All things Middle East related

[BigHairedAristocrat]

Originally Posted by RedskinRat

Really? Just an opinion, BHA, or do you have anything to substantiate that?

Just used my brain. The article stated:

The U.N. claims that 4,000 cases of violence against women and girls were reported to the Afghan Ministry of Women between 2010 and 2012.

thats about 1,333 cases of violence against women and girls reported per year. Doesnt that seem shockingly small to you? even on a purely annectodal level, when you think about similar crimes here?

However, since you wanted some substaiting evidence, about 2.3MM people are raped or assaulted by their current or former partner each year. 3-4MM women are beaten or assaulted by their husbands, male lovers, or exboyfriends.
http://http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...estic_violence

Now, I would imagine there would be some overlap between those two statistics, so lets go on the low end and say that equates to about 4MM cases of violent domestic abuse against women in the US per year.

you have 4,000,000 violent assaults against women per year in the US compared to 1,333 reported cases in Afghanistan. Now, before you the data is skewed due to the US having a much larger population, consider that the US has about 300 million people and Afghanistan has about 30 million (10 times more). So even if you multiplied the Afghan statistics by 10 to correlate the numbers, you'd have 13,333 attacks in Afghanistan to 4,000,000 in the US.

Granted, women are more likely to report crime here than in some of the more "backwater" areas of Afghanistan, but you cant argue with the numbers.

Also, interesting reading is this this UN report on violence against women:

http://unstats.un.org/unsd/demograph...st%20women.pdf

The first statement in the report is that violence against women is universal. Neither the US or Afghanistan is on one of the charts shown, but surprisingly, Australia was the 4th most violent country surveyed, with over 50% of women experiencing physical violence in their lives.


Ultimately, my point is this: People get so outraged at these crimes against women in these other countries, but they dont share the same outrage when it happens here. In my opinion, its partly racism. "Its the middle east. Theyre muslim, so theyre so much worse over there." Bull crap. The truth of the matter is, violence against women is so common here (and in pretty much every other country in the "western" world) that we're immune to it. But people are only outraged when we see our "enemies" doing the same things. Its hypocritical and its shameful.