Domestic Violence - a male perspective
Domestic violence is a dance. It takes two partners. Sometimes one leads, sometimes the other. The denial of female participation in domestic violence is becoming criminal in and of itself. The dictum that you "can't blame a victim" has turned any unfortunate event in anyone's life into an excuse for atrocities.
I think the ultimate twisting of the issues was the NG post I saw blaming Phil Hartman's murder by his wife on the "emotional abuse" she suffered from his "withholding" the attention and emotional devotion she required.
It does show how issues of violence are often deeper and more subtle than first meets the eye. And it invites investigation into the subjects of emotional violence and a long overdue recognition that violence does not have to be explosive and obviously destructive in order to be considered violence. In fact, the long term low level violence indicated by the aphorism "Death of a thousand cuts" is far worse because it is concealed.
When I worked in a community mental health center with alcoholics and drug addicts back in the mid-1970s, I could tell days in advance when one of my female clients were getting ready to get beaten up: they would become belligerent and, the term is simplicity itself, hateful. They would project resentment, hostility, and spite. The phrase "getting one's buttons hit" was a good description of how they played emotionally laden verbal and body language into a confrontation. An interesting side note is how all of these women also turned seductive at some point in time. As a male counselor, they attempted to run on me all the female power games that they ran on the men in their lives. It became something of a game to see whether they could draw me into their pattern of interaction, which was why they had been referred to a facility called "The Psychiatric Receiving Center" in the first place.
Abusive lifestyles tend to cluster. Violence often flourishes where addiction is present. That is part of why today's distorted notions of DV are so culturally destructive in the long run. Women deeply involved in addictive and abusive behaviors are assured that they have no part of the problem at all and practically forced by the culture to blame men for their own abusive behaviors. Men can stop their participation, but DV will NEVER be even slowed until women's active participation is addressed. Many of these women need treatment for addiction to alcohol or a host of other drugs - an affliction noted for breeding the most developed forms of denial.
As long as women are allowed to run free without being held accountable for their participation in violence, which also means intiating overt violence at least half the time, the chain of violence will be carried on by those children to whom she is allowed to be violent. Violence in childhood is something that gets incorporated into a child's view of the world. It becomes the lens through which the child sees the world and when the violence comes from someone the child loves, then violence and love get all mixed up in the child's mind. It paves the way for either expressing love through violence, or mistaking violence for love.
Emotional/physical abuse follows the same cycle as the episodic, or binge, addict. After each binge there will be remorse, shame, promises to do better, then a period of relative calm. The abuse cycle thrives on drama and there is great power in each of the three roles of victim, perpertrator, and rescuer. Players caught in the abuse triangle move among roles freely. When an abuse cycle starts, partners in the dance will take turns leading and following, being perp and victim. The basic step is for two, but the dance is made considerably more exciting with a third dancer. With the cast rounded out, each can play victim, perp, and rescuer and enjoy the full psychodrama of those roles.
After an explosion of anger by the perp, the victim enjoys a brief period of extreme power as the remorse puts the perp into the "make amends" stage. But the victim and the perp always calculate the amount of "amends" to be paid quite differently. When the perp begins to feel that the debt is about paid off, the victim still expects additional redress of grievances. This excessive "emotional taxation" leads to resentment, and another explosive episode moves onto the launch pad.
The only answer for men in dealing with a woman addicted to the power that being the victim gives her is to turn your back and walk: the Rhett Butler solution. Frankly, it's best not to give a damn.
Easier said than done.
But, an accomplished victim will find a way to be a victim no matter what you do. Having one's intentions misrepresented and one's honor impugned will be the inevitable result of becoming involved with someone who looks for opportunities to take offense, and is very heavy handed when she does so. That is the shape of much larger things to come. Best to leave such a woman soon, before you come to care for her.
Men must use extrordinary means to insulate themselves from the potential violence of women. Women literally have the license to kill if they have PMS, or are depressed, or can claim abuse. And who can't these days? Men will be punished by the courts for any act of violence BY a woman, whether against him or as an accomplice. And the statistics for these punishments will be used as justification for making the laws more punitive.
This culture will make no progress whatsoever toward dealing with violence, domestic or otherwise, until it begins to address women's active role in violence. As master's of the emotional realm, women's emotional violence tends to be far more subtle and insidiously destructive. The very use of the intimacy which forms the basis of relationships as a weapon is a subtle form of betrayal which turns people gradually away from any ability to trust that person. A fine example of female emotional violence is by journalist Nora Fox on the subject of fair fighting.
Violence must be fed, with overt violence or the covert emotional violence of hostility, and will starve to death suprisingly soon if deprived of nourishment. Men must learn how to recognize how toxic that women like Nora Fox are, and to avoid them.
Sadly, for men already entangled in an abusive relationship, the only real choice is to leave it. The dominant notions that women are always the victim and the male always the perp will absolutely prevent a woman from getting the help she needs. The system doesn't just allow her every possible out, it actively works against her taking any responsibility. Unless and until the legal system gets rebalanced, something highly unlikely to happen, a violence-prone woman will have the law on her side on every issue. Men need to realize this, and take measures to protect themselves in a hostile legal environment.
Because DV is a cyclic abuse pattern, it will continue unless something breaks the cycle. Either partner can decide not to dance and make the decision stick by changing their own behavior. What will not work is trying to force the other to change, while one's own behavior remains the same. People trapped in the abuse cycle will often trade one abusive partner for another identical one time after time. They never look at their own role in the process which begins with the selection of abusive types to become involved with.
Throughout history, an abusive woman has been referred to by the term "bitch." Some women have taken up this label as a badge of pride and thrive on how hostile and abusive they can be. I call this having fallen in love with "the bitch". Men who doggedly pursue the rational and logical approach in the face of "the bitch" will inevitably fail and end up with scars.
It is often difficult for men to recognize potentially violent women. The "be tough, be silent" training that boys receive make it hard for them to recognize low-level violence. They shrug it off. Only when it escalates past a certain point do they say "Hey! Wait a minute." By that time, however, they are usually entangled in relationships from which the exit is just as bloody as staying in them. What makes it worth all the effort of leaving, however, is that once men leave they can make the decision to not allow violence to be part of their lives.
Over the past several years, culturally sanctioned violence against men has been growing. Most violence against men it not overt, but covert. Here are two fine examples of culturnal violence against men, degrading men and painting them in the worst possible light.
Men have only one choice when dealing with a violence prone partner: leaving and avoiding such people. This involves, of course, learning how to recognize them.
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