This is a series of ongoing women’s consciousness raising sessions. This is how it works:
We are inviting women from diverse cultures, races, sexual orientation, and all who self-identify as women, regardless of birth gender, to share their personal stories about their encounters with sexism, racism, classism or similar forms of discrimination as they relate to the larger issues of women's oppression.
Traditionally the women’s movement has called these moments “clicks” --when it clicks in our mind that we are being oppressed in our day to day lives. If through dialogue, we find ways to work together to move the lives of women forward, great. If not, we can at least listen to each other and become more sensitive to each others' goals.
These diaries are intended to be dialogues among women from their own perspectives. We ask men readers to respect this. Deliberate use of divisive racist, misogynist, homophobic, transphobic or classist remarks will receive one warning before the might of the daily kos moderation system is brought to bear! Please don't "feed the troll" by responding to them to avoid disruption of the discussion.
We hope to have a rotating diary writer and chair each week. If you would like to write a diary and moderate the weekly discussion (or have a problem posting or commenting) please contact us Dailykos at UNASPENSER, GEMINIJEN or NY BRIT EX PAT.
As I go through my days there are myriad 'clicks' I might experience. Some are barely audible, leaving me with doubt about whether it was real. Others are solid and clear and I'm very aware of exactly what about an experience was adulterated by an anti-female energy. There are two topics, though, which are more like the click of a land mine, where it's real and it's explosive, for me. I struggle to contain my rage. Those topics: rape and abuse. Particularly, when people turn to the victim as the primary focus of attention and criticism and even "responsibility". It's that whole "blame the victim" game. It evokes the protective mama lioness in me like no other thing, except, perhaps, protecting my daughter.
Last night, I experienced a prime example of that right here on DailyKos. I no longer have the naive expectation that a supposedly progressive group of people are going to be any wiser and more compassionate on these subjects than anywhere else. It is perpetually proven that we harbor a strong misogynistic streak here and that many among us are rape and abuse apologists. Still, it enrages me. I'll take a look at last night's experience below the fold. (Be forewarned, there is some of the worst possible framing of women in some of what will unfold. If you're like me, you may need to chain your computer to the table so you don't smash into the wall while picturing the commenter's head. This is from a woman absolutely committed to non-violence, so you can get a sense of how bad it gets.)
Before posting the link to the diary, I'd like to point out that there are two directions in which the discourse is extremely problematic. First, the diarist uses a photo caption to slander all Republican men as wife abusers. That really caught me off-guard. I'm not a male Republican and I found it offensive. As much I disagree with Republicans politically, it's unacceptable to accuse every single one of being a criminal. It dehumanizes them and I would like for us not to use that tactic. It makes it very difficult to have a valid and much needed public dialog about a very serious concern when we fling unfounded accusations like this. In fact, it is a form of bigotry and I can't abide it.
The caption under a head shot of Sen. Jordan:
This guy drinks and pushes his wife around.
The way Republicans do.
The second problem is, of course, the nature of the comments. We'll look at that after we look at the diary.
Ohio state senator won't face charges for domestic violence+
The diary is about the report that Ohio State Sen. Kris Jordan, whose wife called into police when he became violently angry, will not have charges pressed against him. They aren't pressing charges because his wife has chosen not to. That despite:
[His wife] also was recorded as saying violent incidents with her husband began about two years ago, sometimes after he had been drinking. She said her husband had been drinking that night but not to excess.
“This is not new,” Mrs. Jordan, 31, said. “He’s done this numerous times, and I just got sick of it and I just had to call.”
There is a transcript to the 911 calls, as well. (The quote above was recorded by the police cruiser on the scene.) I find the 911 transcripts heartbreaking, because she is clearly worried or she wouldn't have called, but her violent husband is hovering (with a gun out) and she's struggling to balance managing his fury and getting the help she needs. She doesn't know which option is a bigger threat to her. Kudos to the police officer for keeping her on the phone until the attending officers arrived.
While she is recorded as explaining that for the last two years her husband has been having violent episodes combined with drinking, her husband is telling the officers:
“She got a little upset,” Sen. Jordan told a deputy on the recording. “Girls do that.”
The 34-year-old senator went on to say the incident was “90 percent emotion.”
“I threw some things on the ground, but I didn’t hit her or anything,” he said. “So she’s all worked up about who knows.”
On the recording, Sen. Jordan tells deputies that he works at the Statehouse, “until she gets me thrown out of office,” he said. “Over (expletive) not cleaning the upstairs ... and then me pushing some towels over and some other stuff over.”
It's classic. He is violent, but if he loses is job over it, that will be her fault, because "Girls are like that." The just get emotional over "who knows". It's called being terrorized.
In a healthy society, any public conversation about this case ought to be pretty straightforward. His behavior should render him a coward. His portrayal of women should be castigated. And she should be acknowledged as likely living with TSD - it's not 'post' until she gets out of the traumatic relationship. This man should be publicly unacceptable and forced into court. The woman should, at minimum, receive compassion. In a truly healthy society, we would provide her with protection, counseling and the means to get on her own two feet without this monster in her life.
Instead we get these despicably predictable assessments:
Why is she still with him? Did she press charges? (0+ / 0-)
Sometimes you have to take responsibility for placing and keeping yourself in danger.
Yep. She's living in terror. Mostly likely in a constant state of trauma. Most of us know that the most dangerous scenarios are when women try to leave. Abusers are about two things: control and forcing the victim to subjugate her own sense of self and become an extension of the abuser. Vis-a-vis the first, leaving is challenging that control and it unleashes a particularly large reservoir of rage. Vis-a-vis the second, since the victim now has fused identities with the abuser, it is nearly impossible to leave (how does one leave oneself?) or to seek punishment for the abuser (thereby punishing oneself.) Part of the control mechanism is brainwashing the victim so that she also doesn't believe she can make it in the world on her own. Even if she has a good job, she is likely to have an embedded belief that her survival depends on him.
The comment above is all too common. You can see the same theme here - by a woman who later claims she had to get herself out of a domestic violence situation, so that's what every woman's responsibility - and here.
It escalates to things such as denying that an abuse victim could be vulnerable:
Sorry(0+ / 0-)
But I refuse to view women as being vulnerable because they're not. You do women a disservice by suggesting that they are.
In fact, it is a "disservice" to acknowledge vulnerability. As though it's a dirty word and the one thing a grown person can never be is vulnerable. This is such a pervasive issue in our culture and it underlies why we have a political party which doesn't believe in social programs: because no is supposed to be vulnerable. What human race have they experienced? People are always at varying degrees of vulnerability in different ways. In fact, one can't have intimacy without acknowledging and being careful of another's vulnerabilities, rather than disparaging them and exploiting them for it.
I had already lost my composure, as you can see in comments that begin like this: "Do you have a clue what it's like to be terrorized every moment of every day?..." (I'm starting to get personal. If the person were in a room with me, I'd be in his face and I would dog that point until he went into submission. I don't have any tolerance for this stuff.)
But the two things that really got to me: first, was a claim, stated after I suggested that we need to provide protection and counseling when we know a person is being terrorized at home, that women stay in abusive relationships because, well, I'll put the quote in because it made me so sick and I can't even paraphrase it:
You better get busy... (0+ / 0-)
...because you got a lot of figuring out to do, first of all, whether or not the tens of thousands of women purportedly abused in this country every year meet your criteria, and second of all, when you correctly identify the 90% of them that do, to provide the recuperative therapy they need (but mostly don't want).
Some of us, dear Una, can't be helped. We did it on purpose to ourselves, we know exactly what we're doing, we're going to stay right where we are, mollifying the beasts.
I really started to lose it at this point:
holy shit. you are arguing that abused women want (2+ / 0-)
to be abused. holy fucking shit. that they subjected themselves to abuse because it's what they wanted?
holy fucking shit. with people like you, the human race is doomed.
My response here feeds into the next thing that outraged me. Recall above that one of the people claiming that abuse victims need to be "responsible" was a woman who claims she herself escaped a domestic violence situation. I responded to her initial comment with this:
fuck. "Step up to her responsibility" wow. yep. (2+ / 0-)
she's been terrorized, but it's all about her being responsible.
Holy fucking shit, it's always about the victim being responsible.
People don't live in a vacuum and society does have responsibility for helping the vulnerable. Otherwise, we're all doomed. Domestic abuse situations require intervention.
Ok. Not at a peak moment of grace there. But, this woman, who can't conjure up any compassion for a woman who is clearly being abused goes on to accuse me of being - wait for it ----
You don't know me or my background.(0+ / 0-)
As it happens, I had a wretchedly involuntary education in domestic violence. I know terrorized domestic circumstances very well.
Violent language is a specialty of emotional abusers
That's right. Sen. Jordan has violent rages at his wife, sometimes waving a gun around. She doesn't for one moment acknowledge that he is abusive and should be held responsible. But, I vent anger via a swear word and the dialogue comes around to me being abusive. Because, you know, emotion, expressed in words but not directed as describing an act against someone, is well, that crazy emotional stuff and it's abusive!
Ready for this? FUCK THAT! Ok. I got that out. After a night's rest, this was my actual response to her:
oh. that's precious. This woman has reported that (1+ / 0-)
her husband has been having violently angry episodes for at least two years. She's been calling his parents, but they weren't around this time. You're not concerned about her because she "Should take responsibility". But you're very concerned for the DailyKos community because I used swear words and I'm abusive.
Very precious.
I didn't direct my anger at you or anyone. I simply expressed it through words that were more concise than me spelling out the anger.
How quickly you're willing to call a woman who is standing up for an abused woman an abuser. You feed into a sick cycle of victim blaming and particularly about coloring the whole abusive cycle as being about the women and not the men.
When a victim has let us know that she is being abused, the spotlight should be on the abuser not the the victim. Always. He should be arrested. He should be publicly castigated for how he treats another human being. No one should accept the demeaning way he spoke of her.
I'm sorry that you had to stand up for yourself and find your own way out (so did I) and I know how lonely that can feel and how bitter it can feel to see other people get the help you didn't get. The answer is that we all deserve the help. Not that we abandon everyone else who is abused just because we had to go it alone. The compassionate response it to realize you don't want anyone to ever go through that alone. That you wouldn't want your own sister, mother or daughter to endure it because society would create systems to protect them. If this woman were your daughter, would you be saying "take responsibility!"? Or would you actually be able to open your heart and empathize and try to find help?
I suggest more therapy my friend. You're still have PTSD. You're in a very common place. But, it's not the end of the healing process. You have further to go.
by UnaSpenser on Tue Aug 09, 2011 at 10:59:59 AM EDT
I really don't handle this crap well. It infuriates me. It's just another part of our war paradigm-in-the-name-of-competition bullying society and I feel like the forces that support this inhumanity are way beyond my ability to impact. I really want another world to live in, please. But, I'm stuck in this one and I need more effective ways of handling these moments.
Until then, these will be the rare occasions when vulgar words emanate from my lips and fingers.