Domestic violence and the World Cup

This story caught my eye yesterday. The 'End the fear' scheme set up in Manchester seems like a very good idea, and viewed from a positive angle any increase in the reporting of domestic violence is to be welcomed.

But I think there are several problems with the way the story is presented. Most importantly there's no evidence that acts of domestic violence increased - the reporting of such acts went up, at a time when women were (quite correctly) being actively encouraged to come forward. We don't know if more domestic violence was occurring, of if the same amount was going on but more of it was coming to the attention of the police.

This has two unfortunate implications. Firstly it adds credence to the idea that a certain type of man (and we can probably guess which type - working class football fans) can be provoked into violence simply by their team losing. This seems to me to tap into cultural stereotypes amount working class people as irrational, easily provoked etc. I may be reading too much into this aspect of the story, but I kind of doubt it.

But leading on from this, and much more importantly, I think the story as presented downplays the extent, and frequency, of the violence suffered by some women. I'd be very surprised if many of these cases are 'new', in the sense that it was the first time the woman involved had been subjected to violence. It seems much more likely that this was usually the latest in a series of attacks, but the woman was on this occasion encouraged to come forward by the publicity around the scheme. So rather than an increase in domestic violence linked to the world cup, we're actually just getting a better picture to the real level of 'everyday' violence.

Stories like this have the unfortunate effect of both 'othering' crime - domsetic violence is committed by lumpen proles who get wound up by football matches, unlike nice middle class people - and downplaying the real level of victimisation suffered by women.