“I didn’t agree to this”
April 4, 2009
by Violet Socks, Editor
|The New Agenda is sponsoring a Violence Against Women forum on April 18, 2009.
Keira Knightley is appearing in a new ad campaign about domestic violence for the British charity Women’s Aid.
In the shocking two-minute film, Knightley is shown being brutally assaulted by her partner (warning! violent content):
At the end of the clip, you’ll notice that the tagline says “2 women die from domestic violence every week.” That’s the figure in the U.K. In the United States, it’s ten times that number: at least 20 women killed each week. (Reported figures vary, but the range is from 1000 to 1500 deaths per year.)
In the British press, reaction to the new campaign is mostly very positive, though some are wondering aloud if this kind of thing really works. What do you think? Is this the kind of ad that will raise awareness? Will battered women see themselves in this? Will it have any effect on abusive men?
Early coverage of the video in the U.S. media suggests to me that the internal barriers people have to recognizing domestic violence are quite sturdy. On the L.A. Times site, for example, one commenter protested that “guys just don’t beat their girl friends/spouses/significant others when they walk in the door.” On E! Online site, several commenters were reminded of the Rihanna and Chris Brown case, and took the opportunity to air their belief that Rihanna was “faking it.” Meanwhile, commenter “Andrew” (also on the E! Online site) helpfully explained that this sort of thing is the natural result of “women are being employed in positions where men should be, displacing men as bread winners and providers.” Men are frustrated by this challenge to their natural authority, sez Andrew, so of course they strike out.
We have a long way to go.
Thanks for posting V.
This takes your breath away. But as much as it seems to be shock value, this is reality for 1 in 4 women. So, we should all watch this so we are motivated to end it – for good. Put the abusers in jail or mental institutions for a long, long time.
I think it’s great to have videos like this one. It will at least get the subject in the news. I don’t think you can watch this without needing to DO something about violence against women. It made me a little queasy and that’s a good thing!
Shocking and brave. The comments on E! are terrible.
This is the only language the younger generation understands. They have grown up watching horrendous acts of violence against childre overseas, for instance, and they just do not understand what violence could be… unless they see it.
Just MHO.
But I think, judging from my own children’s reaction to my discussions about…. I am correct. What they do not see does not register as “real” to them.
In my limited experience with domestic violence, men beat their wives or girlfriends when they do something very trivial that upsets them – a minor silly disagreement, poorly-cooked food, bad coffee, forgetting groceries, falling asleep on the couch… The ad doesn’t reveal what sets these men off and doesn’t deal with the pointlessness of it.
I kinda agree with the commenter’s explanation of abuse being the result of women’s employment, but explaining something does not excuse it nor make it justifiable. I think we have to redefine man’s role in society as well as woman’s role. The previous feminist movements did a good job redefining what it means to be a woman, but there needs to be a corresponding redefintition of what it means to be a man to provide appropriate role models for treating women better among other things. The current definitions in society are directly opposing each other.
I think these ads work because it takes away the ignorance that we see continued to be allowed in the pop media by the likes of P Diddy who calls the Rihanna DOMESTIC VIOLENCE a ‘situation’ and no one seems to call him out on it.
Domestic Violence is not a situation, it is VIOLENCE, in its most ugly form and re-labeling it doesn’t make it acceptable. I for one don’t intend to buy any product being promoted by P Diddy (Sean John Combs). He was after all saying he was scared of Palin, for what I call PR Misogyny:
Diddy Blog #24 – Sarah Palin Scares Me
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sean_Combs
On December 27, 1999, Combs and his then-girlfriend, Jennifer Lopez, were at Club New York, a midtown Manhattan nightclub, when gunfire broke out.[1] After a police investigation, Combs and fellow rapper Shyne were arrested for weapons violations and other charges. The New York County District Attorney’s Office, led by Assistant District Attorney Matthew Bogdanos, indicted Combs after his driver, Wardel Fenderson, claimed that Combs had tried to bribe him into taking the weapon after the shooting.[14]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=70wGnx_lZio
Knightley is a highly respected and followed star. Young women will watch this just to see her, and will believe what she is “telling them”.
Rihanna has a big following too, and also with her, young women will “believe”. Too bad, but very interesting to make comparisons here and try to understand what’s going on with role models.
Michelle Obama is not Hillary Clinton (not even in her First Lady role) but I think she may change who is considered a role model for Black American youth. I sure hope so:
I thought the video was good, but the YouTube comments are telling. Lots of people were moved by it… but there are plenty of ignorant jackasses who think its sexist because it only focuses on women, doesn’t tell the man’s side of the story, omits that men are “more” victimized by domestic violence than women… and some comments are just downright hateful. I don’t know if any minds were changed.
Ultimately, is the video any different from what kids see on television and in the movies, anyway? They see images of women abused by men all the time. Its presented as a regular, frequent event – a normal part of the condition of womanhood is being a victim. Does this video say anything different?
Actually it works the opposite way. Levels of domestic violence track to the degree of male dominance in a society. The more women are dependent on and subservient to men, the more they get beaten up. The more women are independent — in other words, the more feminism in the society — the less violence against women.
It’s actually a lie of patriarchy that if women would just stay home and stop trying to be feminists, they wouldn’t get beaten/raped/whatever. In fact, countries like Saudi Arabia and Pakistan and other extremely conservative patriarchal societies have the highest levels of abuse in the world. When men believe that they own women, they abuse them with impunity.
True, it wasn’t a sitcom with a solution. But the message “I didn’t agree to this” was very clear. And it came from the battered woman.
I was dismayed to see what YouTube is cueing with it. I only clicked on one, but I suspect the others are equally missing the point. Of course, YouTube is for the boys. The one I saw was a sex interview. The partnership of sex and violence; that’s the message P.Diddy and Chris Brown promulgate.
“I didn’t agree to this/ask for this” was the message of the video, was spoken by the character, and not just what comes from some few feminists on an internet discussion board amidst a deluge of the type of male posters who frequent Pandagon.
“omits that men are “more” victimized by domestic violence than women…”
That is actually an anti-suffrage argument I read about yesterday for my research paper… things really haven’t changed all that much.
That is really interesting, Violet. In regard to your comments on the level of feminism in a society and the level of abuse. We have to fight this believed concept that abuse against women is just something that some men are innately prone to do. Analyzing the different levels of abuse from culture to culture is an important part of this discussion because it demonstrates that we don’t have to live with the “boys will be boys” argument.
I would like to see a follow-up video where Knightly is on the fence about staying with her abusive boyfriend, but then finds the courage to leave and move on with her life.
we need to move past the idea that women have done something to deserve abuse. When I first went to college in the late 80′s, I went to a prestigious engineering school. While I was there, we heard on the news of a young man walking into an engineering classroom at another top school, telling everyone that he didn’t get accepted into the school because the girls “took his place”, then told all the boys in the class to leave, lined all the girls up and shot them. It was a blip on the radar in terms of news, but it hit all of the women on campus very hard, since we heard that kind of talk every day (“we took the place of a qualified man”).
So yes, educating both girls *and* boys about gender parity is part of the next step.
It was no blip on the radar. http://www.gendercide.org/case_montreal.html
kaija:
Well said re. education!
I, too, recollect the engineering school massacre in Montréal, and that it was a small radar blip for U.S. news media. A recent movie, Polytechnique, dramatizing the event has renewed attention, some of it unwanted– in the past couple of months, the controversy has been discussed in Montréal, extending to the Toronto area as well as to the U.S., where former students and surviving family & friends have voiced their reactions to the movie.
“Case Study: The Montréal Massacre”
http://www.gendercide.org/case_montreal.html
Summary of the massacre & related news coverage. Many links e.g. to the Canadian Natl Film Board’s documentary, public awareness campaigns, commentaries.
“New Film About Montreal Massacre of Female Students Stirs Controversy”
The Chronicle of Higher Education
February 3, 2009
includes links to media coverage of reactions
“Montreal massacre film brings up ‘too many memories’”
Graeme Hamilton / National Post
http://www.nationalpost.com/ar.....id=1228750
focuses on the new film, has a couple of blog comments from people who don’t get it
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