You’re right, I did make an assumption based on being emotional about the subject, and for that I apologize. I hope you accept that.
At this point, I am not interested in continuing our argument, as it is clear we are not going to change each other’s mind. My last statement on the matter is that although your blame may not harm the victim, your sympathy towards them could be something that leads to helping them. That’s basically my point in as simple a way as I can put it.
I hope that extending sympathy allows the abused to know that they will get a friendly ear, a helping hand, and an earnest desire to help. If we sit around a judge the abused, I think we contribute to an atmosphere that leaves them feeling friendless and hopeless.
I have sympathy for people all the time who had some control over their circumstances. I have sympathy for the blind diabetic and the smoker with lung cancer. Sympathy says that they’re worth it, even if they’ve made poor choices. They still deserve help, not another kick in the teeth.
Daedelus, apology accepted, I have my own emotional investment in the subject.
I understand your point, but mine isn’t that I have no sympathy. It’s that I have plenty, but it IS exhaustible.
DianaG, fair enough. In my work with children with emotional/behavioral disorders, I’ve had my fair share of times where my patience was worn thin or my sympathy exhausted, but it returned after taking some time away when I needed it. Just saying, sympathy is exhaustible, but it’s also something that can come back if one let’s it.
Cheers.
As with similar ‘domestic’ crimes, there is a definite us versus them mentaility. Because, as with acquaintance rape, the second you agree that victims aren’t a sub-human alien species (or, conversely, perfect martyrs), you have to acknowledge that you could be one, and as soon as you find that abusers don’t wear scarlet As and aren’t driven to abuse by some fault of their victims, you have to agree that society is doing a somewhat crappy job in perpetuating a cycle of violence. If you can tell yourself that everything would be solved if victims just said ‘No means no!’ and walked out then you don’t need to concern yourself with real solutions or despair. Just leave! Just don’t date an abuser! (Rarely: Just don’t abuse people!)
I would also encourage anyone who gets frustrated by situations like this to volunteer for a help line or at a shelter (ideally one with good security – yes, they try to keep their locations secret but it’s not unusual for abusers to come by, or so says a friend of mine used to have baseball bat duty). Just going through the legal system with these people, as someone else said, is a nightmare. Calling the cops is far from an ultimate answer. You have got to be damn sure they’ll arrest your abuser on sight. And that they’ll keep them. And that they won’t get out on bail. And that they’ll go to jail. And that they won’t find you when they get out. For someone who’s just been told that they and the people they love will be killed if they go for help, those are pretty big concerns.
Can it really better to stay and CERTAINLY get beaten (or in your example, killed) right now, today OR take the chance that you will be afforded some protection by law enforcement, or friends and family or (gasp!) even taking steps towards becoming able to protect YOURSELF while the abuser is locked up?
After all, it dosent take long to go out and buy a baseball bat or a 12 gauge shotgun…
Right. And a huge percentage of women in jail for murder are there for killing their abusers. Perhaps you’d say it’s obviously better than being killed, but I’m not sure everyone would agree.
If and when a victim can step outside themselves, acknowledge abuse, figure out an escape plan and find resources in their area – leaving an abuser is when they are most likely to be severely injured or murdered. Again, better than certainty of death if they stay, but still, nothing’s ever that easy.
And you’re assuming that this person has a strong social network, either to begin with or after a period of abuse (which, again, almost always goes hand in hand with being cut off from your friends and family. It’s much harder to control someone who can get a second opinion). And, if they do, that it is something they are willing to sacrifice along with a career and reputation if it comes to that.
And that their abuser isn’t in law enforcement themselves, or doesn’t have strong ties to the community.
Again, it can be frustrating as hell and I’m not sure the OP’s situation is quite what I’m describing, but pretending it can all be solved with a country song or vigilante justice is a joke. Not all abusers go to jail, and many vigilantes do.
Believe it or not, not all women are proficient with a baseball bat or a firearm, nor are most of them in a place psychologically to fight back, let alone go through with an act of murder.
Moreover, Orders of Protection necessitate informing the other person (abuser) of where the victim is living/working, which is terrifying for the victim for obvious reasons (let alone the daunting prospect of navigating the legal system, facing their abuser in court, etc.). And outside of obtaining Orders of Protection, little can be done legally as even if they do go to jail for domestic battery, it will only be for a few years, and does nothing to guarantee protection after that.
Again, I feel it’s too easy to blame the victim in these “hypothetical” cases. The OP brought up a case about his own daughter, who is in a long-distance, abusive relationship. In that particular case, there is time, distance, and familial resources on her side and hopefully she will receive the counseling that will provide her with the mental and emotional resources to take the steps to end the relationship. Unfortunately, not all women have said resources, and even if they do, there is never a guarantee that they will be safe afterward.
Believe me, if it was as simple as going to Wal-Mart and picking up your weapon of choice, I’m sure there wouldn’t be any cases of abusive relationships existing. The fact that they do exist speaks to the fact that there are more complex matters at hand.
Briefly, it’s because ‘abuse’ generally involves making the abused feel like their partner is a wonderful person who could do much better than them, and he/she’s only hitting them because they drove them to it.
Say the violent partner is a man, and one night he makes his wife a lovely romantic dinner. He makes sure all her friends know he made her dinner (like with a facebook update), and they’ll comment on how lucky she is to have him. Towards the end of the meal, she says or does something ‘wrong’ and gets a plate thrown at her head and the rest of the dinner thrown over her as he kicks her. ‘Why do you have to spoil everything? It’s like you want to make me angry!’
Next morning, as she kneels on the floor clearing up the mess, covered in bruises, she considers contacting her friends, but they’re all on his facebook, and hers, saying how lucky she is to have a man like him. Guess he’s right and it really is her fault after all.
I don’t think that’s what having sympathy for someone means. You can even be annoyed with someone for not leaving at the same time as being sympathetic about their shitty situation.
I dont know much about country music (I am partial to New Orleans StreetFunk and Van Morrison) but I do know that just about NO ONE would describe the shooting and killing an intruder who broke into a home to attack someone (ESPECIALLY an intruder who had attacked the victim before, subsequently been arrested for it and then placed under a restraining order by the victim) as engaging in “vigilante justice”.
Its called self defense, and its a right that EVERYONE has, and if children are in the picture, its a DUTY that every parent has. Period.
But so often they are not intruders. They have their name (and maybe only their name) on the mortgage (financial control can’t be underestimated and is one of the main ways in which, while both exist and are serious, male-on-female DV can differ from female-on-male. Telling someone you want to take care of them or that they can stay home to have and raise kids can sound wonderful but be a prison).
Ironically or appropriately, I don’t think the OP would find much argument with some victims of abuse. Like addicts (and it has been described that way), they assume that if things get really bad, they’ll leave. So things can’t be that bad. And that, above all, they are not deserving of sympathy or help.
ETA I don’t want it to come across as if I feel the situation is hopeless and there’s nothing people can do to avoid or leave abusive situations. I know it’s been recommended a hundred times here, but it’s worth mentioning it again – Gavin DeBecker’s The Gift of Fear is a quick, smart read. There’s a section on stalking that I think applies, also, in that the victim sometimes does ‘lead on’ the harasser (often because they’ve been conditioned to be nice or blame themselves), people wonder what they did to deserve it or downplay the whole thing, and that it couldn’t happen without a stalker/harasser/abuser.
I think another point is that many women will stay if they’re told that their loved ones will suffer if they leave. “I am strong and I can take this, it doesn’t matter what happens to me, the important thing is that the rest of my family is OK.” Many women will only leave when it becomes obvious that their children are suffering, partly because they believe it’s better to take the hurt themselves than to allow someone else to do so.
That’s not a bad feeling to have, to a point. Most parents would say something similar about their children’s physical safety. So where do you draw the line between necessary and unnecessary pain? I’m pretty sure that abusers are expert at blurring and erasing that line.
And it’s not like it’s all bad, all the time. There are lots of good times too, and so people keep hoping that those will come back and that the bad parts will be over soon. It’s like that behavioral experiment with intermittent rewards; you will try hardest when you don’t know whether the reward will appear or not.
For me, sympathy is like compassion.
It is not about the ‘worthiness’ of the recipient, it is about the open hearted humanness of the giver.
We give sympathy to the cancer victim without expecting it will improve their cancer. Yet sympathy for the abused is only forthcoming if it produces a change in attitude? I don’t see it that way, sorry. We give sympathy because they are suffering. As humans we empathize with suffering, and sympathize.
Those most deserving of both our sympathy and our compassion are, by definition, it seems to me, the most ‘unworthy’.
My sympathy is aroused by suffering alone, I feel no need to judge the recipient as worthy.
You know, you really do drop some excellent posts on this board.
Agreed. Well said, elbows.
::::::blush::::::
Why do you assume that I never went to the cops? Try putting yourself in my shoes. You are 16 years old and pushed into a marriage by a mother who says she has supported you long enough. Everyone tells you how lucky you are to get such a catch, a man so handsome and charming could have anyone. You are taken to live in the country miles from anyone, no car, no phone and can only leave when he drives you to and from work. It’s 1975 and most small town police still consider abuse a family matter. You talk to two cops who come into where you work and are told it’s just your word against his even though you are covered in bruises. Your boss just tells you to wear clothes that cover the bruises better. You’ve seen him stab a guy in a bar fight and you are afraid he will kill your young neices and nephews because he told you he would while killing your cat. He stands a foot taller than you and outweighs you by 50 pounds of muscle. You don’t have a gun or money and a way to buy one. So what do you do?
This thread has really been stuck in my mind, so I have some more thoughts.
If you can’t give sympathy, please at least don’t give disdain.
It’s very hard to understand this unless you experience it or study it extensively. What I ask is not that you understand it or change your mind, but just have some respect towards victims.
Blame being directed at victims really does make it harder to leave.
I don’t want to go TMI (my ex is still stalking me), but I was a victim for nearly a decade. I am not going to blame some person on the internet that I will never meet IRL for my staying, but just always hearing little “it’s her fault” from all sorts of places really did undermine my confidence to leave.
I knew what was going on was wrong. I was aware of resources out there. But I also heard from my ex (and his family) all the ways in which I deserved it. I would hear from people I knew, strangers, society in general, all these little things that reinforced it too… like if you stay past the first time, then you don’t deserve help.
When someone is systematically and deliberately fucking with your head for years, you’re feeling pretty insecure.
We need to stop victim blaming (in rape cases too) because it does make it so much harder to get out. I was already being treated horribly, I didn’t much relish the idea of getting it worse.
Another reason why women stay that haven’t been mentioned: the devil you know is better than the devil you don’t know.
I knew my ex hadn’t killed me and hadn’t done too much permanent physical damage. I knew it had tapered off and only happened a couple times a year. I knew every single thing was in his name and if I left, I would have nothing and no place to go. If I left, that might finally push him over the edge to really try to kill me (which, knock wood, has not happened and I’m almost out of the 2-year danger zone.)
At least when I was with him I knew where he was and what kind of mood he was in.
I knew what would happen to me if I left and I was right on every single end. His friends and family completely abandoned me: they harass me, accuse me of lying, of being the aggressor myself. (even though he confessed to some of them and some of them witnessed it). I lost almost everything I owned. And because I left him and then told people what he did, he has made it his sole purpose in life to make me pay for that. He spends an unbelievable amount of time coming up with these ruses and plans to fight with me, entrap me, or just piss me off.
I tried calling the police and he very nearly killed me and our other household members. The police can only do so much. He was a master manipulator and evidence was scarce, so it’s not like they could lock him up and throw away the key. Hell, first time offenders barely get punished even if found guilty. Restraining orders expire, if they get granted at all. You can go and hide, but there’s a real good chance he’ll find out where you are anyway.
Do you quit your job, so then you have no income? Or do you stay at your job where he knows where you are 40 hours a week? Do you avoid all your friends, family, favorite hang out spots and activities? For how long?
I was lucky too. I worked with some fantastic domestic violence groups and the police and prosecutors believed and supported me.
I don’t really care if I get sympathy. I’ve lost so many friends and family over this that I couldn’t care less about what another person thinks, much less a stranger. But for other women still in that situation, they might need to know people will be supportive of them when they need help, and support means sympathy to some people.
So I guess what I’m saying is that victim blaming as a society just continues to perpetuate the cycles of violence. Even if you can’t wrap your brain around why anyone would stay, like I said on the previous page, she still had someone beating the crap out of her. She was still a victim of a crime.
“Valid ways” from your perspective. But since it wasn’t your life that was in the balance, that’s really not your call to make. You seem very assured that you knew what was best for these other people, but that’s very rarely the case.
Moving thread from IMHO to Great Debates.