Honor Based Violence

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Honor based violence and domestic violence are two common forms of violence that exist in our world today, and have for many years (Devaney, 2014; Hague, Gill, & Begikhani, 2013; Olwan, 2013). Honor based violence is defined as any sort of incident performed by a male relative that is done in order to preserve family honor (Eshareturi, Lyle, & Morgan, 2014). It is commonly associated with Middle Eastern nations (Belfrage, Strand, Ekman, Hasselborg, 2012; Olwan, 2013; Standish, 2014). Domestic violence is defined as In both instances of honor based violence and domestic violence, victims can be seen as losing power and control within their own lives, which proves difficult when trying to come forward to gain help. This can be noted in the …show more content…

Based off of this notion, both domestic violence and honor based violence are considered to be “gendered” issues (Standish, 2014). Society never envisions a woman hitting a man, and it never causes nearly as much outcry as when the roles are reversed. While we never imagine those situations to exist, there is truth in that men can also be victimized. With both honor based, as well as domestic violence, there is a minority, which includes underreported male victimization, with less than 1% reporting assaults to the NCVS (Muller, Desmarais, & Hamel, 2009). Part of the reasoning behind its underreporting is there is this fear of not being believed by society, because of an established patriarchal mindset (Muller et al., 2009; Reddy, 2008). There are widely accepted gender roles, which establish a form of patriarchy (Muller et al., 2009). Researchers believe honor based violence to be paving the way to a full patriarchy, with women having no rights at all (Eshareturi et al., …show more content…

There is no way to criminalize or police these types of violence due to underreporting (Policastro, & Payne, 2013).Honor based violence is common, with about 5,000 deaths each year in “honorable situations” (Belfrage, Strand, Ekman, & Hasselborg, 2012; Chesler, 2010; Hague et al., 2013; Eshareturi et al., 2014), and domestic violence occurring with almost 87 percent of surveyed cases in 2014 having homicidal potential to those victimized (Juodis, Starzomski, Porter, Woodworth, 2014). With honor based violence having such a cultural basis, it is hard to police because there needs to also be respect for one’s right to beliefs (Eshareturi et al.,