what if your phone rang 11 times a minute?

A couple of weeks ago, the National Network to End Domestic Violence released the results from their census of domestic violence providers. Approximately 62% of programs in the US participated in the census, so the results may not be completely representative - regardless, these results should not be ignored.

The Executive Summary (pdf) states that in a 24 hour period, 47,864 adults received services from a domestic violence agency and local, statewide and national hotlines received almost 17,000 calls (more than 11 hotline calls every minute).

Despite the prevalence of domestic violence, we (global we) still have a little bit of a problem dealing with it. An article on salon.com entitled 'Judge: Wife-beating is normal in your culture' caught my attention this morning. Though the specific case that this article refers to Muslims in Germany, this is not an uncommon response by some in the legal system (or outside of it...). In Germany, it seems, there is a one-year waiting period for those that want a divorce. A 26-year old Moroccan-born Germany woman was denied a fast-track divorce, despite the danger she was in, because the Judge said her situation was normal in her culture. I was a domestic violence court advocate in Chicago and often heard this dismissive response, particularly when I was advocating for/with immigrant or Latina survivors. Machismo, religion, immigrant status, etc. does not make violence ok or expected or 'normal. Nothing does. If you work with survivors or are just interested in this topic, I found a Muslim Wheel of Domestic Violence developed by Dr. Sharifa Alkhateeb. The wheel was adapted from the Duluth Power and Control Wheel. The original Duluth version has also been translated into spanish. The National Center on Domestic and Sexual Violence has a list of wheels for every occasion. Get yours today!

A dependency on normalcy is dangerous for all involved. Besides, who gets to define what is normal? And if something has been normal, does that mean it needs to stay normal? You know, like when 'whites only' signs were normal or it was normal that blacks and women couldn't vote? I could go on... but I think you get the picture. And, really, what the heck would we do with ourselves if treating each other with respect was normal in our culture, or any culture?