Disciplinarian parents who ignore the viewpoint of their children may be contributing to the obesity epidemic. The tentative explanation is that children overeat to cope with stress. Parents who set out rules, but listened to their children and provided them with a sense of security, had children with the fewest weight problems.

There’s a lesson for society as a whole here. Subjecting the most vulnerable members of society to constant insecurity isn’t an incentive to try harder, it’s an incentive to find ways to alleviate the stress. No matter what obesity-pundits say, food is an effective and cheap way of reducing stress. Business and government are currently being obliged to adjust to the reality of inceasing rates of obesity. The efforts seem to be focused on setting more controls: deprive people of food, berate the character of people who have “let themselves go”, and bemoan “addiction” on all the afternoon talk shows. Perhaps instead of spending all this time and money on damage control, which seems to be rife with humiliations that will only make the problem worse, people should consider providing more checks on rankism. Allowing open season to abuse the most vulnerable members of society has resulted in a tremendous cost, and the bills are now coming due.

I didn’t think it was possible for the U.S. cultural bar to sink any lower after Abu Ghraib. Silly me - apparently the U.S. is working without a net when it comes to sheer barbarism. Now we have ministers, traditional leaders of our local communities, beating children for reporting sex abuse. As the article points out, this girl has been betrayed several times over and has no reason left to trust adults. Even more sad, U.S. society doesn’t compensate for this sort of experience: for the rest of her life she will be punished for having “baggage” and a distrustful attitude.

Perhaps this is all part and parcel of a civic culture that busies itself in manipulating appearances to prevent morale issues instead of striving for a more just society.

This is the domestic terrorism we need to be worrying about. Perhaps part of the $545 million Homeland Security budget should be dedicated to developing a color-coded alert system to protect people from their domestic partners.

There’s a terrific news aggregator for domestic violence issues here. For LGBT-specific issues, get started here.

A study sponsored by the United Nations shows that domestic abuse has been normalized in Syria. It’s not hard to imagine why Syrian women would hesitate to protest a beating when a sideways look from their neighbors can get them killed.

The most tragic symbol of America’s failure to expand human rights in Afghanistan was the parade of women who set themselves on fire as a last ditch way to communicate their despair. The news cycle for the burning of women seems to have ended, and the horror conveniently forgotten by fickle Americans. Today Kevin Sites managed to recapture a hefty chunk of attention with the story of an abused child bride. When I checked the story over 11,500 people had recommended it, and almost 7000 had commented. Thanks to the gift of news coverage, one abused child will receive an abundance of help, and perhaps a few others will benefit from some spillover generosity. It’s heartening to see there are some abuses that can still get past the American “that’s your problem, don’t drag me into it” mentality.

The only thing that bothers me is that the thing that’s clearly moving Americans to action is the picture of Gulsoma’s scars. Does that mean a person has to have extreme scarring to prove their status as a victim of abuse? Just as Gulsoma’s tormentors deliberately avoided her face, the truly clever abuser will avoid physical scars all together, and instead seek to inflict maximum social or psychological violence. Injuries that can never be proven are perhaps the most damaging of all.

The governor of South Dakota has signed a bill to ban abortion. Somehow religious beliefs have managed to hijack the government, twisting the law so it can be used against the Constitution, against the poor, and against the rights of women as free individuals. Here’s the full text of the Rapist’s Rights Bill.

While this study of heart disease factors focuses on marital relations, it seems likely it would apply to any social or working relationship where people need to cooperate with each other for an extended period of time.

When domestic violence interferes with work performance, the employer often responds by punishing the victim. Abusers work the system to maximize their control:

What employers need to know is that batterers often use the legal system to abuse their victim….One way they do so is by filing motions in family courts for custody of children, trying to prove that the mother is unfit and trying to take the children away from her.

Reducing rankism starts in the home: victims need the support of everyone around them, including their employer. As organizations such as End Abuse work with employers to raise awareness of domestic violence, hopefully we will move toward a society of helping hands instead of slammed doors.