Domestic Violence Laws: Empowerment or Oppression?

Abstract

Relationship between Law and Violence Adherence to the set law enhances peaceful existence among people. However, to some extent, some lawmakers take advantage of their powers and use the law to cause violence among the target audiences. Based on Lazarus-Black (971), "re-gendering" is among some influential laws in Trinidad that defined violence among women. What is re-gendering? According to Lazarus-Black (976), the term represents a process that introduces categories and activities formerly without names to public and legal attention. Experiences of re-gendering in Trinidad defined inequalities and oppression against women whereby this law denied women their rights, limiting them from engaging in actions that remained available for men. Why enforce a law that silences a particular gender based on the assumed stereotype that associates such gender with inferiority? Women, just like men, are humanely mandated to enjoy all privileges that define an effective life. However, if any law subjects any gender to oppression, inequality among other harms that define violence, then such a law can trigger unhealthy coexistence among humans. For this reason, one can associate law with violence when the enforced law ensures unequal treatment based on biological or socially constructed attributes. Following the formation and implementation of the Domestic Violence Act of 1991, Trinidadian private family life became a public affair entitled to court interventions for clarity and judgments in case of a husband-wife sexual harassment affair (Lazarus-Black, 992). It is a law that changed the perception of sexually-related cases that initially, though criminalized, did not take so much weight as law enforcers argued them from the husband-and-wife point of view. However, with the Domestic Violence Act, courts became available to victims of abuse enhanced by timely fashion and little expenses to file and proceed with such cases. Unfortunately, the Act's provisions rendered the...