I've been wanting to talk about the history and about who's doing it now
I believe this history is part of the origin of the word 'vitriol'
Someone nowadays would use the word vitriol to mean very harsh words and speech
I think that began as a metaphor where somone would say 'she sprayed vitriol in his face' meaning she was verbally abusive
Before that it comes from the Latin for glass. I'm not sure if that's because acid is used in making glass, or because it sort of cuts like glass, or because crystallised ingredients look a bit like glass
In Victorian era it was (like poison was and remains) more often a weapon of women. Although ive read claims that statistically it was pretty equal and that that was more perception than fact
Its interesting to note how relatively less powerful most women were at the time
There is even an acid attack - referred to as vitriol - in one of the Sherlock Holmes stories.
The Adventure of the Illustrious Client from 1924 set in the Edwardian era (just after the Victorian)
The thrower is a women who is badly treated by a man, and if I remember she is given a lenient sentence. As i remember - and seems is not uncommon in literature of the time ( such as
Tess of the d'Urbervilles for example) - it's not made clear if the man has just been cruel and broken their engagement or if he has also abused her in multiple ways or even raped her. Sometimes such as in TotdU it is made vague by authors of the time on purpose. One thing to remember is the different context where at the time women were judged harshly and could lose significant 'value' and future prospects if they had unmarried sex or were raped.
It's my observation (and also mention in the beginning of that economist article before the paywall) in the present day the perpetrators of these crimes around the world are often men from cultures that again in my observation sometimes have similar beliefs about women today.
However interestingly the statistics in the UK specifically are more mixed depending who you ask. I am a little suspicious JUST MY OPINION about some of the disagreement and wonder what role something such as 'political correctness' may be playing in that discrepancy as has been speculated to have occured such as in the Rotherham scandal
P.s. the Sherlcok Holmes story was made into the character of Kitty in Elementary the TV show who ends up committing an acid attack on her rapist
Sources:
en.m.wikipedia.org
en.m.wikipedia.org
en.m.wikipedia.org
Acid attack - Wikipedia <- lots of info about present and history
en.wikipedia.org
From 2017 so stats may have changed:
Check out this content on BBC Three.
www.bbc.co.uk
en.m.wikipedia.org
