These past
few weeks, I have made an effort to participate in Domestic Violence Awareness
month. I have been writing, tweeting, Facebooking and sharing. I have been
listening, learning, and engaging in conversation about domestic violence and
its prevalence. I have been literally pouring my heart and soul into the
awareness of domestic violence because it is important to me. It is something that
I think about a lot throughout the entire year, something I want to be a lot
more involved in, and something that needs to be completely eradicated. I feel
like it is so apparent lately, more than ever before, that it doesn’t matter
what people think: Domestic Violence IS
an epidemic. It DOES plague us. It affects A LOT more people than most of us
realize. And yes, it IS a crime. And it is a SERIOUS one.
But
sometimes, for whatever reason, despite how passionate I am about this
particular topic, I lose my confidence. It is due in part because a multitude
of individuals have come to me and asked, “Why do you care so much about this?
Why is it so important?” For the most part in these conversations, getting into
the exact details of why I care is difficult. It’s morbidly embarrassing to
say: I care because I am domestic violence survivor. I care because I am the
daughter of a domestic violence survivor. It’s important to me because I am the
daughter-in-law of a domestic violence survivor. It’s important to me because
it should be something that never occurs; not once in a while, not when things
are stressful, not because he drank too much, and not because she wouldn’t stop
talking.
It should
never, ever happen. No matter how angry you are. No matter how much you might
believe you’re justified. It is important to me because I was isolated and
betrayed by someone who was supposed to care about me; I was physically and
emotionally abused by a civil servant in charge of protecting people. It is
important to me because very few people knew and those who did know didn’t want
to get involved. It is important to me because I will never accept domestic
violence as acceptable, forgivable behavior.
A few
nights ago, I was with a few of my girlfriends and the subject of Ray Rice came
up. I’m sure you all remember Ray Rice but just in case you don’t: Running back
for the Baltimore Ravens, five foot eight, and prominent wife beater. Although
I find any brand of abuse completely reprehensible, I find what Ray Rice did to
his wife to be particularly abhorrent. He didn’t just slap her around because
she got lippy. He didn’t shove her because he found out she was canoodling with
the milkman. He knocked her out cold
and somehow still gained sympathy after it was caught on camera.
I get it;
he is a famous, larger than life, football player. He gets fired up for games
and practices and sometimes, it can be difficult to get out of that mode. I
can’t even begin to imagine what it must be like to separate the hypervigilance
of being a football player from the sweet tenderness of being a husband. However,
there will never be any excuse or justification for what he did. I don’t care
who you are, how well you know football, or what you say.
Don’t play his game. Play yours.
–Rachel Caine
What kills
me is that this act was caught on tape, for the entire internet and its patrons
to see. You could watch it on a loop, over and over again. It became this sensationalized
video, look what Ray Rice did to his
wife! It’s disgusting. I caught a glimpse of it one time and I cringed. I
instantly grew angry. My mouth dropped open in actual shock at what a piece of
shit this person is. Who are these men who feed on others? Why would they ever
think it is appropriate to react in such a violent way towards ANYONE, much
less their wife, the mother of their children, the woman they stood up and
pledged vows to? The woman they swore in front of God and everybody to protect
and stay loyal to. I mean, seriously. I know that I’m particularly sensitive in
general and even more so to this, but are we in the Twilight Zone…?
But anyway,
during this conversation with my girlfriends, I remained quiet because I
obviously have my own opinions about domestic violence. I save my poetic
anti-domestic violence rants for my blog because I’m not trying to force my
beliefs on anyone. (Even though I think this is a pretty basic one…) But what I
wanted to say was: Why are we talking
about him? Why are we feeling sorry for the fact that he was terminated from
the NFL? Oh, you poor, sad multimillionaire, I feel so sorry for you. I wonder
if every time you ponder why you got fired, you remember that it’s because you
took your wife out with one, insidious punch. I wonder if you think to yourself
how you would feel if you found out your daughter’s future, proverbial husband
had done the same thing. Would you consider it just a drunken lax in judgment
or a violent crime against the weaker sex? I cannot even fathom punching a
woman so hard that you’ve left her unconscious.
And yet, on
some warped level, there are people fighting for this man. There are people
defending him, claiming that if his wife stood by him, we should have no qualms
about the situation. There is all this discussion about woman desiring gender
equality, and yet we chastise this man for having a physical dispute with his
wife. There are all these murmurs about how if Ray Rice had punched a man instead of a woman, this wouldn’t be an issue. People are saying that no one
would bat an eyelash if it wasn’t his female counterpart that he rendered
unconscious on an elevator floor.
But why?
Very much
to my surprise, one of the women in this aforementioned conversation said,
“It’s her own fault for staying with him. If she put up with him abusing her,
that’s her fault. Not his.”
I guess
that on some level, I could very mildly
understand her point. After all, as I stated in an earlier blog, I enabled my
ex to treat me the way he did. I allowed it to happen and that is a big part of
the reason why it continued. However, I don’t see how the abuse is her fault on
any level. She didn’t ask to be punched out like a Mike Tyson fight in an
elevator. She didn’t expect her husband to send her flying with one swing of
his fist. Sure, maybe she has put up with him and even went as far as to defend
him on national television but that doesn’t make anything he did right. That
doesn’t excuse him from the way he treated her. That doesn’t alleviate the pain
he caused or in any way justify his absolutely violent, ridiculous behavior. It
doesn’t leave room for him to be an abusive piece of NFL garbage. It doesn’t
make him an acceptable human being.
A husband should not discipline his
wife. –Veronica Roth
But all
this nonsense about the issue being gender equality, the premise that we would
not be so harshly judging Ray Rice if he had instead hit a man, and the idea
that the police didn’t reprimand him so we shouldn’t either is absolute insanity. I’m sorry, but this
isn’t about gender inequality or double standards. This isn’t about the public getting too
involved in a private, marital matter. This isn’t about whether or not Ray Rice
should have been terminated by the NFL. This isn’t about condoning Bing Crosby
in the 50’s and destroying Ray Rice in 2014.
This is about violence. It’s about
domestic violence. It’s about violence against women. It’s about unequivocal, unnecessary
ferocity against someone unable to protect themselves. This is about the
inability for some people to keep their hands off of others. And if you think
it’s about anything else, I’m sorry, but you are wrong.
The truth
is that I know so many people who have been affected by violence just like
this. It happens everywhere, all the time and because people are always so
worried about being inoffensive and politically correct, no one gets involved.
Listen, I get all of this; I do. I’m not saying that I want to peruse my
neighborhood and knock on the door of every wife beater like some kind of
wayward, Burberry wearing vigilante. (But if I did, I wouldn’t have to go far.
There’s a woman living on my street who sent her husband to prison for five
years because he beat the absolute tar out of her…) I’m just saying that if we
continually make excuses for these men, if we incessantly make them the
exception, what are we really fixing? What are we really proving?
Moral of
the Crazy: You know, there is this great John Legend song (that I believe is a
remake) called Hang on in There. I
always believed myself to be this wholesome woman who believed in equality and
fairness, someone who envied the genius of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., someone
who tried her best not to hold judgment or assume things about people. After
all, isn’t that what my major is all about? Impartiality, equality,
non-judgment, egalitarianism? Helping those in need? Providing a service to
those who may not be able to help themselves? Harmony, love, and peace?
Daffodils and roses?
But then
every time I listen to that song I hear the lyrics: You go around complaining about the way things are, but what have you
added to this world so far? And as I sing along with John Legend, I listen
to these words so carefully and I think to myself, what have I done? What have
I added? What has my lack of cruel judgment done to make this world better?
What has my hippie mentality done to provide a service for society?
Sure, I
have volunteered at the courthouse. I’ve lent my knowledge to domestic violence
victims in Pinellas County by helping them fill out injunctions that the judge
will most certainly approve. I’ve picked up trash at the side of the road. I’ve
walked for Breast Cancer survivors. I donated my Mustang GT to the Purple Heart
Foundation in the hopes of helping veterans, if only in a miniscule way. I was
bred from hardworking, honest, Flower Children parents who taught me so many
things about life. You don’t judge people
by the color of their skin. You help people less fortune than you. You remain
humble and thankful for all the things God has given you. You remember where
you’ve come from and how far you’ve come and you give people your best because
they deserve it. When I was seven, my mom once gave her entire paycheck to
a homeless man because she said he had “crystal blue eyes like her dad”. And
she went to bed feeling wonderful, even though she had just given away two
weeks’ worth of work to a complete stranger. This is my history, friends; these
are the people I come from.
I have sung
Three Dog Night, Bill Withers, and John Legend like it’s my goddamn job, but
what have I really done? Who have I
really helped? I have to believe that all of these things that I have endured
because of a man just like Ray Rice had to account for something. I had to have
gone through this for a reason, right? I mean, isn’t there a reason that I
survived, a reason that I was given so many second chances to move on and do
better? All of this had to come with a stipulation right? My torture wasn’t all
for naught. I have to do something,
right?
Otherwise,
what have I learned?
If someone puts their hands on you,
make sure they never put their hands on anyone else again. –Malcom X
My husband
was once really good friends with this woman who was severely abused by her
husband. I want to say that she had three or four kids, but honestly, I’m a
little fuzzy on the details because I only met her once.
What I do
remember was that she was habitually beaten by her husband. No matter how many
kids they had or how many businesses they opened together (the latest was a
fairly lucrative tattoo shop in New Jersey), he beat on her like Rocky Balboa
on a punching bag. Their last argument was the most crucial, as it ended with
him kicking her in the face. While wearing a steel toed boot. And then he just
left her there for their kids to find.
She was
nearly dead. She had to have reconstructive surgery on her face because of the
damage the steel in the boot had done. She was a mangled, bloody mess who would
never look the same again. Her nose was so badly broken that they literally had
to rebuild the nasal bone, and other surrounding bones in her cheeks, to fix
it. She would never breathe right again and if she’s anything like me, she
would never sleep again.
But she
woke up every day and kept on living. She had him thrown in jail, packed up her
kids, and left New Jersey. She left everything she had ever known because he
had almost killed her, but he hadn’t been successful. She knew she had been
given a second chance and she was damn well going to take it.
She made
friends, one of which was my (future) husband. She got herself a new,
completely different job (a far stretch from the profitable tattoo shop she had
once owned with her husband) and she actually was really successful at it. She
had a new place, albeit smaller than her previous abode, but it was hers; she
had earned it. Her husband was locked up and far behind her. Her story,
however, which made papers in New Jersey, is probably still findable on the
internet.
I met this
woman probably about seven years ago but I’ve never forgotten her. She inspired
me. She was graceful and tough. She was one of those people that never
exhibited any sort of discontent with the hand she had been dealt. If my
husband hadn’t told me what had happened to her, I never would have known. She
was dazzling and different; she smiled like she didn’t have a care in the
world. But I still knew that her husband was probably in some dank cell
somewhere, cursing himself for leaving her alive.
I know it’s
probably sad that it has to be stories like this that really make us think.
It’s shameful to imagine that we are moved by such cruelty, that it takes
someone nearly dead on the floor to make us realize that violence is
unacceptable. In an age where so few things surprise us, maybe on some level,
it’s what we need to realize that there are bad people out there; that there
are men (and women) who are habitually violent, who tear others down simply
because they can. Maybe we need to be shocked to realize that this is not okay.
With the
month of October coming to a close, I want to remind all of you that abuse
occurs every day. According to the University of Chicago Press, most domestic
violence cases are never reported to the police. It’s an embarrassing problem,
friends. People don’t want to come forward because admitting that someone
incessantly beats on you is goddamn humiliating. People are always buzzing
about the cost of healthcare and how it affects all of us. But here’s a
statistic for you: According to the Center for Disease Control, every year, there
are 16,800 homicides and 2.2 MILLION medically treated injuries due to intimate
partner violence. THIS COSTS $37 BILLION
A YEAR. With a B.
And what’s
worse is that domestic violence is a cycle. It’s something that never ends,
even when the abuser is behind bars or across state lines. It ripples through
time and haunts you even after it’s over. It affects future relationships and
punishes those individuals, like my husband, my dad, and my father-in-law, who
have to further nurture their once abused wives. I know from personal
experience that my dad speaks softer and gentler because he doesn’t want to be
anything like my mom’s ex-husband. My father-in-law allows my mother-in-law
whatever freedoms she desires because he refuses to pin her down the way she
was before. He worships her because before, she didn’t even know what it felt
like to be loved.
And my
husband, the sweetest of all these men, is tender and loving, always telling me
how beautiful I am and how lucky he is to have me. He is careful to never let
me feel attacked or unworthy. When he’s angry, his tone is unoffending because
he refuses to be violent. He knows better.
Domestic
violence affects so many people and it lasts a lifetime. No matter how much you
heal, and believe me, I have, it doesn’t go away. You’ll always be sensitive.
You’ll always be affected. You’ll always carry a piece of it with you.
Domestic
Violence Awareness month ends on the 31st but I plan to promote
awareness all year round. I hope you’ll help me.
I am a violent man who has learned not to be
violent and regrets his violence. –John Lennon
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