Battered Woman Syndrome - Essay Example

What I Assume
In the recent past, instances of women beating up men in a domestic setting have increased, and it is not a rare case to hear instances when women have killed their own husbands. In 2012, statistics indicate that over 850 thousand men suffer some form of violence from their partners (National Coalition against Domestic Violence 1). These scenarios have raised a lot of concern and I have not been left behind in the effort of cracking this complex puzzle that seems to overturn the order of events in society.

Traditionally, domestic violence against women was taken as ordinary while violence against women was unheard of, and the emergence of this trend has brought about a heated debate in society. In the minds of many, violence against men in society is a complex issue that goes against the norms of society.

On my part, I feel that this situation, though quite complex, is an outcome of various aspects of modern society that initially did not exist in the traditional cultural setups. All along I have associated this condition with the existence of women that are more aggressive than men in the society and who are able to dominate in the domestic setup. Bearing this in mind, I have developed a possible explanation of the possible reason why this behavior has become more evident in modern society. After figuring out this problem, I have come to believe that this condition is a consequence of gender empowerment that emerged in society in recent times. The fact that women have been empowered to become equal to men, women have developed an attitude of domestic equality while some have even become more violent than men. My assumption is that the struggle to empower women in the domestic setup has culminated in the erosion of cultural behaviors, consequently allowing women to be more aggressive than men in the domestic environment.

The Search
The argument of Lenore (241) is that violent women's behavior is a defense mechanism that helps them to eliminate their threat and most times it may result in the murder of the husband.

Champaign (59-76) examined the various stages of the development of battered woman syndrome. Initially, the woman suffers violence from a man and the woman becomes mentally tortured. In the second phase, the man will apologize for his wrong behavior but will repeat the same mistake, often while under influence of substance abuse. The behavior becomes frequent and the woman learns her position as a helpless person and cannot run away from his man for fear of the consequences of such an act. In the end, she becomes mentally unstable cannot reason a way out of the situation. The extreme reaction of a woman who has suffered from this syndrome is some sort of defense tactic that will eliminate her threat, one of which may be killing her husband while he is least conscious. Research shows that as long as there is evidence of repeated abuse, the court has all the reasons to justify a woman who killed her husband (Lenore 311).

What I discovered
From the research, I discovered that not all instances of women violence against women can be regarded as part of the ills of gender empowerment. While there is evidence that some women display violent behavior, in many instances women become violent as a reaction to continued male violence. The traditional culture that allows men to dominate in the domestic environment has made women victims of gender violence. According to the psychological explanation of battered women syndrome, women violence against women results from mental disorders that arise in instances of an unceasing beating from men, who are often victims of drug abuse. As a matter of fact, the law has sought to accommodate the plight of women by granting them sentence relief in instances where it can be proved that a woman has been a subject of domestic violence for a long time. The conclusion that can be derived from this research is that, at times, women's violence against men is a counter-reaction of women against frequent domestic abuse.