover, most female animals successfully balk whatever suitor does not appeal to them.

It is not therefore reasonable to conclude that neandrathal man was a forcible rapist.

The feature article in the December 1996 National Geographic is about the barbarian Mongols and Genghis Khan. The fact of Mongol women holding a high place in the barbarian society, which does not rape - or physically abuse - its women (in the past or in the present), is emphasized.

 

Kaiduorkhon:

"The URL you provided offered several definitions of rape, specifying no circumstances and offering no parameters. Instead beginning the discussion with the disclaimer:

This article or section does not cite its references or sources.
You can help Wikipedia by introducing appropriate citations."

I shall find you better references.

"You say that all sorts of animals rape. If you are talking about domesticated animals who overpopulate what would otherwise be guarded territory and boundaries, then you may certainly include dogs and cats. But their genus, in the wild, be they wolves or foxes or lions or tigers, etceteras do not rape, rather, there is an entire ritual of non-rape by elimination of competition. Moreover, most female animals successfully balk whatever suitor does not appeal to them.

It is not therefore reasonable to conclude that neandrathal man was a forcible rapist."

According to this book, your conclusions are incorrect. Rape amongst wild chimpanzees and other great apes is extrodinarily common, as well as analogues to warfare:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0395877431/104-3847203-2571103?v=glance&n=283155

http://www.aec.at/festival2000/texte/randy_thornhill_e.htm - References a recent (2000 book) that covers this.

"The feature article in the December 1996 National Geographic is about the barbarian Mongols and Genghis Khan. The fact of Mongol women holding a high place in the barbarian society, which does not rape - or physically abuse - its women, is emphasized. "

This is in direct contradiction to a statement we have of Genghis Khan:

"The greatest pleasure is to vanquish your enemies and chase them before you, to rob them of their wealth and see those dear to them bathed in tears, to ride their horses and clasp to your bosom their wives and daughters."

In essence: To rape, pillage, and plunder.

 

As to your gainsay of the raping and pillaging of Genghis Khan (I am familiar with that quote) - and an ensemble of other armies before and after him, take note that I allude to Mongol women in the Mongol culture - not outside of it.

I think you're right about some of the primates, and the are closer to man than other animals, but they are not men. Men and primates also are known to practice cannibalism, but it is the exception rather than the rule.

I think we are fencing about whether rape is 'normal' or not. I submit it is anomalous. Regarding violence - its like the difference between murder and killing. Murder is optional. Killing, unfortunately, is necessary. Those are two exemplary categories of violence, and they are not by any means the same, though the two words are commonly used interchangeably. The venerable Ophiliote (Sp?) chose to argue with me on this point and brought himself to a cul de sac. I haven't heard from him since.

 

Kaiduorkhon:

"As to your gainsay of the raping and pillaging of Genghis Khan (I am familiar with that quote) - and an ensemble of other armies before and after him, take note that I allude to Mongol women in the Mongol culture - not outside of it."

Granted. But you will find few cultures that associate moral rightness to raping women in one's culture, anyway. By the sheer fact that this is an incredible strain on society should be enough to explain this away. Foreign women, on the other hand, are utterly game.

"I think you're right about some of the primates, and the are closer to man than other animals, but they are not men. Men and primates also are known to practice cannibalism, but it is the exception rather than the rule."

The more primtive we get, the greater instances of cannibalism, though. Almost all surviving cannibals are primitive peoples, as well as historically this being the case, also. Civilization rarely producse a heavy-cannibalistic focus, with a notable exclusion being the Aztecs.

"I think we are fencing about whether rape is 'normal' or not. I submit it is anomalous. Regarding violence - its like the difference between murder and killing. Murder is optional. Killing, unfortunately, is necessary. Those are two exemplary categories of violence, and they are not by any means the same, though the two words are commonly used interchangeably. The venerable Ophiliote (Sp?) chose to argue with me on this point and brought himself to a cul de sac. I haven't heard from him since. "

Well it depends on what one means regarding "anomalous" here. It seems to stem from natural conditions of humans but can be restrained by cultural and moral imperatives. If by anomalous you mean that it exists -despite- those imperatives, well that is not truly an anomaly, in that the law has never truly changed our way of life, only restricted it enough to make civilization much easier than if law was less effective.

 

I think Ron you will find politicians are perfectly adept at answering questions with the one they prefer to have been asked. They don't get hit by their interviewer.

Anyway you asked why I wished to behave like a man. I was not trying to or wishing to, I merely mistakenly thought I was conversing as equals. But I realised that men don't converse this way unless they expect or accept confrontation of a violent sort.

 

I think violence is violence no matter what the circumstance or situation or whatever, and violent actions on a fundamental level in our society are unacceptable unless the violent act can be justified. i am not convinced, however, that any violent actions taken by one against one's partner - or even one footballer to another - is justified, no matter what the circumstance.

Now, if one partner nags and nags and nags and provokes and provokes and pushes and pushes the other to a point where WHAMMO, one accross the kisser then the problem here is the nagging and provocation and pushing (as has been suggested in previous posts) or, better put a lack of respect for each other and ones self, thus suggesting a problem with the relationship to begin with, no?

EDIT: to go back to the original post - I am suspicious of any conclusions drawn i.e. domestic violence is on the rise, when the claim is void of statistical proof - but that's not to say it is not a serious issue that needs to be addressed.

 

It's not on the rise, awareness is. The thread guy is not recognising that simple fact.

 

Is it to be understood that the John Wayne Gacey's and the Ted Bundy's and the Richard Allen Davis's, and the piles of bodies stacking up at McDonald's and the post office and the school cafeteria's and the work place have always been going on, except people and/or the media didn't report it as much? That is after all, what 'the media' would have people believe.

My generation is of an era where convenience stores were not built like movie theaters and fortresses; where no one locked their bicycle or car because it wasn't stolen; where only people in bad parts of large cities locked their homes; where your children and your grandparents were safe in the streets; where and when the hardest drugs you could find in your entire town were at the liquor store.
The younger generation (including 'the media') is now telling the older generation that the crime rate isn't going up (What broken arrow?)- must be the elderly - thread guy's - paranoia (refer, unreasonable fear). The population has gone up and only generated the illusion that the rate of violence is ascending. Surely by now there's a genre of street drugs out - with a corroborate number of users and dealers - that will give me a whole new/old outlook on what's happened to the world, especially the United States, in the past forty or so years. A rudimentary case of thread guy's hallucinatory - perhaps senile - non recognition of the simple ('New Age' translated) facts of life. (Excuse me, please.)

Post Script: Although there were many causes for the exemplary Columbine H.S. massacre, one of the main reasons it occurred is because the two perpetrators were methedologically and expansively bullied for an extended period of time, without intervention.