You’re confusing “way too women experience partner violence sometime in their lives” with “all men are violent criminals and need to be separated”.
While yes, a lot of drug related violence is caused by the drug war, the harm for drugs is easy to see from with a significant portion of the homeless, theft and ciolence as the worst addicts fall out of society, and ruined wasted lives. Harm for alcoholism is much more obvious and easy to see, but I’d also add all the victims of drunk driving to it’s harm
I’m not saying all men are abusers or harmful and therefore need to be separated, not at all. If my partner and I were to utilise a service it would not offend me to have a short conversation with her, away from me, to ensure she could say things without me hearing them. Having a safe way out of abusive relationships is the key predictor of whether women will stay or leave. In the 70s women couldn’t get a credit card or bank account in their name so couldn’t leave, but once that changed a whole bunch of women left their husbands and escaped to improve their lives. In a situation like a temporary housing shelter it would be ideal to have that conversation and offer a way out. Is sex segregation the best way of doing this? No. Is it better than nothing? Depending on the rate of intimate partner violence, maybe? I don’t know for sure, but I am open to the possibility that it is better to have that be a space without men.
And yes, most of the harms of alcohol are socially accepted to some degree and thus hidden, so it isn’t well studied and understood. I think we agree that most of the harm comes from the legal context of drug use, not from the drugs themselves as such. I mean paracetamol can cause some harms but it is balanced by the benefit and we make a rational decision to use it. I think the same applies to weed and MDMA, but all of the social and legal things around those two generate tonnes of harm and obfuscate the actual issue.
I want a government to run a test of many different approaches in different areas, matched to reduce confounding, so we can see what actually works. Should weed be legalised or decriminalised? What works better? Which measures do we care most about? Same for all the other issues. Run the studies with agreement in the legislation that if the study shows X works we will do X. It would mean we decide in advance our response to the outcomes of the studies and then work from that basis going forward without regard to current party in office or political pressures.
You’re confusing “way too women experience partner violence sometime in their lives” with “all men are violent criminals and need to be separated”.
While yes, a lot of drug related violence is caused by the drug war, the harm for drugs is easy to see from with a significant portion of the homeless, theft and ciolence as the worst addicts fall out of society, and ruined wasted lives. Harm for alcoholism is much more obvious and easy to see, but I’d also add all the victims of drunk driving to it’s harm
I’m not saying all men are abusers or harmful and therefore need to be separated, not at all. If my partner and I were to utilise a service it would not offend me to have a short conversation with her, away from me, to ensure she could say things without me hearing them. Having a safe way out of abusive relationships is the key predictor of whether women will stay or leave. In the 70s women couldn’t get a credit card or bank account in their name so couldn’t leave, but once that changed a whole bunch of women left their husbands and escaped to improve their lives. In a situation like a temporary housing shelter it would be ideal to have that conversation and offer a way out. Is sex segregation the best way of doing this? No. Is it better than nothing? Depending on the rate of intimate partner violence, maybe? I don’t know for sure, but I am open to the possibility that it is better to have that be a space without men.
And yes, most of the harms of alcohol are socially accepted to some degree and thus hidden, so it isn’t well studied and understood. I think we agree that most of the harm comes from the legal context of drug use, not from the drugs themselves as such. I mean paracetamol can cause some harms but it is balanced by the benefit and we make a rational decision to use it. I think the same applies to weed and MDMA, but all of the social and legal things around those two generate tonnes of harm and obfuscate the actual issue.
I want a government to run a test of many different approaches in different areas, matched to reduce confounding, so we can see what actually works. Should weed be legalised or decriminalised? What works better? Which measures do we care most about? Same for all the other issues. Run the studies with agreement in the legislation that if the study shows X works we will do X. It would mean we decide in advance our response to the outcomes of the studies and then work from that basis going forward without regard to current party in office or political pressures.