Essay by Eric Worrall
The husband wasn’t a sadistic POS wife beater, it was climate change which made him raise his fists?
Domestic violence is cost of climate change for Sri Lanka women
BY DIMUTHU ATTANAYAKE
THOMSON REUTERS FOUNDATION
Feb 15, 2024SAPUMAL THENNA, SRI LANKA –
After years of scant rainfall in a remote region of Sri Lanka, farmer Renuka Karunarathna’s crops failed and as the family’s income dwindled, her husband took his anger out on her, beating her so badly she had to go to a hospital.
“I have got beaten up so many times,” Karunarathna told said in her village of Sapumal Thenna in Sri Lanka’s North Central Province. “I suffer a lot.”
Domestic violence is a little-studied side effect of climate change, especially in poorer nations where increasingly frequent heat waves, droughts, floods and storms can exacerbate economic hardship, which in turn can fuel anger and violence.
…
Although Sri Lanka has few detailed statistics on the links between climate change-related crop failures and gender-based violence, Rashmini de Silva, a gender and climate change researcher, said when basic needs are not being met, women can suffer physical, verbal and psychological abuse.
“There are records of domestic violence where men beat their wives, when even the smallest issues in regard to buying food or expenses for children’s education or farming have to be discussed,” she said.
…
Read more: https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2024/02/15/world/society/domestic-violence-climate-change-sri-lanka/
I’m utterly disgusted by this attempt to excuse bullying and violence against women as a climate change issue.
Is claiming climate change made someone use violence against his family any different from claiming the devil made me do it? The devil is the person inflicting the violence.
The reason men beat their wives is they are useless excuses for men. They haven’t got the guts to take on someone who can hit back. Even worse, the abused woman’s brothers and father are too gutless to protect their sister or daughter.
To try to use climate change as an excuse for such vile cowardice, all I can say is Sri Lanka and anywhere else which tolerates such behaviour needs to take a good look in the mirror, and stop making excuses for violent thugs.
Cultural violence against women is fixable, either through legal changes or other means. Women in India, next door to Sri Lanka, finally got fed up with cultural tolerance of violence against women, and the refusal of authorities to act. Nowadays men in India who hurt women live in fear of being beaten by stick wielding female vigilante gangs.
as should ‘just stop oil,’ ‘extinction rebellion,’ ‘declare emergency,’ and the EPA.
I note that they claim the immediate cause for his thuggishness is “crop failure.”
THAT can be more plausibly traced to the Greens. Blocking dams that prevent flooding and store water from wet times for use in dry times. Banning inexpensive fertilizer, pesticides, and herbicides that are made from fossil fuels. Inveighing against GMO crops that grow with less water, less fertilizer, are pest-resistant, and provide more nutrition.
Yes, those groups SHOULD be the targets.
You didn’t include in your list the famine that was caused, not much more than a year ago, by the Rajapaksa dynasty mandating a “transition” to “organic” agriculture.
I don’t know anything about the Sri Lankan culture, but aren’t we not supposed to judge? Sure, we can judge men of European descent from hundreds of years ago by modern standards, but we can’t judge different, contemporary cultures by our standards. It’s moral imperialism or somethin’, innit?
Yep, disgusting isn’t it?
Being worried about accusations of racism caused British police to turn a blind eye for over a decade to mostly Asian Muslim child rape gangs operating in Britain.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rochdale_child_sex_abuse_ring
Jacinta Price, an Australian Aboriginal senator, also spoke at the last Aussie CPAC about the pressure on her to stop talking about rampant incest and domestic violence in Australian Aboriginal communities.
I think true evil is staying silent about such abuses because you are too worried about offending someone’s cultural values.
The British authorities used to understand this, in the early 1800s they had no hesitation hunting down and killing every member they could find of the vile Thuggee cult in India. Uprooting that ancient tradition made the world a better place. The Brits did such a good job wiping them out, some nowadays claim they never existed at all.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thuggee
I am a guilty descendant of those that interfered with the tradition of suttee empowering women with their mourning. Should I attend and say sorry in Women’s Studies?
we can’t judge different, contemporary cultures by our standards
I feel that it’s only that we live in stable, well fed societies that allows us to suppress violence, become vegans, and so on.
If society were to collapse I suspect we’d revert to anamalistic behaviours overnight.
We can barely get along already.
Coming…
Why not? Is wife beating OK in Sri Lanka because they are Sri Lankan? Or is wife beating a barbaric act of cruelty which should be called out wherever it occurs?
Of course not. I think More Soylent Green was pointing out that we can judge from our position of cultural stability. And I agree with him. I’m very thankful we live in a society that allows that and whilst Sri Lanka has considerable problems, I don’t think violence is justifiable as a result.
A Reasoned response… Thanks, Tim.
I agree 100%. Any such behavior including bullying is barbaric, and should be called out regardless of where it is happening . There has to be a wall ,or even cannibalism and human sacrifice will be excused as “them being them”.
That idea reasonably applies to some aspects of different cultures but violent behavior, especially against the defenseless, the suppression of individual rights, the unequal treatment of some based ideology or religious dogma about ideas such as class, cast, intrinsic superiority of some, is always repugnant and reprehensible. Failure to call it out is explicit support.
Are you saying that it’s alright to beat your wife if the culture allows it ? Legal possibly but still wrong . Morals are not a dynamic. Every human knows what it right and wrong .
Imagine in 1000 years time when we have fusion energy aplenty and can synthesise food including meat. Everyone is a vegan because actually killing animals is barbaric. They’d look back on us as barbaric for killing animals and yet in our society today, it’s fine. We’re apex predators and it’s natural, right?
Any idea that humans should be different from other animals in regard to diet is an abstraction that bears no relationship to physical reality. It exist only in your head.
You’re missing the point. The point is that our morals aren’t absolute, they come from our experience and expectations from society.
Cannibalistic societies have existed and if you were born into one, you wouldn’t be disgusted by the idea like we are even though it seems like a no brainer (to us) that they are morally repugnant.
‘…it seems like a no brainer…’
Humor?
What about killing killer whales for food, thus stopping them killing non-killer-whale species for food? Will society stop society doing that? Nature is red in tooth and claw. All that is necessary for animal cruelty to exist is for good men to sit around watching nature documentaries without lifting a finger to stop it. Prevent Nature Now!
If/when we can synthesise food, ie create “meat” without using animals and once society has well and truly become accustomed to that, then yes society would stop doing that.
I dont mean synthesise food the way we do it today, think Star Trek replicator synthesis (ie essentially the same as the “real” thing)
Oh, wait…are you wondering whether we’ll stop all animals killing for their own food? I cant see that as a future myself but YMMV.
“ Every human knows what it right and wrong .” Now, that, right there, is funny.
As a straight old white bloke ‘I say nothing I see nothing I know nothing I did not even get up in the morning!’
The new religion knows all and are running everything-
https://www.msn.com/en-au/news/australia/climate-change-could-trigger-giant-megaswarms-of-locusts-study-warns/ar-BB1inDM
Climate alarmists make one dire claim after another. None of them ever happen.
Wolf! Wolf!
There is no wolf.
You may want to think a bit more about what you wrote. If your words were not meant to imply that Sri Lankan culture supports spousal abuse then you may have misspoke. And if you are suggesting it is wrong to oppose spousal abuse in other cultures, again I think you are not representing widely held global standards of human rights and protections.
And what is the main reason for recent crop failures in Sri Lanka !
Anti-fertiliser idiocy, due to the fallacy of “climate change”
“After years of scant rainfall.. crops failed.” Surely the government ban on using fertilizers had nothing to do with it. Fear socialism, not climate change.
Fear moronic governments. !
Fear climate change political policy!
I think we are going to have to introduce Climate Change Derangement Syndrome (CCDS) as a thing. These climate alarmist people are definitely deranged over the weather and climate. They see things that are not there.
“……..when basic needs are not being met, women can suffer physical, verbal and psychological abuse.”
Society is going to see a lot of physical, verbal and phycological abuse if and when fossil fuel production is shut down out of a naive belief their use is causing climate change.
Starvation tends to do that when an economy collapses.
After all those years of being told it was the Super Bowl I am glad that got cleared up.
Name one thing for which climate changed hasn’t been blamed. I’ll wait…
Poverty reduction in free market democracies?
Sorry, that’s all I could come up with.
Joe Biden’s massive intellect.
There Is one cause of this . It is the low life thug behind the fist. In my opinion one who beats a woman, child, dog, or anything weaker than themselves should be put out of society. Any method to achieve this is O K
Anyone who beats a helpless woman should be beaten.
How do *you* like it, bad boy!?
For domestic violence exists no reason, but for sure, climate change is not even able to serve as explanation. I always wonder about the brain ilness to set on climate change as reason for what ever BS. These narrative following “researches” are the further dead of what science once was.
I think climate change alarmisim is a brain illness.
I kind of agree. My frequent shouting at the television when some idiot waffles about ‘climate change’ sometimes leads to domestic strife.
That’s a complete other story 😀
Are the complaints about the subject matter, or about you shouting? 🙂
The CAGW crowd is pitiful. They have nothing but lies and cheating.
Domestic violence must have peaked in 1934 and 1936.
“Domestic violence is a little-studied side effect of climate change,...”
Rather, stupidity is a little-studied effect of climate change obsession.
Also, what the heck is “a gender and climate change researcher“? Is that a sister field of feminist glaiciology? A “framework that considers gender dynamics in environmental (climate, glaciology, hydrology) knowledge” because “women are more likely to be harmed or negatively affected by glacial melt than men“?
Ever so sensible. We’ve all seen the videos documenting streams of women fleeing the Summer melt in Greenland.
I searched for Ms.Rashmini de Silva in Google Scholar and found an Oxfam study she participated in, called “Loss and Damage to Land: Voices from Asia.”
Searching the study for climate and gender, I found this: “Climate-induced migration increases the care burden on women and exposes them to harassment and violence.”
Evidently, the knock-on climate effects of CO₂ emissions also exposes people to “increased gender-based violence” … reinforces colonial legacies and other inequalities related to income, gender and power” and and impacts the “intersectionality of inequalities,”
All of which are Feminist and wokeista tropes. Ms. de Silva has undoubted qualifications for modern high-level work in the field of Glacio-Feminological Studies.
In place of the “what is a woman” question by Congress… I want to hear the answer to “what the hell is Intersectionality of inequalities???
“At what temperature did you start beating your wife? I remind you, sir, you’re under oath.”
I haven’t started, your honour……. not yet, anyway..!! 🙂
Waiting for the 2ºC signal that the world has ended. 😉
(ps… no, I won’t beating my wife… she has a black belt in Thai cooking, or something like that.)
“At what temperature did you start beating your wife?”
Good one! 🙂
“Nowadays men in India who hurt women live in fear of being beaten by stick wielding female vigilante gangs.”
Not enough “fear” if men are still hurting women.
Agreed, but it’s a start. Most Indians I’ve met are decent, I know good Indian men who would help the women administer the beating.
Most people from any background are pretty decent, when it’s all said and done.
I think so, too. It’s the Bad Apples that get all the notice.
Is there anything bad occurring that isn’t being at least partially caused by man-made climate change? If so, it’s a well-kept secret, at least according to the alarmists.
Doesn’t this just beat everything.
Oddly no one has mentioned the many instances where women deliberately antagonize their man to the point where he responds physically. She proves that he is evil and she is a victim and can hold this over his head forever. Ask a real psychologist about this, don’t take it from me. Women have agency, the ability to control situations, including the actions of their less perceptive husbands.
Crop failures in Sri Lanka are in large part a direct result of a government edict that destroyed efficient agricultural practices in favour of Lysenko-like magical thinking. It has absolutely nothing to do with climate change and domestic violence has nothing to do with a mild 1.5 degree C warming of the global surface temperature.