KVT – Domestic Violence @ Goethe

KVT and a can of worms and wishes

DAD I WISH at the Goethe institute is well worth visiting. It requires a lot of harrowing viewing and reading and, apart from a couple of upbeat moments, should make you feel sad and angry and not a little powerless

Usually my opinion pieces are full of photographic images (too many I hear some say!) This piece contains only one because it would be reprehensible of me to include others without the consent of the image owners. The one chosen is part of the PR for the exhibition

Domestic violence, wherever and whenever, is an obscenity that scars the lives of more than one quarter of the world’s population of women and children…the you tube video below is USA-centric but the statistics could probably be extrapolated on a global scale

[youtube width=”600″ height=”337″]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3s2hu9Zon4s[/youtube]

Generally the perpetrators of domestic violence are males. Of course all females cannot be statistically excluded but, being US-centric again, it is estimated that females make up about 5% of perpetrators

The video and the images in the exhibition at Goethe can seem to imply that domestic violence is a peculiarity of the less well educated and the impoverished. This is not a truism and allows too many perpetrators off the hook.

It is a well known statistic that a high proportion of males who have been victims of domestic violence and/or sexual abuse and who do not receive adequate counseling, will become perpetrators. One remedial thrust is to identify the victims and effect some form of ongoing counseling or support

At Goethe 23 male victims of domestic violence perpetrated by close male family members, usually the father, tell their stories and their aspirations via photographic images taken by the victims from Hanoi and four close by provinces.

The process used is known as Photovoice and is apparently a common tool to attempt to address the disempowerment of marginalized people and help them reclaim a voice.

The twenty three ‘essays’ are very powerful and the general viewer will hope that the exercise is not just an effort to present the issue of domestic violence to a wider audience but that serious attempts will be made to counsel and give follow up assistance to the young males who have been chosen to highlight the fact that many young males are victims of domestic violence. Similarly one would hope that some counseling would be available to other family members who have been highlighted as co-victims (in these cases mothers and siblings)

If not, the exhibition could be doing more harm than good to the people involved

The exhibition is part of 16 days of activism campaign against gender based violence and its PR says that it presents an awareness raising message to the community and a call to the government to increase participation in executing laws that will promote gender equality and prevent domestic violence. It is not declared whether the exhibition is an end result in itself or part of a serious, ongoing program, or how that program is being effected.

I recommend the exhibition to all members of the Hanoi community because everyone, high-born or low-born, wealthy or impoverished, native-born or foreign will know, or will have been or still be, victims of this insidious, invidious affliction.

Perpetrators? Well that questions opens up another can of worms!