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![rapeculturerealities:
thepoliticalfreakshow:
Blaming The Victim: Internet Responds To Gripping Domestic Violence Photoessay By Blaming Photographer and Victim, Rather Than The Abuser, For Domestic Violence [TW: Domestic Violence, Victim-Shaming, Abuse Apologism, Abuse Culture, Abuse Enablism, Violence, Child Abuse, Child Neglect]
This week, the Internet got angry at Sara Naomi Lewkowicz. The 30-year-old photographer had the audacity to photograph domestic violence – and to publish the photos in a major magazine just as Congress was debating the reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act.
In the photos, we see a 31-year-old man named Shane throw his 19-year-old girlfriend Maggie against a set of kitchen cabinets. He traps her with his body against a kitchen counter. He chokes her. At one point, her 2-year-old-daughter walks in and stamps her feet as she sees what’s happening.
The Internet thinks this is Sara’s fault.
Sara’s photo essay, earlier called “Maggie and Shane” and originally published at fotovisura.com, was published Wednesday as “Photographer As Witness: A Portrait of Domestic Violence” in Time’s “Lightbox” photography feature. The 39-frame story is edited down from photos taken in three visits with the couple over roughly as many months.
Commenters at Time think Sara is unethical for not trying to stop the beating. They accuse her of voyeurism; of choosing “an awesome photo spread over critically need help”; of lacking empathy; of exploiting children.
It matters little in such heated discussions whether any of this is true – or demonstrably untrue (as much of it was when the comments were made). One example: Sara called 911. All of that takes a back seat, in these heated comments threads, to something much easier and more visceral: righteous blame.
Many of us are familiar with the phrase “blame the victim,” and there’s no shortage of that in the comments, at Time, on Sara’s essay. Here’s a sampling of the ideas you’ll find there: Maggie, the beaten girlfriend, should have seen this coming. Maggie stays because she likes it. Good riddance, Maggie was cheating on her then-estranged husband anyway … etc. In classic form, one insists of Maggie, “She is not the victim. She is the perpetrator.”
If there’s a single thing about which the critics shouting about Maggie and Sara in Time’s comment section seem to agree, it’s this: The only adult in the house during the assault who isn’t responsible for the violence is the man committing it.
There are limitless variations on the lies people tell themselves about women like Maggie who are beaten by their partners. The truth is so much more straightforward: Women are abused by men who are abusers.
Abuse may have accomplices (e.g., drugs, alcohol) and catalysts (e.g., a bad day at work, a fight with the kid) but whatever context clings to the commission of abuse does not change something many of us apparently still can’t easily admit: Abuse is committed by abusers, who alone are responsible for their violence.
Sometimes this truth, too, has an accomplice: the camera. Donna Ferrato, the first person to extensively and visually document women who’ve survived domestic abuse, has been taking pictures like these for 30 years. No one ever wants to see them, she says, because they make people nervous, anxious. And for good reason. “The camera catches truth, in action, from all different sides,” she told me. It is “the most powerful kind of weapon.”
So maybe it shouldn’t surprise us that a young, female photographer who wielded such a powerful weapon against violence in a society that prefers to keep invisible, and that so often blames victims, finds herself, too, showered with blame.
To be sure, it feels like there are things missing from this story. Time opted not to publish details about the 911 call – made from Sara’s phone, which she had to take back from Shane in the midst of the fight — even though Sara had previously written them in response to an earlier round of this same controversy at fotovisura.com (where the pictures went up in December). Paul Moakley, Time’s Lightbox editor, told me he felt their written version, which said only that Sara was “confirmed” someone else had called 911, was “much clearer” without the extra details.
But those details matter. Viewers I talked to felt differently when they knew that there were two other adults, friends of Shane, in the house. They felt differently when they knew that Sara physically retrieved her cellphone from Shane’s pocket – he had borrowed it to call Maggie when she left the bar angry at him, and with their shared cellphone, and she hadn’t gotten it back before the argument escalated. She put herself at risk to do that; she snatched it from his pocket as the assault was still happening – and handed it off to one of those adults, instructing him to call 911. They felt differently when they knew that Sara is a tiny 5-foot-2 – all details available with the fotovisura.com version of the story.
And I would bet that those who criticized Sara for the frame that includes 2-year-old Memphis crying in the kitchen as Shane beat her mother, those who argue that Sara should have put the camera down and removed the toddler from the danger, would feel differently if they knew what Sara told me: “When I took that, I pressed the button, it took like three frames of this little girl, and then the other adult was in the room picking her up and taking her out. It literally lasted a matter of seconds.”
In one caption, Sara writes that Shane tried to coax Maggie into the basement by offering Maggie two options: keep getting beaten in the kitchen, or they go “talk privately” in the basement. But there’s a clause that’s not in the caption: “What he said was — he pointed at me at one point and said, ‘Because it’s none of her fucking business.’”
If you look at Sara’s full-body portrait of Shane before he begins hitting Maggie – neck tendons inflamed, muscles taut, mouth opened wide in a shout – you might guess that there would likely have been no conversation in that basement, that the violence would have escalated. “How bad” isn’t a guessing-game worth playing.
“[Maggie] just kept saying no, I’m not going down there with you,” Sara told me. “That’s the big thing I thought about – if he was willing to do that with a camera there, what would he be willing to do if they were alone? That scares me to think about.”
In case it isn’t clear, it is reasonable to think that Shane thought he was holding back for the camera. It seems reasonable to think that Shane thought what he was doing was harmless enough that even people whose fucking business it wasn’t could watch. It seems reasonable to think Maggie believed the photographer-witness to be her best bet for safety. It would, therefore, it seems to me, be reasonable to think that the act of documentation was not merely passive; it was also protective.
And something else: It may seem strange to say so, but there is also victory in Sara’s essay. Ann Jones, who has been writing about violence committed against women for the last 20 years, says the officers’ responses to the 911 call show progress. “The arresting officers here, judging by the captions of the photos, were great. That officer says to Maggie, ‘You know this is going to happen again. They keep doing this. They only stop when they kill you.’ When we started work on this in the battered women’s movement, police were taking the guy’s word for it, not taking a statement from the women, blaming the women for causing the situation in the first place, saying there’s no point in arresting because the women won’t press charges. Prosecutors weren’t pressing charges as they should have,” Jones remembers. “It was all on the women.”
There’s also victory of a kind for Maggie: She files a complaint against her abuser, and she leaves him, two things many women in abusive relationships are reluctant to do.
“People don’t give Maggie enough credit,” says Sara. “She left. I just wish the story would be about her, not me. I’m just a freaking photographer.”
But why confront our discomfort about images when we can instead confront the photographer? Why challenge the perpetrators who commit, and the structures that underpin, this violence when we can blame its victims – and, when the evidence of violence is still too powerful, its witnesses?
Maybe that’s too cynical. It is, at least, for Sara. “I’m excited that this is proving people want to talk about this. People want to address this issue. Bottom line, I think it’s got people addressing domestic violence.”](http://25.media.tumblr.com/69fa133e5b47576f7fe4e67bdbce2d12/tumblr_mj2a2hGmEU1qjo9duo1_500.jpg)
This week, the Internet got angry at Sara Naomi Lewkowicz. The 30-year-old photographer had the audacity to photograph domestic violence – and to publish the photos in a major magazine just as Congress was debating the reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act.
In the photos, we see a 31-year-old man named Shane throw his 19-year-old girlfriend Maggie against a set of kitchen cabinets. He traps her with his body against a kitchen counter. He chokes her. At one point, her 2-year-old-daughter walks in and stamps her feet as she sees what’s happening.
The Internet thinks this is Sara’s fault.
Sara’s photo essay, earlier called “Maggie and Shane” and originally published at fotovisura.com, was published Wednesday as “Photographer As Witness: A Portrait of Domestic Violence” in Time’s “Lightbox” photography feature. The 39-frame story is edited down from photos taken in three visits with the couple over roughly as many months.
Commenters at Time think Sara is unethical for not trying to stop the beating. They accuse her of voyeurism; of choosing “an awesome photo spread over critically need help”; of lacking empathy; of exploiting children.
It matters little in such heated discussions whether any of this is true – or demonstrably untrue (as much of it was when the comments were made). One example: Sara called 911. All of that takes a back seat, in these heated comments threads, to something much easier and more visceral: righteous blame.
Many of us are familiar with the phrase “blame the victim,” and there’s no shortage of that in the comments, at Time, on Sara’s essay. Here’s a sampling of the ideas you’ll find there: Maggie, the beaten girlfriend, should have seen this coming. Maggie stays because she likes it. Good riddance, Maggie was cheating on her then-estranged husband anyway … etc. In classic form, one insists of Maggie, “She is not the victim. She is the perpetrator.”
If there’s a single thing about which the critics shouting about Maggie and Sara in Time’s comment section seem to agree, it’s this: The only adult in the house during the assault who isn’t responsible for the violence is the man committing it.
[TW: ABUSE] When I was a kid, I used to go over to friend’s houses and notice that their parents never seemed to bully them or hit them. I assumed this was just because they had a friend over, and that their parents terrorized them all the time when I wasn’t around. I didn’t identify my situation as abuse or reach out to a teacher or counselor because I thought everyone had to live through this. I was probably twenty by the time I realized that some families really don’t humiliate and belittle their kids, ever.
I wish someone had gotten that through to me. I wish instead of saying vaguely and uncomfortably “you can talk to the counselor if you have problems at home,” my teachers had said flat-out “it is not normal to be afraid of your parents, and not normal to be unhappy whenever you’re at home, and you can ask us if you’re not sure if something’s okay or not.” I wish someone could have taught me that wanting to be safe was human instead of selfish.
And I’m probably going to make a whole post about this so I won’t belabor the point right now, but this is why feminists care about media and memes that normalize rape. (Or that stigmatize the words “rape” and “rapist,” but enthusiastically normalize the act of forcing sex on people, as long as you don’t call it that.) Because it tells people that rape is normal, that it’s a popular and accepted way to express romance and/or dominance, and we can’t assume that everyone absorbing this culture knows “of course that’s not how it really works.”
— The Pervocracy, Everyone else is doing it… right? (via slutwalksignideas)
[Some Indian and “Western” commentators] have reduced India’s rape crisis to a cultural problem. Men, we are told – specifically, Indian men – are culturally lacking and barbaric. They have no concept of women’s rights or equality. They are born and bred to sexually assault and degrade women. This is a familiar phenomenon, and an outgrowth of colonialism. When horrible crimes happen, specifically to women, we reduce the culture, in this case, of about 1 billion people, to a gang-bang-enabling society of rapists. And of course, by blaming Indian culture specifically, Western sexism is brushed under the table. We arrive at Gayatri Spivak’s formula explaining the colonial exploitation of anti-woman violence in colonized societies: “white men saving brown women from brown men”.
The process of reducing brown men to savages has been all too familiar in recent years. We have seen Egyptian men reduced to “animals” and “beasts” by the New York Post because a mob high on a combination of stupidity and jubilation about Mubarak’s downfall brutally assaulted white reporter Lara Logan. We have seen a number of “native informants,” from Mona Eltahawaly to Hirsi Ali, tell us that Arab and Muslim men “hate” women. In typical colonial fashion, gender dynamics, including real crimes and acts of brutality, are reduced to “cultural” problems in which we can reduce entire societies to large gang-bang parties predicated on savage men who simply prey on women.
— Amith Gupta - Orientalist Feminism Rears its Head in India via Jadaliyya (via intoxicated-spirit)
(Source: mehreenkasana)
Be sure to “full view” each page because (at least on my computer) the black in some of the pages is just GONE. Anyway, my design final. A comic attempting to address society’s failure of telling young boys (and girls too sometimes) that abuse/violence/bullying is NOT an appropriate way to show affection…
REBLOGGING AGAIN because I figured out what was up with the colors uhghhsdlkf
Strong TW: abuse, domestic violence
Click-through for larger textPower and Control - the different kinds of relationship abuse
Hock, Roger R. Human Sexuality. 2nd ed. Pearson Education, 2010. 131. Print.
(Source: politi-kia)
This is my favourite post on tumblr.
^^mine too!
fucking yes.
So… This is awesome.
(Source: dontgetcomfortable)
i wrote a paper as a senior in high school about this and when tracking the unhealthy relationship symptoms i found this out too. fucking a.
THIS is a legitimate reason to think Twilight is problematic. Not “oooh, but it’s girly literature cause the vampires sparkle and all the teen girls are into Edward”. As funny as some of the sparkly vampires jokes are - and they really sometimes are - Twilight’s very unique take on vampires is the least of the series’ problems, yet this criticism gets heard a lot more than the criticism of people who have noticed that something isn’t quite right in the relationship between Edward and Bella.
Anyone who thinks “it’s so romantic that he wanted to eat her and also snuck into her room without her permission to watch her sleep” really, REALLY needs to…rethink their definition of “romantic.”
The only list of fifteen things I could find on their site was this. And here’s the list:
- Embarrass you with put-downs?
- Look at you or act in ways that scare you?
- Control what you do, who you see or talk to or where you go?
- Stop you from seeing your friends or family members?
- Take your money or Social Security check, make you ask for money or refuse to give you money?
- Make all of the decisions?
- Tell you that you’re a bad parent or threaten to take away or hurt your children?
- Prevent you from working or attending school?
- Act like the abuse is no big deal, it’s your fault, or even deny doing it?
- Destroy your property or threaten to kill your pets?
- Intimidate you with guns, knives or other weapons?
- Shove you, slap you, choke you, or hit you?
- Force you to try and drop charges?
- Threaten to commit suicide?
- Threaten to kill you?
Now, granted, I’ve only read Twilight, and only once, but I can say for sure I saw enough of this in that one book that if I saw it IRL my warning flags would be flying high. Stephenie Meyer has one HELL of a lot to answer for. And honestly, I can’t help but wonder what’s going on in her house too.
“Our house was small, and when you grow up with domestic violence in a confined space you learn to gauge, very precisely, the temperature of situations. I knew exactly when the shouting was done and a hand was about to be raised – I also knew exactly when to insert a small body between the fist and her face, a skill no child should ever have to learn. Curiously, I never felt fear for myself and he never struck me, an odd moral imposition that would not allow him to strike a child. The situation was barely tolerable: I witnessed terrible things, which I knew were wrong, but there was nowhere to go for help. Worse, there were those who condoned the abuse. I heard police or ambulancemen, standing in our house, say, “She must have provoked him,” or, “Mrs Stewart, it takes two to make a fight.” They had no idea. The truth is my mother did nothing to deserve the violence she endured. She did not provoke my father, and even if she had, violence is an unacceptable way of dealing with conflict. Violence is a choice a man makes and he alone is responsible for it.”
I love this man.
![queasyfemmeproblems:
The Wave of Violence [TW: intrapersonal/relationship violence, abuse]
Earlier this fall, I attended a training with SafeLink, an organization that works to end domestic and dating violence. The training taught us how to spot the “red flags” of abuse, how to reach out to people in abusive situations, how to help someone who is being abused maximize their safety, and how to understand the commonalities of all abusive relationships.
One of the things we talked about in the most detail was a new model for abusive relationships: the “wave of violence.” The presenter drew a diagram on the board that looked a lot like the macro above (made with my own inestimable microsoft paint skills—you’re welcome). The basic idea is that abusers take more and more control away from their victims as time goes on: the “peaks” in the wave get larger and more dangerous as time goes on, while the “valleys” gradually increase in size as time goes on, too. In fact, what might have been the “peak”—the very biggest issue at hand—after one month might become the normal expectation (the valley) after five.
The “Wave of Violence” isn’t a particularly well-known model (the violence wheel is also great and more popular), but I think it offers a few points of clarification:
1. Abuse is about power and control
The abuser’s ultimate goal is to violate their victim’s autonomy. The idea that abusers “resort” to abusive tactics is absolutely nonsensical. So is the idea that abuse has to leave a bruise or that “just” screaming, “just” shoving, or “just” pouting/driving too fast/stealing/belittling/etc. isn’t “real abuse.” Abuse is defined by patterns and power dynamics.
2. Most abusive situations do not get better on their own.
In fact it’s likely they’ll get worse, though this isn’t always the case. What is always true is that the abuser is choosing to engineer a situation where the survivor has as little power as possible. For the abuse to end, the abuser needs to consistently make fairer choices—or else their opportunities to abuse need to be cut off.
3. There is no universal “hierarchy of violence” or hierarchy of trauma
It’s reductive to say that abuse always progresses from healthy behavior to emotional abuse to physical violence like hitting. Instead, it’s more accurate to say that the level of power and harm in an abusive relationship tends to increase as time goes on. This power and harm can be achieved through many, many different tactics, though. For example: an abuser can retain an enormous and even life-threatening amount of power through methods like sexual violence, reckless driving (a common intimidation tactic), forced sleep deprivation, or even confiscating medications that the survivor needs to function.
4. The “honeymoon period” looks different in different relationships
It’s a common misconception that the perpetrator will ply their victim with cards, flowers, kind words, and apologies after an abusive blow-up. This absolutely does happen, but it’s also true that some abusers will just blame the victim for their outburst and move on. Others will refuse to acknowledge that anything happened at all. If the survivor feels that they are at fault, they might even wind up being the one begging for forgiveness.
5. It’s safest to leave during a period of relative calm
It’s most tempting to leave when things get to a “peak,” where the situation might well be worse than ever before. But this peak is also when the abuser is most insistent on over-powering their partner. Virtually all abusers escalate when their victim leaves them, but the escalation will be much worse if it’s coming from a peak instead of a valley. If possible (and it might not be possible), leaving during a period of relative ”normalcy” is the best bet, particularly if the survivor has a safety plan in place to help them stay safe after ending the relationship.
[Note: for simplicity’s sake, I drew each peak increasing steadily. An actual abusive relationship is far less simple. The peaks and valleys, in general, do tend to increase as the relationship progresses (and especially as commitments get more “serious”), though.]](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m5u2rgnjYg1qbz4v1o1_500.png)
The Wave of Violence [TW: intrapersonal/relationship violence, abuse]
Earlier this fall, I attended a training with SafeLink, an organization that works to end domestic and dating violence. The training taught us how to spot the “red flags” of abuse, how to reach out to people in abusive situations, how to help someone who is being abused maximize their safety, and how to understand the commonalities of all abusive relationships.
One of the things we talked about in the most detail was a new model for abusive relationships: the “wave of violence.” The presenter drew a diagram on the board that looked a lot like the macro above (made with my own inestimable microsoft paint skills—you’re welcome). The basic idea is that abusers take more and more control away from their victims as time goes on: the “peaks” in the wave get larger and more dangerous as time goes on, while the “valleys” gradually increase in size as time goes on, too. In fact, what might have been the “peak”—the very biggest issue at hand—after one month might become the normal expectation (the valley) after five.
The “Wave of Violence” isn’t a particularly well-known model (the violence wheel is also great and more popular), but I think it offers a few points of clarification:
1. Abuse is about power and control
The abuser’s ultimate goal is to violate their victim’s autonomy. The idea that abusers “resort” to abusive tactics is absolutely nonsensical. So is the idea that abuse has to leave a bruise or that “just” screaming, “just” shoving, or “just” pouting/driving too fast/stealing/belittling/etc. isn’t “real abuse.” Abuse is defined by patterns and power dynamics.
2. Most abusive situations do not get better on their own.
In fact it’s likely they’ll get worse, though this isn’t always the case. What is always true is that the abuser is choosing to engineer a situation where the survivor has as little power as possible. For the abuse to end, the abuser needs to consistently make fairer choices—or else their opportunities to abuse need to be cut off.
3. There is no universal “hierarchy of violence” or hierarchy of trauma
It’s reductive to say that abuse always progresses from healthy behavior to emotional abuse to physical violence like hitting. Instead, it’s more accurate to say that the level of power and harm in an abusive relationship tends to increase as time goes on. This power and harm can be achieved through many, many different tactics, though. For example: an abuser can retain an enormous and even life-threatening amount of power through methods like sexual violence, reckless driving (a common intimidation tactic), forced sleep deprivation, or even confiscating medications that the survivor needs to function.
4. The “honeymoon period” looks different in different relationships
It’s a common misconception that the perpetrator will ply their victim with cards, flowers, kind words, and apologies after an abusive blow-up. This absolutely does happen, but it’s also true that some abusers will just blame the victim for their outburst and move on. Others will refuse to acknowledge that anything happened at all. If the survivor feels that they are at fault, they might even wind up being the one begging for forgiveness.
5. It’s safest to leave during a period of relative calm
It’s most tempting to leave when things get to a “peak,” where the situation might well be worse than ever before. But this peak is also when the abuser is most insistent on over-powering their partner. Virtually all abusers escalate when their victim leaves them, but the escalation will be much worse if it’s coming from a peak instead of a valley. If possible (and it might not be possible), leaving during a period of relative ”normalcy” is the best bet, particularly if the survivor has a safety plan in place to help them stay safe after ending the relationship.
[Note: for simplicity’s sake, I drew each peak increasing steadily. An actual abusive relationship is far less simple. The peaks and valleys, in general, do tend to increase as the relationship progresses (and especially as commitments get more “serious”), though.]
(Source: poorlifechoicesblog)
tw: abuse, rape, domestic violence
A few weeks ago my mom stapled pages of a story in one of her women’s magazines together and handed it to me. She gave it to me pretty much with the tag lines “for your feminist blog” and “something new to consider.” Indeed it was; she knows me well.
The story is titled “I was forced to be pregnant.” With a title like that, reading it was actually not on the top of my to read list. I thought it was about women not exercising their right to choice. I was very, very wrong on that one.
Have you ever heard of Reproductive coercion? It is a term that was quite recently coined by the advocates against domestic violence to describe a certain type of abuse some women face. It occurs when a man pressures their partner to have kids and/or impregnates them against their will. Reproductive coercion comes in three different types:
1. Emotional pressure that turns into verbal and physical abuse.
2. Sabotaging birth control
3. Marital rape
Over 75% of women 19-49 who reported once experiencing domestic violence also endured some type of reproductive control by men. It’s all about control and domination over a woman’s body.The first story in the magazine is about a woman who got married around 36 years of age. After a few months of dating her boyfriend talked excitedly about having children. After he proposed he began calling her “The Babymaker.” She then confided with him that one of her fallopian tubes was blocked. He in return insisted she see a fertility doctor. She recounts, “I had finally met a great guy who was eager to start a family with me. What woman wouldn’t fall for that?” Soon after her honeymoon he persisted on in an obsessive manner, but his efforts had to be temporarily halted as she had to get emergency back surgery. Alas, 6 months into recovery he was back to pressuring her again. She was in much pain at the time due to her back, but she agreed to In Vitro Fertilization. She then became pregnant, but soon miscarried. In response, her husband grabbed her by the neck, choking her. He apologized, blaming his outburst on his grief and had her sign up for another round of IVF. And then a third round. She tried to put him off with the excuse that she needed to weigh more before she could take treatments, her husband forced her to get on the scale often and filled the fridge with fattening foods. “It hurt that all I was good for was getting pregnant.” She recounts. At the end, he screamed at her, threatening to replace her with a maid if she couldn’t get pregnant and she told him she no longer wanted to have his child. He destroyed bedroom furniture, pushed her down the stairs and threatened her with a gun. She fled to a domestic violence shelter.
The second story was about a woman who faced marital rape. This woman was 40, had a then boyfriend and two children from a previous marriage. After telling her boyfriend she did not want any more children, her boyfriend refused to wear a condom and began to rape her. She then became pregnant with her third child. Birth control was never an option for her because she couldn’t hide pills anywhere for he went through all of her belongings. Three months after giving birth, he raped her again, impregnating her with twins. She lost the twins in a physical fight with him, but soon became pregnant again. During her recovery she begged her obstetrician to remove her ovaries and devise a lie to tell him; that she had cancer. After a decade of sexual abuse and violence she was able to get a job that kept her out of the house and often times traveling.
One in four callers to the National Domestic Abuse hotline said that their partners had tried to force them to become pregnant. Why? As one woman stated, “Its like he wants to own me from the inside out.” Having a baby is the perfect tie that binds. These type of abusers want to create a circumstance in which their partner is dependent on him.
WHAT’S THAT HAVE TO DO WITH PLANNED PARENTHOOD?
Many voters never consider how defunding these clinics could hurt victims of domestic violence who turn to them for counseling as well as pregnancy prevention. Abused women will turn to health care providers long before they will turn to domestic abuse hotlines and organizations. Many women in abusive relationships rely on life saving, affordable care programs such as Title X. It is critical that such places are open and operation when women and children need them so desperately.
holy fuck im crying.
Reblogging so that every time someone tries to say something to the effect of, “She should have known better than to have sex,” I can smash their face in with this.
Pertinent
(Source: feminist-blackboard)
Bitter Grapes: [TW: domestic violence, sexual assault, discussion about abusers]
Okay so as a survivor of sexual assault, there is something that really, really bothers me about the discourse around sexual assault and domestic violence. I apologize in advance if I don’t word this right, feel free to…
My boyfriend and I got into a fight on Sunday evening and it turned physical. It had never happened to this degree before. We have parted ways within the past two days.
I’m posting these pictures for myself so that I’ll remember, and also for the women out there that have bore bruises from the ones they loved.
I will admit something. I wanted to stay with him. Very badly. But I have a support group of friends and family that are more or less keeping me from crawling back to him. And at this point, looking at myself shirtless in the mirror, I think they’re right.
I never would have thought that he would do this to me. I never thought that it would get as elevated as it did that night. We have never been this way throughout our relationship. But I remember thinking that night as he wrapped his fingers around my throat, “I could die tonight. This could be it.”
So I packed my things and I left. At first, yesterday, I didn’t tell anyone that he grabbed me. My parents noticed the scratches on my neck and the bruise on my elbow, poking out from my t-shirt sleeve. But I dismissed it when they acknowledged it. I used excuses like, “I must’ve bumped into something,” or “I guess I scratched myself at some point.” But this evening, a good friend of mine called me after she saw that my relationship status changed on Facebook. And that phone call changed how I feel.
Initially, I was just going to let it go and move on. I wasn’t going to talk to him anymore. But when I told my friend about how he threw things, not at me but around the room I was in, she encouraged me to file a police report. Not necessarily to press charges, but to get it on record that this occurred. She told me that throwing things is Step 3 in domestic violence. Throughout the phone conversation, she told me about the best friend that she lost to domestic violence a few years ago. It started out just like this. By throwing things and yelling. Then he smacked her around a couple times when he was drunk and she dismissed it. Then he beat her up when she was eight months pregnant. She was too scared to say anything. And then he would come crawling back and they would get back together, and they did that over and over again until he finally killed her. Because she never filed a report about the prior occurrences of violence, and because her diary was not admissible evidence, and because there was only one witness of the occurrences (my friend), the man that killed her was only tried for voluntary manslaughter. He’s getting out two years from now.
The point my friend was trying to make was that even if I never see him again, this needs to be documented, if not for the girls he may hurt down the road, then for the whole female race. I do not have to just deal with this, and neither does any other woman. Should he ever try to mess with another girl, it will already be on record that he has done something like this before. She kept saying, “I know you’re scared, but you have to do this.” I’m, of course, nervous about doing this, but I could protect another woman through it. I was going to just move on, but like my friend said, “This is serious shit.”
I’ve talked about it minimally to my best friend so far. He’s hinted about the bruising and I’ve hinted about it but I haven’t acknowledged everything that happened yet. He’s been there for me through it and he’s listened to me and watched marathons of The Golden Girls with me. Which is what every girl needs at a time like this.
I’m not going to press charges and I’m not going to try to get revenge or even mangle his name. We both made mistakes as humans do, and we both yelled and screamed and threw things. I did fight back. That was the first time I have done that in my entire life; and it honestly felt pretty damn good. Because for the past four months, I’ve felt like I have caved after every fight. He doesn’t cave, ever. And if I keep caving at this point, I’ll be caving my entire life, if I choose to stay with him.
I don’t want that life. I don’t want to wear long sleeves. I want to wear sundresses. I want to put make-up on because I feel pretty, not to hide scratches or bruises or even shame.
I chose to post pictures because I want to remember this. I also wanted to do it because…well, my body is special. Bruised or not, my body is not bad, and I’m not ashamed of it. There is nothing wrong with my body. What’s strange is that the physical pain actually makes the emotional pain feel better. Not that I want my body to keep hurting, but it reminds me that just like these bruises, the pain will go away. It might not for a long time, but it will go away.
I’ve been hurt on the inside in ways I never imagined. I’ve never felt this broken-hearted. I could’ve given him everything. I wanted to give him everything. And now I can’t give any more.
I am a woman. I am a woman that knows when to say no. I am a woman that has wonderful people in her life that love her more than she knows. I am a woman that bears bruises but not shame. I am a woman that will rise out of this filth and these ashes and I will shine. And for those women out there that are going through the same thing, I want to tell you that you are worthy of so much more than what you are getting right now. I had to have my mom tell me that to believe it. And it may not mean as much coming from me as it would your mom, but believe me when I say it. And if you don’t have a support group, then message me. We can do it together. Or better yet, rekindle old friendships that have been lost. Because if you are with an abusive man, he doesn’t like your friends. But chances are, those old friends would still be there for you if you just give them an opportunity. I’ve had friends show up out of nowhere to be there for me and I thought I would be completely alone. Don’t fool yourself into thinking that this guy is all you have going for you. There is a way out. There is a way out.
As for me, I only had to deal with this degree of physical violence a couple of times. He grabbed me the first time a few months back. But for the women out there that deal with it every day, I can’t imagine what pain you must feel, inside and out. You can still get out.
I’m taking this experience and turning it into something beautiful. No matter how much pain or how many tears I have to endure. And as much as I want the best for the man I love, I can’t continue to love a man that can’t give me his best.
I am a woman. And I am still beautiful. I am still knock-out gorgeous. I am still loved by people that know the right way to love. I still have so much to look forward to in my future. And I know now that breaking up with me was the biggest mistake for him and the biggest miracle for me.
“There are better things ahead than any we leave behind.” - C.S. Lewis.
You forgot to mention that you are a STRONG woman, for having the courage, strength and willpower to walk away! I know personally that this is not an easy thing to do - men like this make you feel like they are the ONLY ones that will love you an if you leave you have nothing - your stomach twists when you decide to leave, it’s a physical reaction; fear, excitement, anxiety! But you have done it, and good on you! You are right, no woman ever deserves this, we are human and we deserve RESPECT, and respect does not come in the shape of a bruise. Well done, stay strong and be very very proud of yourself. ***hugs***
You are so brave. I greatly admire your courage and strength in leaving and staying away - it is not an easy thing to do, but definitely the right decision. Good on you, and thank you for documenting what has happened.
I never intended to include Chris Brown’s name in one of my tweets to start some sort of a controversy or to gain publicity or anything like that, and now that he’s throwing accusations my way, like using steroids… I feel the need to reply. So please allow me to retort. I’m a lifelong, proud, drug free, straight edge individual, so Chris and I come from two completely different worlds. I don’t have a manager, I don’t have a bodyguard… I don’t need a bodyguard. I don’t have an assistant, I have no need for a PR to tell me what to tweet, or when to tweet. And I don’t hit women. Period. In my world, women are to be revered and respected. And I firmly believe that in this life, there are consequences and repercussions for people’s actions, and I don’t think Chris has payed for what he’s done. Picking up trash on the side of a highway does not make amends for repeatedly striking a woman in the face and sending her to a hospital. So, Chris wants to throw stones my way now and I say that’s fine, but put some gloves on and get in the ring. And I will choke you out, and I will make you feel as weak and as powerless and scared and alone as any woman who has had the misfortune of knowing a sad, cowardly little boy such as yourself, and all proceeds can go to a woman’s shelter of my choosing. If you want to pick up more trash on the side of the highway to make some amends, you should donate more time… maybe tell kids exactly what you did isn’t right. But I’m also a realist, and I know that none of these things will happen because Chris Brown isn’t a man and that’s fine. I just know that someday, somewhere, somehow, somebody will put Chris Brown exactly where he belongs, and it honestly doesn’t have to be me… I would just really like it to be.
#i don’t watch wrestling #but i want to kiss this fella on the mouth
(Source: laceygold)
