Domestic violence seems to be defeating us

Dear Editor,
It seems as though we are in a crisis. Everyone is pitching in when it comes to combating domestic violence, and in the last month or so, it is like the more we are becoming aware of the scourge, the more it is happening.
Apparently, no one is hitting any right key, and now the American University of Peace Studies is taking a hand. Maybe my little bit will provoke some new and deeper thinking.
I first thought of anger and how deadly deceptive this can be. It simply makes people totally irrational, especially when it reaches what we call the boiling point. William DeFoore, an anger-management writer, describes anger as a pressure cooker: “We can only apply pressure against our anger for a certain amount of time until it explodes.”
In terms of the body, when we get angry, the heart rate, arterial tension and testosterone production increase, cortisol (the stress hormone) decreases, and the left hemisphere of the brain becomes more stimulated. This is straightforward biology. In other words, we will do something when we get angry that we would not have normally done.
I think that this is where we need to do some work. It makes a lot of sense to avoid situations that can spur arguments and even practise the slow count to 10 or even the walk-away thing.
The other thing is the social level and this feeds especially on male egos. Those who experience anger explain its arousal as a result of “what has happened to them” and in most cases the described provocations occur immediately before the anger experience.
Such explanations confirm the illusion that anger has a discrete external cause. The angry persons usually find the cause of their anger in an intentional, personal, and controllable aspect of another person’s behaviour.
This calls for more than the proverbial rain check among the males. Check the cases of male assault and the reasons are all self-extenuation: the women did not cook; she was not faithful; she was flirtatious; she did not listen; or she came back late. Our society has fed the notion that men must regulate women, and even the women have come to accept this.
First we have to delve into the mind and body and see how these are allowed expressions in society.
That is why we have the conflict of what is legal versus what is immoral and illicit- society condemns what law allows.
One example – nothing is illegal about drinking by females. But tell that to a man! So this contradiction must be resolved. The bottom line is that we must curb the scourge and we cannot wait and just theorise.
Yours faithfully,
Ursula Scott