[Vision2020] Crimes Against Women and Divorce

[Nick Gier]

Greetings:

A response to my post on misogyny appeared to imply that there is a 
connection between divorce and cohabitation on the one hand and hatred of 
women on the other.

To test this hypothesis let us begin in Asia.  The highest divorce rate in 
Asia is found in the tiny Himalayan Kingdom of Bhutan where the Harvard 
educated king is married to four sisters.  When I traveled there in 1999 I 
discovered that the Bhutanese were not embarrassed by their high divorce 
rate.  What it meant to them was that their women were free to pursue their 
interests as they saw fit, which was evident in the large number of 
successful businesswomen.  Compared to India, where the divorce rate is low 
and women have far fewer freedoms, crimes against women, especially new 
brides, are frequent.

Let us turn next to Europe where cohabitation rates and divorce rates are 
high.  Again one finds far fewer cases of domestic violence and abuse 
against women.  The fact that many European women go topless on the beaches 
and in the woods (or in even a dining hall at Odense University while I was 
trying to concentrate on my meal!) incites European men to a very low rate 
of sex crime and little abuse of women in general.

Finally, let us turn to the Hebrew Bible which contains some grisly 
accounts of violence against women. Haggar is left to die in the desert 
when a hen pecked Abraham is forced to act by his wife Sarah.  In December, 
2003, I gave Doug Wilson an opportunity to denounce Abraham and Sarah, but 
he declined to do so.  So much for family values and respect for women of 
color!

One night in the land of Benjamin a Levite and his concubine find 
themselves in Gibeah, where they were put up by a kindly old man. (Judges 
19) As in Sodom the men of the city come and demand their assumed right to 
abuse the stranger.  The old man offers them his virgin daughter and the 
Levite's concubine, but the Levite insists that only his woman be 
taken.  The men of Gibeah rape her to death and the next day the Levite 
divided up her body into twelve pieces and sent them to the tribes of 
Israel. The Israelite leaders met at Mizpah and decided that the Benjamites 
should be punished for their "abomination."

The fact that Lot also offered his daughters to the mob to save his guests 
from a Sodomite attack shows that the main issue here is not the abuse of 
women but the honor of men. It is significant to note that God does not 
condemn these acts of violence, and there is now a shrine to Saint Lot at 
the alleged spot where his daughters had sex with him.

Today some Muslim families continue the abomination called honor killing, 
in which a daughter who has been raped is killed to save the honor of the 
family.  Few divorces and even fewer incidences of cohabitation in this 
society.

I believe the hypothesis is not confirmed.

Nick Gier