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We need a better name for the crime in which a woman is brutalized by her significant other. It's sickening the way people say the police assumed that this shooting was "just a domestic dispute" or "a simple domestic dispute". A domestic dispute more aptly describes a tiff about who is going to do the dishes or who is going to read to the kids tonight; it's not a description befitting an awful and horrific social ill.
Maybe it's just me, but this term is really beginning to grate; it not only grossly minimizes a huge problem, it's a misnomer. What is "domestic" about murdering one's girlfriend in a dorm room? It's like some kind of sick code for a third rate crime ("Well I guess if it was her boyfriend/husband who killed her, then it's not something we need to be concerned with.")
Enough is enough. Let's just call it murder, okay? As in, "a gunman murdered two people on campus, and therefore we can't assume that anyone is safe until he is caught or has had time to cool down. Please find a secure area and stay there." Instead we got some line about a "domestic dispute", and now 33 people are dead.
