ACCOUNTING FOR PERSONAL VIOLENCE

Blow by blow
Vanessa Baird explodes some myths about today's plague of personal violence.

The blood's amazing
It's Saturday night. Time for a fight. George Fisher plunges into a violent male subculture with a short story about blood and death.

How violent are you?
Another silly - or not so silly? - NI quiz. Try it for size.

Death to desire
Why rape? Why clitoridectomy? Clara Czerny examines the politics of sexual violence against women.

Zap! Splat!
High ratings for Rambo and The A-Team. But does violent entertainment make us more aggressive? Judy Gahagan looks at an old chestnut from an unusual angle.

Diet of violence
Coke + chips = trouble?

Everything smells of fishmeal in Chimbote
Peruvian shanty-town dwellers caught in a violent trap. Dan Vega tells the tale of Marta, Felix and Rosa.

PERSONAL VIOLENCE-THE FACTS

Switchblade politics
Richard Kazis traces an angry white backlash in the US.

SIMPLY a survival kit

What I deserve
Why do women stay with men who beat them? Debbie Taylor explores a troubling taboo.

Twisted toy-town
Judith Ennew and Wendy Titman examine how and why, all over the world, adults use children for sex.

Breaking the Cycle
Can the wounds of torture and abuse be healed? Sue Shaw investigates.

Nothing gets you writing to us like a personal politics issue of New Internationalist. Our capacious mailbox seems suddenly diminutive. The letters section of the magazine wholly inadequate. In contrast, the guilt feelings of the editor who fails to reply to all your missives is boundless.

It's natural that such issues should get your pens and indignation into action. Not a great many of you will be experts on human rights in East Timor or deforestation in Sumatra. But without wishing to cause offence I can safely bet that all of you have first-hand experience of personal violence. So for us to try and pack this vast and unruly theme into 32 pages, give it a clear line and satisfy all of you into the bargain is somewhat ambitious.

But then our purpose is to give you something to think about, take issue with - and perhaps, on occasion, agree with. And NI readers are not, thank heavens, backward in coming forward with their own opinions. So mail persons, be warned.

It has been a disturbing issue to edit - and not only because of the painful nature of the subject. As soon as you think you have the issue reduced to a few simple points it suddenly sprouts more heads and tentacles like a monster from Greek mythology. So at the weekly co-operative meetings when progress reports on magazines are given it was with a despairing irony that Personal Violence was described as 'under control'.

You may notice that this magazine has rather more than the usual number of personal or New Journalism pieces. By its nature the subject often makes more sense when described in personal terms. Even at editorial meetings when we were thrashing out a theory and a line people found themselves making points by relating anecdotes from their own experience - or the experience of friends and relatives.

Elsewhere I found that people either froze awkwardly when told the subject of the magazine - or revealed events in their own lives they would probably never have discussed otherwise. For in spite of the diet of violence we get through the media, on the streets and in our own domestic lives it is still something that people feel ashamed or afraid to talk about in personal terms. If by raising the issue New Internationalist gives people the opportunity to do that and discuss what is probably the single most common source of human misery then it will, I hope, have achieved something useful.

Letters
Letter from China
Update
Briefly
Endpiece: by Chris Brazier
Reviews: including Aphra Behn classic
Country profile: Hong Kong

COVER PHOTO: Mary Evans Picture Library
ONLINE MAG MAINTAINED BY SIMON LOFFLER