Warning! If you have struggled, or are struggling with domestic violence, this post may bring up unpleasant thoughts/memories. Please read at your own discretion.
By Claire
Domestic violence is no joke. When I hear a joke about domestic violence it makes me want to throw up.
Violence isn’t funny, it’s not cool, it shouldn’t be used to sell a product, and it shouldn’t be made into entertainment. And it has no place in an intimate relationship.
I’ve never been in an abusive relationship, and (as far as I know) neither have any of my friends or family. But this is an issue that is extremely close to my heart.
I spent three months working at a transition house for women who were leaving abusive relationships. While I was there, I got an up close look at what domestic violence can do to a relationship, to a family, to a child, and to a woman. It rips families apart, it creates impossible monsters out of children, and it can reduce a woman to a shell of her former self.
The organization I worked for tried to help change that. At our shelter, we had room for up to 10 women and 8 children (though at one point I’m pretty sure there were more- it was hard to keep track sometimes.) There, women and children could stay for up to one month (though they certainly wouldn’t kick anyone out onto the street,) and have almost everything taken care of. There were beds, food, a closet full of clothes because many of them women leave with only the clothes on their backs, childcare available for most of the day, a children’s councillor three days a week, and women’s councillors available 24/7. The people working at the shelter were incredibly dedicated to helping these women get back on their feet and start fresh.
And while at points it was incredibly restorative to my faith in humanity to see women come to the shelter broken and leave not whole, but mending, it could be really hard. I would go home and as much as I would try to keep it from getting to me, some days it would. I couldn’t help but think how all of this could have been prevented if these husbands/fiancees/boyfriends/baby daddies/wives/girlfriends (yes, it happens in both hetero and homosexual couples) had just not hit them in the first place.
But domestic abuse is not just hitting and physical violence; it can be emotional, mental, verbal. Certainly physical is the first to come to mind, perhaps because it is the most inherently dangerous. You cannot kill someone with your words, but you can kill someone with your fists. Your words could cause someone to kill themselves, though.
Domestic abuse is not an exclusively feminist issue. There are men who are abused by their wives/girlfriends/boyfriends/fiancees/husbands/partners, and often these men face more of a stigma in admitting they are victims, because our society teaches us that men should be strong, unfeeling, and, well, (for lack of a better word) manly.
But it is not a stretch to say that domestic violence affects a disproportionate number of women. On average in Canada a woman is killed every six days by a current or former partner. That was 67 women in 2009. Today, there is around 3000 women and 2500 children living in shelters. That’s equivalent to the number of people I would have if I tripled the size of my high school. Half of Canadian women have experienced at least one incident of physical or sexual violence since the age of 16.
When will we stop and realize that these numbers are way too high and that enough is enough?
One of the most poignant moments for me is when I was doing my training, and we were given a character, and as a group, we had to go back and forth to various “places” (sheets of paper with “hospital,” “home,” “police station” etc. written on them and placed around the office) as we struggled to escape our abusive relationship. As in many real life situations, mine did not have a happy ending. My character was an immigrant woman, who spoke little English or French, and was eventually raped by her husband, resulting in a difficult pregnancy, complicated by the fact that she was constantly being sent from government agency to agency in the hopes that she could get some kind of assistance and leave her abusive husband. It ended with her heading back to her home, feeling hopeless and let down. It was incredibly eye opening because you could actually feel the frustration. If it was so maddening for me to be constantly walking from one end of the room to the other, how would it feel to be constantly going back and forth between people telling you “sorry, but I can’t help you?”
Domestic violence can be somewhat of a taboo topic in many cultures and societies. In many places in the world, it is still legal for a man to rape his wife. Here in our western society, domestic violence is somewhat less of a taboo topic, though it would seem that isn’t always a good thing. In my opinion, we have become uncomfortably comfortable with domestic violence. As long as it is not happening to us or our loved ones, we can’t be bothered to speak out against it, or not severe enough in our condoning of domestic violence. Which leads me to the eternal poster boy for domestic violence, Chris Brown.
For those of you living under a rock, Chris Brown is a grammy-winning hip hop/R&B artist, who I actually think is really talented- more so than many of today’s popular artists. However, in 2009, the night before the Grammys, at which he and his then-girlfriend Rihanna were both scheduled to perform, he beat Rihanna so badly that she had to go to the hospital. 3 years, a felony assault and uttering threat charge, a couple hundred hours of community service, more than halfway through his five years of probation, and a completed course on domestic violence (I actually read in an article- I wish I could find it now- that some men who are required to take these courses can actually use the time to bond with each other and share tips on how best to hit their partners so that it won’t be noticed,) Brown was invited to perform at the 2012 Grammys. Clearly, people are more than willing to forget what Chris Brown did, and celebrate his successes. He released a song called “Look at Me Now” - can we just pause for a moment and consider how sick this is, in the context of his career slump being because HE FUCKING BEAT HIS GIRLFRIEND?- on an album that, although it won a Grammy, was unpopular with critics because of Brown’s perceived unwillingness to mature and learn from his mistakes. As Sasha Pasulka puts it, “I’m not ok with Chris Brown performing at the Grammys, and I’m not sure why you are.”
Chris Brown shows very little remorse for what he has done. He got off easy with a guilty plea, and avoided jail time. He hired a crisis management team to repair his image.
He must have paid them well, since it would seem no one cares about his actions. We don’t have to forgive Chris Brown but it would seem that a lot of us are ready to anyways.
When someone with a lot of twitter followers points out that what Chris Brown did was wrong and that really he hasn’t done much to own up to it, they are promptly bombarded with messages from the so called “Team Breezy” (AKA the pseudostalker fans of Chris Brown) about how everyone should stop bring up things that happened in the past. During the Grammys this year here’s what Team Breezy was talking about on twitter.
Um, excuse me? No, thank you, I will continue to boycott anything to do with Chris Brown, and I will do so until he is old and dead and rotting in a box in the ground.
It is not ok that people are ok with him. I cannot stress this enough. It is not ok that (as Sasha Pasulka says in the article linked above) when Usher criticized Brown for what he did, Usher was delivered with so much hate from supporters of Chris Brown he had to apologize. Beyonce has plenty of kind words to say to Rihanna, and says them very well- but she says nothing to condemn Chris Brown. Oprah speaks more frankly about domestic violence in this clip (“he hit you once, he will hit you again,”) but she doesn’t say anything about Chris Brown.
So few celebrities have actually spoken out about Chris Brown, and those who have are met bombarded with comments and replies that are often filled with not only hateful speech, but scarily violent vitriol. No person (not even Chris Brown) deserves that.
Though Rihanna has gone on to have considerable success after being abused (as many women do) I think it makes it easier for us all to brush it off, to be content with “well, it obviously wasn’t that bad, look at her now.” As much as I wish that Rihanna had taken the opportunity to speak up for battered women everywhere, I respect her decision to put it behind her and to move on. She has no obligation whatsoever to become a spokesperson for domestic violence. As empowering for abused women everywhere to see that they’re not alone and that domestic violence touches everyone, from all walks of life, as it would have been to see and hear Rihanna speak out, she cannot be blamed for wanting to move on with her life. If I could do one thing to fix this mess, I wish that Rihanna would never have to have her name dragged into this again, and I wish that no one would ever see the police photo of her after she was beaten.
I know it sounds like I’m just beaking on Chris Brown here, but you have to understand that he is a visible representation of all men who beat women. These men are not usually so prominent in our media- I’m not arguing for public shaming to become a regular practice with criminals, but it would be nice if people made Chris Brown remember what he did. Because when he’s swaggering on stages all over the world singing “Look at Me Now,” from his album F.A.M.E.,I’m not sure that he does.
If we do hear about an abuser, it is often after he has been killed by his victim. Recently in Eastern Canada, there is an ongoing case before the courts about a woman who is facing charges of conspiring to commit murder after allegedly trying to hire a hit man (an undercover RCMP officer) to kill her abusive husband. What is being decided in this case will set precedent for other cases of abused wives who kill their husbands as a last resort, in self-defense, or as a result of battered woman syndrome.
This can be quite a polarizing issue, and I’m not 100% sure where I personally stand. I believe that it is fundamentally wrong to harm another human being. So the question is, who is more in the wrong, if both parties are both guilty of a heinous crime?
I think my proposed solution would be to aim for prevention- make it easier for women to leave, put more funding into shelters like the one I worked at, where women are able to start fresh after leaving, and to increase awareness about domestic violence, its warning signs, and how to help someone who is being abused. And if all this fails, and a woman believes she truly has no other way out, and is in danger every day, she must do what she believes she must do. Is all the years of abuse at the hands of the person you’re supposed to be able to trust most not punishment enough?
At the very core of this problem is the subjugation of woman in society. Some men, it would seem, have an insatiable need to feel strong, dominant and powerful, and some do that by exerting power over their wives, girlfriends, etc. Violence breeds violence, and in turn children that have grown up in a home where domestic violence takes place are more likely to either perpetrate it (if they are male) or be victims of it (if they are female.)
We need to stop the cycle of violence in its tracks and teach our children that it is neither ok to hit or to be hit. We also need to talk more about the subject of domestic violence and tell our friends and family that it’s ok if they need to reach out for help at some point and that there is always a way out. I commend TV programs such as “Criminal Minds” and “Glee,” for covering the topic of domestic violence, regardless of how trivially it was done. On “Glee,” for example, I was disappointed that when the topic was first brought up it was used as a “C” storyline, and wasn’t dealt with with a lot of complexity, but I am glad that they didn’t show the storyline being wrapped up nice and tight with a happy ending and instead showed (spoiler alert) Coach Beiste going back to her abusive husband, because that is what really happens. Many women have to try multiple times before they leave for good, whether it’s because they go back to their abusers on their own, because they are not financially independent, or whether their abuser drags them back, or any other of many possible reasons. That is, if concerns about finances, their children, and safety aren’t enough.
Domestic violence can be attributed partially to the rigid gender roles our society forces us to adhere to. The majority of abusers are men, who as young boys are taught that “boys don’t cry,” “real men don’t show emotions,” etc. All of this leads boys and men to bottle their emotions, not showing them and keeping everything inside, to themselves. Because boys and young men are not taught how to properly express and deal with normal, human emotions (including anger) this can often manifest itself as violence. This is clearly demonstrated by the cycle of abuse in an intimate relationship, where at first, there is a “honeymoon” period, where everything is fine and dandy, the man will be kind, attentive, loving and constantly showering the woman with affection and often gifts. Then, tension will slowly build, with the woman usually walking on eggshells, doing everything the man tells her to because she is afraid of the repercussions if she doesn’t. Eventually, the ticking time bomb that is the abuser will explode, usually into a bout of physical violence. After that, he will cycle back to the “honey moon phase” leading to the woman telling herself numerous mantras of “he didn’t mean it, he was just drunk,” “if I hadn’t left the house such a mess, he wouldn’t have been angry,” “he’s just having a tough time at work, things will get better soon.” As much as we all would like to believe that these things are true, they’re probably not. As time carries on, the violent episodes will become more frequent, and the honeymoon phases will become shorter. When the violence ends, it will probably end in one of three ways; she leaves, she kills him or he kills her. Not many of these outcomes have happy endings.
Domestic violence is not funny, it’s not okay, and the people who make jokes about it are not funny, and they are not cool. I’m not okay with anyone hitting anyone else, and I’m not okay with people getting away with crimes that deserve harsher punishment. Clearly, the justice system and society have failed Chris Brown and it has probably failed other men who beat their partners too. So, I implore you; don’t buy Chris Brown’s record. Don’t watch his videos on youtube. Unfollow his twitter and unlike his Facebook. And if you know of a woman that is being abused, or have suspicions, say something. Don’t be an innocent bystander-call the police, call local shelters and hotlines for advice, and pass on the information to the victim.
For more information you can visit http://www.transitionhouse.net, http://www.futureswithoutviolence.org/ , http://www.acws.ca/, or search “women’s shelter [name of your location]” in your favourite search engine. If you are trying to leave an abusive relationship, be sure to cover your tracks, by either clearing your history or using incognito features on your internet browser.
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