In the past couple days, many of us have seen our news feeds flooded with disturbing photos of battered women under the heading International Domestic Violence Awareness Day, or something to that effect, with the subheadings "
Stop", "
Basta", "
Enough is Enough". We all know what it signifies -- that this "
awareness" will somehow make it stop.
But the problem is, it is not a new phenomenon. It is the year 2012 ... TWO THOUSAND TWELVE. "
Awareness" has been alive since ... well, for a long damn time. Back in the day, though, as early (or late) as the mid-1980s, women were still being told to "
go home", "
be a better wife", "
clean the house better and he won't (or feel the need to) do this". Then along came Tracy Thurman, whose story became headlines and a movie. Her lawsuit against the police started not a trend, but an awareness.
And this was good.
Slowly, ever so slowly, people -- normal, regular, everyday people (and at that moment, this included the police, clergy, courts, etc.) -- began to understand what was happening, not only the physical aspects, but the
psychological and
emotional ones. These were the hardest for anyone to grasp. Why would she let this happen?? What the hell is the matter with her?! If *I* were her ... ahhh but you are not. And unless you have been in her shoes and felt the emotions, the psychological torment, you are doing her a disservice and disrespect to say those words.
She knows. Believe me, she knows. She feels your looks, feels your disgust at her "lack of a backbone", her "lack of any self-respect". She should leave! Of course she should. But she also needs you to understand what has been, and is being, done to her emotionally.
She loves -- or loved -- this man. She remembers the happiness of their courtship, their wedding, and even the days following. She remembers looking into his eyes and seeing love, and of trusting him with her very life. Otherwise, she wouldn't have said "yes". And so, when he kneels before her, crying, face full of pain, begging for forgiveness, promising ... *promising* it will never happen again, she believes him. Why? Because she not only wants to, she needs to. Excuses will be found, be it work, stress, alcohol or even drugs, a driver who cut him off at the end of a long, hard day.
Ah ... the excuses.
She hears and reads every day of the excuses made for people like him. Psychiatrists, psychologists, sociologists and everyone else, will find excuses -- he had a hard life, his childhood was difficult, he wasn't in his right frame of mind, he is "ill" or has some "mental imbalance" that would work itself out with therapy, or anger management, or any other of the hundred ways.
She is made to feel
worthless, not only by him but by society.
She is made to feel
less than intelligent, not only by him but by society.
She is made to feel
embarrassed, not only by him but by society.
She is made to feel that she
should have "fought back", by a society who says "If I was you, I would have picked up the nearest frying pan or anything else I could get my hands on..." But if you had been her, can you be so sure of that? To know what it is like to be in the middle of it? She is being overpowered, and is thinking of nothing more than surviving the assault, of doing what she must to possibly protect others. Maybe she is learning what "Russian Roulette" is with a pistol pointed at her head by someone professing to love her, and is not thinking of much past surviving that moment.
We must stop making her feel this way. She already knows it, but she feels she has no choice. She may be being threatened while it is happening or after it has happened.
"If you tell anyone at all, I will kill you. Mark my words."
"You will self-heal here at home, because a doctor/hospital will ask questions."
"If you tell anyone, remember that I know where your family lives ... and your niece(s)/nephew(s)."
How do I know this? Why would you believe me or even tell me I'm full of shit? Because in the early 1980s, I lived it, I
survived it, and I heard every single one of those lines, especially the last one. I could not fight back in the middle of it --
he was too strong. I lived with the continued fear of more "games" of Russian Roulette played at my temple. I heard all the excuses. I was told over and over to go back, be a better wife, be ... well, be anything but who I was. Shelters? I was half-dead and taken to a "shelter", in a horrid and violent part of Chicago, where the "shelter" was a no-tell-motel with drug deals going on in the lobby, the smell of alcohol everywhere, and left on my own in a dingy room. Not everyone has "somewhere/someone to turn to".
We must stop doing this to women,
we must stop saying "if I were you", we must be there for her, even quietly, without making her feel worse. We must understand that there may be other underlying reasons why she is not leaving, or afraid to leave -- possibly children and even animals. She wants to protect the innocent ones, because what will happen to them? I had no children, but two dogs for whom I "took it" to intervene when he approached them.
Every single day we make excuses for violence, whether it is against women, children or animals. It is time for it to stop. We need to have not a day for awareness of violence against women, but a *lifetime* of awareness against violence in all its forms.
We must stand against violence itself. And we must understand and stop being so self-righteous and "holier than thou" (for lack of a better term).
So why the title to this? Because today I read a wonderful "letter to the editor" from an Italian woman who said some of the same things I have been saying, but about a different subject. She was addressing this "day of awareness" and asked "how are we supposed to fight this, when every day on the tv and in ads we see women barely dressed, being used as puppets and playthings to be used, portrayed as unintelligent and in a position subordinate to men? In the minds of men who see this, he sees women as objects. Violence and this mentality will only end when he is only being shown on tv and in ads women dressed intelligently and professionally."
She went on to say "The problem is US -- women who continue to go on tv/in ads barely dressed, the objects, the puppets, the showgirls (ed.note: one woman stated to me "as a Berlusconi girl") who refuse to do anything else because it is 'easier' and the only way to 'get ahead'. These women give and enforce the wrong image of women. To change the violent mentality of tomorrow's men, the women of today must stop this aspect."
Many will say "women should be able to dress however they wish, it is the problem of the man." I agree to an extent, of course, but it is this portrayal of women -- by women! -- that is a part of the problem. Turn on a tv here, and even the female newscasters and weather forecasters are popping out of their shirts and micro-minis, all the while saying "why won't anyone take me seriously so that I can get a real job?"
So. Milly, I applaud you for standing up and saying what many of us are thinking.
Enough is enough. With all that we as humans have been able to accomplish and are still accomplishing technologically (and all other ways),
why are we still making excuses?
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