Violence Against Women

I am aware that I only caught a short part of a discussion on Radio 4 when I was in the car this morning, but as far as I can gather a woman was arguing that porn (all the way from the soft porn of Playboy bunnies to hard porn on the Internet) is the main cause of rape and violence against women.

This is ignorant nonsense. I forget the exact biblical reference, and I don't want to look it up just now, but there is a passage in the OT that runs "If your son disobeys you, remonstrate with him, beat him if necessary, and if he still disobeys you take him to the elders and if he disobeys them, stone him to death". There is no similar sanction of violence against disobedient women. The reason for that is that violence against women was the norm, and in many parts of the world it still is.

For example Islamic teachers have argued recently that it is good for your wife if you beat her and women & girls are ritually murdered in India on a regular basis. The references are easy to find on the web. It is only in the parts of the world that have benefitted from the Enlightenment, where there is freedom of expression, an equal franchise, and so on, that women have equal rights with men to protection under the law.

Those are the same societies that allow porn to some extent under freedom of expression. But protection, for everyone, women included, against violence comes first. To equate porn with the cause of violence against women is simply ignorant of what is happening in much if not most of the world, and against which we should all be protesting as strongly as possible. The guy the woman was arguing with called her "nuts". It's a pity he didn't call her "ignorant" and bring the facts of the matter to her attention.