Stories we tell

I was having a discussion about the Scott Peterson case and weighing in on the whole death penalty issue when someone said, "You know, she should have never married that psychopath. She should've known better." This comment made me so angry. I said, "Hey, people don't walk around with the words "psycho jerk" tattooed on the foreheads and their police history in hand.
Sure, there are signs but most people don't know them from the typical Hollywood "romance" i.e. the man follows her home after just meeting her and tells her loves her, asks her to marry him after just a few weeks and a few "deep connected conversations" he thinks he's known her his whole life. She is his life. She is the one that will make him feel whole. This then turns sour quickly into the "If you leave me I will die." bit and then "If you leave me I will kill you" or his sweet hands becomes a fist. This that I have written above is not my opinion but actually a story from a book titled "Abusive relationships." This is the story of not just one woman but many many women. I know men experience this as well. One of my most beloved friends was married for years to a woman who loved to threaten to hit him, would walk out on him whenever he asked for anything, and threatened to take their child (who HE raised) away from him. So I DO know that men get into shitty relationships too but it is not so normalized in our society. Violence toward women is something you can see in so many different movies and genres of movies and there's a whole category of "love songs" on the radio that I call "stalker music" because it's constantly talking about a man or a woman who "cannot live" without the other. Yes you can. If you can't seek professional help please because the world really doesn't need anymore damn psychopaths thank you. I think the problem is more deeply rooted than that though. A fear years ago I did an interview with the director of the local agency called "SANE" (Sexual Abuse Now Ended) and she told me a very stunning statistic: most of the sexual offenders were not molested or raped as children. The most common experience they shared was that they had witnessed domestic violence between their parents or their parental figures.
That really surprised me because I thought well surely they learned that kind of behavior somewhere and THEY DID because it isn't such a far leap from thinking it okay to beat a woman (or a man or a child) then to rape or molest one. Is it?

I think about ALL the women I've known over the years who've been beaten by their spouses/partners and comments like the one I began this blog with really really hurt. Because it puts the blame on them. YOU should've picked your man better. Excuse me???
Granted women often don't leave situations when they turn violent but you have to realize that relationships are a process and the guy who seemed "incredibly attentive and affectionate" today might just turn into tomorrow's control freak. Personally I think they need to teach classes that teach young women and men about what healthy relationships SHOULD look like and the warning signs of an abusive relationship. THIS is a THOUSAND times more important than stupid "home-ec" or even health class. Save a life. Teach a girl that she actually has the right to tell someone to piss off if he thinks he can slam her against a wall or call her fat and stupid or even if he tries to get her drunk to sleep with her. Teach a boy that he has the same right to be free from violence AND emotional manipulation. I do not think men deserve to be hurt. I do not think women are always victims either. I think that this is a story we tell each other in our society. Men are this way and women are that. Violence is normal, natural. It just happens to a few sick individuals in sick circumstances. No. It happens SO often. Your children see it and NORMALIZE it. They think it has to happen everywhere. I remember being stunned the first time I went to a friend's house and her parents weren't calling each other asshole and bitch or yelling at one another about her. That was remarkable to me. I thought god I want to live like that. I have known three women in particular who I love with all of my being that have gone through absolute hell on earth to try and "escape" abusive relationships without being murdered for doing so. The year that my most beloved friend managed to get away, three women were murdered in the U.S. in cases so unbelievably grotesque they actually made the news. I say this because so many domestic violence cases don't make the news. They don't even make it beyond the front door. What I would love to see is people asking hey, what is wrong with our society that creates and shapes a man who'd rather kill his pregnant wife than divorce her and give her the option of a life he seems to want for himself? What is wrong with our society that confuses violence against women with "entertainment"? Where do people learn this behavior and how can we make it stop? How can we make the laws so absolutely intolerant of such behavior to make men and women think twice about brutalizing one another? How can we all do our part to stop it? This is SO important to me. You MUST STOP BLAMING THE VICTIM!!!!! Remember Nicole and O.J.? Remember how people asked over and over again, why did she stay with him? SHE DIDN'T. She had left him and still was murdered. By whom, well it doesn't seem we'll ever really know that. The point of bringing it up here is that our culture suggests if a woman is murdered/raped/beaten etc, she is SOMEHOW to blame for that. She wasn't strong enough. She didn't leave. She didn't fight back. She could have left. Why didn't she leave? What about the children? Why does SHE stay with the one who hurts her?
ALL of this puts women and girls in a cage that says if you are in a bad relationship it's really up to you to pull yourself out of it. Society however needs to aid in this and with our social programs being shredded left and right how do you expect her to leave? With no socio-economic support, no shelter to go to and laws that still put the burden of proof on the victim, do you really think that you've made an easy out?

I want to make it crystal clear that I still struggle with the issue of personal responsibility here.
My mother is STILL with a man who hurts her. For the life of me, I do not understand why.
What I know though, is that she IS economically dependent upon him and thinks that if she loves him enough he will just remember that he loves her too. We need to move beyond the whole love as addiction bit. Something that is toxic to you is toxic to you no matter how good it may feel or seem at the time. Still, I also know that after years and years of abuse, she has learned to define herself by every bruise and broken bone. She tells herself to me in stories of pain and I don't know how to change that. I wish I knew how to rewrite it. I know I can't though.
She has to rewrite her life for herself just as we all do. We need to do this as a society though.
A full frontal assault on the images that show women as objects waiting to be possessed and controlled. A full out war on the idea that anyone should be able to lash out in anger with physical, verbal or sexual violence. I wrote an earlier blog post on the Disney movie "Pirates of the Caribbean" when it dawned on me that the girl in the movie is struck by a man, groped and stripped of her gown, humiliated etc by the many men in the film. And yet she is considered empowered. Is THIS the model of the empowered woman that you want to show your children?
Yet this is a movie marketed to kids. It IS an entertaining and funny film. I just couldn't get over that ill feeling when I saw her struck. I thought, God, here I am watching this with my son and my best friend and her three kids, who've actually seen their father do the same thing to her.
That's fucked up and yet THAT is considered entertainment. Normal. If you question it, you're just overreacting. You're just a whiny bitchy manhating woman. You're just making something out of nothing. Tell that to the next woman whose obit makes the paper and story makes the news. Tell that to her family. Tell that to the next Scott Peterson. People seem so outraged that he killed a pregnant woman. What about the fact that SHE was a human being just like Iraqis are human beings and female soldiers are also human beings and "prisoners of war" or "enemy combatants" are also human beings, each with a value of life and a sovereingty over their own person, that someone else feels entitled to end or violate and unfortunately has the power to do so.

Further, I read a blog recently by someone I thought quite thoughtful who was actually talking about how the 'nice guy' is always hurt by women who want the 'jerk.' He went on and on about this and then at the end of his blog read the riot act to women who happen to "not pick their men better" and up pregnant or with a child, looking for anyone they can get. I hate to tell you this but just like you can't seem to find the woman who'll make you her life, many women have the same expectations of men because society conditions us to think that way. I'm sorry. I still feel that you shouldn't try to make ANYONE your life. Not your children, your partner, your husband or even your job for that matter. If you do, you put so much expectancy on the other person that they can't be themselves. No, they're too busy living for you. That is just as unhealthy a mindset as the person who stays in a violent relationship because it too violates the rights of each human being to be their own unique and beautiful individual. I often wonder if part of the reason so many people become abusive is because they never had a true sense of themselves. They were beaten down. Raped. Violated. Or they were controlled and condemned for even wanting anything for themselves. It is ironic that we deem people who don't want to be someone else's life and world as "selfish" and yet a little "selfishness"is not necessarily bad. I think we need a sense of ourselves before we can ever truly love/honor and respect someone else. The reason being, is that every single thing that comes into our life shapes us in some way and everything is always changing. IN FLUX. SO the more you try to hold on to something and keep it the same, the more harm and confusion you cause. The more you suffer and cause others to suffer. A brave and great man can see this. He doesn't need his manhood defined by his ability to control life or head a family as a dictator. He can learn to live as a equal and with the status and security that that provides. The whole cutthroat competitiveness that defines our society and is almost expected from men makes it damn hard for them to actually behave otherwise. Those who don't "get with the program" are considered disfunctional or "Too feminine" or too "weak." Men are beautiful. Women are beautiful. We can be beautiful together. We can be two whole creatures complimenting one another and living in harmony rather than feeding off one another like parasites. Humanity can live from this earth in harmony as well rather than acting like a tapeworm, eating and devouring everything in its path. We need to tell ourselves new stories. First we must write them. Challenge that which says women and men must just "be" this way because of genetics or conditioning. Or that nations must wage war to protect themselves. We don't have that right. You don't have that right. I don't have that right.
We can't MAKE it right either. It is just wrong. Until we can see that, there will be more Laci's with their unborn babies. There will be more Scott's with their warped view of love. There will be more dead children from skies full of bombs or bellies emptied by sanctions. I know I get a bit over the top on my rants lately but if you can sit and listen to that shit on the radio and not get pissed or listen to well meaning people speak about how she should've known better and not get worried, well, then you are contributing to the problem that will create more stories just like this one. More tragedies that we can sit and shake our heads about, shed a few tears over and then carry on as helpless as ever. We need to become better friends to one another. Take a moment out of your rat race life and honor the people who you surround yourself with. Be a true friend and make being a good human being the top priority. All of the other expectations we put on ourselves are so secondary. What will your degree and hot car mean to you if you're dying in a cold hospital room alone and the medical bills are wiping your savings out hour by hour? People think oh social services make people "Dependent" on the system. One day honey, you'll be dependent too and then you'll think twice about that belief. Besides that, the crap that we call "social services" in most states is so time-limited and difficult to qualify for that you'd probably make more money standing on the street corner with one of those "need help" signs then you would begging for money and food from the welfare office or fighting with the insurance company to get them to pay the bills you supposedly pay insurance to cover.

As a woman, I think the man who can sit there and actually speak and listen from the heart rather than the ego is a billion times more interesting and attractive then one who wants to just tell me about all he's accomplished. Likewise, a woman who can get beyond society's perpetuation of the beauty/victim myths is far more lovely than one who is destroying herself trying to please others. We NEED each other. You wouldn't survive without others and neither would I. We owe it to ourselves and future generations to end violence against each other. We really need to evolve. Or at the very least get involved! peace!