Pat Robertson was asked that question. His answer was simple: you’ve got to stand up to her, and oh, how he wishes he could announce on television that you should beat her.
Well, you could become a Muslim and you could beat her. … This man’s got to stand up to her and he can’t let her get away with this stuff. I don’t think we condone wife-beating these days but something has got to be done.
How clever! To simultaneously advocate domestic violence while distancing oneself from it, and at the same time get in a little Muslim bashing! Who says Pat Robertson is senile? He’s not — he’s just evil.
But he’s wrong. You don’t need to be a Muslim to beat your spouse; we’ve got relatively few Muslims here in mostly lily-white Minnesota, and we’ve still got a tremendous number of domestic violence cases.
One in every four women will experience domestic violence in her lifetime. 1 One in 33 men have experienced an attempted or completed rape.
An estimated 1.3 million women are victims of physical assault by an intimate partner each year.
The majority (73%) of family violence victims are female. Females were 84% of spousal abuse victims and 86% of abuse victims at the hands of a boyfriend.
And then there’s this juicy statistic: in Minnesota alone in 2006,
5,295 battered women and 5,131 children used
Minnesota emergency shelter services.
Were they all Muslim? Hey, Pat, maybe you can crack a joke about how those 5,000 women and children have learned a little something about submission and respect.
Pat Robertson comes across as a doddering old idiot zombie. Unfortunately, he came across that way 30 years ago too.
My personal theory is that he died long ago. His handlers just inject him with a reanimation serum, hand him a script, and hope he doesn’t try to eat their brains.
And there’s that blatant envy Robertson has for the Muslims, who know how to deal with uppity wimmin and atheists.
Pat, you know YOU could convert. I’m sure you’d fit RIGHT in.
The “man” (much as the “real man” concept is abused, I have great difficulty in mustering respect for someone who asks Pat Robertson for help in personal life) whose wife once even “stretched her hand” to attack him never specifies why they have problems, except for her failure to recognize his intrinsic anatomical authority.
PR, of course, finds that in itself sufficient to brand the wife a chronically rebellious 13-yr-old, and sees no other issue here that raises any questions.
I’d say un-fucking-believable, but no, this is quite quite believable.
Bigotry and violence against wimmins all at once? It’s a thing of beauty really.
How…just how does this man have viewers?
Come on Pat…CDD…you know you want to!
By not being that far out of line with their views.
Oh PZ, you should see this. Robertson has a brother in arms with rapper Chris Brown. Who. Tattooed. A. Battered. Woman’s. Face. On. His. Neck.
Seriously. And yes, despite what he says, it looks just like Rihanna (not that it would be OK otherwise). For real.
http://thinkprogress.org/alyssa/2012/09/11/828711/chris-brown-tattoos-an-image-of-a-battered-woman-on-his-neck/
I give it exactly three minutes before the decent people outraged by this are called cunts, haters, and bitches who need a good raping.
Sort of in line with fatwah envy.
The way they make sure Zombie Robertson doesn’t eat his handlers’ brains is to have all those handlers and scripters be mummies without any.
How does he have viewers?
Wake the fuck UP! How long do you have to hang around blogs like this before you stop being surprised that a majority of “respectable” society encourages this or stays silent?
These viewers are people you work with, eat with, and shop with every goddamned day. Stop fooling yourselves.
Tired of your uppity wife not submitting to your authority?
Become a Muslim, and beat her!
Tired of gay people strutting around their flagrant sexuality?
Become a Muslim, and bash them!
Tired of evil abortion doctors mudering innocent babies?
Become a Muslim, and send them to face
JesusAllah!Tired of all these Muslim immigrants?
Become a Muslim, and shoot a bunch of kids!
I’m not sure which bothers me more, the misogyny or the scapegoating. Oh, right, it was both.
OP: Holy shit, Pat Robertson is a disingenuous, vicious scumbag.
Josh: Holy shit, Chris Brown is a disingenuous, vicious scumbag.
What the fuck is wrong with this world? That’s rhetorical, by the way. I know the answer is “Everything”.
So, Pat Robertson’s opinion on domestic violence is not substantially different from GirlWritesWhat’s opinion on domestic violence. Good to know.
In my old church you wouldn’t dare sympathize with a woman who came to meeting with a black eye. That would be encouraging her to . Pats sheep pay him millions of dollars to say that shit because they have read those verses in the bible and they want their respected. *spits*
Let’s see how this sounds reversed.
My, it almost sounds like advocating violence against someone.
But you can’t be angry at me since I said we can’t condone it.
People like Pat view woman as children. How much do you wanna bet that he’s down with “spare the rod, spoil the child”, too?
Josh, Official SpokesGay @ 8
All I need to know about Chris Brown is that he is a vastly overrated talentless wannabe somebody!
He needed to beat up another talentless over-hyped female ‘celebrity’ to get his 15 mins of lukewarm attention from the media.
It made little impact on Rihanna…she has gone skipping back to him boasting that he has changed…in her docile dreams.
Some folk have no discernment or taste otherwise they would not be suckered into the cynicism and the sheer crud he pretends is his muse and the sheer optimism that she so wants to believe…like many domestically battered women…she is living in pink fluffy cuckoo world where it never happens again…only it will!
Well, here’s my advice to the woman. Divorce him.
Last year there was a very young couple living at my apartment complex who would get in huge arguments on the property in public view.
The guy would always be dismissive and the girl would just keep getting madder and madder until eventually she’d start slapping, scratching, or outright hitting him.
She would flinch after hitting him as if bracing to be hit back, but I never saw him hit her back. And she then would just keep going because she knew she could get away with it.
I never called the police or anything, but looking back on it now, its kind of fucked up that I didn’t because if the guy was hitting the girl I would’ve definitely called the cops.
Considering the intellectual level in his organization as evidenced by the output, I don’t think they have anything to fear from zombies.
sigh
Well, that’s a hell of a way to dismiss the cycle of abuse and blame the victim all in one sentance fragment.
Not to defend Chris Brown in general, who is a slimeball abuser, but that tattoo doesn’t look like a battered woman. It looks like an undead woman. Tangentially, it’s really hard to examine, because it’s a fuck-ugly tat. If I saw him on the street, I would wonder what disease he had caught to make his neck do that.
Jasper:
You know, you were a right fucking douchecake in Jen’s thread about leaving blogging for a while. I had thought perhaps that was a one off, but I see my initial thought was correct: you are a right fucking douchecake.
If you think it’s all that simple, Cupcake, why don’t you run on down to the nearest shelter and dispense your oh-so-privileged wisdom. You won’t help any women, but you might actually learn something if you could manage to shut your mouth and drop the blinders for five minutes.
You might try learning something about christianity too – that makes it even harder for a woman to get out. Almost impossible.
anubisprime:
I see you decided to go with being a disgusting asshole today. Real nice.
For those few of you who perhaps haven’t read the holy babble, here’s a short roundup in large print. *Warning* Have barf bag ready.
http://spot.colorado.edu/~huemer/biblequotes.htm
jarjar it figures you would come in and make a comment like that.
This thread isn’t about female on male abuse (which we all know happens and at a much lower rate, so stuff it), it was specifically about the prevalence of misogyny in culture where someone in a position of power like Pat thinks it is ok to beat your wife under the “correct circumstances”. Not to even mention the other asshole things he threw in about Muslims etc..
You could also read the statistics PZ posted and see what it was about. But no.
You had to come in and make your WHAT ABOUT THE MENZ comment.
You know damn well what the point of your comment was so don’t even try and excuse it.
Fucking asshole.
You’re just itching for the next FGM thread too I bet.
People, you have to understand that Pat Robertson is not well. About two years ago he mistook a pail of lead paint for is age-defying shakes. Every since then, he has been addicted to drink gallons and gallons of lead paint. And everyone knows that lead paint is a gateway paint to huffing spray paint.
Or at least that is what I am assuming. I mean it isn’t possible that Pat is a crazy, hate-filled ignorant bastard? There has to be a more complicated answer than he being and always has been horse-shit incarnate.
FSM
Oh, those wacky Muslims and their Holy Bible!
With the vile and thoroughly repugnant Evil For Jesus this disgusting monster vomits, I honestly think that physical eating the brains of the living is the very least of the evil things he does.
Of course, I would not want Zombie Pat gnawing on my cranium for fear of getting bigot-cooties, anyhow.
@big stupid monkey
Sounds to me like you have some kind of irrational hatred for men.
Regardless, domestic violence is domestic violence. The women who do it are just as shitty as the men.
And there’s the first ‘misandry!’ comment of the day!
It is reprehensible and inexcusable for you to compare horse-shit to that thing.
Horse-shit has a valuable purpose of being soil amendment, whereas Pat Robertson is a half-fossilized, avaricious bigot who hates For Jesus in order to steal money For Jesus from the faithful.
True.
Now that we’ve said that, notice that the scumbag in this video talks about man on woman abuse.
Audley Z. Darkheart: My name is Legion, for we are many @ 17;
This reminds me of the conversation we were having on the August 2012 Molly: Alethea H. “Crocoduck” Dundee thread a couple of days ago about how all these misogynist arsehats seem to place so much emphasis upon perpetually infantalising women while simultaneously viewing them as the sex class.
That nasty old zombie Robertson repeatedly and directly likens women, who don’t instantly submit to the notional inherent authority conferred by the possession of teh mighty peen, to disobedient children. He as good as states that the problem here is that most fathers don’t beat mindless obedience into their daughters, and then goes on to imply that this ‘failure’ must be ‘corrected’ by the adult woman’s spouse through domestic violence.
He also never questions whether the probems in the relationship in question might be, in any part, the responsibility of the man. Nope, he just instantly assumes that this problem can be solved with a little bruralisation of the child-woman in question, because Robertson clearly believes that since you cannot reason with a child an you would an adult, then your only option is to beat them into submission, and women are simply another class of children, but with added procreative hardware.
That his vision of sexual relationshops is twisted is further reinforced by his claim that these ‘rebellious’ children are resisting the ‘rightful’ authority of their fathers, and when they achieve sexual maturity (not ‘grow up’, because women are never really adults – at least not in the dark world Pat Robertson inhabits) they transfer this rebellious father/daughter relationship dynamic to that that they have with their
new ownerhusband/boyfriend.You heard that right, ladies – in the world according to Pat Robertson, its disturbingly literal Electra complexes all round. Still, the news isn’t all bad – a little brutal domestic vioelnce, a few years/decades spent living in fear, and you too can be ‘cured’ so that you can live your lives as the wholly owned possessions of abusive dudebros…
So, basically, a main course of a offensive misogyny garnished with a little fatwah-envy – standard Robertson fare.
I really hate that bigoted, partially mummified git.
Yep, that BigDumbChimp sure has a hatz teh menz thing going. Damn good disguise too.
Caine, Fleur du mal
Nice derailing! Gotta get that vendetta in, I see.
Anyway, of course it’s not that simple. I never said it would be easy or simple, but it is a solution to work towards.
jarjar:
WHAT ABOUT TEH MENZ?
stanton,
I am sorry. I see the errors of my ways. You are right; there really is nothing that could symbolize Pat. Any pile of feces, no matter the stench, can be of some benefit to humanity as fertilizer.
Maybe just maybe a festering boil on the ass would be simultaneously as annoying and as useless as Pat is.
Audley:
Yes, however, when you get into the fundamental christian view, it’s much worse than that. There, you’re going back into the mindset of women as chattel, full stop. Women are expected to be quiet, submissive servant incubators and little more. Step out of that little circle and why, you’re asking for it!
The video, before editing, showed Pat Robertson saying, “You can’t divorce her, according to the scripture, so I say move to Saudi Arabia.”
Source, and more discussion: http://maddowblog.msnbc.com/_news/2012/09/11/13805925-pat-robertson-marital-counselor#
Jasper:
Bit of an idiot, aren’t you?
That’s right, you never said. All you did was plop down your fuckwitted privileged point of view as if it were the simplest thing in the world. You have a serious lack of empathy problem and you seem to be allergic to thinking.
Also, Jasper, do you happen to know how many women who are abused and do manage to get out of the relationship end up murdered? You might want to look into that, if you can get your brain to work for 5 seconds.
Yep a vendetta against douchecanoes who need to stop opening their mouths only to choke on their own feet.
Immoral me…here I’ve been spending time trying to treat my wife with respect and work out our issues. I should become a morale man and just beat the ever-loving daylights out of her.
Thanx again Christians for explaining how I should be morale in life.
Yep. The views Robertson expressed were mainstream 70 years ago. There are still plenty of men (and some women) who think that way.
*passes around banhammer splat protectors*
Caine:
Oh, no doubt. *barf!*
Gregory:
Yup, I was thinking of that convo from a few days ago. And the more I think about the more angry I fucking get. Because if it’s not Pat calling us ‘chattel’, it’s some clueless misogynist trying to ‘protect us from ourselves’.
@Nerd of Redhead, #48:
Left leg, left arm… Tighten straps around face, pull tab to inflate… pull belt across chest… Right leg, right arm… leave gap of 10″ for airbags, return tray to upright position… Tighten laces, rotate clockwise, void in South Carolina. There. Ready.
I would like to remind those unfamiliar with him that Jarjar is a troll who shat on Jen McCreight’s “Goodbye for now” thread and has conducted itself similarly here.
Audley and Caine, what did you expect from Anubis Prime?
Jasper, stop digging. Really.
That’s probably true. I don’t think I’ve ever denied that – which goes back to my bit about needing people like Jen to help alert me to such things. Without people like her speaking up, I would most likely be oblivious.
It’s your right to believe that, of course.
Yes, that’d be an aspect of the “hard” reference. There’s lots of programs/resources available for women to employ to help get away, etc, assuming we can get that information to them.
Setting a goal, like divorce, is the first step in that process.
I don’t suppose you could be a little less emotional for a sec?
It might not be that simple.
Men who beat women don’t view see them as people, but as chattel.
They think that if they’ve fucked her, she’s theirs, and nobody elses – and they sometimes make sure of that by killing a wife or girlfriend that is leaving them.
Getting rid of those shits is very, very hard, even if you are healthy, mature, socially and economically secure.
I know, I saw it happen to my cousin. Her father had to physically threaten the little shit for him to finally go away(imagine about 10 200lbs volunteer firefighters cornering you alone one evening telling you about people bothering Ms. X mysteriously falling down stairs).
I figure it’s almost impossible to someone whose situation is much less favorable like a patriarchal flavor of xianity where people think this is acceptable.
Pat Robertson is part of a larger was on Muslims.
http://www.salon.com/2012/09/11/fox_news_war_on_muslims/
It’s this weird phenomenon where we’re technically in agreement, but you seem to be upset at my tone.
Jasper:
…
I’m sure you don’t care one way or the other, but I used to respect you quite a bit. I am rapidly revising this opinion.
Jarjar is now on automoderation. Given his record, nothing he posts may ever see the light of day again.
Re: the domestic violence statistics
I recently had a daughter. Contemplating about how best to bring her up in this world has really focussed my mind on how much we need a fuck-tonne more fixing more quickly to make it safe(er) for her (and everyone else).
Meanwhile, I hope she will take an interest in Aikido. If I can teach her to to take her old man down with wrist-locks choke-holds and throat punches, she will be less likely to appear in the appalling statistics and more likely to give any aggressor ample time to reconsider violence against women from a hospital bed.
Q.E.D, that is, unless she is blamed for “overreaacting” to her abuse.
I have heard an anecdote about a woman who fought back when her husband was trying to choke her to death. A judge sentenced them both to “anger management” classes.
Self-defense is not inherently bad, but it isn’t a replacement for changing our misogynist culture.
The fact that Pat is complaining that girls are not being taught to respect male authority is even more repellent then his advise to move to Saudi Arabia. If it did not contain the Darwinian taint of chimpanzees, Pat could fully endorse the idea that beating a woman keeps her civilized.
I will not miss the words of jarofshit.
Daisy:
Sorry, I don’t normally waste my time trying to puzzle out what the hell Anubis is talking about, but I’m really bored at work.
Wait wait wait. First he says she’s incorrectly transferring her issues with her father onto her husband, but then says her problem is that she won’t submit to authority. So… maybe she’s transferring those issues because her husband is trying to fill the exact same role as her father?
It’s frightening how much the two of them (pat and the woman) ignore the possibility that the wife might have a complaint or two, or other problems of her own. Nope, the only problem is that she’s not recognizing her husband has authority over her.
Replying to the title question, depending upon the environment:
-Not even notice, as this is normal and should not be a thing.
-Applaud and say something colloquial like, “You go, girl.”
-Yell, “Solidarity!” and help her rebel.
One needs to do what one can to make herself safe while this future better world is being worked on. Learning self defense does not negate doing what one can to better society.
If I am not mistaken, Caine is just about always armed. I think her policy is best.
Jasper, what the fuck? Seriously. If you’re not emotional about this subject matter, there is something fucking wrong with you.
Do you even know how hard it is to get to a shelter? Like, how few there are, how often they’re full, how many don’t take kids or pets, how likely a DV victim is to have her money and vehicle access controlled by her abuser so she CAN’T leave? No, I’m guessing you fucking don’t, because otherwise you wouldn’t be saying the stupid shit you are.
Anusbisprime: Fuck off, and stop blaming the victim.
Josh: That is so, so revolting. Chris Brown and every single one of his supporters are vile.
Janine,
With you on that one. No one is at fault if they don’t fight back, but I support the heck out of those that do as well.
Jasper:
No. It goes back to you manufacturing excuses for being all comfy, wrapped up in your privilege, spilling your douchebaggery all over the place.
The responsibility for you being continually educated is on you. The responsibility for being a decent human being is on you. Instead you whine about a woman taking a break due to constant, overwhelming harassment as an inconvenience to you and it’s *her* fault if you act like a douchecake, because of course, it’s *her* responsibility to educate your sorry ass.
Oh FFS. I don’t suppose you could be less of a douchecake for a sec?
What makes you think I’m emotional? The naughty words? No, Cupcake – I just cuss a lot and I have a very low tolerance for assholes. Tsk.
I have to second what Happiestsadist just said, shelter space can be very limited. No town could accommodate all of the abused partners who need help. And the fact that these shelters are not really well advertised do not help either. This system is really not well designed.
Q.E.D. @ #58: My parents started me on martial arts when I was two. Wish I could say it made a difference. I had plenty of weapons, plus my own hands, which I can be very nasty with, when it happened to me. I mostly just blamed myself more afterwards because of it. Self-defense is worth it for some things, plus a generally handy skill, but it’s not much of a talisman.
Janine:
Yep. I always have something sharp and tiny around somewhere.
The husband’s first sentence shows where the actual trouble lies (Actually, every sentence shows that, but bear with me): “My wife has become a real problem.”
Not “My wife’s behavior has become a real problem.”
Not “My wife is being threatening/unloving/chaotic.”
Not “My wife is making our marriage difficult.”
No, it’s that his wife has become a PROBLEM. She might very well be everything that he describes, but even if that’s so, he doesn’t want help. He wants outside justification and approval for the things he wants to do or is contemplating doing, none of which are for *their* sake, only his. People don’t even talk about their dogs with phrasing like that. We say that something is a problem when we want to get rid of it. When the dog’s chewing is a problem, we try to get rid of the behavior, not the dog. We get rid of the *problem*. When a loved one is acting destructively, we try to get rid of the destructive behavior – the problem – not the loved one. So when you call a spouse a problem, you are probably saying, “I need to be rid of this person.”
And hey, I don’t begrudge someone whose relationship is such a shambles that they have to think of only themselves and get out. But the rest of his letter does not support that hypothesis.
Ms. Daisy Cutter, Vile Human Being
That’s your prerogative of course, but when I’m irrationally attacked for things I haven’t said, I’m going to correct it. So please forgive my frustration when someone is attacking me, calling me an idiot, etc, for what appears to a fury of irrationality.
Happiestsadist, opener of the Crack of Doom
Did I say I don’t feel emotion about it? There’s a difference between feeling empathy and emotion and letting it run you.
Judges also have to be dispassionate when doing their thing. Is something “wrong” with them too?
Are you saying that domestic abuse services don’t exist, for instance? Yes, again, that’s part of the “hard” reference.
The only way I can find your response here relevant is if you’re suggesting that the person does nothing and stays in the abusive relationship. Otherwise, I agree with you.
But apparently agreeing with you constitutes “saying stupid shit”.
And quite a few judges have been dispassionate when dismissing a woman’s charge of abuse.
Happiestsadist:
Word. No one should ever think it’s some sort of safety panacea, it’s not. I also point out that self defense tends to be utterly useless when it’s a situation of domestic abuse. Relationship abuse tends to happen slowly over time, there is usually more than one type of abuse going on (emotional and verbal components are almost always seen), there’s grooming the person, conditioning them, and it’s more of a spiral descent. By the time it is seriously bad, most people are in such a bad mental and emotional state, fighting back doesn’t even occur as an option.
As for self defense in other situations, yeah, it can be good. I didn’t bother with it after my rape, I went to certain people to learn how to fight. That said, more than self defense, the best things you can teach someone are to have confidence in themselves, and how to keep a cool head and not panic. The more you can read a situation, the better your chance of survival.
She was not suggesting that the abused woman should stay, just that it is not so easy to get out of the relationship.
When I volunteered for an anti-violence hotline, most of the people I spoke with did not know the numbers of the shelters. They are not widely known.
You know, it is awfully easy for a dude to remain dispassionate about this shit. How likely is it that he will be battered or killed by his partner and society will condone it?
Want to know what really pisses me off about this? All of the people who will then condemn this abused person for going back to her abuser. They do not know shit about what abuse does to a person.
If that man is gay, some people will point at it, proof that .
Janine:
Ick. I hadn’t thought of that.
Audley, this is why you straight people need us queers around, just to point out these things.
Janine:
No, they don’t, which is what is pissing me off about that smug fuckwit Jasper.
Another component of domestic abuse is the isolation – it’s a standard tactic and seen so often, it’s just not funny. That’s one of the reasons so many women end up dead and of those who don’t, why it can take decades for them to get the fuck out.
When it comes to a woman who is in a fundamental christian marriage, it’s even worse. The whole community will help on the isolation and shunning front, they will support the abuser and of course, god doesn’t like divorce.
Plus, a judge recently told a woman who had suffered sexual assult that it would not have happened if she hadn’t gone to the bar. The abuser,a cop no less, was given a suspended sentence.
I think ,unbelievably, the judge was a woman also.
Just to complete the thought, just like many of us need you around just to point out that even a wanted pregnancy is not a pleasant experience.
I did not want anyone to think that what I just said was meant to be snarky.
For your further edification, I present you with this picture of ol’ Pat standing behind Mittens:
Pat’n’Mitt.
Caine at @ 81:
Patricia at @15:
Weird how Caine is the emotional one by pointing the tremendous difficuties of getting out of an abusive relationship (not the mention the dangers), and Jasper is the rational and cool-headed one by offering the never-heard-of_before wisdom that the woman should divorce.
If only more women simply thought of that, domestic abuse would certainly have disappeared a long time ago. Maybe they were too emotional to think about it though…
Jasper, you are a dishonest piece of shit.
Judges have a good reason to be dispassionate in their jobs. This is not a fucking court of law. If you actually gave a shit, you wouldn’t be lecturing survivors about being too angry. Cram your straw-vulcan shit sideways.
Shelter information is not widely known. Also, as I just fucking said, they are very hard to get into. So “just” leaving the abuser, for all the reasons I gave plus more, including the emotional side of the abuse is really fucking hard, and yes, you are belittling the absolutely massive struggle involved. Also, the time you’re most likely to die at the hands of an abuser? As you’re leaving or just after. You fucking moron. No, they should not stay, but blaming them for not leaving when you want them to is not fucking helpful.
Do not forget, kassad, it is also emotional to point out the limited space of shelters and how difficult it can be to get in.
Janine:
Trust me, I need to check my privilege, so thanks for that. And sorry that I had to be reminded that not all dudes are straight.
That being said, my corrected point:
You know, it is awfully easy for a dude to remain dispassionate about this shit. How likely is it that a straight man will be battered or killed by his female partner and society will condone it?
Will they say that he deserved to be put in his place? That maybe he somehow wanted it or that he should have left long ago? Or will he be portrayed as a good man who had the misfortune of knowing a “crazy bitch”?
No, Janine! Your point was a good one and I didn’t think you were being snarky.
Well, you were snarky in a good way! ;)
kassad: I know! I mean, he’s just being ~helpful~ with this groundbreaking suggestion that all they have to do is leave their abusers! I don’t know why people are getting so mad. We should give him cookies for being so helpful.
Audley:
“Why that poor man! What was he do, given that horrible psycho hose beast?”
Kassad:
Oh those pesky women and their problems! Men don’t have any problems divorcing*…
*insert near-fatal eyeroll here
I would suggest that Jasper read this before he says an other word on the topic.
The part that stood out the most to me was how he sort of asked “we don’t condone beating women anymore, right?” as if he was oping someone would step in and say it was okay just this once.
Janine: Fucking Dyke Of Rage Mountain
I agree that happens, and it shouldn’t. I don’t understand your point though. Are you saying judges shouldn’t be dispassionate, but rather let their emotions drive how they do their job? One of the critical aspects of a properly executed judicial system is to eliminate as much bias as possible, emotional or otherwise, even if the outcome isn’t perfect.
The problem with domestic abuse is that it’s difficult sometimes to get that evidence, even if it’s because the victim didn’t get to a police officer “in time”, or something else lame like that.
Conversely, it would be bad to have a judicial system where people are thrown in jail merely because someone accuses another of a crime.
Women lose badly because of this, and frankly, I don’t know what the solution is, other than to try to find ways of enabling them to gather evidence, for example.
Having the judges be less dispassionate wouldn’t be a solution.
Caine, Fleur du mal
Where it’s been relevant, I’ve admitted as such.
I’ve observed my sister in an abusive relationship. I know from that, and anecdotes from others, that trying to revise the abuser is most likely going to be a failed approach.
So, thus, the best solution is to leave. Do you not agree? Or do you think there’s another option? The victim can stay, stay and revise the abuser, or leave, or .. what?
If you believe the victim should leave, then you agree with me.
If you believe there’s resources available to help them, then you agree with me.
I’ve agreed with you that it’s a difficult and risky path, and I agree with the rest of your comment, including how religion makes it more complex.
Once again, as far as I can tell, we’re in full agreement on the topic.
But you’re upset at my “smugness”, as you’ve been projecting onto me.
I get it, you think I lack empathy/emotion. Can we move onto something more relevant now?
Perhaps they should move to Saudi Arabia.
I divorce.
I divorce.
I divorce.
Done.
Janine: Fucking Dyke Of Rage Mountain
I probably don’t even have to read it to know I probably agree with the points.
… but I skimmed through it. It agrees with me, and I it.
Caine:
I’m was thinking of when Phil Hartman was killed years ago– the media made his partner out to be some crazy coked up whore and he was an innocent. Now, I’m not saying that she wasn’t an abuser or that he deserved to be murdered, but it’s a sad state of affairs when it would be a step forward for our news media if female victims were portrayed the same light as male victims.
How do you know unless you are prescient? That is your problem, thinking you agree when you obviously don’t.
If that is the case, Jasper, why the fuck are you arguing that abused women should just leave? Yes, they should leave but it is not that simple, as we have been pointing out to you.
Just fucking read and try to understand why some of us are upset with you.
Or would you rather remain oblivious and claim that you really agree with us while at the same time, dismissing us.
Believing without evidence that you can’t be wrong is no way to go through life, son.
So Jasper, why are you STILL blaming women who don’t get out fast enough for you? How do you think you’re helping?
Audley:
That’s the fucking truth and it’s sadder than all hells.
Don’t forget that in the biblical law the woman almost always is punished by death for a transgression. Even in the case of two men fighting, if the wife of one of them trys to help her husband win by grabbing the of the other man her punishment is
So how would the scene follow in christian logic (!) if
one of the couples in the fight was gay, then would you cut off one hand before or after you stoned them to death for being gay?
Now usher in the asshat that will say that True Christians™ don’t believe in that anymore.
Happiestsadist:
Jasper seems to enjoy blaming women for anything and everything, from not making him aware of things to being at fault in an abusive relationship.
Interesting how Jasper can only natter on about how the women are at fault while not a word is being said about those men who abuse and there are so very many of them.
Janine:
Yes, I’ve been amazed at how some people can so emotionally spew proven and widely known facts about domestic abuse shelters. Right in the face of reasonable people that are helpfully suggesting that maybe the people abused should leave the people abusing them. The problem became so simple once you get rid of those pesky emotions.
Happiestsadist:
Well, in all fairness those people have been victims of abusive relationships. Or know people who have been. Or are involved in the fight against domestic abuse. Or have some basic knowledge about the mecanisms of abusive relationships. Or did a goddam fifteen seconds search on Google about the limitation of shelters. Anyway, they end up with all their fluffy emotions clouding their judgement as a result.
They should be pitied, not condemned, for their inability to miss the obvious solutions due to their knowledge of the issues. They should be teached the detachment necessary to finally propose fucking inane solutions.
I wish it were more well known that abuse in lesbian partnerships happen in the same rate as heterosexual partnerships. That abuse is not linked to what gender one is but linked to the power that one person has over an other. And that this society is rigged to support men, despite what MRAs like JohnTheOther says.
I just remembered the time Pat said how his organization wouldn’t support battered women’s shelters because it “hurt the family” oblivious to the fact that if had come to that the family was dead and all one could do was pick up the battered pieces.
Who ever said maintaining one’s integrity was a good thing?
In every field of social justice, there will be A) people for whom the issue is of intimate and paramount importance their own lives or the lives of people the know well, and B) people for whom this is not the case, but who support the issue for less personal reasons.
It is easy for people in group B to step back and adopt a dispassionate or even clinical attitude. People in group A do not necessarily have that luxury.
People in Group A will also tend to be much more informed and involved with the nuances of the subject, if for no other reason than having to live it daily.
Those of us in Group B need to remember, when talking to people in Group A that
1) a dispassionate, clinical tone can easily come across as callous and shallow, and
2) it is highly unlikely that any of the arguments they are thinking about aren’t already well known to the people in Group A.
So, in short, try to think before hitting that “submit” button – how will my words come across, regardless of my intent, and, is this something that really even needs to be said?
Jasper, to be as charitable as possible, you mean well, but calling getting out of an abusive relationship ‘hard’ is like calling Charles Manson ‘a bit of a naughty boy’. Over and above the relative scarcity of things like shelters for domestic violence victims, the gradual and insidious way that the relationship became abusive, and, quite often, the control the abuser has over his victim, there’s one final thing – sometimes the victim to actually still loves the abuser, and still want to be with them. Humans are fucked up that way – they can be with someone that regularly beats the living snot out of them, yet still love them. I know this because my mother was one such human. The only thing that actually spurred her to finally get the fuck out was when my father started doing the same thing to me and my brother as he had already been doing to her for years.
Chances are, if he’s taking advice from Pat shithead Robertson, he sees her as his property, and will not allow something like that to happen.
You might as well have said something like “She should grow super powers and beat him up!”
Jasper, if you simply cannot be convinced right now that the rules of holes apply to you at this moment, please take a moment to consider the circumstances of King Pyrrhus.
Janine: Fucking Dyke Of Rage Mountain
The article doesn’t say they shouldn’t. I don’t see how it’s contradicting me.
Ah, that’s the source of your error. Caine came out of the woodwork and erroneously accused me of that, and you picked it up and ran with it.
My advice was that the victim should divorce. You agree with me. The “simply” part was injected by others.
I do understand. You’re upset with me for something I did not say, but I can see how the miscommunication could arise.
What I’m dismissing… yet again… are the accusations about me that are false. Do you expect me to simply allow others to lie about me unchallenged?
All these things that have been presented to me I’ve already known… but since people are upset that I’m not emotional enough about it, they assume I don’t understand.
Caine, Fleur du mal
See, this is a great example of one such lie. At no point have I said anything like this. Since I’m not saying enough that’s actually wrong, or that they disagree with, they’re inventing things to be upset about. It’s incredibly dishonest.
And yet another lie. Did you notice how I was careful to use the terms “victim” and “abuser”? That’s because I don’t want to assume who the genders are.
Could you please direct me to where I said anything like this?
This is just getting stupid how much the lying is being cranked up.
smidgy
You could interpret it that way, yes. It’s a general word that denotes difficulty.
Does the disagreement here seriously boil down to word choice?
Janine:
Yep. The domestic abuse rate is high in gay partnerships as well. It always comes down to the power dynamic, no matter the genders in the relationship.
Bravo Amphiox!
THAT should be said over and over. But it is not an argument that is useful against MRAs. I once made a similar point in a discussion about how “domestic violence affect man as much as women, but the PC politics don’t admit it and men get screwed”. The response was “Ha! and women are not punished by the law as much as men!”. Proof of misandry, or something to the same effect. Women were not force into “financial slavery” by courts (little known facts: divorce rulings are far lower in the gay community for some unfathomable reason). And then onto the argument that lighter sentences for women disprove the concept of patriarchy.
Sometimes, there isn’t enough Jack Daniel’s in the world…
Jasper found Aron Ra’s misguided post Just sayin’.
Jasper:
Legal penalties with teeth to them would “revise” him pretty damn quick.
Why, yes, because I am incapable of reading for myself and would have passed over what was implied when you said:
That was the whole of your comment. Nothing about how difficult or dangerous it can be. Nothing at all. Just a glib “leave him”. At best, this is rather dismissive.
And you, Jasper, when this was pointed out to you began to both “agree” with points without understanding why anyone could take you comment the way it was presented and dismissing how emotional it all was. You are digging in deep. And I am not inclined to be charitable to you.
Then why didn’t you give whatever your fucking complicated advice is, if you already understood the one part of it you did give wasn’t appropriate by itself?
While you’re at it, how about the husband? Do you have any advice for him?
Fucking advice-giving: how does it work?
Ha! TonyJ, as much as I loved Xena, I knew this was not a realistic path to follow.
If the cash stops rolling in, the management team will run old Pat into a home for the utterly bewildered quicker than you can say “utterly bewildered”. But the cash keeps on coming so they let the silly old bugger say whatever he likes.
Ugh. This sentence really sticks out at me. I don’t know what phrase would best describe it, but I detect a subtext of resentment a bigot or other unsavory character has when society deems something he took for granted to now be unacceptable. That subtext is painted over with uncertainty (“I don’t think”) and an insincere inclusion of himself in “we.”
My interpretation of his hidden intention: “Dagnabbit, in the good old days, we could beat our wives, but all this goodie-two-shoes ‘violence is bad’ newfangled civilized morality won’t let us do the things that make us proud barbarians! How are we supposed to forcibly impose our will on the weak, now?”
I’ve certainly heard similarly slimy sentiments from racists horrified that they can’t discriminate against minorities and fundamentalists horrified they can’t go on a bloody crusade against the infidels/heretics/unbelievers.
—
And for the obvious: All domestic abuse is bad, and the various types have a lot of common root causes and cultural reinforcement worth discussing. It’s not a zero sum game where attention paid to one type inherently means a loss of attention for the other types.
Jasper,
Let’s say you’re driving along and you’re T-boned by a drunk driver and you suffer a severe brain injury. Do you think it would be at all constructive if while talking to your loved ones I said “Well, we all agree that drunk driving is bad… but Jasper should have done a little defensive driving. And what kind of car was he driving, did he get the in-seat air bags? Was it a big SUV or a compact, because drivers are safer in certain types of cars than others. No, of course I’m not blaming Jasper, why are you getting so fucking emotional about it? I’m just being logical and pointing out that if Jasper had been wearing a helmet and neck guard thingy like the NASCAR folks use, and maybe picked a better time to be out driving, none of this would have happened. We all agree that the drunk driver was at fault of course… but did Jasper really have the best insurance, I see you’re having trouble coming up with the deductible…OW! Why are you hitting me? I’m just being coldly, dispassionately rational about Jasper while he’s in a coma!”
One of the many things that annoy me about Pat Robertson is that he seems perpetually self-amused, like he’s some Oscar Wilde-like wit and his every pronouncement a bon mot that will end up in future editions of Bartlett’s.
Not surprising that Jasper thinks you can’t “revise” a human – he certainly can’t seem to manage revising an opinion.
Caine! Stop telling me what to think of Jasper!
*snort*
Janine, you know I’m not capable of doing that, what with the emotionz and fluffy pink lady brainz!
Ms. Daisy Cutter, Vile Human Being
I didn’t say I entirely agreed with it. A few posts down you’ll find why I thought it was objective.
Also, As long as we’re linking to my comments…
You don’t think that has risks too? Also, by the time the abuser has undergone “legal penalties”, the relationship may as well be over, with ramifications, and then the problems really begin.
Though, it’s hard to say how any particular situation would work out.
Janine: Fucking Dyke Of Rage Mountain
Yes – the rest was a fabrication of your own mind. I’ve now corrected you, and others, on your error, several times. Care to apologize?
I’ve already granted that I’m not the best at communication. I corrected you, and others, but you weren’t satisfied with that. Between being irritated with my “smugness”, and fabricating things to be upset about, this hasn’t been a very productive conversation.
You seem to be committed to trying to find something wrong with what I’ve said, no matter how much the truth has to be stretched.
You, and others, have been categorically wrong about virtually everything you’ve accused me of, but somehow I’m in the wrong here.
People have been swearing at me for various things, including the comment that started this conversation. So yes, it’s been emotional.
You have not corrected me.
Blow it out your ass.
Then you quit cranking it up. Look in the mirror.
Nope, you bloviated, thinking you were correcting. NO EVIDENCE WAS INVOLVED, and your OPINION isn’t evidence. Ergo, no correction was made. Those correcting you supplied evidence. So get off your smug high horse and supply some much needed humility to your posts.
consciousness razor
How is it inappropriate by itself? So far, most people agree that getting away from the abuser is probably a good course of action. That’s the goal, even if it’s a difficult one.
It would probably be to seek counselling, deconvert, and pack his bags – in short.
Improbable Joe
I don’t find your analogy particularly accurate. It would be more like this:
Someone is in a car accident and the car is on fire, with the person trapped inside. My advice is for the person to get out of the car (which, granted, seems obvious enough). Then, all a sudden, a pack of commenters starts pointing to me, in rather emotional terms, that it may not be as simple as that, and that I’m a smug douchebag for suggesting it – and what if the person’s leg is pinned, etc?
The fact that the person’s leg is pinned doesn’t negate the fact that the person should exit the car.
The objection appears to be that I didn’t give enough detail to my to-the-point advice, with an assortment of other words they decided to put into my mouth.
Caine, Fleur du mal
I didn’t say can’t. I said that it doesn’t typically work. It’s really hard to get people to change personality, especially if they’re prone to aggression/violence.
Are you advocating that the victim sticks with the abuser? Or is this just a useless point to take another jab at me because of your erroneous projections?
Yes. This.
Women in abusive relationships are at the greatest risk of being severely beaten or murdered when they try to leave their abusers. There are long lists of women who were murdered by intimate partners within days of taking out restraining orders or filing for divorce.
In the case of Maria Teresa Macias, she had tried everything available to try to escape her abusive husband. She got restraining orders, went to counseling, cooperated with investigators, and was saving up to move away. In the process she lost custody of her children – CPS took them away because she couldn’t keep her violent husband away. CPS questioned why the police weren’t enforcing the protective order, but the inquiry went nowhere.
Despite his repeated harassment and violations of her protective order, her husband continued to receive nothing but verbal warnings, assuming the police bothered to show up at all. In one 911 dispatch tape, a deputy can be heard saying, “I can’t keep filing a report every time she calls.” The police eventually told Teresa to stop calling them to report stalking or harassment, and asked her to instead keep notes and then submit a periodic written report.
She was eventually shot in the head by her husband just days before she was to move out of the area.
Women stay in abusive relationships for many reasons, but a big one is that we as a society have done a spectacularly shitty job of protecting the women who do try to leave.
Pat Robertson, still bringing the fucking evil shit, after all these years. I do not hate Robertson. I despise him. Him and everything he stands for.
Still not presenting evidence Jasper…More bloviating.
Does anyone have statistics on abuse against men? Knees/punches to the groin, slapping/hitting the face, punches to the body, objects thrown, stabbings with pens/utensils/knives, kicks to the entire body, twisting of fingers/ears, hair pulling, etc? All of this is very common abuse against men but I think almost no men report it.
I think Jasper really does not understand the extreme difficulty most – or at least many – abused women face. They have connections in the community, a job most likely, often limited financial resources and their husbands have this idea that she is HIS. Thus you get stalking, extreme stress, and often no real way to actually leave. Have we not all read about the husband who shoots his estranged wife at the super market as she walks out or something similar? Showing up at her workplace and creating problems which she is blamed for which can jeopardize her financial status?
As for Pat – the key word there is ‘authority’. She does not recognize the husband’s authority over her. What Pat really wants to say is “knock some sense into the stupid bitch and show her who’s boss.” Still dimly aware that he cannot say that – notice how long it takes him to frame his response – he advocates going to Saudi Arabia where it IS o.k. to set wimmen straight. He likes the idea so much, he recommends it twice.
And fingernail scratching.
Fuck off, MRA troll.
Janine: Fucking Dyke Of Rage Mountain
Would you like me to link a few comments where I corrected you on something you said in error?
Instead of fabricating a bunch of things you think I’m saying, that you somehow magically derived from two words – “divorce him” – you could, you know, ask what I meant, instead of putting words into my mouth.
Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls
I agree, no evidence was involved. Of course, that’s a problem for them, not me, since the points of contention have been about what I’ve been saying – or, more precisely, what they’ve been claiming I’ve been saying.
For instance, if they claim that I said something, and I point out that I didn’t say that. That’s a correction. Up until this point, all they can manage to do is swear at me when I correctly point out that they are in error, and ask for my mythical posts where I’ve said something that I haven’t.
Let’s take for example the “Easy” being tacked onto the “Divorce him”. I never said that. They made that up. This is pretty easy to point out. They’ve fabricated in their minds this version of me who says things like that, and start assuming that I’m doing that now, instead of listening to what I’m saying.
I’ve yet to actually be wrong about anything here. Those bits that they think I’ve been wrong about I’ve actually agreed with them, or it was something they made up.
Do your own leg work, but it is utterly irrelevant when talking about abuse against women. Only MRA fuckwits think otherwise, and they aren’t very smart, are evidenceless, and have attitude problems, which make them unwelcome. Think about that before your next post.
Ever heard of google?
Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls
Do you even understand the concept of burden of proof? I keep asking them to substantiate their accusations, and I get swears in return.
eidolon
Probably not. Exiting the abusive relationship should still be the goal, should it not?
NOPE, more bloviating. What you say and what you think you mean are two different things. And you aren’t nowhere near a good enough writer to claim that level of clarity. Care to evidence your claims? Or do you know that some ambiguity is involved?
Sorry Jasper, the burden of proof is on you to prove your claims that you are misunderstood. Which you don’t do, you just bloviate around it.
Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls
Here’s your error. I’m correcting them on what I mean, not what I said. Since only I have access to my mind, only I can correct that.
I’m fine with people misunderstanding what I said. But apparently, with these people, correcting them, ensuring they understand my meaning, is bad.
Of course some ambiguity is involved. But when you’ve added a third word “easy” to “divorce him”, and I didn’t say “easy”, then clearly some fabrication has occurred.
@ Jasper of Maine (I feel safe and welcome at FTB);
You seem to feel that people here are wilfully misrepresenting your position, but I would like to amplify Janine: Fucking Dyke Of Rage Mountain’s point @ 121;
Janine is right on the money here – your comment, in its original wording, does seem callous and dismissive.
@ 19, you wrote;
You did not qualify this position. You did not acknowledge the great difficulty and personal danger inherent in simply leaving an abuser who views their victim as chattel rather than a person. You made a comment that, whether intentionally or not, came across as dismissive of the suffering of the victims of domestic violence.
When called out on this, you claimed that this has been blown out of proportion by other commenters, but later in the thread you compound the impression that you are less than sympathetic to the plight of those who suffer such abuse by writing @ 52;
Accusations that advocates for social justice for marginalised groups (and in particular women) are being unduly ’emotional’ is a longstanding silencing tactic of MRAs and other misogynists – it relies on the idea that an utterly dispassionate spock-like approach to the topic is automatically superior to someone who shows emotion, while failing to recognise that it is easy to be dispassionate when the issues under discussion don’t directly effect you, which is in itself an expression of privilege.
As an example of what I am talking about, I will quote below an excerpt from a piece on Bitch Ph.D that Carlie linked to in the August 2012 Molly: Alethea H. “Crocoduck” Dundee thread;
Simply replace the word ‘civil’ with ‘dispassionate’ here, and you will see the relevance. As this applies to discussions about abortion, it applies equally to other discussions dealing with social issues that effect women disproportionately more than men, such as domestic violence. Holding up a standard of a dispassionate, vulcan-esque mien as the proper way to engage with the issues makes you seem as if you are trading on your male privilege of not being directly effected by the issue of domestic violence as a means of painting the women who are as screeching, irrational hellions.
Furthermore, your analogy to the role of a judge @ 72;
Which you expanded upon @ 96 is also severely flawed, because judges are required to maintain emotional distance form the cases under their purview as a component of the proper function of a court of law; a very specific environment with a very specific task to perform, that is in no way comparable to public discussion or activism. Remaining dispassionate about an emotive topic does not mean that your argument is automatically superior – it usually simply means that you enjoy a level of privilege that means that you can afford to treat the topic as a matter of idle intellectual interest; just another point to be made or rebutted in debate.
If you still feel that you are being unfairly targeted on this thread, I invite you to look again at what you have posted, and realise that (whatever your intent may have been, remembering that intent is not magic) the practical effect of your words have been to diminish and dismiss the experiences of women going through abusive relationships, and that the anger you have encountered is in response to the words you have actually written, and any anger directed at you as a person is because we have no other basis on which to judge you – none of us are privy to your innermost intentions.
This is not about bashing you ‘just because’ – this is about calling you to account for repeating arguments that are used to silence women and minimise the importance of domestic violence every time the issue is raised. If you were not trying to silence women in this fashion, and you were simply caught in the crossfire without understanding why the statements you have made are incendiary, then you would be well served by spending less time being defensive, and more time researching the issues and finding out why people are finding your words so problematic.
Jasper, you said something useless. True maybe, in the “to end war people just have to stop fighting” sense. But still useless, which as been perceived as condescending. Or maybe you thought anyone here or any abused woman never thought of such a complex concept, in which case you probably should not participate in the discussion. Again, you basically said that women would stop violence toward them if they removed themselves from violent situations and acted as if it was not A) stupid and B) easily understandable as victim blaming.
And your reaction to valid criticisms is to ask, to a woman on the topic of violence toward women, not to be so emotional! Are you sincerely wondering about the backlash? Was the next step asking if she was on her period to be so bitchy? It is not just poor communication skill at that point.
From that, you seem to think that a few vague justifications about your first comments, a few misrepresentations of your critics, a request for an apology (WTF?), and then doubling down on the “emotional” crap will create a “productive conversation”?
“Productive conversation” from the guy who said, and I quote the entirety of the advice: “Divorce him.”
I sincerely doubt that the conversation is gonna end well for you.
How is this relevant? The post is about the systematic abuse of women as backed by holy scripture, and a well-known religious figure who misses the old days when a man could force a woman to submit to his will by smacking her around with impunity.
Do you know of any major religions claiming that God wants men to submit to women, under threat of violence? No? Then you’re off topic, and you need to get off the feckin’ stage. This isn’t about violence in general–it’s about a specific, scripture-approved form of it, and a man who seems to approve of it while simultaneously claiming moral authority.
There’s been an awful lot of digging here lately.
Jasper, when you find Ben, tell him I said hi.
No, they have taken your claim, did a logic exapansion, but you want to retract it. Why can’t you acknowledge you can be wrong? And until you can acknowledge you can be wrong, you can’t be right.
You already skimmed Janine’s link and “agree” with others here. You totally get it already. You’ve been listening very carefully, that much is obvious. You know it’s difficult. So you tell me.
Jasper, do you not understand the importance of context? The advice you gave:
is, as you say, actually accurate and good advice. However, the context you gave to it, by simply putting it by itself, makes it appear, at least, that you have little or no idea how difficult following that advice actually is. This is compounded when you give inaccurate analogies like this:
The actual situation is as if it can be plainly seen that the leg of the person in the car definitely IS pinned, the doors are locked with the keys having fallen out the ignition and gone missing somewhere in the interior, the glass in the windows is, for some reason, toughened to near unbreakable levels, plus the person doesn’t actually want to get out the car because their kids are in the back – and all you’re doing is standing there, inanely saying they should get out the car.
Ms. Daisy Cutter, Vile Human Being
Is this for me? Because if it is, it’s in error as well.
Did you catch the part where I support women’s rights, A+, etc?
Or would this be in reference to my stating that the judicial system needs evidence before convicting people? Because it would be staggeringly irrational to disagree with that.
But if this comment wasn’t for me, then please disregard.
Well, Gregory Greenwood made the same point before me and more eloquentely. Should have refreshed, sorry.
Kassad:
Hah! He’d be out of luck, I haven’t had a period in 18 years. I do, however, still have a uterus, so you know, I’m all hysterical and stuff.
I’m pretty sure the “Fuck Off” is for atcggcta @138.
You are not an MRA troll. You agree, like you said. You just don’t want to admit that you communicated really badly and lazily then made it worse by digging.
LOL oh yeah *what* an ally. All you Keerrr-azzyhyserterical harpies just calm down. he’s got it all figured out for you. This “ally” will decide for you when you’re being keeeerrrrraaazzy emotional. You know, cuz bad words means bitches be keeerrraazzzzzyyyyy.
Warning: completely irrelevant & off-topic to follow: Xena didn’t have super powers. She was just. that. awesome. at kicking ass.
kassad @ 157;
Not at all – you said what I wanted to say in a far more succinct and cogent manner.
Is it against Pharyngula policy to wish that Pat Robbinfuck would just die? As in physically die to death, so that he would no longer be able to say things or do things anymore?
Jasper –
While leaving the relationship is a goal, the fact remains it is damn hard and very dangerous. So, at least from my PoV it becomes, how can this be changed?
The very first step needs to be a realization that women are not property and husbands do not have authority over their wives. And therein lies the problem. A significant percentage of the good Christians do not feel that is wrong. Further, neither do a fair number of manly men, regardless of religious affiliation. After all, abuse is not just something found among the religious or the MRA …remember the movie “Sleeping With the Enemy”?
Absent a way to change the mindset – at least in the short term – then we have an obligation to do whatever is possible to make it at least feasible for women to actually leave. And how would Jasper do that?
People playing dispassionate are typically those who can’t win the argument, because they are the most evidenceless folks around. They pretend that being calm wins, rather than what they say, and what they back that up with. They lose consistently around here to evidence and passion.
TRIGGER WARNING!
Exhibit “A”, Fred Phelps of the Westborough Baptist Church, a study in domestic violence Stockholm Syndrome:
http://www.blank.org/addict/orig.addict.html
Leaving is not at all “easy”…
Oh my dog, fingernail scratching. You poor, poor men.
Somebody call the whaaaaaaambulance.
That certainly puts into perspective that case in the news about a young woman who was burned on 80% of her body by acid thrown on her by the boyfriend she tried to leave.
We fluffy pink brained wimmins should stop complaining about our puny wimmin problems to kiss the poor dudes’ booboos.
Gregory Greenwood
“Seem” being the operative word. As I’ve said, I’m find with being misunderstood, but after several rounds of correcting them about my meaning, one would think we’d be at an understanding. Instead, I’ve got round after round of further misrepresentations.
That’s true. When they’re nitpicking anything I say, trying to find anything to be upset about, sure. If a commenter is being emotional, and I ask this person to be less emotional, any connection to abused victims is erroneous.
Some people are justified in being emotional, others are not. I do not believe the emotional outbursts from those here, about things I haven’t said, are not justified.
So that’s where they’re getting this idea. It’s strange how I can agree with them on all points, be a feminist, etc, but because I am not thrilled at emotional outbursts, that must mean I’m an MRA.
It’s an association fallacy.
I can see that. That’s not my intention, but rather to correct the irrationality of those who are lying about what I’m saying.
If someone is wrong about something, they’re wrong, whether emotion is involved or not.
Granted.
Granted too! I’ve also granted several times that I’m practically “omnipriviledged”.
That’s why I’ve been correcting them – so we can clear this up. It’s unfair in that they’re accusing me of things I haven’t said and/or thought. I understand it’s an emotionally charged topic, which is I haven’t been venomous (It’d be like pissing Spock off).
I can understand that.
consciousness razor
I don’t think it is. The article didn’t contradict what I said.
I agree.
That’s true – the circumstances of each situation is different. The goal is still the same – exit the car. Though I’m not there. I’m on on the other end of the CB barking obvious orders.
—-
Well, I’ll draw the line here. I’ll take Gregory Greenwood words and consider things.
So do all the concern trolls. You sound like a concern troll, type one. Pretend to be a supporter, but not quite there because of concerns, like vocal women correcting you.
Kassad:
No, no, it couldn’t be, you see everything everywhere is all about Jasper. Oh my yes.
Well, be fair now: sometimes they also get punched in the goolies.
Whaddaya mean you aren’t prepared to spend 99.9% of the rest of your life loudly denouncing punching men in the goolies, ya misandrist harpy?
There’s how it seems to you, and how it seems to everyone else. Which do you think matters to everyone else?
atcggcta:
1- This thread is about violence against women.
2- Try doing a Google search. I’m sure you can find the answers on your own, instead of causing thread drift.
Fingernail scratching is not to be laughed off. Why, I scratched a fingernail just the other day and it was pretty uncomfortable.
Gregory Greenwood
we should make a crime-fighting duo: “Succint & Eloquent against the Masters of Evil”. That would be awesome.
Caine
Ah yes. The Magical Organ of Confusion! Run from its reason-destroying brain-waves!
BTW, does the uterus really uses brain-waves? Or is it an airborne chemical agent, a sort of pheromone of fluffy-brain?
Maybe we can create a frequency to cancel its deleterious effects on Mankind! Yes.. I see it now… the struggle shall continue. The Source of All Woes (U.T.E.R.U.S) will be opposed!
I really want to see someone take a kick to the entire body now.
I’m on on the other end of the CB barking obvious orders.
And you’re blocking up the channel so that the fire truck can’t get the order to go to the site of the accident and the noise you’re making is distracting the people in the car so they can’t concentrate on how to get the door open so at least the kids can get out. A person in an abusive relationship who can get out does so. If they haven’t, there’s a good chance that something is keeping them from doing so and simply saying “divorce him (or her)” is not helping. Divorce him? Great. Tell me how to do so without getting killed or losing my kids.
Jasper of Maine:
Do you have anything to add to this? You ‘solution’ sounds incredibly simple. In fact, I wonder if any woman has ever thought about this before. Even more, I wonder if it’s even as easy as you make it sound.
If ‘divorce him’ is not easy (it isn’t) and is rather complicated (it is; even assuming it’s even a practical choice for the woman), then presenting it in the form of a simple solution (and a condescending one at that; yes, it’s condescending to a woman) fails to acknowledge the reality and complexities of what many women-sadly-have to deal with.
It dismisses them.
Comparing domestic violence to rape of men doesn’t make sense. We can do better than compare 1 in 4 apples to 1 in 33 oranges.
Jasper, you started with a statement that perhaps you thought was benign, but that statement was a TRIGGER, and you were called out on it. (How many women in abusive relationships have tried HARD to leave them, and failed? And suffered worse for the effort? How many of the women replying to you right do you think MAY HAVE ACTUALLY LIVED THROUGH IT?)
Perhaps you intended no such thing, but that doesn’t change that it is what happened.
Maybe you feel yourself misunderstood. Perhaps you find it unfair to be misunderstood. But you’ve dug in now and your hole keeps getting deeper. Stop and think a bit. Step back and take a look at where you are finding yourself. Is THIS the battle you want to fight? Even if you win it in the end. At what cost such a victory?
A simple “I’m sorry, I didn’t intend to sound so insensitive, that was not what I meant.” at the start would have diffused everything.
It may not still be too late.
Remember Pyrrhus.
kassad @ 174;
That has the makings of a great police procedural – afterall, if the X-Files can work with “Pseudo-Sceptical Sorta-Sciency Person & Obsessive Abduction Freak against the Sinister Government Conspiracy”, and the various versions of CSI do just fine with “Magical Super-Advanced Crime Fighting Tech and Flashy Camera Angles against Assorted Not Very Smart Crooks”, then we surely have a shot…
;-P
Dianne:
Well, what is with those women, wanting to continue breathing and caring about their kids? Sheesh, no satisfying them.
As if the danger of being murdered or losing your children wasn’t enough, there’s also the dire financial situation. I’ve known a number of women who have managed to leave and get into a shelter and find themselves in a hole so deep money-wise, they have little hope of digging out.
Amphiox
It’s an interesting minefield I seem to have ran through. I was wondering where all the bizarre accusations were coming from.
I’m notoriously stubborn if I think I’m right.
Their straw men of me (and I’ve seen several since my last post) are probably solidified at this point.
The thing is, I’m not sorry about defending myself about misrepresentation and straw men and lies. The fact these triggers exist doesn’t make the incorrect accusations correct.
Caine, I almost added a sarcastic comment about finances, something like “And if I can get out and still have a place to live besides the nearest cardboard box-free bonus!” but didn’t for some reason. In general, even without the threat of abuse, women and children’s standard of living goes down after a divorce, men’s goes up. Gee, isn’t it simple to “just leave” when leaving means sleeping on a park bench tonight and for the indefinite future?
Bad analogy.
Fire is not a person. Fire has no responsibility. Abusive husbands do. That’s the whole point of the drunk driver analogy, and it sailed two miles over your head.
So you’re saying the fact I was triggered by your statement and immediately made defensive since everyone just shrugs and says “Just leave him!”. Gee, why didn’t I think of that? Apparently, you are assuming I’m stupid. A proper analogy for this situation is the douchecakes that wake into a thread about rape and tell the victims “Just press charges! He should be in jail!”
Yeah, so fucking helpful. I’m so convinced that you care.
Trigger warnings were created and used for a reason. You also don’t double down and accuse the triggered victim that they are wrong and incorrect for being triggered. You ass.
There’s no way my “accusation” of being triggered by your callous throwaway line was incorrect, since triggers are determined by the victim.
Dianne:
Oh yes, it’s just grand. On top of that, if you’re in the States, and you attempt to get any sort of assistance, why, you get all kinds of people looking down on you, being a slutty welfare queen just leeching money off all those hard working rich peoples and how dare you buy something that isn’t absolutely essential!
Dianne:
Oh and also, if we’re going to live on Jasper’s Planet of Privilege, everyone knows all men pay adequate child support, on time, every time, even the abusive fuckbagges. Right?
So was Pyrrhus.
Are you sure it is a strawman of this kind
http://inalienablerights.files.wordpress.com/2009/06/strawman21.jpg
and not this kind?
http://kikuko-nagoya.com/picture01/mino-kasa30.JPG
Jasper:
You don’t get to set the emotional tone here, cupcake. You’re not in the demographic that is most affected by this issue. If it makes you feel all icky that the gurlz are getting emotional over a subject to which we’re too damn close, you’re free to leave and find a dudelier thread to comment in.
Too bad.
It’s unfair that you came along and sucked up all the oxygen in the thread instead of apologizing for being a jackass who doesn’t know how to apologize when he steps on other people’s toes.
Oh, and no, the MRA troll comment was for the other asshole in the thread.
My family’s church in MI was like that when I was growing up. I’m sure nothing has changed since I left.
Intent isn’t magic. Why don’t you just apologize and try not to salvage your initial post?
Ms. Daisy Cutter, Vile Human Being
Of course not. But if it’s done so erroneously, expect to be corrected on it.
Good thing that’s not what I’m thinking. I don’t see erroneous emotional outbursts as being productive, no matter who is doing it.
I would think the question of intent would matter. Apparently not to these folk. What really matters is word choice, apparently.
As soon as people stop being wrong, and acknowledge that they were wrong, the conversation would be over. Instead, they, still even now, are continuing to fabricate things to be upset about that I supposedly said/think.
But apparently lying doesn’t matter.
Here’s another example of a hallucination coming from the depths of Caine’s mind:
Caine, Fleur du mal
If you had actually asked, instead of putting words in my mouth, I would have told you that I think there’s massive problem with men paying child support, etc.
But no, you didn’t do that. You just assumed based on this mischaracterization of me that you have festering in your mind.
JAL – Nothing has changed at my old church either. It can’t ever change. The holy babble is infallible.
So, you’re not just an oblivious idiot, you’re proud of being an oblivious idiot.
vaiyt
The purpose of communication is intent, even if it’s not done successfully so. Most people here have agreed that my original point is correct. They’re upset that I didn’t supply enough detail.
Everything after that is defending myself from wave after wave of lies.
You mean, like when you told me that I took the ball and ran with Caine’s representation of you.
@Jasper 72 (primarily)
As for judges and dispassion:
Jasper, you are badly wrong. If judges don’t care, they are bad judges. Judges are supposed to be passionate. At the trial level they are expected to be passionate for the truth and the law and for justice, at the appellate level for the law and justice, but finding fact is rarely anymore an issue.
But you are absolutely supposed to be passionate. You are merely to make sure that your passions do not cause you to perform judicial acts that are contrary to law.
In the same way that we might passionately care about eroding the respect given to people who advocate treating women as inherently subservient chattel… yet we are expected to ensure that our passion doesn’t lead us to private acts that are contrary to law, like blowing up TBN. That would be bad. Being passionate about this stuff? Not bad at all.
If you can’t figure the difference between being passionate and meeting an obligation, you’re in sad shape.
Happiestsadist way back @ 65
This is depressingly true. I have a friend who’s been couch-surfing as much as she can for the past 2 weeks because there’s no available space at any shelter in her entire state. Incidentally, that state is Maine, in case it’s at all relevant.
atcggcta;
If you’re going to troll at least put some effort into it. That’s the saddest MRA attempt I’ve seen in a long time.
Jasper:
I disagree.
I think the purpose of communication is to convey an idea(s), usually from one individual(s) to another. To do so effectively, one should be as clear as possible about the idea they are trying to explain.
You did communicate.
You did not communicate clearly.
The idea you communicated had the effect (for me) of conveying a simple, condescending solution to a complex problem.
No. 200 comment in the thread and you’re there? Seriously? I’m ready to accept that you really thought that your “advice” was worth mentionning. I’m ready to accept that you had no idea that calling woman emotional is one of the oldest tropes of misoginy and a argument systematically used to dismissed feminist concern for more than 100 years. I’m ready to accept that you think that your vague precisions suddenly made your comment a good advice. I’m even ready to concede that some critics may have jummp the gun on some accusations.
But when you just said that EVERYBODY here is just nickpicking on your wording and that is the only problem, it is impossible to see anything but dishonesty. 200 comments, more than a dozen people explaning to you what was wrong, on different tones and using different examples.
You are on a self-righteous martyr trip, and that ultimately all there is to all yours posts on this thread.
Dude, what thread are you reading? Not one person here has agreed with your original point. They have all quite rightly taken you to task for spouting tripe.
It is abundantly clear that you don’t have a single fucking clue about the needs of women who are trapped in abusive relationships, so why don’t you take your stupid point and shove it down your throat?
You can then shut the fuck-up, accept that you are WRONG, and possibly learn something rather than blathering on and on about how poor idiot you is so fucking misunderstood.
Tethys, the only reason why you said that is because you are jumping off from what Caine, Amphiox, Ms. Daisy Cutter, Illuminata, Nerd, Gregory Greenwood, vaiyt, JAL, dianne, kassad, eidolon and others have said about Jasper From Maine.
Jasper,
Do you have anything to contribute? Anything at all?
Because your initial foray was about as insightful as a fortune cookie, and less necessary. And now you’re just behaving like a common shit-stirring troll, leading me to suspect you knew exactly what kind of reaction you were going to get and are now enjoying the results. It’s tiresome.
And in case you’re just clueless and not, as I suspect, a malicious piece of shit, yes, expressing such an obvious and conventional piece of “advice” without further commentary strongly implies that the matter is a simple one in your mind and that no further discussion is necessary. Your asides about others’ emotionality serve only to solifify the implication. Whatever the reason, my advice to you is that you’re behaving like an ass and you should stop it.
Tony •King of the Hellmouth•
It’s strange how you disagree with me, and then go ahead and agree with me.
I get that people interpret it that way. I’ve since clarified, as usually happens in normal conversations.
kassad
And yet, I’ve never said that. I’ve said that I thought it was obvious. I know it may be difficult to accpept, but not all my comments are that well thought out, and some are even quite inane.
Oddly enough, my non-sexism is what brought that about. I don’t care what gender is being emotional. If you’re being emotional, you’re being emotional.
Weirdly, most people agree that it’s good advice, actually. It’s either that, or try to change the person, which there’s less disagreement about.
FYI, this is what I said:
That’s true. When they’re nitpicking anything I say, trying to find anything to be upset about, sure. If a commenter is being emotional, and I ask this person to be less emotional, any connection to abused victims is erroneous.
You’re starting in on the fabrication too. Is it not plain English above? How did talking about a set of people – addressing those who are chastising me – turn into “everybody”? Also, I’ve actually talked about “other problems” on multiple occasions, but I wouldn’t blame you if you didn’t read the whole thread.
Yep, starting right into the making stuff up to get upset about.
It’s difficult to be wrong when I’ve agreed with them on virtually every point, outside of lying about what I’ve said.
Ad hominem.
The lies are on your part. You were unclear and condescending, and when called on it, doubled down instead of doing the honest and honorable thing, showing a lack of integrity on your part. A simple “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean that as a it sounded with explanations of what you really meant” would have sufficed then. Now, you need to stop tripling and quadrupling down, as your losses are to great. Take a break.
Janine:
Yeah. Caine’s representation my rosy red ass. Jasper’s douchiness is all over to read, in his very own words, between this thread, Jen’s leaving thread, his crap over at aronra’s, etc.
Jasper:
No, you fuckbagge. People have told you, repeatedly, why they find you and what you said problematic. You waltz into a thread with the moronic , acting the way every privileged douche on the planet does, like women are all 3 years old and can’t possibly think for themselves, ’cause duuh, of course a woman wouldn’t ever think of that on their own.
Your “advice” was pompous and pointless, completely ignoring the dynamics involved, which are much more complex than “oh, let me toddle over to the divorce court and take care of this pesky problem, then all will be simply wonderful!” Then you proceeded to dig that hole so furiously you should have dropped out the other side of the planet by now.
Jasper – you know what the absolute biggest proof is, against your claim to true ~ally~ status?
Woman after woman after woman, as well as some posters not male-identified, told you that your “Get a divorce” was glib, patronising, and triggering.
You dug, you bloviated, you railed about unfair treatment and misreading your words.
Gregory Greenwood says the same things, makes the same arguments, and what’s your response? You’ll take it under consideration.
This is why ~allies~ are looked on with suspicion, because they believe that mouthing words of support entitles them to hector and pontificate on the nature of the oppression, and dribble out “advice” like “Divorce him”, or “Always take a cab home”.
kemist –
A twenty year old woman , here in the UK, was stabbed 39 times by her boyfriend. This was on the second of January. On New Year’s Eve he’d sent her a text saying that his resolution was to “never hurt [her]” again.
She died, and left behind a three week old daughter. She just wanted to make it work, she loved him.
Tethys
I’m reading a thread with a bunch of people having hallucinations, apparently.
Do you want a list of all comments that agreed that leaving the abuser is a proper action?
I’m sorry you think that, though it’s not relevant to my original point. There’s a small set of possibilities one can take when one is in an abuse relationship. Exiting the relationship is one possibility. Do you agree?
Most of the discussion after that was pointing out that I didn’t express the difficulty level – which I agreed I hadn’t stated.
That’s the thing – I haven’t been wrong. What you’re considering “wrong” are things that I fully agreed with that they assumed I didn’t understand.
I have learned something. I learned that one can inadvertently stumble into a minefield where all of a sudden everyone is having hallucinations about one’s position and can’t stop lying about it.
Nope, wrong again (trying for a record). A straight insult isn’t an ad hominem. That would be if someone said they can’t believe you due to your doubling and tripling down, ergo reject something you say on another topic. You can’t win, so take a break.
xkcd really does have a strip for every occasion…
Then you have learned nothing, as the lies, evasions, and lack of apologies come from you, not us. Until you stop lying to yourself, you can’t stop lying to us. You made a mistake. A responsible adult admits mistakes. Why can’t you?
And after the abusive husband beats/shoots her to death for trying to leave him, then what?
Jasper.
Drop it.
Just fucking drop it.
You are not doing yourself any favors by dropping shit like this.
So, what is it, are we all on drugs or are we just too emotional?
Fuck it.
Just drop it.
Pat R,’s got to the essence of organized religion: identify the weak and provide an excuse to abuse them, physically, emotional, mentally, economically.
And get rich by doing so.
I’ll be forgiving Pat once he finally dies. Or maybe he IS dead now, and I won’t ever have the chance, ‘cos I can’t manage it now.
Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls
You apparently need to learn the concept of honesty too.
Again, it’s fine if they misunderstood me the first time. Once I corrected them, that should have been the end of it, but instead decided to “double down” on the misrepresentations, after being repeatedly corrected on my meaning. That’s lying.
People exploded in my face for what would otherwise be a rather innocuous statement, with no ill intentions, and I’m supposed to apologize?
Caine, Fleur du mal
Yes, and assuming they know how to read, it’ll be patently obvious.
So again – tone. Got it.
I agree, it is much more complicated than that. If you’d take a break from putting words in my mouth for a moment, you’d realize I concur.
Funny, people who were not part of the argument are calling you out Jasper. I guess your truthiness is just not that obvious.
Oh gods, poor widdle Jasper. Who is it who is being all emotional here? Looks like it’s you, Jasper. Along with being incredibly melodramatic.
You were wrong. Deal with it.
Jasper, would you comment on a thread about rape and tell the victim(s) “Just press charges!”?
I’m betting so, since you are doing similar shit here. I’m also guessing you don’t see what’s wrong with that either.
*sigh*
Fuck it.
Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls
Please learn how to apply the fallacy. He dismissed everything I’ve said due to an irrelevant point.
Here’s his quote: You are on a self-righteous martyr trip, and that ultimately all there is to all yours posts on this thread.
Because the only mistake I’ve made so far is to trip a mine in the minefield, and then have the audacity to defend myself against constant misrepresentations.
Janine: Fucking Dyke Of Rage Mountain
I’m not sure. I’m not sure where all these assertions about things I’ve said/think have come from that don’t correlate to reality at all. Hallucination is one possibility.
I can grant that my original comment could have used more tact, but I’m not one for walking on eggshells.
Jasper
Yes, please provide proof (from this thread) that “Most of the posters here agree with your original point”.
A simple count will do nicely thx!
Caine, Fleur du mal
Wrong about what? All the things I agreed with you about?
Nerd of Redhead:
I was gonna say.
No Light:
I did not even notice that. Jasper is certainly starting to paint a delightful picture.
Jasper:
Ha yes. The “I don’t see colors” defense. To be honest, it is the boldest “I don’t see gender” I’ve seen. Well played sir.
So your default assumption for Caine criticisms were that she was too emotional because you’re so “non-sexist”. I guess that your default assumption for the next jobless african-american you’ll see will be that he is too lazy because you’re so “non-racist”.
If you’re going to troll at least put some effort into it. That’s the saddest MRA attempt I’ve seen in a long time.
Stella, I had to look up your acronym, I thought maybe the R stood for Republican, and then I was going to REALLY be offended. But I see you are just bullying me when all I did was ask a question. Which should have been more of a statement. Forget Google……there is no real data on domestic violence against men. Men don’t report it. And women who abuse men do so knowing their actions will not be punished, which makes the size and shape of the object they throw at you or the placement of their kick to your knee that much more brutal. This thread is not about Pat Robertson, because certainly we don’t want to waste much time thinking about that moron. I’m just saying that we need to address all forms of domestic abuse….against women, children, and men.
Q.E.D.@ 58–
Reminds me of an incident with my ex-husband many years ago mow. Our daughter was 9 or so, and we were watching “Practical Magic.” My ex had the gall, after exposing our kids to the damned Bond films, to complain about the “message” displayed by the two witch-sisters played by Kidman and Bullock in poisoning the lunatic boyfriend who was kidnapping / threatening / torturing them. He thought it wasn’t a good example for her to see.
I gave him the Look and told him I thought it’s a splendid example for her to see women who are being abused taking action to protect themselves and finding a way to save themselves from the abuse. The last thing I want her to learn is that she should lie back and take it if someone abuses her.
For once in his life,k he actually shut up.
A working definition of the JAQ off troll; atcggcta at #225.
Now quintupling down Jasper, why can’t you just leave? That would be smart. But then, you have shown you aren’t. Just idiotically stubborn and obtuse.
atcggcta:
Oh yes there is. You aren’t actually interested in it, because all you’re doing is trolling. I suggest you stop, else you might annoy a monitor enough to drop a line to PZ.
Kassad:
This is the one thing which is keeping me amused in this thread, Jasper’s idiotic assumption as to my emotional state. I’m working in between posting and not the least bit worked up. Jasper seems to think that using naughty wordses means a person is over-emotional. (I won’t use emotional, because everyone is emotional, that’s bloody useless as an attempted insult a/o handwave.)
Of course, Jasper doesn’t seem to be the brightest bulb around and I am committing the crime of posting while female.
Fixed that for you. You are the problem, and until you can admit you are wrong, you are WRONG.
atcggcta:
I have a few documents in french if you want. But no data on domestic violence against men (in the US I suppose)? I call bullshit. Just start by Wikipedia.
interesting exerpt: …consensus in the field is that women are as likely as men to strike their partner but that—as expected—women are more likely to be injured than men.
Do the rest of your homework. And by the way, your post still reeks of thread-jacking. The “bullying” part of your statement for example is just moronic. Avoid that.
The main issue here is that religion widely condone violence against women, and often command it. Find me a single instance of religion calling women to physically abuse their husbands and we’ll talk.
Tethys
Nope – too much of a grey area for numbers. The question wasn’t really whether the original point was correct or not, but rather it took into account the full complexities of the situation.
It’s quite possible that more people think the abuser should be repaired, instead of leaving the abuser, but I didn’t hear to much support on that.
That’s not even remotely what I said. I call people out for being emotional if they’re being emotional, regardless of their gender. To make this connection between my accusation of her being too emotional and her being female is a connection that occurred in the heads of others, as are most of the criticisms I’ve received.
I don’t care what gender this person is.
Joy! You’ve decided to hop on the lying bandwagon too! That didn’t take long.
Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls
Because people are still lying about me (see above). It’s an excellent example of an accusation that just comes out of nowhere.
Caine, Fleur du mal
It is very possible I misread your actions. Generally, though, people don’t start off swearing, unless they’re play-acting, or being emotional. So no, not an assumption.
Now who’s trolling? Yet another lie. Do you actually get these things from anywhere than your hallucinations?
You are the one who keeps bringing gender into it.
Everybody Else Is Wrong
Jasper:
Excuse me? Who the fuck are you to tell us what the “correct” tone to take on an issue that doesn’t affect you is? Eat Ebola-tainted shit and die.
One, “erroneous” isn’t your judgment call; two, “productive” isn’t your judgment call; three, eat Ebola-tainted shit and die.
You do this a lot to women in meatspace, don’t you? Eat Ebola-tainted shit and die.
It doesn’t matter what its “purpose” is. What matters is what is heard and understood. Otherwise advertising firms wouldn’t be in business. Also, eat Ebola-tainted shit and die.
“I don’t see
colorgender!” Oh, and by the way? Eat Ebola-tainted shit and die.Fixed it for you. BTW, in case I haven’t invited you in the last few minutes to eat Ebola-tainted shit and die, I’m inviting you now.
Jasper, give it up. Nobody is taking your word for anything other than lies and bullshit. You can’t win. You lost 20 posts ago. The first rule of holes is to stop digging when in over your head. Stop digging (POSTING).
Jasper, are you done giving shitty advice, or do have anything else to contribute to this thread besides calling us all liars?
Ms. Daisy Cutter, Vile Human Being
I don’t think I’ve been telling people what tone to take. I’ve remarked that some are overly emotional. Of course you’re going to address issues any way you feel is appropriate.
Alright, this is probably one of those communication errors again – sorry. I agree. I’m not sure how else I’d phase it, maybe “outbursts with errors”.
Do what? Argue with people? I argue with people who I think are wrong. A lot. Again, gender is not considered.
I agree – and after I clarified my statements, that should have been accomplished, even clumsily.
Frankly, I don’t understand this point that has been brought up a few times now. Weren’t we working towards an egalitarian society? I thought the point was to treat the two sexes equally.
You, and others, have invented this sexism straw man of me, and were upset about that, and when I pointed out that it’s in error, you get upset that I’m pointing out the error, and proceed to make more baseless fantasy accusations about me.
That notion I can understand. I won’t apologize for landmines I didn’t create, but I do apologist for propagating the problem.
Jasper,
If you’re saying something and everyone else is disagreeing, there’s a good probability that they’re not the ones who are wrong.
Why?
Why are people not allowed to get emotional over issues that effect them? When a well-known religious person is all but calling for domestic abuse, and attributing it to God’s commands?
This might be an abstract philosophical discussion for you–for others, it’s their lives. And you do not have the right to tell them not to get pissed off about it.
That’s your privilege speaking. Recognize it.
Ok Jasper, you win. If everyone who objected to your posts is lying about you (even if I’m not sure why suddenly everyone would have decided that you were the black sheep. People must just be mean-spirited with a pack mentality), I guess you’ll just have to leave with that moral victory.
Jasper,
I suspect that you don’t recognise just how much your writing is saying about you. Besides the surface reading of your words, there is a consistent subtext, which Caine and others are responding to.
To use Paul Ryan’s convention speech, say the part about the GM plant, as an example, if you peer at his words closely enough, yes, the plant did finally close down when Obama was in office. The subtext, including the mere fact that this was spoken about at the republican convention, was that this was Obama’s fault, although he did not exactly say that. However, the announcement for the plant’s closure was made before Obama took office, making the subtext false.
Your comments are like that – the surface reading might sound ok in your head, but the impression that you are giving is one that is dismissive of women to the point of callousness.
People are not lying about what you have said. They are reading what you have written, in the context of this post and in the context of your other comments.
Laughable.
It was all of those hallucinating liars that planted the landmines.
Jasper:
I don’t agree that intent and convey an idea are the same thing. So no, I don’t agree with you.
Jasper:
If your intent is to convey an idea so that others can clearly understand you, perhaps your comments should be thought out better.
Rodney Nelson
Do you know what “mob mentality” is?
feralboy12
Well, it’s more on a personal level. If you’re emotional with me, it’s not going to “compute” very well.
The problem is that it’s not a case of them being emotional over something that matters to them. It’s about them being emotional over a fantasy version of me that they’re slowly inventing.
Recent additions to this fantasy version of me are:
* I’m probably going to be racist and think black people are lazy.
* I think there’s no problems with child support delinquent men.
* I’m arguing, at least in part, because women are arguing with me.
These came out of nowhere, as far as I can tell.
I agree, and have agreed on my privilege several times now.
Believe it or not, and others have complained about this, there’s this sort of lynch mob that jumps into action upon any perceived misogyny. I understand they deal with actual sexist/misogenist people frequently and are sensitive to it. This time, they’ve targeting someone who basically completely agrees with them, even if I managed to trigger them anyway.
People must just be mean-spirited with a pack mentality), I guess you’ll just have to leave with that moral victory.
It’s frustration… a burning out from dealing with nonstop MRAs, etc. I don’t think they’re mean. They’ve decided, on little to no information that I’m an enemy.
Thank you, Jasper. I now have my sniny new sub-moniker.
By the way Jasper, aren’t you a regular here? You seem to miss a lot and I’m genuinely confused. I mean:
– the “emotional” dig
– the victim-blaming, in appearance at least
– the unchecked privilege goggles on your criticisms
– the “intent” is the goal of communication defense
– the “I don’t see gender to treat both sexes equally” non-sense
It just seem a lot of 101 stuff you are missing by a mile. I’m not a regular, and a man, and you still look terribly clueless or willfully dishonest to me.
(I did not even put on the list the misuse of “ad hominem”. And it was a misuse.)
echidna
I can see how that would happen. This is how I address topics, any topic. That’s not likely to change.
Sure, if you want to spin making false assertions that have been repeatedly corrected that way, then sure.
Tony •King of the Hellmouth
I guess we’re talking bout different things, because I’d say that language communicates intent as it’s purpose. But that’s probably a semantics thing.
I agree.
Janine: Fucking Dyke Of Rage Mountain
Someone did. All I know is the landmines are there.
echidna
No – remarking at the color of a car (“it’s red”) isn’t an insistence that the car be repainted.
Do you know the concept that “you are wrong? Obviously, you don’t. YOU ARE WRONG. DEAL WITH IT ELSEWHERE.
kassad
My main focus tends to be counter apologetics. I don’t often debate feminist. I typically nod in agreement with those who do.
I’m not sure I get the third one. Is communicating ideas not the point? On one hand, people seem to be accusing me of being bad at writing, and on the other hand, I’m being accused of doing so as a “defense”. Which is it?
This seems to appear whenever anyone just can’t stand the idea that I didn’t accusing a woman of being emotional because she’s a woman. It’s being upset at something I did correctly (not allow sexism to play a role). I don’t understand what’s incorrect about that.
I’m sorry you think that.
Incorrect – it was an apt utilization.
“I’m not telling you to repaint your car. But that blue really looks horseshit, and you should change it.”
This thread should be bookmarked and shown as a classic case of derailing.
And there is the rub. You have no desire to examine your own thinking. You are quite happy with the status quo. You are currently as insightful and wise as you are ever going to be.
And Caine has repeatedly pointed out that she is not emotional, but that you are mistaking what might be described as rough language for emotion.
But you ignore her. Completely.
echidna
I have, and I do. I was referring to my style of writing. I am in full support of feminist issues.
It’s difficult to rethink things I haven’t even said, or thought.
Yep, until Jasper can admit he can be wrong there won’t be any growth as a person. Right now, he is doing the AA definition of stupid. Saying the same thing over and ever, but expecting a different result. He has to change for a different result.
I see, he is one of those “allies”.
kassad,
Thanks for your comments, you made some good points for me to think about.
Apologies to all for getting off track from the main topic of the thread.
Janine:
Damn, you beat me to it.
echidna
Incorrect.
Isn’t it strange though, that now, even though someone appears to be behaving emotionally, and merely says they aren’t that now counts – but when I defend myself against delusional claims out of nowhere, I’m wrong.
Janine: Hallucinating Liar
Yep, I’m an ally. It’s not particularly important if you believe that. I won’t, however, sit by while people lie about me.
The “notoriously” part has certainly been demonstrated.
But if you have enough self-awareness to use that term, Jasper, then you ought to have enough self-awareness to consider taking this as an opportunity for some individual growth in that department.
Might I also humbly suggest that at this point you consider taking the conversation specific to you, what you did or did not intend, and how you were or were not or are or are not or are about to be or not to be misrepresented, to the Thunderdome, and allow the conversation thread in THIS post to return to the original topic?
The claims against you are only delusional in your mind. They are real to us who inhabit Pharyngula. You are WRONG. Admit it, and go away for a while. Otherwise, you are in everybody’s killfile where you belong. Somebody so low you don’t even deserve to be read. Change your tactics, they aren’t working for you.
I’m just saying that we need to address all forms of domestic abuse….against women, children, and men.
Don’t all the MRA abusers say that? Think about that before you respond again, unless YOU have evidence.
oh fer cry eye.
I’m not an MRA or trying to derail this thread! I’m just saying none of you spend nearly enough time talking about how terrible female abusers are!
Here’s a sampling of assertions that came out of the depths of Caine’s imagination. None of these are based from anything I’ve said… it’s all that “deep interpretation” where they start reading into parallel-universe me.
If anything, I’ve been repeatedly saying that gender does not play a role in my addressing of arguments, or evaluation of emotions.
Okay, I’m off – there went my evening. I promise not to reply to this thread anymore.
@ Jasper of Maine (I feel safe and welcome at FTB);
I would like to refer back to a point made by No Light @ 209;
You do seem to have responded to me somewhat differently than you have to most of the other commenters here. While my phrasing may have been different, the actual arguments in my post had been made by other people, often better than I made them, but the difference being that their nyms where either apparently female or non-gender identifying, whereas mine is masculine.
Now, I am not making any assumptions about why you chose to respond to me as you did, but can you see how this may appear suspicious to the other commenters on the thread, especially given your references to people being overly ’emotional’ which, as mentioned before, is a type of argument that has a known history of being used as a means to silence women and dismiss their experiences?
This is the problem here in a nutshell – you say that you are the innocent victim of a hair-trigger mentality among the Pharyngula regulars, and yet your every post seems to exhibit attributes that we hve all seen many times before, and are strongly associated with the tactics of misogynists.
This may be simply a string of spectacular bad luck, but it has been going on for so long now that such an explanation must begin to stretch even the most generous credulity.
At the very least you have, whether deliberately or not, made this thread all about you and your belief that you are being unfairly maligned, which in itself will not endear you to the people here who want to hold the thread on-topic.
—————————————————————-
No Light @ 209;
If Jasper does transpire to be a misogynist troll and not someone who has somehow managed to get the wrong end of the stick to a truly epic degree, then I would like to apologise to everyone on the thread if my engagement with him has aided and abetted that misogyny. It most certainly wasn’t my intent but, as I have been trying to convey to Jasper, intent is not magic.
Why not several hours ago, when this thread wouldn’t have been about you, a nothing.
Oh, and Jasper, I’m a 60+ year old male. I understand privilege when it is misused, as you did today.
It’s been a long time since I’ve seen this many OM’s on one thread.
Ok. I accept that. You should maybe try to understand more. But ok.
I’ll explain the privilege thing. Women are constantly put down. Now, the degree may vary but this is true for every woman. Always. So I think you can agree than when you simply said “Divorce him” it might have look condescending? As a man, “omniprivileged” as you put it, with such stellar analysis of how to break an abusive relationship? On a thread full of people aware of social justice issue in general and women issues (since it is the subject) in particular?
If I can Godwin it for you to be more clear, how do you think you would come off on an Holocaust survivors board if somone is asking how hir parents could have survived and you interject, as an American, by saying “By leaving Germany! Duh”.
You still did not address the fact that the first time you agreed to reflect upon one of the criticism toward, it was by the first male-identified commenter? That’s a pretty big coincidence and maybe you should be open to the possibility that it says something about you, even if it is subconscious.
Second, you don’t see gender. Fine. Society does. Everyday, everywhere. It is like race. You are talking to women who having and are put down everyday, typically by saying things like you just said, even if in your case you felt justified. “Women are bad at science”, “Women are not funny”, “Women thrive on drama”, “Women can’t have career”, “She must be on her period”, “She’s still single, what’s her problem??”. You have probably heard almost all of these in your life. Women certainely have (and that’s of course the mildest form of everyday sexism). When something like that is so pervasive and has been thrown in your face countless time, do you really expect people to see the exact same comment and say: “Oh but in THIS case he genuinely mean it, and not in a sexist way!”?
You have to be more careful before you call a woman “emotional”. You have to be more careful when you call an African-American “lazy”. Because of the sexism and racism of society, the simplest explanation is sexism or racism. And oppressed people do not have the time to parse through everything thrown at them to see if “yes, this time he is not sexist or racist!”.
There is a post by Crommunist that very good that address the equalitarian fallacy of “I don’t see color”. Find it.
And by the way, right now the concrete goal is not an equalitarian society, when genders are condidered equal, but stopping one gender from being thrashed so much, in hope that one day there might be equality. That’s different. And you are not helping for the sake of “being right”, because you consider people were not fair enough to your comments? That will piss people off.
kassad @ 276;
Are you sure you aren’t the eloquent one? This post seems pretty darn well put together to me…
If I was a gambler, I would say too many tells by Jasper. An obvious Concern Troll. Unlike Jasper, I can acknowledge I am wrong, but I won’t be wrong Jasper’s word alone. Third party evidence is required.
Gosh, I hate to be emotional by pointing it out, but just in case, here’s a few more reasons why leaving an abuser is hard:
They threaten to kill you, the kids, and pets.
They typically don’t like you to work, because it allows them to control the money.
Because they control the money, good luck finding somewhere to stay while you look for a shelter.
They have already alienated you from your friends, the more thoroughly the better.
They like people who have poor relationships with their family, so that you really don’t have anywhere to go.
They talk their friends into doing things like monitoring you, or checking up on you to make sure you’ll never have the chance to look for shelters.
They place monitoring programs on the computer so they know if you’ve used the internet to look up shelters.
They often manipulate authority so that you think or know you’ll never get legal help with the abuse.
They manipulate your love of your children/pets, so that they can get the children to say things which demoralize you further.
They start out really charming, so that when things do go to shit, you keep thinking it’s something you’ve done.
They remind you that they can find you anywhere.
They make bargains with you, like that they promise they won’t hurt the kids if you let them hurt you.
They put on a really good face for your family, friends and acquaintances, so that you think that telling anyone will make you seem crazy.
They often provide friends and family (access to whom they can choose to block) with excuses for your injuries which stem from some failure in you. (“She’s hysterical, so she hurts herself. But I love her anyway.”)
They sneak back at times they don’t say they’ll be there, so that you are unable to figure out when they won’t be around.
They destroy your identification, making it difficult or impossible to get access to help programs.
But, you know, leaving them is really easy. No problem. You can just pack up, steal a car and then you’ll be living the good life (except for the whole death threats if they have your phone number and if they can manipulate your landlord/lady with a sob story into giving them access to your place or something.)
Piece of fucking cake.
Since we are derailing, Jasper what is your thought on Female Genital Mutilation
@mouthyb
QF-so-much-fucking-T that it hurts.
Seriously. The vast majority of points on that list reads like a brief overview of my life for the last two years or so.
I’ll add that they have you cultivate a close relationship with their families and have their families support them unequivocally, so when you tlak about your problems with their family you’re told (very nicely – mind you!) that it’s just the way they are, to ignore it. Or that you must have done something to make it happen, so maybe you should look at your behaviour…
Also that standing up for yourself in any way is met with terrible anger, dmismissal of the issue and huge retribution because you’ve “hurt their feelings”. The issue itself is NEVER discussed.
Your opinions are entirely worthless, even down to opinions on furniture. Oh, unless they conincide with his of course, in which case they’re perfectly valid. “What? You say I don’t value your opinions? That’s total rubbish, what about those times we totally agreed on purchasing those things? Or that we both agree that !hobby is the best thing ever? LIAR.”
Oh, also, my hopefully-soon-to-be-ex changed the locks of his house so I can’t go get my stuff. Now I have to organise a day when he’ll be there to intimidate me and most likely claim a lot of my stuff as his so I can be thoroughly reminded of my place.
Additionally, restraining orders? That’s a laugh. Apparently since I’m not living in that situation any more I’m not even fucking eligible for one. Even though I’m now still terrified, he’s still contacting me even after I’ve expressedly told him ONLY to contact my lawyers and that I’m not unable to socialise because all my own friends were replaced with “mutual” ones and he’s turned those against me.
YEAH. THIS IS FUN.
And my case of abuse is mainly fucking emotional, with a little bit of sexual assault thrown in for texture. Hell, it’d be easier with bruises to show. Try giving evidence for emotional abuse in a family court.
Jasper
You should lurk more and comment less. And when you comment consider how other people will take your comment. If you are only interested in how you sound to yourself then just say it in your head.
Many posters here have direct experience with the issue and have considered it at great length. I suspect you have not.
Jasper are you trying to win some “most smug asshole” of the year award? Cause every single comment you make makes me wish someone would splash a drink in your arrogant prat face. Jesus fuck.
***POSSIBLE TRIGGER***
Funny, my abuser was a “good” Christian man who expected me to be his mother, his maid, AND his fuck-toy at his beck and call 24/7. Then there was the manipulation, the threats, the violence, the destruction of personal property, the pin you down with a knife at your throat and threatening to “end you”.
Aaand the excuses. Oh, the excuses. But they all came down to “you did/said something I don’t approve of”.
Yeah, this isn’t a “Muslim thing”. It’s a control thing.
@Nerd. Ill take your bet. I recall Jasper from earlier and I don’t think he’s a concern troll, just filled to the brim with hubris.
Sophia: I’m so sorry. I hope your ex gets bored with it quickly, since the legal system is so…. uninterested…. in doing anything about it.
“Knowing their actions will not be punished ?”
Fuck that noise.
Women have been put in prison for defending themselves during attempted murder.
Shape and size aren’t important ? Are you fucking serious ??? Here’s a guy with a hundred pounds on you, go ahead, annoy him ’till he hits you. His fist knocking all your teeth out isn’t any more brutal than a bit of hair pulling. A bit less even.
When’s the last time a woman sent her husband to the ICU with kicks and fingernail scratches?
Seriously, listen to yourself. You’re the snotty boy who walks into the ER whining that his sniffles are more important than a heart attack.
Are all MRAs such clueless crybabies ?
Yes
@mouthyb
Thanks. What gets me most is the terrifying indifference of the whole thing. I’ve been abused – to the point I was suicidal – the had that used against me. I’m still suicidal at times even now. His punishment? Nothing. Nothing at all. In fact, he’s got a huge support network telling him I’m crazy, just wanting attention, that I miust have just gone mental to “suddenly” do all these HORRIBLE things to him (horrible things being trying to get his visitation rights to his son cut down to levels that were not harmful to the little guy’s mental health.
I’m the bad guy, I’ve lost all my friends, I have no income, no house (staying with parents who are also emotionally abusive, though less so. YAY!) and even if I did get my own place, I’m so emotionally damaged that I have to take medication that knocks me out for 8 hours or so, making taking care of my baby at night bacisally impossible on my own. Nice catch 22 – so common in these situations!
Step 1: Abuse your SO. Cause them enough mental anguish to cause severe symptoms of mental illness, so they have to be medicated.
Step 2: Blame the medication for the symptoms, whilst simultaneously doubting loudly that a problem exists at all.
Step 3: Complain that SO is incapable of looking after baby, use with lawyers to get more time with child.
Step 4: Yay! It works!
Congratulations! Your SO’s life is now entirely fucked up, they can’t break the depression/sleep/care cycle without extraordinary help and you’ve successfully gotten a judge to side with you and grant you more time with your son than is healthy for his development! Kudos. You are now eligible for your Inhumane Arsehole badge! Please join the fucking queue.
Our justice system at work!
Oh, our bloody justice system. Our bloody stupid justice system.
[OT]
Sophia, ack!
I hope you can overcome this, I hope you can get a decent life going.
You have my best wishes. Really.
heh, yeah. I am getting OT. Sorry for being deraily – just got a bit het up after mouthyb’s list of reasons why “Just divorce them/leave!” is such a stupid thing to say.
Thanks though :)
Ugh. Jasper. This:
IS EXACTLY WHAT MY ABUSER WOULD DO. I’d get upset at him for being abusive and he’d tell me to stop being emotional, claim that I was “overreacting”, and he’d be all scary-calm and insisting that having an emotional reaction is somehow “wrong”, “bad”, or made me “less than”.
So your claim there of “any connection to abused victims” being “erroneous”? 100% Grade-A BULLSHIT.
WMDKitty – EXACTLY.
“You’re just getting hysterical over nothing!”
Silencing tactics 101.
All that’s missing is the “I’m no longer an ally *pouts*” card.
after this epic attention-derailing, that card can’t get played soon enough.
Yes.
Just because someone reacted badly to your smug and dismissive statement does not make it less of a smug and dismissive statement.
You keep likening your actions in this thread to hitting land mines. It might be instructive to keep in mind that land mines don’t chase you. You have to step on them yourself.
It was NOT an innocuous statement at all. Many have tried to explain this to you, but you have just ignored them. Until you understand this simple fact, you will not make any progress here.
There’s a road out back that needs some paving with those intentions of yours.
Jasper, this reasonably well known quote that really ought to be better known sums up exactly what was wrong with your initial “divorce him” advice:
As mentioned upthread, victims who feel able to leave already do exactly that. If the victim *doesn’t* leave, then that almost always means that the abuser has deliberately manipulated the situation so that the victim is unable to access the resources to get themself and their dependents away safely and securely. The victim believes the abuser’s threats that they will track them down and kill them, kill the kids, kill the pets and kill anyone who is helping them if they ever try to leave – and the statistics show that victims are right in believing that the probability of the abuser carrying through on such threats is high.
So, since your advice essentially consisted of “all the victims need to do is the most dangerous thing they could possibly do”, that is why people reacted so strongly to it.
*headbonks Sophia*
I hope you can get away from that jackass, and keep both yourself and your kid safe and sane.
There’s another point about divorce that I haven’t seen mentioned. Divorce is expensive. Many lawyers want the money up front before they do any work. Someone with low or no income would have trouble coming up with the lawyer’s fee, the filing fee, and all the rest of the expense involved in getting a divorce.
Rodney – yep. Every time the matter I’m involved in goes to court it’s $3000 for EACH PARTY. The lawyers cost $250 or $350 an hour with every call, email, photocopy and everything also costing money. That’s for relatively cheap lawyers over here.
If my parents weren’t well-off, I’d be FUCKED. Can’t afford court? That’s nice, sort out your problems on your own. Oh, that was the problem in the first place? … *crickets*
Sophia, please do not say that. You were directly on target and on topic. It was Jasper who derailed.
Though it does you little good, I wish you luck, Sophia.
Wow, check on Pharyngula in the morning, this post was not even up. Check in after full day of work followed by an evening class and look what I missed! 300+ comments.
a few random thoughts to share:
First, let’s parse this one. “I don’t think we condone wife-beating…”
So he’s not sure. Scary.
“… but something has got to be done.”
They taught us in management training that the word “but” wipes out anything preceding it. So much for uncertainty – he actually is sure. Yikes!
On divorce: two common trick divorce lawyers advise their male clients (if anyone’s heard of lawyers advising women of the first one I’d be interested to know) 1.) Go to every other divorce lawyer in town who’s any good and pay for an initial consultation. Bar association ethics rules then prevent all those other lawyers from representing your soon to be ex-wife. 2.) Sue for custody. This they tell them is a “bargaining chip” that extracts concessions from the woman.
Also, the state of Florida will not extradite civil judgements. That means if you owe anyone except the federal government money you can move to Florida then not have to pay back a dime. Anyone who does not want to pay child support need only move to Florida (and many divorced fathers do) then the ex can’t do jack about it. Prior to the crash of 08 divorce after childbirth was the leading cause of middle class women falling into poverty.
Which frankly is a shame because, and I know I’m just speaking for myself here, I’d really rather not have someone like Jasper standing too close to me.
Jasper, you SHITHEAD—Your actions tell on you know matter where you go. People are piling on you here for the exact same reasons I told your stupid ass off on Jen McCreight’s thread. Your first instinct is to dump all over the victim, which says something ugly and shocking about your character:
Your bullshit-
My response (nevermind the whole rest of the thread chastising your for being a pig-ignorant selfish FUCK):
Can you please, for the love of pete, commence fucking yourself and shutting up?
Sophia,
I second Caine #303. Your story is completely on topic and helps people with little experience (i.e. me) to understand better. Unfortunately others are more interested in their damaged egos.
For what it is worth I hope things improve.
sadunlap,
Cripes!
I know fuck-all about this, yet this sure trips no skeptical alarms. :|
(That’s… horribly plausible but despicably malicious, if true)
[addendum]
sadunlap, I wish to make it clear I laud you for this information, and it’s not you that makes me frown.
Robertson was just being flip.
Why does he even bother responding to letters if he’s just going to make stupid jokes.
What _was_ funny was seeing his sidekick constantly trying to steer him to reasonable alternatives (to moving to Saudi Arabia and beating her); eg, counseling. She’s like “c’mon, say something _normal_, you old coot.”
But he would have none of it.
Funny guy. What will we do when he’s raptured?
@Sophia
I thought your experience was very much relevant in cutting down Jasper’s stupidity. Plus, it is completely understandable why you would rant about it. This whole thing with domestic abuse is unjust.
Flip off
@John Morales — It’s true, I heard it from a lawyer.
WMDKitty, grr.
Such gaming of the system should not be allowable in the system.
The ambit claim part (suing for custody) is not something that can be addressed, but surely the perversion of ethics (conflict of interest) surely is.
(This needs fixing!)
eleutheria:
It wasn’t a joke, he wasn’t being flip. He thought, as always, that he was being boyish and charming, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t serious.
You’re a fucking idiot for saying “oh hey, just a joke!”, too. That’s dismissive and harmful in light of the fact that submissiveness on the part of a woman is a basic tenet of fundamental christianity.
Try reading the damn thread before you spill your stupidity all over the place. Read what Patricia had to say – she should know, she was deep in fundamental christianity for a long time. It’s no laughing matter at all when it’s considered to be perfectly alright for a man to beat a woman for getting out of line, for not being properly submissive or doing anything which is considered to be a sin.
Women are considered to be chattel; their lot in life is to be a submissive servant incubator, full stop. These women have been raised in fundamental christianity, they have always been taught that their lot in life is to be submissive. Submissive to god, submissive to their father, submissive to their pastor and of course, submissive to their husband. They have been groomed and conditioned all their life, they are already primed, mentally and emotionally, to a life of abuse, so if a father or husband is abusive, hey, she was doing something wrong. She only got what she deserved.
It’s a vile and loathsome mindset and deeply problematic for fundamental christian women to find themselves in, because the slightest thing can be considered a ‘sin’ by their husband and *wham* you’ve just been punched in the gut. You talked back? *wham* You’ve just been punched in the face. Dinner wasn’t on the table at the proper time? *wham* You’ve just been slapped across the kitchen. And so on.
It might be a fucking joke to you, but it sure as hell isn’t a joke to women who suffer through years of verbal, mental, emotional, physical and sexual abuse. So you can shut up and fuck yourself right over the nearest cliff.
Squared, cubed, and tesseracted.
eleutheria—shut your glib, flip fucking mouthListen to what people are telling you. Have empathy. Be less ego-centric (and don’t you dare come back here and complain about being treated harshly because so help me go I’ll berzerker on your ass).
Koshka:
That was Janine, but I’ll come along and third, fourth or nth what others have said.
Sophia, you are not derailing and you are most definitely not being off topic. You came along and confirmed every single thing I said about what women go through when trying to tell Jasper it wasn’t so simple as “get a divorce”, along with all the others who attempted to get through that thick skull of his.
Your experience is relevant, and it makes a huge difference to hear from those people who are actually living such a situation because you put a face to it, which, while it won’t get through to idiots like Jasper, might make all the difference in the world to someone who is reading. You never know and I thank you for your voice and your passion and your strength.
[meta]
Just caught up, and I wish to make it clear and explicit that I share other regulars’ opinion: Sophia, you were totally on-topic, you made concrete what was only an abstraction, and you deserve thanks for that.
(I intended for my prefix only to refer to my own comment, and that because I wanted to express my support and admiration and well wishes for you in your situation; I’m sorry I didn’t make this clear earlier)
The legal system may have failed you, but we here shan’t even though all we can do is support you — but we do support you and wish you well and have your back if anyone dares quibble about your situation.
I eagerly await Jasper’s solutions to other world problems.
War? Stop fighting!
Famine? Eat more!
Global Warming? Cool the place down instead!
[meta]
My previous goes for WMDKitty, too.
Well.
Good then.
(I really hate missing one of these.)
—
bye-bye Jasper
—
eleutheria
don’t bother
Sophia,
Thanks for your comment. As many others have said, it was most certainly bang on topic.
Is it just me that Jasper ignored or did Jasper just refuse to respond to anyone who said they were in an abusive relationship?
Thanks, everyone.
Heh. So telling, isn’t it? I’m do used to being attacked when speaking my mind that I even see posting my experiences here as unimportant and off-topic.
That’s just another fun aspect of emotional abuse and controlling behaviour – my opinions are worthless and so I’m being selfish and attention-seeking if I so much as make a peep. It filters into your everyday life. Insidious shit.
In related news, I’ve just been to my appointment for FDR (family dispute resolution). Now, I have to wait for this woman to tell me whether or not I’ll have to sit in the same room as my abuser and “have a mediated discussion” or whether or not she deems us “unsuitable”. I’m fucking terrified. It’s never so simple as just being able to let it go, is it? Nope. -They- decide whether or not you’re too vulnerable. -They- decide whether “mediation” would be helpful.
Sigh.
(end another rant. Still feel guilty, but slightly less now with the encouragement. Thanks you guys, you all help me feel slightly less like jumping ship.)
My… third reaction towards this post was: “My advice to the woman: Divorce him!” (The first was at Pat Robertson: “Uagh”, the second at the husband “What an idiot!”)
Then I read the rest of the thread… and the warm and friendly reaction that this advice got.
So before posting here, I went to consult the person that has had the most influence on my worldview and values. A person who had been in an abusive relationship, and took the advice that her lawyer gave her: “Get out as fast as you can before it is too late!” A person who took her two little children, one of them mentally handicapped and left. Who got the divorce, in a society that didn’t have “women’s shelters” at all, but where courts still searched for the “guilty part” of a divorce. Who mangaged to keep up with the stress of the proceedings, building a new home, managing her job and her children on top of a manipulative, stalking ex-husband.
Her advice to the woman: “Divorce him!”
Now you can start to call me a priviledged, ignorant woman-victim blaming idiot… but don’t you dare to insult my Mom!
Sophia,
That you are aware of this is a really good sign, that you can be wry about it even better.
I can but encourage you; be strong, be true to yourself, have hope.
(Best wishes!)
WARNING: 1) The following post contains satire. For the humour challenged and/or targets of this post (who should be obvious to even the meanest wit) this may cause offence. Feel free not to read it. 2) The following post will have a postscript that contains swearing, NORTY WERDZ, meanness and assorted anger. And also an appropriate reference and apology for shamelessly ripping off an excellent comic. 3) It’s longish. Tough.
Last year, alone, 1814 women’s experiences were discounted on the internet. For actual “slut shaming” the toll was even higher, 2005. Rape threats were higher still at 2470. Whilst “it’s just joke” and “what about the men?”, the highest of all, a staggering 3927 and 4653 respectively.
Now I’m telling you this because many of you here tonight could be women on the internet right now. These figures concern you, directly. Now it’s easy to say “Well, I’m not surprised, women are emotional and flighty!”, but you know that’s not the point. The one thing that should strike you about these figures is this: alarming as they are,
They are just not enough.
There are over one billion bitches on the internet, a few thousand just doesn’t register, I’m sorry. And there are even more sluts, whores and dirty, dirty tramps polluting the information super highway. Now you may say “Well, what can I do?” with a helpless shrug of the shoulders.
Well, I’ll tell you what you can do; when you access the internet, or any form of interactive media, this year, remember you are male, therefore misogyny should be your default mode of interaction. Keep to the good old sexist cultural mores! Or at least some of them. And let’s have none of this “recognition of privilege” rubbish in these feminist spaces. If you’re in the middle of Pharyngula, Skepchick, A+ fora or any part of the web and you don’t know whether you’re being sexist or an ally, just stick your foot in your mouth and give those bitches hell. You’ll shut them up! You’ll shut them up! As a general rule when commenting on the internet, if in any doubt whatsoever, double down and never admit it.
And don’t let this stop at the internet! If you should come across a woman in real life, try slapping her arse and commenting on her tits, or telling her to smile. It makes really great family outing on a Sunday afternoon to see a load of hairy legged lesbians shaking their fists and spouting some incomprehensible feminist gibberish as they are ridiculed by a crowd of baying misogynists howling for them to “convert back to cock by being given a proper fuck”.
Now I would be the last to deny these activities involve an element of risk, but what true blooded male could possibly resist such a call from his own sense of ingrained privilege and entitlement? Above all remember: even when you are called on your bigotry, let no woman on the internet go unpunished!
Goodnight.
Louis
P.S. With full attribution for inspiration to Rowan Atkinson and his superlative Road Safety sketch, and full apologies for such a poor imitation.
HOW THE FUCKING FUCKETY FUCK IS ANY OF THIS STUFF STILL HARD FOR PEOPLE?????? ARGHH! FUCKING SEXIST OXYGEN THIEVES!!!!
Sophia,
I’m am {multiple}ing thanks for your comments. No they are not derails/off topic (IMO), yes they are valuable, and you should be praised for your courage in posting them, not silenced for your legitimate emotions at your unpleasant (understatement!) circumstances.
Thank you.
Louis
@Freodin
Because all women have the resources to be able to do that. RIGHT.
So, one woman could handle the stress, the abuse, the job AND children. I’m guessing the kids weren’t under a year old, and that she had some capital to call upon in case of emergency.
Fine, and good for her.
She is an OUTLIER. A very, very lucky woman to have those kinds of resources and that kind of resilience. Most of us don’t, and aren’t.
If I didn’t have my (abusive) family, I’d be dead. I WISH I was being melodramatic, but I’m not. I’d be dead. I’d have either stayed in the relationship (because the alternative would be to be homeless with a 3 month old child) and committed suicide because of the relentless abuse, or run away (on foot, with the child in arms) to eventually have my child taken away due to neglect and committed suicide because of my failure to take care of him.
I didn’t KNOW about women’s shelters. I didn’t have any money to dip into, I didn’t have a job because I was taking care of a tiny baby. I couldn’t even afford my own medication. Still can’t.
You tell me what I should have done, within those parameters. You tell me exactly how I should have gotten away without a car/baby seat, where I should have gone, how I could find money to SURVIVE let alone get lawyers for divorce/family court proceedings.
I’m not even that bad a case in the scheme of things. At least I DID have my parents to give me somewhere to stay. I still don’t want to be alive anymore, the only reason I am is my son, who is now six months old. I still have no money, no home of my own and no control over my life.
Is that my fault? If you believe that, then tell me why.
I’m waiting.
Now I’m telling you this because many of you here tonight could be women on the internet right now.
In my #327 should be:
Now I’m telling you this because many of you here tonight could be men on the internet right now.
Fuck it all. And I proofread. And I C+P’ed from a Word doc I made last night. AND I DOUBLE CHECKED IT.
Fuckety fuckety fuck fuck fuck. I’ll be laughing at my own jokes next.
{Grumble}
Louis
Sophia,
This thread blew up while I wasn’t paying attention so I made only one comment, but I read everything you wrote. You have my sympathy and admiration. I hope for the best possible outcome for you and your son.
Thanks for sharing your story. I hope the message reaches some of the thickheads.
My voice is only the most… verbose one on this thread. Others have shared much worse than what I’ve been through. We’re all in this, all damaged by it* to varying degrees and all recovering with varying degrees of success*.
The common thread between all of us, as far as I can see, is that we all have been horribly wronged and have had no justice done. (*I’m not trying to put words in anyone’s mouth – tell me to fuck off if I’m speaking too generally)
I doubt that if the things said on this thread so far haven’t gotten through to those thickheads that anything will. We’re probably all just overreacting, of course. Pull ourselves up by ‘ur bootstraps and all that. Just didn’t try hard enough.
Sounds so familiar, doesn’t it?
Also, re: Jasper’s “brilliant” advice: “Divorce him”. Ah yes {strokes beard} cogent, simple, wonderful. Indeed, indeed. Why aren’t these silly bitches just BETTER?
See also:
Comments to black people: “Why aren’t you like Oprah/Obama?”
Comments to people with disabilities/mental illnesses: “Why aren’t you like Stephen Hawking/Tanni Grey-Thompson/Oscar Pistorius/Vincent Van Gogh/Kay Redfield-Jamison?”
Comments to gay or transgender people: “Why aren’t you Harvey Milk/Jodie Foster/Jóhanna Sigurðardóttir/Thomas Beattie/Amanda Simpson/Victoria Kowlokowski/Sally Ride?”
Or actually, if you want a really good question (although I seriously doubt many of the fuckwits will grasp why) see the question from “I Robot”:
Detective Del Spooner: Human beings have dreams. Even dogs have dreams, but not you, you are just a machine. An imitation of life. Can a robot write a symphony? Can a robot turn a… canvas into a beautiful masterpiece?
Sonny: [With genuine interest] Can you?
Okay, I am now officially in a mood.
Louis
@Sophia
First of all… no, it is not your fault. I don’t envy you and I wish I could do anything to help you. (And I apologize right now if something I will say now does not come over correctly: English is not my native language and I might not hit the tone I feel.)
But I can’t help feeling that you fell for the opposite of the victim-blaming so many people nowadays get accused of: enviroment blaming.
You didn’t have any resources. You didn’t have the resilence. You were burdened by a baby. You didn’t know where to go. NO ONE CAME TO HELP YOU!
Yes, I agree, you had it really bad. I feel for you, I really do. Though that doesn’t give you the right nor the knowlegde to make statements about the situation of others… not my Mom’s nor that of the wife of OP’s doucebag.
But on the other hand, you asked to correct question: “What should I have done?”
The answer to that question can not be “Nothing. You are the poor little victim. There is nothing you can do. Shut up, suffer and wait for more proficient people to fix the world.”
The answer cannot be “Stay with you abusive husband and hope and pray something happens before… something happens.”
“What should I have done?” I don’t know. I don’t know you, nor the situation you have been in, nor the options you had.
But if you want your opinions to count and you don’t want to be subject to the decisions of others… YOU have to do something.
What you told us here is appaling. I can see that the system is fucked up and against you. I know how fucked up it can be, from my own experience. I agree that it needs to be changed. But you cannot just stand there and do nothing.
“Get a divorce” is not the end of the solution. It is the start. And it is rather stiffling for such a solution process if the first tentative attempts are countered with a “YOU ARE NOT HELPING ME AT ALL! SHUT UP, IGNORANT DOUCEBAG!”
I am not blaminng you. I don’t think Jasper is blaming you. But please don’t blame us for not being able to solve the worlds problems with a handwave. We are only humans – we are trying.
I have a friend who, at one point was so desperate that all she wanted to do was to pack up and leave, give up everything if she could just keep her kids (for the recored, the asshole didn’t even live with them during the marriage but came “home” once a month. He still sued for custody and against her being able to move with the kids to a different city)
Sophia
Holy fucking shit that’s ugly. I really hope you and your son can pull through
*hugs if you want them*
Same as always: women really are too stupid to say such things for themselves.
Tell us if we can support you in any way
Freodin
So, your mum was strong and lucky (hey, he didn’t kill her after all) and had not been grounded down completely. Good for her, good for you. But if you and she think that that’s how such things always or even most typically go, you’re both ignorant and behaving like assholes. Oh, and as for the “don’t you dare to insult my mum”: you brought her into this, none of us. And if that’s all she has to say on this she’s the Queen Bee of domestic abuse.
But that doesn’t hold true for you, does it? You’re totally qualified to comment on the OP wife’s situation and tell her to divorce him because your mum did so.
Yeah, but it’s OK to tell her “divorce him”, ignoring your total lack of additional information and the actual information we have about the difficulties and dangers those women face.
Like telling them to get a divorce.
So, yeah, actually women who have been or currently are in that situation ARE telling you that you’re not being helpful, to the contrary, you’re destructive and your respone is to tell them that they don’t know a thing and have no right to say anything about the topic but you are speaking.
So, what makes you so super special to know better about what’s actually helpful than they are?
I’m not calling you a douchebag, there’s a three strike rule.
Freodin,
Having a mother who went through an abusive relationship does not give you a license to be a condescending asshole.
Especially to someone who is fighting her way out of an abusive marriage right now.
@Freodin
Show me one place where I’ve blamed you or anyone else for my problems.
Except for my husband, who I feel no guilt in blaming for his actions.
Re: environment blaming. Uh… where else should one put the blame when it IS the environment that is causing the trouble? If one is being abused, one’s source of trouble is that abuser. If that abuser is creating conditions that stop the abused from being able to access help, then they are to blame. Is everything their fault? Who knows? I certainly don’t blame my abusive husband for say… stubbing my toe, or for me burning dinner a few nights back. For what he has done, though, I can blame him.
I didn’t ask anyone for help, I tried everything I could think of to get out of the situation. I didn’t expect anyone to rush in and help me.
You seem to be saying that I should have done something to help myself. I’m telling you I DID. I did EVERYTHING I could, which was very limited in the first place.
I asked you what I should have done, you reply that you don’t know. Well, that’s honest at least, and I thank you for that. What I cannot thank you for, and indeed feel thorough revulsion at is your insistence that by feeling helpless in a situation in which I was MADE to feel helpless through constant shaming, belittling and isolating I was somehow simply… not doing it right.
If you don’t know, you don’t know. Do not simply call me a victim and say I am not doing enough.
In addition, I have not once sworn at you, told you to shut up or called you anything resembling a douchebag. Those were your words, not mine.
If you are going to tell someone that they’re not doing enough, or that they’re doing it wrong, or that they shouldn’t complain because they simply didn’t think of and try all the options, then you damn well better have a good suggestion for what they could have done. Speaking as though there was some magical solution that people have not tried is not only condescending but highly insulting. I am not an unintelligent whiner. I am a problem solver. This problem I could not solve, because solving the problem requires me making changes to other people.
You cannot change other people who do not want to change. There’s your environment blaming, also known as placing the blame where it belongs.
You know what? If you really want to just make a short comment on this story, you could have just express empathy with the victim, instead of doling out some lame advice everyone already knows. Especially when said “advice” is as dismissive and ultimately self-serving as people who tell rape victims “Just press charges!” Or tell the poor to “Just get a job!”.
That way this could be about the victims, instead of a full of himself jackass trying to dig to the center of the Earth.
@ Sophia, Michelin-starred General of the First Mediterranean Iron Chef Batallion;
As others have already said upthread, you post was in no way derailing – your experiences are entirely relevant to the topic at hand, and help to illustrate why Jasper’s “just get a divorce already!” attitude is so toxic. Furthermore, it must have taken a great deal of courage to discuss something so painful and traumatic so openly in order to help cast light on what is happening here and to cut through the obscurantism of the clueless, and I would like to thank you for doing so.
You have my sincere best wishes in building a life for yourself and your child safely away from the abusive arsehole who did this to you.
@Gregory
Thankyou. Honestly, I just think I’ve gone past the point where I care what happens anymore. I’m not sure whether posting my experiences is therapy or a slow, spiralling decline into where madness lies.
It will be interesting to see how long I can keep up the façade of strength, if it’ll last until I reach some kind of temporary closure or if I give in to pressure from all sides and simply shrink into submission like everyone seems to want.
Freodin,
Your mother worked her way successfully through a difficult situation. Good for her. She has my admiration. However you’re forgetting one important point. Your mother was one individual in a unique situation. Other people are not your mother and their situations differ, sometimes quite drastically, from your mother’s situation. There is no “one size fits all” solution to abusive relationships.
Sophia,
Being the inhibited introvert that I am, I haven’t said anything to you. I apologize for that. You have my respect, my sympathy, and my best wishes for resolving your situation successfully.
@Rodney
Being an inhibited introvert myself, I don’t blame you in the slightest. Introvert fist-bump and thanks :P
@Freodin
Before you give such blatantly obvious advice, you could stop and think: maybe they already know this? It helps not to assume women are stupid.
Wouldn’t a better solution be “Stop falling in love with abusive jerks!”, you think?
When you have fully grasped why the above advise isn’t really very useful, you’ll understand why other simplistic, one-phrase, one-size-fits-all ‘solutions’ aren’t either.
It’s exactly the same as telling rape victims “Well, just run away!” No matter how many times you are told the world isn’t that simple, you can still just keep blowing that horn: “If more women just simply ran away from rapists, there’d be fewer women raped!”
Regardless of intent, the effect of this is a desperate attempt to somehow, in some way, make sure that the woman is to blame for the crime committed against her. Because however much we sympathize with her, she should really just…
It’s not the advice itself that’s wrong.
It’s the assumption that the women in question are too dumb/weak/whatever to have already thought of it.
Freodin @ 334;
Given the fact that the legal system and broader society are both clearly unsupportive of women in Sophia’s position, and that Sophia did everything she practically could to get out, only to find her every option blocked by her abuser or by the judgemental attitudes of society as expressed by opinions such as your own, in what way is the environment not to blame? And if the environment and the abuser aren’t to blame, who do you think is? Sophia? How is that not victim blaming?
Mocking an abuse victim? You’re a real class act, aren’t you?
And yet you feel entitled to use your mother’s experience – which you have already been told was an outlier and does not reflect the usual state of affairs faced by domestic abuse victims – as a cudgel to beat women who don’t ‘pull themselves up by their bootstraps’ to your satisfaction? And you also feel that it would be appropriate to tell the woman mentioned in the OP, when you also know nothing about her personal circumstances, that she should get a divorce, again using your mother’s experience as a benchmark for how women should handle abuse, and smugly judging those who don’t live up to your expectations.
You don’t see that as hypocritical?
So, the onus is entirely on the victim to fix things – the rest of society bears no responibility, and the obstacles it puts in the path of women trying to get out of abusive relationships function as… what? Character building exercises?
You wouldn’t happen to be a libertarian, would you? The stench of callous, privileged self-righteousness emanating from your general direction seems somewhat familiar…
Again with the victim blaming – it is the woman’s fault each time her abusive areshole of a husband/boyfriend beats her, because she should have gotten off her backside and left him, is that it? And what about those women who do leave, only to be subsequently murdered by an abuser who sees them as his personal chattel rather tham a person? Are they to blame for not arming themsleves? For not being alert enough? For not being better shots? For expecting the police to actually take their reports of the dangerous behaviour of their stalker seriously?
When are you going to accept that the only people responsible for abuse are the abuser and those who enable that abuse – his (or, in relatively rare instances, her) immediate support network and those people who continually attempt to shape the public discourse on abuse by seeking to shift the blame onto the victim – people like you?
Yes, you. By your actions on this thread, you have given succour to abusers by blaming the victim. You have lent support to their favourite rationalisation for their repugnant actions; that the blame for abuse ultimately lies with the abused party, not with them.
Think on that before you decide that you are a fit person to judge Sophia.
Recognition that circumstances play a large role in things = deliberate helplessness/self assumed victimhood now does it?
Okay, who failed to send me that memo?
Louis
@Louis
What? You weren’t aware? As soon as the pink, fluffy laybrainz assume some semblance of rational thought, they must be immediately defluffed so as to retain their proper
lack offunction.You know, when your car or office chair starts thinking for itself you’ve gotta find the brain and remove it, y’know?
I did and I’m sorry. It got misplaced into the “don’t let Louis know anything about this” folder instead of the “send this to Louis whenever you have a free moment” folder.
Sophia,
Ahhhhh yes, Teh Pink Fluffeh LadyBrainz™. I always forget about those.
I keep meeting these intelligent, capable human beings who just so happen to have different genitals than I do, it’s throwing my average off. Obviously it goes without saying that most Wimminz™ are Too Emotional™ and easily prone to Hysteria™. I just keep meeting these weird outliers. It’s strange, the more I treat women like people and not like morons or life support systems for vaginas, the more intelligent, capable women I meet. There couldn’t be a correlation could there?
Hush my fingers! Such wanton speculation cannot be borne in the presence of women on the internet who need shaming and silencing. Have you Made Me A Sammich™ today? WELL HAVE YOU???? I NOW WANT A SAMMICH!!!!! It is your WomanDuty™ to do this. Also, The Oral Sex™.
{Claps hands imperiously}
{Relaxes on chaise longue}
{Gets fanned by the house boy}
{Sips Mint Julep}
Louis
Rodney Nelson,
Please place yourself in the Naughty Corner™, directly.* I shall have the Minions™ see to you shortly.
As it is a first offence and a Wednesday I am feeling generous. You may even be able to walk afterwards.
Louis
* All those familiar with the Cornish accent should read this as: “drekkly”.
I am currently making simmered Japanese vegetables. If they will not do in lieu of a Sammich™, and if you are not near western australia to make the pickup of Not-Sammich™, then I shall have to face my Punishment and forego The Oral Sex™ to go directly to the Spankings™.
Which I shall administer myself.
With a small, stuffed turtle belonging to my son, who is the Menz™ who is currently in control of my life. Very symbolic, no?
Sophia,
Well at least you are obviously Sincerely Apologetic™, which is important, or something.
;-)
Louis
If women are too emotional, how come it’s men who always seem to be the ones shooting guns into crowds because they’re upset about something or another?
Dianne,
That is a very good question.
However, as luck would have it, I, a man, have a cogent and simple explanation of this phenomenon that I have not in any way just pulled directly out of my arse and expect to be taken as gospel because I have testicles:
These men go on killing sprees because bitches don’t have sex with them/have enough sex with them/annoy them/creep shame them.*
Reductio ad
EveRebecca WatsonLouis
* I don’t want to go looking because I know, I KNOW, that I will find sincere and genuine propositions of precisely this. These people are parody-able sometimes. Hell, I’ll put reasonable money on one of the fuckers advocating this turns up here to repeat it.
Louis @ 350;
On a related note, I once had the most objectionable misogynist (and homophobe, but more on that later) attempt to explain to me why teh menz must never perform cunni lingus on a woman.
His argument (if I can grace his misogynist blather with such a grandiose term) went thusly:-
What does the man get out of doing that? This would be a sex act performed, not to make babies or for the benefit of teh all important peen, but solely to pleasure the woman. Apparently this is very much a bad thing, and may give women ideas beyond their station, such as the curious notion that their orgasm should matter too. Oh, and apparently it was ‘disgusting’, because women’s bodies are icky, or something
The idea that making an effort to sexually please a woman might lead to all maner of good things for both parties was clearly too difficult for him to grasp, and after that point he went on to claim that performing oral sex on a woman was somehow ‘unmanly’ and (this part being said with a level of revulsion that spoke volumes about just what kind of jerk he was) ‘gay’…
Naturally, this attitude of his didn’t work both ways – he was the type of oblivious dudebro who considered it the absolute obligation (not to mention privilege) of women to perform fellatio on guys like him. Apparently, this was neither disgusting or indicative of lesbianism (lesbianism apparently not being a bad thing in itself, just so long as the lesbians in question were actually ‘hot’ bisexuals looking for a threesome with his peen, but utterly awful if it was of the type practiced by the angry, hairy-legged femininist ‘dykes’ that existed only in what passed for his imagination, feminism and such notionally ‘bad’ lesbianism being largely interchangeable in his tiny pea-brain).
When I called him on his misogyny, his response was that there was no point even trying to talk with a ‘mangina’ like me, and that I should not be surprised when I fail to form any relationships, because I had voluntarily consigned myself to the dreaded ‘friend zone’, and ‘girls’ (not women, notice, but girls) may talk about respect and equality, but they all go for ‘real manly men’ like him in the end. Apprently, he believed he knew what they really wanted, whatever they may have said to the contrary, one imagines much in the same way as a
rapist‘surprise sex exponent’ knows that ‘no’ is really code for ‘yes’…I am surprised to report that I somehow managed to make it through this entire conversation without shooting/stabbing/otherwise mangling him even once, though I would be lying if I say that I did not feel the temptation.
dianne: As one of the awful conference papers I reviewed yesterday reminds us, emotions are soft things which men ought not have. Instead, they have hardness and loving correction.
Obviously, it’s not that they’re emotional, it’s that they’re experiencing extra-hardness and wish to lovingly-correct the crowd.
/seethe
Sophia: I don’t know if I mentioned it directly, but you have my utmost sympathy. And, from experience, I salute you.
Interesting juxtaposition in Louis and Bob’s posts:
Louis: “These men go on killing sprees because bitches don’t have sex with them/have enough sex with them/annoy them/creep shame them.*”
Bob: ” ‘girls’ (not women, notice, but girls) may talk about respect and equality, but they all go for ‘real manly men’ like him in the end.”
So…are ManlyMen(TM) getting sex or not? It seems to be women’s fault either way, but it’s kind of hard to track down whether MRAs want to claim that they’re the only ones getting any or that they’re being deprived of sex by evil women.
Louis @ 355;
And don’t forget the problem of the excess build up of the ‘white poison’ – if not removed by a woman (as is their function, naturally), it of course makes us blokes do bad things.
Like go on shooting sprees.
It is not as though we can be expected to be responsible for our own actions or anything! None of you heartless hellions know how darn hard it is to be a man, constantly at the mercy of one’s endlessly demanding member. It’s not fair, not fair I tell you!
————————————————————–
Frenziedly begins typing up whine-athon about the evils of misandry, and how teh ebil feminazis just don’t understand that…
*Dolly Parton voice*
Sometimes… its hard… to be… a man…
*/Dolly Parton voice*
Ok, so “get a divorce” is not helpful. It is to simple. It is not precise and situational enough. It is not deep enough for an internet comment boards.
So I would like to know what kind of advice all of you really helpful people have to give women (or men) in such a situation?
@Sophia, Michelin-starred General of the First Mediterranean Iron Chef Batallion : Sympathies and well said. You have my support for whatever it is worth and, if you want them, virtual hugs from me.
+++++
Via a comment upthread by Nick Gotts (formerly KG) :
Y’know I can relate to that very well personally.
I suspect most of us, its human nature, we’re criticised, we get emotional, we don’t always handle it well. Been there done that, got the bloodstains to prove it. We dig ourselves deeper arguing because we’re upset and we’re arguing our case which we
knowthink is right, even when everyone else is telling us (frequently with evidence and real life examples and logic and counter-arguments and more) that we’re wrong.Now if you’re a genuine feminist ally, a genuine stubborn arguer who really just won’t get it then the best thing to do is , well, what somebody upthread recommended (Forgotten who and too lazy and tired and drunk as ever, sorry)
TAKE A BREAK!!
Lurk more post less. Listen, think reflect. Write a response in word, save it and let it sit for a while before coming back to it. I find walking the dog and then having a shower and getting a night or day’s rest can help. Have a computer free day if you need it. (Hint : I really think you do.)
But Jasper, dude, y’know what I can’t relate to? What marks you out as a real concern troll arsehole?
Before all the concern trolling & derailing you’ve been doing here (no, no don’t deny it, we can all see its true), before you were instructed to eat ebola-tainted shit and die – after 200 plus comments where many here tried giving you the ever diminishing benefit of the doubt, you posted an abusive fecal vomit over on Jen McCreight’s “Goodbye for now” thread.
Now I have my faults, I’m fucked up in many ways but y’know what, even I’d never do anything as outright fucking evil as that. So, well, go eat ebola tainted shit and die. This is not an ad hominem, not a misunderstanding, just a not-so-polite (& why should it be polite given your FTB conduct?) request :
Go eat ebola-tainted shit and stop trolling here asswipe.
I very rarely say this but PZ if you haven’t done so already before I click submit and this gets refreshed I’d recommend splatting this nasty Jasper with the banhammer.
PS. Pat Robertson? he can, go eat ebola tainted shit from Japser’s bloody fecal vomiting in his death throes and the sewers of the worst toilet in Scotland and die too.
Freodin, I am glad for your mother and for you that she was able to get out and make a new life for herself, and I have every admiration for her for doing that. Just as I have for my OH’s mother, who crossed the country with four young children when she left her abusive first husband, and went to a city where she knew no-one and was forced to have two of the children live for some years in a children’s home because she couldn’t feed all four, before eventually being able to have them come back to live with her.
But none of that actually makes a damn iota of difference to what we are discussing here – the fact that societies all over the world, specifically bolstered by religion, actively work to weaken women as much as possible when they justify and enable domestic abusers. By not having shelters easy to find, with the resources to take in all who need them. By not taking abuse reports seriously, by not stepping in to prevent further crimes, by not ensuring that all adults have their own access to their own financial independence.
That some people manage to get away is wonderful; that you or anyone should use the existence of these outliers in the way we have seen in this thread is to downplay or by implication to negate the validity and experiences of the many who can’t. And that is actually harming them further. It is like the myth of the self-made man (sic), pretending “anyone can make it to the top if they work hard enough” – pointing at the handful of cases where someone has succeeded against all the odds – and then using their example to castigate everyone in poverty as feckless losers responsible for their own failure. Because you are not citing the example of your mother as a source of hope, a person to celebrate, a reason to feel optimistic or rally strength; you are using it to imply “if she could do it, anyone could”.
And that is some active not-helping right there.
dianne @ 358;
Firstly, who is Bob?
;-P
Secondly, I have always found the positions of MRAs to be highly inconsistent, even from one post to the next by the same MRA, let alone bewteen different MRAs.
All they seem to be able to agree on is that everything that goes wrong in their lives/the world at large is somehow the fault of women, and that women are all pathological liars, an attribute that they seem to think comes with lady-parts, much as wisdom, authoritah and general awesomeness supposedly comes as a package deal with teh mighty peen.
Unless you are gay or one of us woeful ‘manginas’, of course…
Gregory: Mia culpa! I mixed you up with an entirely different regular! Sorry! Probably just my fluffy lady brain* in action.
*Never mind that difficulty parsing/remembering names and/or faces is an asperger’s trait. According to the MRAs, only men have Asperger’s syndrome. Men who are flakes about names or have difficulty parsing emotions are to be pitied for their AS, women are just stupid. But that’s another rant.
Gregory Greenwood #356
Your self-restraint is commendable.
I once had a similar conversation with a man who also complained bitterly that he hadn’t a date in several years. Somehow this lack was not his fault at all.
Gregory,
Ahhhhh yes the “white poison”. I know it well. (I relatively recently informed two very good friends of the euphemism, and they fell about. It was a metaphor they could sympathise with!)
Strange how we must be rid of the white poison for the evils that it does, yet we must share it with as many others as possible. Isn’t it going to make them do evils? It’s so HARD being a man. {sigh}
Louis
@346. Gregory Greenwood :
Emphasis – bolding – added, italics orginal.
Seconded emotionally by me and quoted for so much fucking truth.
Thast bit in bold (& with the ‘only’ italicised) should be an obvious flippin’ axiom. Everywhere but especially here and now inthis culture, place and society. Why the fuck ain’t it?!?
PS. Can I also please nominate for that #346 Gregory Greenwood comment to be in contenton fro the NEw Molly Award?
I shall restrain the temptation to make a Viagra® joke.
@Sophia #337
I fear the thing to blame here is the internet. It started with an innocent little comment: “Divorce him!”… nothing more. And somehow everyone here assume that this means “I have the ultimate solution: divorce him! If you don’t, it’s your fault and you are to blame for everything that happens to you. But if you do, I guarantee you eternal bliss and happiness!”
Is “divorce him” too obvious? I don’t think so. I have seen it several times – my parents included – that divorce / leaving is not the obvious option.
Perhaps you are really to blame? If only you acted different, perhaps he would change? Can you leave him, if he threatens to kill himself? If he threatens your custody of your children, or their life? Isn’t it better to stay and bear your burden?
An abusive spouse can make you think this way. I have seen it myself. And they are wrong!
I’m sorry if I made you feel as if you did it wrong and did not do enough. I didn’t mean it this way. You DID something. You tried. That is the point. If you failed because the odds were stacked against you, it is not your fault. And all I can do is applaude you for trying and urging you to try again. And again.
Not because of some stupid meme of “if you only try hard enough, you will surely succeed” or “God helps those who help themselves” or anything like that.
Just because I simply cannot see any alternative to trying.
But there are people who don’t try. Not even “don’t try anymore”… but “don’t try at all”. And perhaps such people might profit from a little nudge.
Rodney Nelson,
You are a better man than I am.
This isn’t a particularly high bar to get over I will confess!
Louis
To answer this threads title question (Think someone may have done something similar waa-aay upthread already but, *shrug*, my version if I may suggest?) :
I. Nothing. Deal with it.
II. False premise thus invalid question – a “husband” (or wife) has no “authority” over a partner – just love and mutual partnership. In a sane relationship which, well, yeah, what’s sanity humanity~wise?
III. Listen to the “rebellious woman”, respect her views, talk with her and come to some sort of mutual agreement..
_____________.. And if you can’t do this then, agree to go your separate ways in life, be nice about it, don’t blame your partner, learn and grow.
All of which should be pretty obvious and, of course, is abstract and assuming a good faith question, which, probably not-so-much the case here.
Real Life experience (especially by the “rebellious woman” in question)
mayis fucken well likely to vary mileage~wise.@Freodin
What advice would we give? Not much, unless someone asks for advice. If someone doesn’t know about resources that are available to help, people can point them out. The existence of domestic violence shelters, for one, if that is appropriate. The numbers of local support organisations if they ask for that kind of help.
In general, people don’t want advice, they just want support. They want to know that not everyone is like the horrific caricature of a person they’re forced to live with and the people that enable them. Just that can sometimes make all the difference in giving someone the confidence to get help. And that’s if getting help is possible. Most people don’t have that luxury. Their internet usage might be monitored or non-existent. They might be physically isolated in a rural area where everyone knows them and would return them to their abuser.
Every situation is different, but knowing you have support, that you’re not just crazy or overreacting, that you really are in an unhealthy and damaging situation – that is pretty much universally a good thing.
Freodin:
According to your first post, you already knew this, having read the responses to that statement. You went ahead and said the same damn thing anyway, using your ™ as an excuse.
When that didn’t work, you found another nifty way to blame the woman in the relationship rather than the abuser. (Here’s a thought, fuckwit – resources aren’t the same from place to place. You said English was not your native language, so not in the U.S. then?)
Now you want to play all helpful with your “what is good advice?” crap. Of course, you couldn’t manage that until you got in some serious victim blaming.
There’s one thing your ™ didn’t do. She didn’t manage to raise a decent human being.
@Freodin
My last post @372 went out before I’d read your latest.
Thankyou, that’s all. Thankyou for taking the time to read and understand. It’s much more than most people care to do.
@368.Rodney Nelson
So a Cialis (spelling?) one instead then?
Freodin #360
tigtog in #299 gave an appropriate response to Jasper when he gave the same advice for ending an abusive relationship.
Divorce is often a good solution for an abusive relationship. However sometimes divorce is not workable. As I said above in #301 divorce is expensive. So someone unable to bear the expense will not be able to divorce their abuser. Other people have given other practical problems with divorce.
Just because your mother was able to divorce her abusive husband doesn’t mean this solution is usable by all abused women.
@StevoR #367
I agree with your post and Greg’s post that you quoted: the sole person to blame for abuse of any kind is the abuser.
But somehow I think that an advice of “stop abusing your wife” is indeed to obvious. Or do you think people have never thought about that.
We – as society and individuals – have to stop abuse. We have to stop it by calling out, by changing norms, by giving support… and by enabling the victims.
If I make the suggestion: “we should provide more shelters for abused women”… am I to obvious? Am I blaming you for not providing it? No, I am making a suggestion that might help!
And in the same way, if I suggest that an abused women should leave her abuser, I am not blaming her for not doing it… I am making a suggestion that might help.
And if you (all) want point out that this is too simplistic and obvious and that there are a lot of problems connected with that… don’t tell me I am blaming the victim for not solving all these problems – help me and her to find a solution!
Freodin:
No, the internet is not to blame. It was not an innocent little comment. It was a privileged stuffed douchebag handwaving the problems of misogyny and abuse in a patriarchal culture.
You said you saw the reception that stupid comment received. What happened, you saw them but didn’t bother to read them? If you read them, you didn’t comprehend them very well.
Stop blaming victims and stop defending assholes who can’t see past their privilege enough to be a decent human being. Jesus fucking Christ. Asshat.
Freodin,
Like Sophia, I didn’t see your #372 before I posted my #376. You’ve answered your own objections to peoples’ comments.
Freodin:
I was right. You are not a decent human being. You’re a piece of fucking shit who is going to sneak in victim blaming into every single post.
Shut the fuck up.
Freodin #377
It would be irresponsible for anyone to help someone find a solution until enough is known about the particulars of the situation. Circumstances differ in each individual case.
Freodin, if I’m reading you right you do seem to be listening/prepared to listen (unlike the unlamented Jasper upthread); if so that’s great and as to your question I think Sophia pretty much said it in #372.
Support, contact details for a shelter, a lift to the shelter, watching the kids while someone talks to a counsellor or lawyer … just listening to someone and letting them know their voice is worth hearing – all those things. A donation to a shelter … a letter to the papers or to your political representative … not letting it pass unquestioned when someone you know talks domestic abuse down at work or in the pub …
dianne @ 364;
So, my secret identity as ‘The Slightly Beige Knight…known as Bob’ is still safe then?*
And don’t forget – the incessant molestation of women is nothing more than an expression of the ‘social awkwardness’ of the men doing it. Poor guys, will nobody think of how hard it is for them not to sleeze all over every woman they meet, what with being so ‘awkward’ in social situations and all…?
—————————————————————-
Rodney Nelson @ 365;
Perhaps the world would be a better place if less restraint was shown toward misogynist arsehats like him.
That is another common species of MRA; they cannot conceive that the reason why they haven’t had a date might have something to do with their own behaviour or (almost invariably) deeply unpleasant personalities, oh no – it is always the fault of women, and in particular the ‘castrating feminazis’ who are conspiring to lightly broil his little fella and then serve it with butter and garlic.
I honestly don’t know which type is worse – the whiner who hates women for not immediately lining up for the chance to have sex with him, or the aggressive dudebro who thinks that women all secretly crave his peen, but are just too stupid/proud/in denial to admit it to themselves, but will weaken in the end because no woman can resist the allure of his pee-pee.
—————————————————————-
Louis @ 366;
Credit where credit is due – I… borrowed (read: shamelessly stole) the turn of phrase from one of your posts on an earlier thread.
All part of teh miracle of teh sexors – what is the ‘white poison’ to us men, that builds up in our bodies and torments us endlessly, is miraculously** converted into the glorious ‘white boon’ the second it comes into contact with lady-parts, and is a most precious gift that they would be honoured to receive, if they weren’t all such ungrateful harridans, that is…
All of us in the fraternity of teh poor oppwessed menz*** share your pain, Brother Louis.
—————————————————————-
* Insert obligatory joke about “not being the pasty, overweight keyboard jockey we deserve; but the pasty, overweight keyboard jockey we need” here.
** Think a XXX rated version of the transubstantiation.
*** Our symbol being a set of gentlemen vegtables rampant on a white field.
Dianne:
I have seen this questions asked many times, and there’s never an answer from the “bitchez are keerrrraaazzzy” camp. But, I imagine if they ever did respond it would be a “Falling Down” defense. That the world (meaning a bad traffic jam in this case) is just so hard on the Poor Oppressed White D00dz that they just HAVE to go on rampages.
But we’re still supposed to trust their superior D00dly Vulcan logic skillz to run the world and tell us keeerrrazzzzy bitchez what’s what because penis.
Sidebar: it’s ridiculous to admit, but I just realized we’ve created a Whiny Ass Bigot verison of LOLspeak. No wonder the Whiny Ass Bigots are so confused how we can identify them on sight.
+++
Freodin:
Inaccurate. The glib “divorce him!” was responded to multiple times with explanations why that’s unhelpful and his response to was dig in, double down and start whining about tone. When it became clear that he was uninterested in doing anything but whining, people gave up on trying to reason with him.
So your inaccurate description of this thread was deliberate, because all you really wanted was yet another way to sneak “it’s the bitches fault” into the conversation. Lovely.
Tell me, how is it “enabling the victim” to point to hard facts and statistics that show what happen to far too many women who “just divorce him”? How is it “enabling the victim” to point out the egregious lack of support services for victims? How is it “enabling the victim” to put the blame for abuse exactly where it fucking belongs – ON THE ABUSER?
C’mon. make with the backpedaling and excuses.
… aaand I should refresh before commenting.
Freodin, may I suggest you think your answers through a bit more. Also, I think there is a language issue here.
Caine, I could be wrong but when Freodin said “enabling the victims” I think he actually meant “we as a society have to help by empowering the victims/making the victims able to get out by providing more shelter spaces etc.” – something like that.
If Freodin doesn’t know what “enabling” means/how this word is actually used (and thinks it just means “making able” i.e. giving someone the ability to do something, like having a computer enables me to post this) then that changes his dodgy post significantly.
Is that it, Freodin?
@377. Freodin :
Okay. What might help – listen to what the (mostly women) who have survived domestic violence say and what *they* want and think.
More women’s shelters and more widespread knowledge of them and the relevant laws and options ASAP? Fuck yes.
More education and a massive grassroots campaign to change the current rape culture we’re all living in? Fuck yes.
More power to, understanding of and help for those who’ve been battered and violated and harmed by their partners? Fuck yes.
And more too I think.
*I* don’t have all the answers, there’s a shitload I don’t know and that’s just what I know I don’t know. I’m not going to pretend to be an expert and not claiming I know best and /or at all here.
Excuse me, but what else does “enable” mean? It might be a language problem, but this is the only meaning I know of.
I’m pretty sure Freodin doesn’t know the use of “enabling” and that this is causing him to miscommunicate here.
I have to go.
Freodin, “enabling” doesn’t mean what it looks to you like it means. Sorry, running out the door now.
@385. opposablethumbs
I hope that is the case – that’s a charitable and reasonable interpretation in my view – but then I could be mistaken.
(Guess I’ll see on refreshing a few times too.)
Eleutheria:
Going by your handle and your lack of empathy, I bet you’re a libertarian. Am I right?
Freodin, fuck you.
Right, the inanimate series of tubes is to blame for some fuckwit making a fuckwitted comment and not apologizing when told he was being a fuckwit but kept up his fuckwittery for several hundred comments before flouncing.
Nice fauxpology.
I think you might profit from a “little nudge”… from the top of Mount Everest.
The reluctance of society to actually hold men legally and morally responsible for domestic violence has absolutely nothing to do with this, does it?
The “knowledge”?! I think she knows damn well what would solve her situation, you patronizing shithell.
Now you have me baffled. Neither my trusted old PONS nor an online dictionary was able to tell me what horrible other meaning “enable” has that makes people call me names.
I found the meaning “authorize”. Did you really consider I though women needed to be permitted to act?
Freodin @ 386;
In this context ‘enabling’ has a similar connotation as it does with relation to those who are suffering from something like a dangerous addiction – if you ‘enable’ that addiction, then you create an environment where the addicted party finds it easy to avoid seeking help or taking the steps necessary to get their life together. You ‘enable’ the continuation of the self destructive behaviour.
As a result, when you said ‘enable the victim’ it wasn’t read as a suggestion that society should empower the victim to make a positive change, but rather as a criticism of society ‘enabling’ the victim in continuing in a harmful relationship by showing sympathy to their plight rather than telling them to get off their backsides and just divorce/leave the abuser in question. Given the context of the rest of the thread and your earlier comments, this was interpreted as you attempting to slip in further victim-blaming tropes ‘by the back door’, so to speak.
I think that this is the source of the confusion here.
Gregory,
Now THAT is a flag I
could getam undoubtedly behind.Louis
<blockquote cite="The “knowledge”?! I think she knows damn well what would solve her situation, you patronizing shithell."
I quote from Sophia's post #329 "I didn’t KNOW about women’s shelters."
I am not perfect, and I never have claimed to be perfect. My command of the english language is limited, and I think it would suit you well to give others a little leeway before getting out the insults.
Yes, and now you can call me a tone-troll on top of all that.
StevoR @ 367;
I appreciate the vote of confidence, but honestly there are any number of better written and more compelling posts on this thread than mine, many of them written by people with a vastly greater understanding of the issues than I can ever hope to possess, in particular women whose knowledge has been hard-earned by having gone through such traumatic experiences of abuse themselves.
I just don’t think my post is worthy of such recognition, given the company it is in.
Louis @ 359;
Definitely the best place to be when dealing with rampant gentlemen vegetables…
:-)
@Gregory Greenwood #394
Ah, thank you for that information. I have to admit that I have never heard of that term in that context, and so it didn’t even cross my mind that it might be misunderstood in such a way.
BTW, this is what I meant earlier by “the internet is to blame”: the way of communication with different people from different backgrounds – even different languages – and instantly assuming the worst about everyone.
I apologize if – whoops, no – THAT! people have misunderstood my intent.
As an aside: I am German. And I am used to be called a Nazi the moment this is known. But fuckwit and patronizing shitshell are nice also.
I’m not so sure about this. The reason that such information isn’t easily available is to prevent ABUSERS from knowing about them. To wit, in my area there’s a program which I will not name that assists people attempting to escape human trafficking situations. The entire reason it’s not advertised is to prevent the traffickers from knowing how and where its operated. There are similar programs that assist women escaping abuse situations and its not advertised for the same reason.
Yes the knowledge needs to be widespread to victims but it must be done in a way that doesn’t make it more widespread to abusers and I have no idea how that would be accomplished.
Where’s that link to that XKCD commic again?
Wait…did the shithead queen bee larva who was bitching about blaming the environment just try to blame the internet?
Dude…all you have to do is learn English as good as a native speaker! Its that simple
I have a feeling people don’t call you Nazi because of your Germanness
Well, most people I converse with via the net are fundamentalist Christians, so they mostly call me a Nazi for being an Atheist.
But beyond that, there does not seem a be a major difference between these folk and the fine welcoming community here…
Well, beyond the regular insults, that is.
::gets back:: ::looks at thread:: huh.
Freodin, I’m glad Gregory was able to help you out on the “enabling” miscommunication. Look, you clearly have excellent English but little knowledge or experience of the language nuances/specific language usage and the commenting history associated with this specific topic.
As you have got into a hole already, partly – just partly – exacerbated by a language issue, on what is quite rightly a topic about which people are passionate, I suggest you stop and read and reconsider before posting further.
You are pissed off at the reception you are getting, but you don’t seem to have noticed or care why people are not happy to welcome you into the room. (it’s nothing to do with being German, which is a pretty dumb thing to say on an international blog (yes it’s in English, but at a rough guesstimate it’s maybe half USAnian, half rest-of-the-world).
Freodin:
I cannot believe you could be this dense and insensitive.
Sophia has made it clear this isn’t even an option for her. So it’s *not* a start. It can lead nowhere.
Now here you are with the gall to tell her she *needs* to do something. Must be so easy to sit up there on your perch, able to dole out bits of wisdom due to your privilege.
****
Sophia:
I’m so sorry for what you’re going through. My heart goes out to you. I hope that someday soon things can get better for you and your child.
Please feel free to drop into The Lounge if you ever need to vent or just chat with compassionate people.
“You are pissed off at the reception you are getting, but you don’t seem to have noticed or care why people ”
Why should he care if a few here apparently take “enabling the victim” to mean enabling victim-hood?
In the post where he made that statement it was crystal clear what he meant. Enabling has multiple meanings the positive one being pretty obvious and within the context there was no way to jump to the negative sense (which would contradict everything else in the comment).
Well at least Caine like any descent human being will have apologized for having blown a lot of fuses without cause…
Maybe this link is really something to get upset about too?
http://www.ahip.org/Cigna-Enabling-Victim-of-Domestic-Violence-to-Begin-Rebuilding-Her-Life.aspx
Also, the Lounge can give some positive advice or actual help, IME. Stay strong, Sophia.
Yes jack it was so outrageous to assume someone who was bitching about blaming environment meant enablimg victimhood when he said we need to stop…enabling victims.
Also FFS you guys this is supposed to be a shark tank but I see so many of yawll giving benefit of doubt right as someone is just done spewing “don’t blame nvironment pick your bootstraps” dog dong. Not everyone is nice and misunderstood some people are just assholes who exploit peoples genoniceness to backpeddle. How are we supposed to purge anyone if your all so forgiving?
Freodin:
I know most of the regulars have already crawled your ass about this, but what the heck, one more person calling you out for being an asshat doesn’t hurt.
You’re being an asshat.
Where did you pull this idea out of? Your ass?
A google search turns up nothing. There’s nothing on Wikipedia. It’s almost as if you made the term up on your own. Sorry, that not only isn’t helpful, it’s the opposite. Sophia cannot rely on this fantasy world where you think “get a divorce” or “environment blaming” are somehow beneficial to her.
Moreover, you completely dismiss the reality of the shit many women have to deal with in cases of domestic violence (wall of relevant text ahead):
Tldr version for everyone
The problem with such advice (I’m out of work and goi8ng to be evicted! So get a job” is that it is unhelpful due to being absurdly obvious, thus actually being insulting akin to asking an adult if they remembered to wipe themselves after using the toilet, and conveys a casual dismisslal of the problem that is arrogant, pretentious, callous and rude.
“Oh the answer is simple why are you bothering me whining about such trivities *i* am above”
That’s how it sounds and that is the attitude th at expresses it.
@Tony #410
What happens when an abused person leaves?
Some may leave and return before they are leaving for good!
Some use a variety of strategies to be safer when they leave!
WHAT THE HECK??
I say that the women should leave and am called a variety of friendly names for suggesting that… and then you present me with an article about women who DO leave?
Why did they leave? Where were all the people telling them: “Oh,no, it’s too dangerous! It is almost impossible!”
*facepalm* jebsus fucking christ.
You really need to quit the blatant dishonesty if you expect people to stop responding to you as they have been.
Hey evetyone who accepted the “me no speaka the english” excuse, look right back to where we started the second you gave slack. This is why people are hammered, people recognize a patern.
Btw if multiple people tell you you’re being an offensive arrogant ass you do not get to play the fucking victim. It proves my point about that statement being cazlous dismissal. If you gave a shit you’d care about offending and appologize and move on rather than continue trying to turn your ass from a hat into a diving helmet
@Ing #412
Perhaps I am allowed to differ a little.
In the situation “I am out of work!” the advice “Get a job!” is callous and inappropriate.
For “my husband is a fundamentalist asshole who insists I submit to him”, “leave him” is quite approprite and no worse than “ask your pastor” or “pray to God”… and I would say a lot more helpful.
Then there’s this option:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francine_Hughes
Sophia – if I lived in the same country I’d offer you our spare room, if only because I know how devastating it is to return to the people who programmed you to believe that abuse was your fault. Big hugs.
Illuminata – the shelter in my home town has fliers in the women’s toilets of GP and sexual health/family planning clinics, hospitals, pubs, and social security offices. They also put them in fitting rooms of clothes stores.
If you call them up they’ll arrange to meet you in a local shopping centre, or clinic, or when picking the kids up at school. They’ll pose as a friend offering a lift. Too risky to give out the address.
Freodin – There are shelters all over Germany. A good friend of mine was running one in the late sixties, and it was part of a network.
Now I want you to think about something -you said it was easy for your mother to escape, to get a divorce. Yes? Have you never given any thought as to why you should not use her experience as the baseline on a largely English-speaking forum?
I’ll help:
1) Welfare – availability and eligibility varies all over the world, and from county to county in some countries. So you cannot extrapolate any access your mother had, to anyone else.
Here in the UK you can get money toward your rent if you’re poor. However, you have to have a home. first. Without money you can’t rent a house, but you need to be renting a house in order to get money. Can you see how impossible that is?
2) The legal system – not only do divorce and custody laws differ around the world, but accessing the system is different too. Some countries have systems like Legal Aid, allowing impoverished people to have a lawyer without needing money. Most don’t.
Americans, in particular, must pay staggering amounts of money for legal help in civil and criminal cases. In some jurisdictions victims of rape must pay to have forensic evidence analysed.
Paying to get restraining orders, custody, child support rulings, divorce, financial rulings on joint property – can you see how the cost of that could get into tens of thousands of dollars? Not easy if you work and don’t have kids, but a stay at home mother, fleeing a violent partner, how can she pay that?
Oh, and fleeing with the children? That can get Mom charged with kidnapping them. I’m sure you can see how that doesn’t help women feel empowered.
There are just two reasons why advice from however long ago in Germany (or Austria, or Switzerland), does not apply to any other part of the world today. Your mother was very fortunate indeed, to live somewhere that gave her the ability and the rights to leave your father. Most women do not, especially in today’s economy.
For “my husband is a fundamentalist asshole who insists I submit to him”, “leave him” is quite approprite and no worse than “ask your pastor” or “pray to God”… and I would say a lot more helpful.
It’s possible, I suppose, that it had simply never occurred to a woman in that situation (i.e. seriously brainwashed by fundamentalism) that she could leave her abusive husband. But I doubt it. And if she really is that isolated, the chances that her husband lets her have an atheist friend who would give that sort of advice are very low. So it’s probably going to be as effective as saying “pray” in a 0=0 sort of way.
Excuse my sorry backside!
People tell me I am an offensive arrogant ass, because they (partially for my fault) misunderstand me, and continuously keep wanting to misunderstand me in order to heap the next insult on my head… and they they whine about “being offended”.
The only person who might claim to be offended for my (misunderstood) position is Sophia, and SHE seem to have gotten my meaning. She also seems to have gotten my apology… which others in some way deem unsincere and false because of the way I phrased it.
The rest of you are offended by one single thing: that I don’t bow down to your greater authority as masters of this domain.
I am misunderstood. It seems I cannot make myself clear… I am sorry for this failure.
But I did not insult anyone. I did not attack anyone, personally or their position. If anyone has the right to demand an apology, it is me.
But it seems I learned enough about that place in that short day. And I am sure you don’t need an ally like me.
Thanks to all the people who tried to understand my point… for the rest: consider me purged!
There is also a big difference between issuing a declarative and asking a question. “Have you considered or tried leaving” phrases it to be about the person it should be about and requests more information with an implied empathy and offer of potential aid.
Phrasing it as a declarative shows you’re an ass. And yes it is a big difference! Help jack off a horse changes meaning by one letter. Let’s eat grandpa changes by one comma. If you can’t grasp that then at least don’t act like an entitled fucking ass when you insult someone because YOU don’t care enough to communicate properlym. If someone mishears you and gets mad its your fault apologize and correct. Every correction from you has been confirming your entitled smug pratism
I’m not fully caught up, but I think that there are many people here that could benefit from this advice (apologies if it’s been mentioned):
[Pandagon]
Gee, it’s almost as if being so flippant toward a victim of domestic violence actually makes it harder for them to leave! Who’da thunk?
Someone else in this thread already said it, but saying something like “Divorce him!” or “Leave him!” in the context of most abusive relationships is tantamount to saying “Just grow superpowers and fly away!”
Trapped in a mining shaft with rubble barring your way? Just dig yourself out!
(How much rubble there is, what kinds of tools you have, whether anyone else is trapped there with you, how much food, water and air you have – these are contextual details that matter, and aren’t addressed by “Dig yourself out.”)
Experiencing crippling muscle cramps while swimming in a lake? Just get out of the water!
(How far you are away from shore, how deep the water is, whether there are any lifeguards on duty are all contextual details that matter, and aren’t addressed by “Get out of the water.”)
In an abusive relationship? “Just leave/Divorce him” is not helpful. Sure, it looks like the optimal end goals, but when you’re being physically and/or emotionally tortured, focusing on the end goal likely won’t be helpful. Instead, you need to focus on the contextual details that matter. What are your resources? Are there resources out there you don’t know about? Do you have kids? Do you have family? Do you have friends? Do you have legal protection?
These are contextual details that matter. Stating what might appear to be blindingly obvious is NOT HELPFUL.
I couldn’t agree more.
I just (heh, heh) want to point out that neither Jaspar nor I have ever said or implied anything about “just” leave him/divorce him.
It seems to me that this concept intruded the discussion in the same way as “but we are not just animals” does when you debate biological classification with creationists.
Perhaps you might want to consider this.
*sigh*
Here’s a place to start figuring out where you are wrong: Just.
Trapped in a mining shaft with rubble barring your way? Just dig yourself out!
I seem to remember a case where some miners (in China, I think) managed to do just that. However, I don’t think that most people on hearing that story would conclude that therefore the average miner stuck in a cave in should be able to dig themselves out.
Is it just me, or does it seem like this 400 post thread consists of the same 200 post conversation, repeated twice?
Freodin could have saved everyone a lot of time and effort simply be reading the responses to Jasper and keeping quiet.
I appreciate the irony of what I’m about to say and maybe I’m on the wrong track altogether, but I think one major problem in this discussion is that Freodin and Jasper have gotten overly emotionally involved in the argument.
It seems to me that they have felt attacked when people responded strongly to their initial statements and gotten angry and then out came the “but surely I’m right that women who are in abusive relationships should leave” and “but I never said ‘just'” defenses. Both are perhaps technically true, but not especially relevant as various regulars have pointed out multiple times and in each case Freodin or Jasper, both of whom show every sign of being smart enough to understand the counterarguments, is defaulting back to these statements. Perhaps because they can’t get past the emotional response of being angry at being told they’re wrong.
Trapped miners usually are not stuck amidst a swarm of sand worms and mole sharks that will viciously disembowel them if they try to dig their own way out but go just slightly in the wrong direction.
And the sand worms, and THEN you’ll have an analogy that might come close to approximating what it is like for women to try to leave abusive relationships.
By “technically true, but not especially relevant”, might you mean that all those people who resorted to calling us names for holding a technically true but not especially relevant position were a little… overboard?
Yes, I admit that I do not like being told I am wrong, but I am downright allergic against being insulted for being wrong. Not that I would attack any embassies, though.
Spot on, dianne. (come to think of it, in Jasper’s case he describes this as his own permanent condition in all discussions – if [he thinks] he’s technically right about a word or a thought he regards it as an absolutely crucial point of honour to stick at that word or thought forever or until his interlocutor capitulates).
Freodin:
No, I presented you with an article about the reasons *why* women can’t *just leave*. One of the points of the article is that there are a variety of complex issues at play that *prevent* women from just leaving. Please note the title of the article.
I’ve heard there are some true perverts out there who are so degenerated that they get a kick out of giving pleassure.
Just what I heard.
Pretty often “divorce” isn’t the first step, but actually the last final step after they walked over broken glass for years.
Illuminata
Hmm, I think that some work with a phone-number that can be widely spread: I used to have a calendar with half a dozen or so printed in: sexual abuse, domestic violence, child abuse…
You could dial a free-phone number that was connected with an office somewhere in Germany and they would get you into contact with the local support structure.
Freodin
No, FFS it isn’t.
The appropriate reaction is to say “Is there anything I can do to help you?”
The fact that the government will not let you starve, be homeless and even pay for your lawyer might have something to do with it.
It’s easy to take those things for granted…
No, you are failing to understand Pharyngula. Insults are your daily bread here. But being a privileged ass talking to women who are/come from abusive relationships what to do is offensive. Because it denies that they are actual sensible human beings and that they have the odds horribly stacked against them. That’s why you are offensive and insult people.
Now remember the first rule of holes and STOP DIGGING
Freodin:
The Irony is strong in this one.
That is *not* why I’m offended by your callousness (at a guess, I’d that that is not the reason others in this thread are offended by your suggestion).
I don’t claim to be an authority.
You are the one chiming in with the simplistic answer for a horrible situation.
As if women haven’t thought about that.
As if it hasn’t been attempted.
As if that’s a solution that can magically solve the domestic abuse.
You are the one claiming the mantle of authority.
Arrogant, condescending authority at that.
I don’t have firsthand experience with domestic violence. I thought
“I’m sure women who have been the victims of domestic violence have thought of/tried to leave or get a divorce. Given that this is a problem in society, clearly those two are not the best options. Now why is that? Maybe I should do some research to learn why it’s not as easy as leaving or divorcing. How can I do some research? Perhaps I can do a Google search for Barriers to Escape From Domestic Violence. Why yes, I can do that. Look at that, there are a lot of barriers to escaping domestic violence. Now that I know this, I understand why any solution will not be a simple one.”
I didn’t say “Oh, you’re a victim of domestic violence. My advice is to leave.”
*BTW, I would think that many of the women in this thread who have spoken up and offered their opinion have done so because they know more about this than you do. You could do with listening to them.
Is it possible that you are too deeply emotionally involved to realize that you might be wrong?
So I introduced a “simplistic answer”… but that is wrong. You assume that it is a simplistic answer, and no attempt of correction from me or Jasper could convince you otherwise.
You assume that I think it hasn’t been though about or been attempted.
You assume that I think it is a magical solution… even when I stated that this is not the case.
You assume that I claim authority, even when I explicitly state that I am not.
I offered the opinion of a woman who knew more about that than me… and it was discarded because she must have had it easy, obviously. Without knowledge of what she went through, she was called a “queen bee”.
When she was at the point where she couldn’t go on any more and sought help, her lawyer didn’t END with “Oh, you’re a victim of domestic violence. My advice is to leave. Pay at the counter and goodbye.” She told her “Take your children and run! He might kill you! Get to safety first… and we well do anything possible to help you.”
Can you not accept that this is the intent behind my posts… and not the callous arrogant authoritative position that YOU READ INTO IT?
Freodin
You are a fucking liar.
And just in case that flies over your head:
Du bist ein gottverdammter Lügner.
Here’s what I actually said:
Notice the IF?
It means that those things are true about her, which I don’t know, because all I know of that woman is what you choose to serve us (What’s the fucking point of bringing her into this anyway? Not her story but her “current opinion” on that matter. Obviously the only reason you want to bring her in is to give us a strawmum behind whom you can hide). Should she actually hold those positions I consider the term justified.
But really, I tried, I thought you were just clueless and probably able to learn. I was wrong. You’re just one of those privileged assholes who think that they can stomp into a room of people, discard the voices and opinions of women and then rant about his hurt fee-fees because we didn’t bow down to your greatness and authority.
Arschloch.
Now you got called names, I suggest just just run off and cry for a while and then decide that you don’t want to play with us mean kids anymore.
++++
Memo to myself: When Caine says somebody is a fucking asshole, just trust her experience.
Freodin:
Oh sure, that’s *A* response. It’s also a condescending, arrogant response (as if the person in question hasn’t thought of this before, but in your infinite wisdom and perch of privilege, you figured out the solution all by yourself).
It’s also not helpful.
Just like your other it’s a simplistic answer to a complex problem. You don’t account for all the barriers to just leaving.
Freodin: Is it possible that you are too deeply emotionally involved to realize that you might be wrong? Because you’re getting so testerical over being disagreed with.
++
No Light & Gillel: both still put the information in the hands of abusers. And, in the case of putting the flyers in the bathrooms, changing rooms, etc, that’s not going to help male victims. And putting the flyers in male bathrooms/changing rooms STILL puts the info in the hands of abusers as well as victims.
like I said, I have absolutely no solution. You’re both probably correct in that these are good locations to put the info and that’s as good AS it gets.
Seconded. Gotta find out where she got her Douchebag Detector.
Freodin:
Both of you dumped your advice without any indication that you knew how difficult just leaving/divorce him is. So yes, the implication is that you both feel that’s all there is to it. In addition, if you truly understood that it’s never that simple, you would have phrased things differently, or not even offered such sage *no woman has EVER thought of this* advice.
Anyone else notice how it went from “I agree why are you yelling at me” to “maybe YOUR wrong”?
In both cases….where one person mysyeriously turned up after the first left…whose soul and first commenting was to defend the first person….and says almost. Exxactly the same shit?
Freodin:
No. I can’t.
You didn’t explain how your advice could work.
I can’t know what your intent was, because I can’t read minds. I can only know what you’ve written. What you wrote was:
It’s condescending because you give this advice as if it has not already been considered and/or tried. You’re talking down to someone who is living through domestic violence. As an outsider who doesn’t know much about the situation, it’s presumptuous to offer such a simple solution. It is not even a start to the solution because the problem is more complex than ‘get a divorce’ can fix.
Which I why I linked to an article about the difficulties facing women when trying to leave abusive spouses.
Illuminata
Sure, but what use is a phone-number to an unknown location worth to the abuser? Given that the people at that end of the phone are capable to filter them out.
And I hope that those people are trained…
Sophia, *Internet hugs* *Internet chocolate* *calming Internet manatees*
…Is it wrong that I want to set his hair on fire?
What makes you think they’ll reconsider?
They’ll just hate the Lady Monolith even more!
No, it’s very common abuse against you. You should report it.
Not everything that happens to you happens to everyone.
Sometimes, you see, stating the obvious is at best useless. Sometimes it’s even an outright insult. Comment 208 explains how that works.
To be fair, GG expended three screens on this. Everyone before him simply assumed that Jasper can’t be as blind to context as he apparently is. GG was the first to try to explain the context.
Several other people have done the same since then, notably Caine in comment 208, tigtog in comment 299, Anri in comment 345, Audley Z. Darkheart in comment 421, and finally Tony in comment 434 (the last comment I’ve read before submitting – I don’t want to refresh again).
I have gotten myself into trouble twice in the last few days, on another blog, by trying to comment on something while ignoring all context. I can’t tell whether I was able to explain that or whether the other person (low traffic over there) just doesn’t follow those threads anymore.
Dude…
The very first thing that my thesis supervisor said to me when I started writing scientific papers was (paraphrasing): “you will be misunderstood, so it’s your responsibility to leave as few opportunities for that as possible”.
Work on that.
Then how do you know it’s common?
But you need to be aware of such things when you write! Otherwise everyone will reach the same conclusions again and again and again!
LOL. It’s exactly the kind of generalizing assumption you keep making.
That would be… funny, because he’s Catholic. Only a few American fundamentalist Protestant denominations believe in the Rapture.
Insult??? She’s fucking superhuman to have managed all that. Do not start from the assumption that everyone is like that.
…Finally, the argumentum ad misericordiam is a logical fallacy. Look it up.
…But it’s true. Jasper wasn’t helping at all, he wasn’t telling anyone anything they didn’t know, and he made no attempt not to come across as an ignorant douchebag.
:-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D
I can’t give advice as long as I don’t know the situation better.
I can’t form an opinion of any worth on things I don’t know enough about. Basic science theory.
*facepalm*
No wonder with all that stress.
…I completely misread that sentence, and so did several other people.
Let me reword it:
“We – as a society and as individuals – have to stop abuse. We have to stop it by calling it out, by changing norms, by giving support… and by empowering the victims.”
We saw “enabling the victims” were triggered, even though the context makes perfectly clear what you meant.
To “enable an alcoholic” means to give them booze.
This is likely something else you haven’t encountered, Freodin: “to have a language” is how you say “to speak/understand a language” in Irish Gaelic; from there it has spread to Irish English and is now common in the US and I don’t know where else. I was never taught that (I’m Austrian), I had to figure it out on teh intarwebz years later.
Let me just repeat that.
It came across that way, and there was no way it couldn’t have.
…But we are. We aren’t temporarily inconvenienced angels; we aren’t supermen that were only recently surrounded by kryptonite. We don’t carry a divine spark; we’re not even made in the image of a god, or made at all. We are just animals.
:-|
…Safety?
Where is safety?
How many victims of domestic abuse have safety available somewhere???
From decades of experiences that you really don’t want to have.
Seconded.
I’ve noticed and wondered about it, but it doesn’t really matter.
Is it possible that you’re too much of an ass to realize you don’t get to tell victims how to react?
A rather revealing bit of projection, isn’t it? Freodin seems not to be viewing this discussion as an exchange of ideas, but as a contest for dominance. What matters is not that one is right, or that one learns anything, what matters is for one to win, to make the other side submit to one’s own version of the argument.
The term “testerical” is apt (not so much the reference to the eponymous organs themselves, but to the hormone that mediates dominance behavior* in both genders)
And you, Freodin, need to realize that intent is neither the only, nor the principle, problem most of us are having with your posts.
It is the consequences, both real and potential of posts such as yours (and Jasper’s) that are the biggest problem. Most of us would not have even cared about intent AT ALL if it were not for the fact that you and Jasper both brought it into the debate in an attempt to defend yourselves with it.
And I have a road out back for you to pave with your intentions.
*(I am aware that my metaphor here depends on a simplification of the real biology, and if my ignorance of my ignorance of any specific aspects of that simplification should drop me into a quagmire over this, then I welcome the storm, and the chance to be educated)
A good Douchebag Detector being the cruel, callous, uncaring, indifferent Universe’s wholly inadequate compensation for a lifetime’s exposure to Douchebags.
Wow.
Yeah, I really shouldn’t reply to comments when I’m that exhausted and mentally drained. Accepting that not-pology was rather silly.
I should have known it’d solidify as “I did the right thing, even a victim of abuse agrees with me, so shut up!”
No. You issued a conditional apology, then continued on and carried on about hurt feelings rather than the meat of the issue.
Guess what? That’s one of the tactics that my abuser used to keep me silent and cowed. If I brought up a serious issue (such as him sexually assaulting me and refusing to stop because it was “my fault”), he would be horribly offended at the accusation. HOW DARE I ACCUSE HIM OF SUCH THINGS? “It makes -you- feel bad? What about me? You’re accusing me of being abusive! I’m not abusive, what a horrible bitch you are for insinuating such things. You make me do that stuff!”
Discussing the issue? No. Never.
It’s not about you or your feelings when you’re dealing with issues that are life or death for the other person. Your feelings DO NOT trump their LIFE.
Um, is it just me, or do abusers have, like, some kind of standard instruction manual they work from?
Apparently. I’ve been perusing some help websites and I’m constantly shocked at how homogenous they are and how much of what I’ve experienced personally seems to be the very definition of an abusive relationship.
I thought that I had it good. I thought that my experience was AbuseLite(tm). You know, because it’s not as bad as those other women. You know the ones, who’re constantly battered and have abuse hurled at them and experience no affection whatsoever and stay because… uh… (we’ll fill in that one later).
The reality is so much less clear-cut than that. An abusive relationship isn’t a loveless one, it’s not one in which no affection is expressed. It’s not even one in which happiness doesn’t occur. It is one that is unequal, imbalanced, controlling.
This is why it’s a problem in the first place! We don’t think our experience is that bad. We’re all so hung up on this mythical “gold standard” of abuse that recognising our own position is so hard – I mean heck – it’s taken me this long to even find out for certain what the standard abusive relationship actually entails.
Society at large is like this. That needs to change.
Exactly. I mean, I’m a FEMINIST, right? I know better than those other women. It could be so much worse. How can I look forward to seeing a movie with him, or wish he would come home, or want to snuggle up to him sometimes at night, if he’s really abusive?
Another thing: years ago I read this description by someone who eventually escaped an abusive relationship, and it has stuck with me ever since. She said, essentially: imagine you’re in a room with a giant terrifying spider. And then the spider disappears and you can’t see what it is, or what it might be doing. Would you feel more at ease, or less?
If there has to be a giant spider in the room, by choice most of us would want to be able to keep an eye on it. THAT’S another reason for staying.
Aww Sophia, I want to hug you sweetheart.
There is no “lite” abuse, no “worse” abuse, it’s subjective. Your worst is your worst. It’s not the sort of thing you can compare. You can’t use the fact that someone may be in a different situation to you, and say “At least he’s not doing X to me”
I said the same thing on Al’s disability thread the other day. Just because I have painful nerve conditions and can’t walk anymore, that doesn’t mean that someone having their first migraine should just “buck up”. They’re in a much worse place than I am.
My parents used to tell me how lucky I was, because I had food, clothes, and a bed. Physical and emotional abuse? Hah! That’s nothing Compared to kids who are raped!
That’s how they trained me. Never do yourself down by minimising your pain.
I wish I could give you a break.
Sophia Exactly! I had this… idea… that if he wasn’t putting me in hospital on a regular basis, that it wasn’t “really” abuse. Combine that with “I can change him”, “but he loves me”, and his endless excuses (from “I blacked out” to “it wasn’t me” to a flat out “buck up and get used to it”) weren’t any help.
Don’t get me wrong, I know how lucky I am to have gotten out relatively whole and (physically) unscathed. But it could have been so. much. worse. It’s this weird feeling of not being worthy of being called a “survivor”, like I haven’t suffered enough to really “earn” it, you know? My head was fucked up to begin with, and The Jackass’s mind-fuckery didn’t help things. I sometimes still feel weak and small and broken and helpless and scared and overwhelmed.
The hardest part? Accepting that I’m never going to be the same “me” that I was before HIM. Well, that, and trying to rebuild my life.
So much love on this thread :)
Yeah. No “oppression olympics”, no “Dear Muslima”. All of these problems are important and need addressing.
There are of course degrees of suffering, and within a specific space (comment thread, community, time frame) issues will have to be prioritised, such as treating a patient with heart failure before someone with a twisted ankle in a hospital emergency room.
“Dear Muslima” is the equivalent in the hospital metaphor of someone having a minor, though possibly serious heart problem, though being told by the doctor that they must wait. There are other people in other hospitals in other parts of the world with CANCER! Having STROKES! With HORRIBLE DISFIGURING FACIAL TUMOURS!
Your problems, even though they are the most severe in this context, are insignificant on a larger scale, so shut up.
The hurt fee-fees brigade are almost the opposite. They’re the one with the sprained ankle in the same emergency room shouting that their ankle is SO SORE. Why doesn’t anyone help me? Why are you all crowded around that unconscious person, I’m in PAIN here!
Heh. Metaphors are the only things that I don’t wholly abject to torturing.
I now recall that I may have had the emergency room thing put into my head by someone upthread. They need credit for putting it there, it’s a fun metaphor to slot things into.
@WMDKitty
You know. Exactly. What I’m going through.
I’m the same. I feel broken and helpless, the system reinforces that and makes sure that he still gets to control my life until my baby’s old enough to make his own decisions.
You can never get rid of them, they’ve scarred your brain so deeply it can’t heal. You’ll never be the person you used to, though… do you feel that you wouldn’t want to, even if you could? That even though the pain is so great, that the damage so severe, you’d not go back – for the simple reason that you NEVER want to have to lose that innocence again?
Part of me wants to go back to the “old me”, but no, I wouldn’t want to have to go through losing that innocence, that sense of… I dunno, that there’s justice in the world, it’s too much to go through that even once. All I can do is move forward.
I wish, oh, how I wish that I could just get over it and move on. (And while I’m wishing, I’d like my time, money, and energy spent on that bastard returned, as well. Especially the money.)
Yeah, my wedding present of a large sum of cash that got spent on “us” – that I want back. I mean, there will be some kind of cash settlement when I actually get around to the secondary legal battle for actual divorce, but I have no idea how much I’ll be entitled to, seeing as he never actually told me how much he earned and hides a lot of work he does to seem as though he is less well off and also a better parent than he is/was. Judges love it.
And by “spent on ‘us'” I’m assuming you mean “spent on HIM”.
bingo.
*facepalm*