Feb 14th was of course V day, an awareness day for plight of women suffering from violence. The good: Anything which helps to reduce human suffering is a very good thing. Women are still disadvantaged far too often, and society has been too slow in redressing this. Women suffer terribly from violence. In many types of violence, particularly sexual violence, the suffering of women is far greater than that of men, in terms of both quantity and severity. Some types of violence, when divided into type, culture and region, are genuinely single-gender. Many types of violence, including violence against women, are underreported, and it’s a good thing to raise awareness of this so we can do something about it. Violence against all people of any race, colour, creed or gender is unacceptable. Feminists do a tremendous amount of good in helping women, and this is rarely to the detriment of men. The bad: Violence overall affects men and women in roughly equal measure, but diffe