By Laurie A. Couture
“Especially.” The word means, according to The Oxford Dictionary and Thesaurus, “chiefly; much more than in other cases”, with synonyms of “first and foremost” and “above all”…
When it comes to the topics of hurt, pain, human suffering, and violence, is it ethical to put the safety of one gender demographic far above the safety of another? More poignantly, should we be putting the safety of a group of adults above the safety of a group of children? Apparently, the Bay Area Rapid Transit system, used by millions of riders annually, seems to think so.
Earlier this year, BART partnered with The San Francisco Asian Women’s Shelter and artist, Amanda Phingbodhipakkiya to produce a series of vibrant, pop art-style public billboards to “encourage conversations and reflection on healthy relationships, families and communities” as well as to prevent domestic violence. However, there is a caveat to this idealistic, humanitarian-sounding wolf-in-sheep’s-clothing campaign: The word “especially”. The campaign’s message, accompanied by its neon-overload images primarily of confident and supported survivor women (with a token man in one panel bowing his head in submission), is brazenly and blatantly gender-biased. Gripping visuals and text persuade a sexist message that domestic violence should be viewed as a gender crime rather than a human crime, and that we must ensure—here comes the Orwellian Doublethink—“respect for everyone, especially women and girls”. [Italics mine]
It doesn’t take a doctorate degree in psychology to interpret that this campaign does not prioritize respect for everyone, period. Moreover, it even elevates the safety of adult women even over the safety of minor boys. “Especially”, suggests the BART campaign, the public must internalize this propaganda and not think of their husbands, fathers, brothers, and even their own sons and nephews, except to view them as potential predators of women and girls. This campaign is concerning, considering that boys are the primary victims of child abuse and mothers are the primary perpetrators of child abuse and fatal child abuse against their children (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2020). Domestic violence statistics have shown since the 1970s what Murray Straus (2010; 2011) referred to as “gender symmetry” in domestic violence, with women actually perpetrating more violence in the home than men.
But what about in the Asian-American population highlighted in the campaign? Are women the primary victims? A study by Chang et al. (2009) of Asian-American adults found that, similar to the rest of the American population, both men and women admit that women hit men more than the reverse. While Gershoff et al. (2012) report that Asian-American mothers strike their children less than White, Black, and Latino mothers, 73% of Asian-American mothers admitted to striking (“spanking”) their children. If BART wishes to prevent domestic violence, the first step must to be protect children in the home… and the second step must be to add a hard, non-negotiable period after the phrase, “respect for everyone”.
References
BART’s Let’s Talk About Us campaign: https://www.letstalkaboutus.org/about and https://www.bart.gov/news/articles/2023/news20230215
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (2020): https:// www.acf.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/cb/cm2018.pdf#page=21
Straus (2010): https://connect.springerpub.com/content/sgrpa/1/3/332.abstract
Straus (2011): https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1359178911000620
Chang et al. (2009): https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4449838/
Gershoff et al. (2012): https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7988802/