I have taken a fair amount of abuse over the years because of my view on spousal abuse, and I suppose this will engender some more. I don’t know what to tell you. People often get pissed off when they disagree with me and, as universal as that reaction seems to be, I still don’t get it. Not that people disagree, but that they get angry. Well…
The American Bar Association has published some interesting statistics about domestic violence. There is all sorts of information shown there, but what you learn, despite the specifics, is that about 25% of women and 8% of men suffer some form of domestic violence. That is a lot of people.
There are statistics that talk about the recidivism rates for those doing the battering, quite high as you might suppose.
What the statics don’t tell us is the length of time people suffer this abuse, and how often they leave the situation, only to return and be abused again. That is, they don’t give the recidivism rates for the battered, only the batterer. That’s a natural thing to do, I suppose, since the focus is on the person perpetrating the abuse, be it physical, emotional, or sexual.
Note: I’m going to be referring to “battered women” and “abusing men” for two reasons. One: women are three to four times more likely to get their asses beat, or whatever. Two: it’s easier to talk about and type.
So, what I’m saying is that men batter their wives and girlfriends, verbally or emotionally abuse them, and sexually abuse them, and they do it over and over again. That’s what makes the recidivism rates not too meaningful a statistic, except for getting a general feel for things. Rates for how often a particular man abuses a particular woman don’t seem to be known, beyond saying it happens more than once.
There is another problem with those statistics: they look only at the abuser and his “re-beating” rate…not at the woman’s “going back” rate. The guy has to have someone to abuse, and that would be the woman…or the kids, maybe, if there are any. (Of course the kids don’t have any choice in where they live.)
Spousal abuse takes two people: the guy doing the beating and the woman getting beaten. If the woman isn’t around the guy, she’s not going to get her ass kicked.
So, how about I give you a plan to end all spousal abuse, or at least keep it to a very low level?
If you don’t like having your ass kicked, leave.
If you leave, don’t go back.
If you go back, apparently you like having your ass beat, so enjoy yourself, but don’t bother me with it.
If you have children and stay in an abusive relationship, even one where the kids are not being abused, you are arguably as much of a prick as your hubby is, maybe more. You are deliberately allowing your kids to be in an unsafe situation, one where they get to see you getting the shit kicked out of you, and one in which they might suffer the same fate. That makes YOU an abuser of your children.
Listen, I don’t mind one bit if you need or enjoy having your ass beat, that’s your business. But why not be honest about it? Don’t get your lip split and your eye blacked, race out crying, and come over here to be safe…only to go back in two days to have it repeated in a couple weeks. This is a dance you two are doing, and I’ll leave you to it.
What if you have children, and if you leave the abusive relationship, you will have to leave your children alone with this guy every weekend? It seems that until a man breaks your skull open or stabs you, he's not legally considered abusive, and so retains all his parental rights.
ReplyDeleteThat's a lousy situation, I'll grant. Better than having the kids around the bastard all the time, however.
ReplyDeleteNot necessarily. The bastard usually worked 60+ hours a week, and spent his nights and weekends carousing with his friends. Most days, he was gone before the kids were out of bed, and came home after they had gone to sleep. But if I had left, he would have had the kids all weekend, and so would most likely have spent more time with them than otherwise. Plus, they would have been alone with him, without me to intervene and tell him when he was a jackass. As bad as they were, our fights were few and far between,and, while he always started it, and, having 8 inches and 70 or so pounds on me, he always won, I was able to take him on enough to keep him from hurting my daughters. My oldest daughter is a lot like me. She was worried about him being violent, but it didn't ever stop her from telling him when he was wrong, or just questioning something he said. He hated that. I wasn't about to tell her to stop, but I felt better when I was there with them. I almost never left them alone with him, and usually during his tv hours.
ReplyDeleteMakes you wonder how the hell someone like me got in a situation like that to begin with, huh? I can only tell you his was not at all typical of the kind of guys I dated previously, or since.
I'm not sure how to respond. First, something like this is so far out of the realm of what would be possible with me, it's hard to process. It's outside my brain function, I think.
ReplyDeleteThe first time my spouse raised a fist to me would be the last. And before I left, I'd take a "baseball bat" to the asshole's head in some fashion. EVEN IF he was 6'9" and 300 pounds, and I was a wee lass wearing a size 0 dress...the cocksucker sleeps SOMETIME. That's first. I've never made a very good doormat. I think that REAL justice has the strong flavor of "you made a bad mistake" in it.
But that's where the disconnect comes for me. Kids, no kids, male, female or any combination, it is simply not possible for me to allow someone...anyone...to behave to me in that fashion. I could never allow it. Once...well, I'd have been surprised, I suppose. Not the next time.
Too, I don't know much, if anything, about the "who owns the kids?" laws...but...if you had been documenting con la policia every event of getting your ass kicked, it's hard for me to imagine he'd get unsupervised visits. Maybe I'm naive, and I'm willing to admit that I am, if it's the case.
Long time ago I was living in El Cerrito and working in Palo Alto, out in the heavy manufacturing areas just off 280...a long drive. And I was working swing shift, beginning at three, ending at midnight...then the long ride home.
In the lab one night I was bitching about how I hated that commute. "No, you don't," said Roy, a guy I worked with. Yeah, I do hate it. "No, you don't. If you hated it, you'd stop. You'd do what you had to do so you didn't have to make that drive You like it just fine."
So, I guess I'd say that you didn't want to leave badly enough, but that sounds glib and cheap when I say it...though I believe it to be true...maybe.
Ha. The police. You know what they said? "So what do you want us to do?" Seriously. That's what that gets you. And without witnesses, it's just one person's word against another. And, yeah, that fuck was so scared of going to jail, he said I attacked him. So, as far as the law was concerned, we were just a couple who fought.
ReplyDelete