Gender violence war must start at home

My teenage daughter tells me she has friends who are beaten by their boyfriends. Not their husbands, not even their fiances, just boyfriends. Her efforts to get them to walk away have been met with blank stares, as if the thought of being without a boyfriend is, to these girls, utterly inconceivable. And so they stay on and the cycle of abuse continues.

Gender-based violence has no justification in any context and most people agree that the men who mete it out on women – and vice versa – have serious problems. But perhaps an even more serious issue is the people who stay on in abusive environments.