Re: the comparison between offering therapy to a depressed unemployed person and offering therapy to a woman who is being beaten at home. Below is a critique of the text on the BBC website, not a critique of the journalist or the journalist's sources.

I think the problem with the simile is that it neither helps us understand the situation of a woman who is beaten by her partner (I presume this is what is meant by being 'beaten at home') nor understand the situation of a person who is diagnosed as depressed because they are unemployed.

The comparison does not work because they are different types of crime, cause different types of injury and as such the comparison might mislead. Actually, the comparison between violence against women and unemployment does work, but only in terms of the construction of the simile potentially being an act of violence against women!

First, I'll try to draw out the problem with the comparison. Is the degree to which each of the pairs of statement below are condemned or condoned comparable?

1a) Society should not intervene to stop men beating up their partners, the job of government is to ensure that women are offered psychological support so that they do not develop a "depressive illness" as a result of being subject to regular physical beatings.

1b) Society should not intervene to stop corporations making people redundant, the job of government is to ensure unemployed people are offered psychological support so that they not develop a "depressive illness" as a result of experiencing regular periods of unemployment.

2a) It is reasonable, when a man is under economic pressure, for him to physically beat his partner, if that is in the long term interests of the man.

2b) It is reasonable, when a corporation is under economic pressure, for it to downsize its workforce, if that is in the long term interests of that corporation.

We would object to each pair, but they are not comparable. We might consider statements (a) to be wrong morally, but they are also considered wrong in UK criminal law. We might consider statements (b) to be morally wrong but they are not viewed this way according to UK criminal law, indeed statement 1b is implicitly supported by the gov rolling out of the CBT programme and 2b is just accepted government thinking. I don't think anyone (publically) would say statements (a) are acceptable (except maybe fathers for justice and such like). So, the simile does not work because we are not comparing like with like. That is just one aspect where the simile breaks down, Rebekah points out others (e.g., unemployed people are not being attacked with machetes and hammers)

But, maybe there is more going on in the text.

Latent but unmentioned is the way psychological work has become feminised (where the socially constructed roles of women have become commodified and then colonised by men: i.e., the caring "professions"). Psychology is degendered in the text. We know women far outnumber men in UK psychology undergraduate studies (ratio of around 70:30), women are then subsequently filtered out in postgraduate training in psychology so that the men get the higher paying jobs in the profession. So in the article the gender of the therapy giver is unspecified, only the therapy receiver's gender is specified, and only in the simile.

Also, is there a latent sexism underneath the attack on therapy and the celebration of social action that is a residue of a patriarchal configuration of social values under a producer-orientated capitalism (women talk, men act: Action men vs Barbie dolls)? CP might be complicit in this.

When women do figure in the text, the effect is interesting. Women figure twice. Women are first mentioned as making up most of the unemployed population - because they are looking after home and family. Women are then mentioned as the comparison group to show how perverse it would be to offer therapy for unemployed people - the example of the woman who is being physically beaten at home. So, first the argument is put that many women are unemployed because they are looking after the home and then women are mentioned again in the simile that cites the woman who is physically beaten at home. So, women don't have a job because they are undertaking the job of looking after the home and the woman in the simile might not be doing a good job of looking after the home because she is getting beaten up there! So, maybe there's an inference (in the way women are positioned in the text) that it is the woman's fault that she gets physically beaten at home?

So, while I would agree that it is absurd that psychology should ask women to think differently about being punched, it is not absurd that we should ask psychology to think differently about women and we should not be surprised if members of this list asks us to think about what is different rather than similar in offering therapy to the person who is unemployed and the woman who is being beaten by her partner.

We should not be surprised, given the patriarchal world order, that our mass media texts might miss the opportunity to avoid a bit of misogyny. It migth be surprising that we miss the opportunity to spot it.