Domestic abuse and coercive control: Are men inherently violent and misogynistic?
Richard Hogan: While we have some staggering figures in relation to physical attacks against women, it is coercive control that finds little expression in data because the majority of women living under the control of their dominant male partner rarely speak about their experience for fear of retaliation.
One in two women murdered in Ireland are killed by their partner or ex-partner. Globally speaking; 87,000 women are murdered around the world each year. 80% of those women are killed by an intimate partner or family member. That is a frightening statistic and a sobering reminder to all of us about the dangers women experience in their daily life. Between 1996 and 2020, 147 women have died, on this small island, at the hands of someone they loved. Whenever I write about violence perpetrated against women I receive emails suggesting I’m just a puppet driving the liberal feminist agenda of the Irish Examiner.
But those kinds of remarks are designed to distract us from an important discussion. Are men inherently violent and misogynistic? Are men safer on our streets than women? Does the court system in Ireland need to be more punitive when it comes to dealing with violence against women and are our attempts at education working? Good solutions require good analysis, and both men and women need to be involved in drafting policies and educational programmes so as to design a framework that addresses the issues in a systemic way.
