It's easy to be smug and secure in our own preconceptions about our country and culture. We are, after all, America - that shining city on a hill, as Ronald Reagan called it. That beacon of life, liberty and justice for all. That bastion of freedom and equality in a world filled by extremism, socialism (irony alert!), and inequality.
But the reality is that America is still very much an inequal society. And you don't have to look any further than the statistics on battered women in this country to see that inequality take shape.
According to many different battered women rescue projects, about one in ten American women have been battered by their partner. When it comes to verbal or emotional abuse, that percentage rockets skyward to nearly forty percent.
To put it another way: A woman is physically battered women by her husband once every ten seconds in this country. Once every ten seconds another women is added to the long list of battered women in America.
It goes further. First, in order to shoot down an alarmingly misogynistic trend in the media, women are not more frequently battering their male partners than at any other point in history. 19 out of 20 victims of spousal abuse are still women, and that is something that hasn't changed since records have been kept. Why certain media outlets - Fox News being first and foremost among them - want to pretend otherwise is beyond the comprehension of anyone with any decency. Though I could make a pretty scalding guess at their motives.
Ok, now that we've established that battered women still make up the lion's share of abuse victims, it's time to figure out who these abusers are. And it's clear that 95% of battered women are battered by their partners. This isn't some case of total strangers beating up women; it's a case of men who are married, or in an intimate relationship with a woman, beating that woman up. It's sickening.
Women battered by a spouse or significant other make up fully thirty percent of all emergency room visits by women of all ages. And what's worse, many of these women have been there before: Violence against women is chronic. Once it starts, it's almost a guarantee that it will happen again.
So if you find yourself in a situation where you're making excuses for a husband or boyfriend who has hit you, just stop. You're a battered woman, and you need to get out of that situation as soon as is possible. And let the authorities know, to boot. Don't be a victim.