How Long Do We Keep Up This Charade?

How long do we keep up this charade? I am speaking here primarily about Thailand and the Philippines, but I have seen the same in quite a few other countries as well. Over the years, as I have lived in these places, I have, perforce, been exposed to the local television programming.

Something that one sees with distressing regularity, is the way women are treated in these television shows. It is almost pervasive that in any show, even some of the comedies, you will inevitably witness violence towards women in various forms; rape, domestic abuse (either physical or verbal abuse), and see them generally being treated as second rate people.

When that kind of visual programming is pervasive, and children, nay, generations, grow up watching that kind of trash on a nightly basis, is it any surprise when these countries have fairly high domestic violence rates? Something that almost any country could do, but especially the ones I'm talking about here, if they want to reduce violence against women, is to implement a radical overhaul of the type of programming they present on TV. To be honest, I don’t know the exact effect it would have, but it is hard to imagine it would be in any worse than what they are doing now.

I'll leave you with a last minute global addendum: the Russian Duma, just a few weeks ago, removed domestic violence from the criminal code. This is just as sad a turn of events (although I have to say that I was puzzled that it had at least one female backer, Yelena Mizulina).