The truth about ‘domestic violence’
Women having nowhere to go is not the problem!
This post is not about my cat. It isn’t about my family. It’s not about my business or giving you tips on what to do during quarantine.
It’s about how totally fed up I am with the sanitized term “domestic violence’”that is showing up in the media during the coronavirus shut down
Media Spin
The media is saying how sad it is that women are not safe in their homes with nowhere to go to get help. Shelters may be closed and there are more and more reports of domestic violence in this time of stay-at-home lockdown.
“But wait! let’s back up the bus here.” The problem isn’t that women have nowhere to go. The real problem is that they are being hit, threatened and raped in their own homes by men who feel entitled to behave however they want if they don’t like something and when they know they can get away with it.
If an employer hits his female employee and gives her a black eye, or holds her up against the wall with his hands around her throat we don’t say “How sad it is that she has nowhere to go!” No. He gets charged: SHE doesn’t have to go anywhere. But if that same man gives his wife a black eye, knocks her down and breaks her ribs, we feel sorry she can’t escape to get help?” There is something wrong here.
When we spend time feeling sorry for women and their predicament and trying to find them shelter, which needs to be done, we totally miss the boat on where the real problem is. We focus away from stopping the problem.It’s like having a stream running through your house and you keep mopping it up instead of diverting the water.
Women’s silence is not the problem!
I recently had the privilege of being a speaking coach for a TED-X speaker who aced her speech on her own heroine’s journey. I went to the event to hear her and the other speakers, all women. At the end of the evening, I wanted to get up on stage myself and say to the majority of the speakers “Your story was about how women need to find their voice, that they need to stand up and speak about how they are hurting.
We need to stop saying that women not having a voice is the problem; women being hurt is the problem!”
Let’s call it what it is
Women and children shouldn’t have to ‘find their voice’ about being punched, knocked around, demeaned and sexually invaded in their own homes. Instead, we as a society need to make it stop.
The fact is, we go into an altered state, we go on ‘stun’ when we are frightened which makes “finding our voice” difficult if not impossible for someone being assaulted.
We need to find a place for men to go when they hit other people: — it’s called jail. And currently if you go to the right one, you might just find a little virus will cozy up and teach you about helplessness and fighting for your life.
Yes, I know, sometimes it is women who are violent to men. And, adults often hit children, or terrify children by fighting in front of them. As a society we have also moved to a state where teens will physically attack or threaten parents or their girlfriends.
There is a knowing in our society that you get away with private violence. And instead of making that not true, we keep rescuing victims.
My Experience
I know ‘domestic violence.’ My father started hitting and knocking me over before I could walk. Then he went to a razor strap and his belt so I lived with welts around my legs and backside until the last beating when I was fifteen. I can tell you that is both excruciatingly painful and really humiliating.
Back then, another sanitized term was used for physical abuse: ‘corporal punishment.’ But do you get the picture? A five-year-old girl being repeatedly hit by a 6'-2" man. My father would then lock me in a room and take the key just in case anyone had the nerve to try to comfort me.
In my decades as a therapist I have heard the stories of hundreds of women, many of whom had been privately brutalized as children, and listened to how they were victims of unresolved crime.
Yes, I understand my father was a war veteran. He had PTSD from front line experiences that fuelled his rages. I know he was an Evangelist and preacher who deeply believed that somehow God appreciated it when you hit children. But he never did it in public or in front of anyone but family. Men who hit women have issues, but that is no excuse for privately assaulting those who cannot defend themselves.
Let’s solve the real problem
Men don’t usually assault women or children in public unless the whole group is into it. They know society won’t let them get away with it. If they knew they couldn’t get away with it in private as well, guess what, they wouldn’t do it.
If there were consequences (for themselves) they wanted to avoid, they wouldn’t lash out and hurt the women and children who are within reach of their fists.
When you use the term domestic violence you don’t really get an image. You don’t ‘see’ the fists swinging at women who are usually smaller and have less physical strength. You don’t see the entitled rage behind the strangling hands or hear the terrifying language directed at the cowering woman. You see only the victims needing help.
Protection, not sympathy
Maybe it isn’t help women and children need, it’s protection. There needs to be legal action against this kind of criminal behaviour. The perpetrators of home violence need to know they are criminals and can’t get away with it anymore.
We need to go beyond feeling sorry for and having empathy for women who are being hit, threatened and raped in their own homes. We need to start protecting them instead.
