Personally speaking, I am a male individual therefore these developments in my individual perspective could never truly encompass some of the several struggles in a woman’s life. However, to begin with it should almost be clear as day to firstly state that violence against women, men, or anyone else in general should never be condoned and that violence is simply never the answer. The several articles that were offered for this week truly interested me, not simply for the factual knowledge that they provided, but instead for the depth and variety of aspects they provided for the general topic of “Violence Against Women”. The first question prompts two answers to be given therefore I will start with the first half of the question which suggests the reframing of violence against women and trauma as health issues. I think this question opens several discussions and debates, therefore I want to make one point clear throughout this post. Violence should never be condoned. Now, as we can see there are several points that can be made as to the different types of violence against women that are unfortunately present in our society. These types were illustrated in a couple of the articles we were given to read this week.  Some of these types include: sexual violence, emotional abuse, controlling behaviors, mental abuse, physical abuse, and so much more embarrassingly enough. One thing to be noted through this is the idea that many are quick to define the word violence as something physical and literal and fail to understand the many other factors that eventually consolidate towards inducing trauma and several other health issues. This leads into the second half of the question which questions our own individual understanding of health illness and medicine on the whole. Reading a couple of these articles from this week alone, I have thoroughly broadened my understanding of what is defined as violence, and furthermore what it means to open discussions about health, illnesses, and medicine. However, I am afraid not only is general public unaware of the variety and depth entailed to this discussion, but also my understanding may still be limited as not only are the effects of such trauma and other violent acts painful as they are but they also have the potential to be long – lasting wherein recovery isn’t even certain either. Therefore, my immediate answer to this first question would have to be that our understanding of health, medicine, and illness would have to be a lot wider and adaptive to such a wide array of violence as much of this is very much “fair game” for induce several health issues and illnesses respectively. The articles would go on to support the ideas at hand as common scenarios such as women coming back from war, intimate partner violence, violence during pregnancy, and others are all common scenarios that can not only affect a woman’s health but also her lifestyle as well.

            The second question asks, “How does intergenerational trauma challenge or reinforce biochemical, mechanical models of health?”. In order to answer this question we must develop an understanding of what intergenerational trauma is. As simple as it mind sound initially, intergenerational trauma is quite literally what is sounds like: trauma that is extended over multiple generations. Firstly, I would like to state that I see the importance of asking this question after the previous one. In the previous question we were asked how our understandings of health, medicine, and illnesses were changed from variables such as trauma. In order to answer this question we touched on specific aspects such as health and illnesses as effect of trauma. The answer to this question reaches beyond the depths of health and trauma and goes into the science of our anatomy as a whole. Whether it be hormones such as dopamine or biomechanical models that we use to study human behavior, I do believe that it simply reinforces our mechanical models of health. Aspects such a socioeconomic standing, work behavior, and several of these extraneous aspects go onwards to serve as examples that portray the outwards affects of violence which in turn induce trauma or intergenerational trauma. Being brought up in an environment with individuals dealing with traumatic symptoms only increases the chances of those around the individual to slowly induce similar symptoms within themselves, thus ideals such as gene – by environment, character behavior, and other neurological behavior can be examined to see that such psychological behavior only reinforces the biochemical and mechanical models of health at this level.