Another down side to Chinese culture: Domestic Violence

[Left Coast2020]

BEIJING -- Her head was ringing from the blows. Once, twice, three times, her husband slammed her face into the living room floor.

Kim Lee tried to twist her tall but skinny frame out from under his 91-kilogram (200-pound) body, scraping her elbows and knees on the carpet. He kept on pounding. Eight, nine, 10 times – she thought she might black out.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/21/kim-lee-domestic-violence_n_1442559.html

As a side note, I consider this to be very accurate. When I lived there I witnessed similar abuse in the apartment I lived in. And since the stairwells are concrete, the noise echos throughout the building. Even when getting off a bus in Shenyang, a female was near the bus stop getting the snot beat out of her by an apparent scumbag boyfriend. There was nothing I could do to stop it. The police would do nothing either if they saw it occur.

[MADem]

1. That's terrible. The police don't give a shit, either? Where does a victim turn? nt

[mzteris]

2. When we were in Taiwan

we had a young woman who tutored our son in Chinese. She was in her early 30's, but still living at home. Her father would beat her pretty regularly. She thought it "normal". She was quite surprised to hear that it's NOT OKAY for men to beat women.

[msongs]

3. when "everybody" does it, it IS the norm and doing otherwise seems an oddity nt

[Suji to Seoul]

4. two instance, both in my time in Shijiazhuang

1: I watched a man take a lead pipe and beat his girlfriend bloody on Dong Ma Lu until the pipe bent. Then when she got the pipe, he ran like a coward. She threw the pipe I him and chased him down the street. They argued for a while more, then walked back down the street as if nothing happened, hand in hand, telling each other how much they "loved" each other.

2: I watched a husband beat his wife from outside my bedroom window, while they child watched and screamed at the top of his lungs.

Sadly, the abuse is two way. Women here are psychologically and emotionally abusive to men, men are physically abusive to women. Women have no problem publicly emasculating men, questioning their manhood and causing public scenes, all because the man did the horrific sin of not buying her something she feels she deserves. TV shows, commercials and movies show women screaming at, belittling and hitting men all the time. I saw one last night when I took my GF to Titanic (a man bought a car. his GF hit him with a frying pan and screaming "you bought yourself a car?" He responded, "but it's for you." She went "really. Now I really love you." No apology for the frying pan) and it made me sick.

Abuse is rampant in China.

Don't tell me bruises count more than other abuse. I dealt with all of his growing up. The bruises healed. The psychological and emotional abuse suffered I suffered from my father and his entire side of the family haunt me even to this day.

[wickerwoman]

5. Not sure it's inherent to Chinese culture though.

The only obvious domestic violence I witnessed in China was my downstairs neighbors, an American man married to a Chinese women who he used to have screaming matches with, beat and call a "cunt" at 3am to the point where the police had to be repeatedly called. They were eventually thrown out of the building as a result of my (Chinese) neighbors complaining about them.

I also saw two men beating the shit out of each other with badminton rackets in a parking lot but I'm not sure that qualifies as domestic violence.

What I did notice in China was that it was much more acceptable for men and women to just be friends. In the US, a man who hung around with women all the time would be assumed to be gay, whereas in China there seemed to be less macho bullshit peer pressure. Might be a generational thing, but all the young Chinese guys I knew were less openly misogynistic than their US equivalents in the wake of gangsta rap, The Man Show, video games glamorizing pimps, etc.

[Suji to Seoul]

8. Men are looked at as banks here by girls

Men are easily controlled because their mothers emasculate them.

Domestic violence happens all the time. no police officer will get involved because it's a family issue. And there is no law stopping it.

[davidpdx]

6. I just finished spending 9 months in China

So nothing surprises me.

They rip Americans for violence, yet stuff like this gets covered up most of the time there. Especially if they are a high ranking official.

[Craig_Langford]

7. I've seen this too

East Asians are second only to Arabs when it comes to misogyny and domestic violence against women. Even in the cities, feminism and gender equality/neutrality are almost unheard of and if they are heard of are dismissed as being fringe ideas, or "anti-traditional" or subversive.

[littlemissmartypants]

9. Wow. eom