Reflection Paper One: Violence
Violence. When I first entered this course I thought that violence was simply physically harming another person. I have now learned that, that’s a narrow definition of violence, as stated by Coady. This paper is supposed to be about what I would like to learn from this course and what I already know, so I will try not to incorporate too much of what I have learned already.
The most interesting thing that I know about violence is the cycle of violence. If you are abused as a child or if you witness abuse, you are more likely to be the abuser. To me that means if you were abused as a child by your father, lets say, then you are more likely to, as a husband, abuse your children or your wife. That’s not to say that, that happens in every case, but it does happen. This theory may be well founded as some of the most prolific serial killers where abused or witnessed abuse as children. I am sure that there are many cases where persons who were abused or witnessed abuse as children, have grown into upstanding citizens who have not committed any crimes.
It is interesting to me that domestic violence is a fairly new concept. Before, it was depicted as a familial problem and was normalized. Today we now do not allow husbands to strike their wives or their children and if they do it is met with swift response by the police. Now when there is a call about domestic violence police have to arrest someone upon leaving. I’m not sure if that’s a good policy or not and I think it would be a good topic for our class to explore.
In my first year at Lakehead I took a course called Women, Crime and Criminal Law. It was a very interesting course that looked at women and their interactions with the law. It was interesting to look at crimes that were committed by women or were committed against women. We looked at the Highway of Tears, where many Aboriginal women have gone missing and are presumed dead. The RCMP have been looking into it for years and there are no suspects and no evidence. There has been a public outcry for investigation of these women as it went largely unnoticed for a number of years. Its interesting to see violence from a gendered perspective, as I am a woman it is something that I can relate to. This story comes from an Aboriginal perspective, which I cannot relate to, so it was interesting to look at it from that perspective as well. The Aboriginal community believes that this went unnoticed for so long due to the fact that the women were Aboriginal and some were prostitutes. I believe that race and occupation should have no affect on an investigation, but unfortunately that is the case in some cases. Violence in my opinion, does not discriminate.
I took a class last year that was called Crimes of the Powerful, in which we learnt what types of crimes powerful people commit. This class taught me that corporations can commit violence. In particular, we learnt about the radio host Jian Ghomeshi who was the host of the Q radio show on CBC. Jian had been accused of the sexual assault of six women. CBC’s producer of the Q and the union representative of Kathryn Borel did nothing after they were informed of Jian sexually harassing her. Even though there were allegations of sexual harassment in 2010 CBC did nothing until 2014 when more allegations were added. Jian, because of his position was allowed (or rather allegations were ignored) to sexually harass women he worked with. Due to his position at the studio, CBC did not want to lose the “star” of the show Q. The corporation allowed this to go on for several years before it became public and they had no choice. This to me, shows that corporations can commit violence, even if it is by “omission”.
From this course I would like to learn what a comprehensive definition of violence looks like. What I mean by that is, I would like to acquire a definition of violence makes sense for our class. I know that one definition of violence is not going to work for everyone (as we have proved in class) but I would like to find a definition of violence that works for us. I would also like to learn more about if violence is a part of human nature. We have looked at a few examples already in class but I would like to have a better idea of if that is the case or not.
