I’ve seen this in action. Women get blamed for not ‘making the relationship’ work. The batterer is often a completely nice guy, so the outside world doesn’t see what he’s like to her. She’s often his private punching bag, his sole form of stress relief. She knows she’ll get criticized if she leaves him.
Then, too, the guy may be a perfectly nice guy when he’s not hitting her. One thing I have to say I noticed overseas: waiting for somethng bad to happen is worse than when it happens. Then it’s over and you can deal with, and she’s got no support and all the tension is gone and God only knows what she’s dealing with. She might very well accept what he tells her: that if she was only a better wife and mother, he wouldn’t HAVE to hit her. All she has to do is shape up. They get brainwashed.
I’ve read, too, that it takes several tries for a woman to leave for good. Each time she gets a little further away, tests the waters, gets a little better at it. Finally she leaves–and chances are good he’ll try and kill her. She might even know this. It’s the most dangerous time for a battering victim.
It’s a very complicated situation, and there’s no way to come up with a simple summing up. It’s not a one-time event, leaving; it’s a process.
Well, you know, some of us them there feminazis are ungrateful for all the patriarchy has done for us…We should be ashamed of not being grateful!
He probably likes being bitch slapped. I bet his idea of a real woman is Ann Coulter.
Oh and I’ve tried calling his office twice this morning. Nobody’s answering, and the link I or someone else gave in another post says people are outraged by the little shit’s attitude.
I agree, but so what? The question, if I understand it correctly, is about why he doesn’t support a bill that would make certain domestic violence offenses felonies. Whatever the answer is, it’s not, or shouldn’t be “Because women often don’t leave their abusers, or return to them,” because that has nothing to do with the question.
And I’m not a lawyer, and I haven’t read either bill, so perhaps - perhaps - it’s unfair to compare the cockfighting legislation to the DV legislation, but is there some ettiquette code I’m not aware of that prevents reporters from asking tough questions? Or that makes it acceptable to tell them they’re “not very bright” when they do?
I suspect if Altman had a good answer for why he opposed the DV bill, he would have given it. Instead, he chose to act like this, making it reasonable to assume he doesn’t much care for women.
Your reading and comprehension skills are letting you down, margin. I observed as a matter of fact that you felt no shame in decrying the patriarchy, without in the least claiming that you should; as I was drawing a comparison between yourself and the women you sneered at for enjoying the benefits of feminism without aligning themselves with feminists.
The rest, as I said, was your own invention, especially the part about saying that women sat around all day. Calling it “weaselling” when I point out that you’re apparently incapable of reading plain English or following a simple analogy is fundamentally dishonest, and it’s useless to ask me for a cite for your strawman, although from what I remember of you this won’t stop you yelping “Cite? Cite? Cite?” until the cows come home. (Figure of speech relating to kine, not an obscure sexist term.)
You’ll have no further use for me? You’ll have to find some other target for your strawmen, ad hominems, and poisoning the well then, to name but three. What puzzles me is why the fuck you think I should be dismayed at the prospect.
Sigh. All that and you still address your fallacy of attributing all good things to the patriarchy. Weasel words. You know you can’t prove it, so bye bye.
** Bricker** a friend of mine just pointed out that honeymoon phase–which you observed—should be observed and guarded against. Often it gets shorter and shorter with every attack, but while the attacks come in private, the honey moon stuff might take place in public so the woman will look like a total bitch for leaving such a great guy. After all, he’s never beaten anybody else.
First off, a chicken is a fucking chicken, it has a brain the size of a peanut, weighs 5 pounds and can’t fly. Yes, it is a prisoner and can’t walk away. A woman is an adult human being with resources and abilities far more vast than any chicken, thus she does generally have the ability to walk away. It may not be pleasant, it may not be safe, it may not be what she wants to do, but she can almost always get away.
#2, the people who aren’t “bright” are NOT people who are interested in domestic violence issues. They are people who think that the chicken bill and the DV bill are comparable enough to say that someone values chickens more than women.
#3, this was not a “tough question”. It was a loaded question full of innuendo and was not probative in the least. Nobody was going to learn a fucking thing from that question, it was a straight up dig at Altman, and she deserved to be ridiculed for it.
#4 Altman needs a better reason to strike down the DV bill than “there shouldn’t be a second offence” That’s a bullshit answer.
This - to me - is unpersuasive. We expect, from adults, a willingness to stand up to pressures like, “She’ll be criticized.”
This, to me, is VERY persuasive. We have no problem accepting a hostage suffering from “Stockholm syndrome,” and the same sorts of factors are in play - indeed, even stronger - in an abusive domestic relationship. Moreover – again drawing on personal experience - “brainwashed” exactly fits. They don’t seem to be capable of realistically evaluating the events that are going on. I talked to a woman that had a broken cheekbone and a punctured lung, and she was convinced that the fault was hers for making him mad.
True, but this falls on to the practical, understandable side, rather the “I don’t understand why they…” side. Fear of being killed is a legitimate, practical concern, and the langour with which some police departments treat protective orders is alarming.
Tell me about it. I once had a neighbor write out a death threat to me, sign it, and shove it under my door. He was on probation for making terroristic threats and domestic violence. The cops refused to arrest him. Three weeks later he stabbed somebody and went back to jail. I wasn’t anything but his neighbor.
Women who end up in abusive relationships (both physical and emotionally) often come from homes where that was the norm. They don’t know anything else. They don’t believe they DESERVE anything better. They think that having your husband beat you is what’s supposed to be. They’re scared, and they’re not thinking straight.
What am I minimizing? You have no basis for making this comment. And yes, the fact is that a woman really can walk away while a chicken cannot. An abused woman has the ability to empower herself and grasp control of her life. A chicken does not. This does NOT mean that spousal abuse shouldn’t be considered a serious crime.
I know a woman in my office who was physically abused by her husband for 15 years. She was with her husband since the age of 14. She had no friends or close family. She never even had a job her entire life. She would call the police and they would throw him in jail over the weekends. He’d come back and hit her some more. This happened over and over again. Finally, she seized control of her life. One day when her husband was at work, she packed her bags and went to a woman’s shelter. She got a job as a bagger in a supermarket. She got a cell phone and had 911 on speed dial. Her husband found her and tried to get her to go back home. She called the police and a judge granted her a restraining order. She divorced him and went to school using the alimony payments. Today, she is a very talented financial analyst. She looks back on her life with plenty of regret. She hates the way she was. The highlight is: When she was with her husband for all those years, she blamed him for her miseries. Clearly, he was to blame. But only when she took responsibility for her own situation did things change for her. Just one example, but a good one. Waiting for the law to protect her did her no good. Realizing that she was a strong, smart woman who had the powr to take back control of her life did her a lot of good.
The guy sounds like a jerk, but I can see what he’s saying in a way.
When I did my internship with DV victims, not one of them was without resources. We have a kickass shelter here and loads of social support – they will help you change your identity and move cross country if that’s what it takes. It’s hard for me to have sympathy for a woman who won’t take advantage of what’s being offered – especially when she’s letting the asshole beat the kids, too (and I saw a lot of that last summer).
I understand sometimes there is NO way out. My husband’s grandfather was a monster to his wife and 6 kids … pimped her out, sexually abused all of them – he was awful. This was decades ago, though – she had nowhere to go. I guess we can make an argument that she should have killed him (hell, I would have), but I understand why she stayed – no resources. And plus if she’d taken him out, she would have gone to prison and the kids would be essentially orphans (but again, we could argue that they may have been better off that way).
But this is 2005, sheesh. We’d be hard pressed to find someone who has absolutely NO way out whatsoever, short of literally being a prisoner.
I don’t “get” it, I admit, which is why I learned I’m not cut out for DV work. Nobody is defending the scumbuckets who beat up their wives, but I simply don’t understand the ones that go back for more. I totally understand low self esteem – maybe mine just isn’t low enough to think I deserve to get my ass kicked for burning the toast, though.
I don’t see how low self esteem ties in with a woman staying with an abusive man when he’s beating the kids, though. SHE may think she deserves it, but why would her low self esteem make her think the kids deserve it?
Everyone thinks you just walk out the door and that’s it.
Jacknifed Juggernaut, all you’re doing is repeating that you didn’t say that, that it’s different when you say a woman can just leave. It’s not. The end.
Battered women don’t start out battered. The guy doesn’t show up for the first date, saying, “Hi, my name is John, and I’ll beat the shit out of you in about five years. But until then, I’ll subtly isolate you and work on you till you don’t believe you desever any better, and as matter of fact, you’ll believe that I’m the only person who’s kind enough to overlook your flaws!”
Sorry, but it has to be said: If you believe that a battered woman just needs to leave, you are blaming the victim, and you need to read up on the subject before you waste anybody’s time commenting. It’s just not that much different from beliveing that black people are criminals or whatever. There are just some things you should make some effort on. After a certain age, a person really should know better than to believe what their buddies tell them. I had friends who once believed that you couldn’t get pregnant if you douched with Diet Coke. I told them otherwise, but they wanted to believe it. Some people wnat to believe that battery is a simple matter of a woman getting off her ass and leaving. “Next Time She’ll Be Dead” is a very good book on the subject.
And to forestall the inevitable cries of ‘But I worked there!’
If the v ictim feels like they have no escape, then none exists. I’m not picking on you but I have to say that people can pick up on attitudes, especially people who need help. If a battered woman worked with someone who was unsympathetic to them or expected them to just leave, because that’s what the other, more lucky person would do, well—I’d be kind of afraid to rely on them. That kind of attitude does show.
You really haven’t had the logic fairy drop by for your biennial pity-fuck, have you?
:rolleyes:
Bye bye yourself. Shame you had to hijack your own Pit thread for this, but that was your choice too. Starting a Pitting devoted to me would have been more ethical than dropping a side reference into a thread devoted to another subject in the hope of getting some shits and giggles.
Next time, try assembling a coherent argument and seeing it through to a conclusion, rather than screech at me and then run away twice - once in the original thread, now here - in the vain belief that you’ve somehow “won”.
I’m NOT blaming the victim for marrying an abuser. I’m NOT blaming the victim for getting beaten. I’m NOT saying the victim deserves any of the beatings. I’m blaming the abuser. I’m saying the abuser needs to go to jail. I personally believe that the abuser should go to jail for a very very long time. But the exact reasons why you state that it’s not easy for a victim to just walk away, could be the reasons that the crime is only a misdemeanor. You used the example that a victim might be financially dependent on the abuser, and thus could not leave the relationship. So tell me how putting the abuser in jail for say, 5 years, would fix that problem. I am blaming the victim for not getting out when he or she can. I would NOT blame a child in a similar circumstance. But adults are adults.
My opinion about you is that you’re being very closed-minded about this. You’re not adding anything helpful in case a victim of abuse might be reading this. You keep repeating the “Don’t blame the victim” mantra over and over. Unfortunately, you don’t understand the real meaning. Let me define it for you. The victim never, ever deserves to be beaten. The victim’s actions, words, etc. do not somehow cause them to be abused. The abuser is a criminal plain and simple. That’s it.
Let me ask you a question: What advice would you give to an abuse victim? Based on your comments so far, it seems that you’d be an advocate of the victim doing absolutely nothing, and just waiting for a new law that would put the abuser away for life. You have an extremely low opinion of women.
Finally, your argument is downright pathetic. You interpreted Altman’s comments in the worst possible way. Your argument might hold water in the rare circumstance that a victim lived a completely sheltered life and then was immediately married to an abuser. Does the word “disingenuous” mean anything to you? I recommend your doing some research on logical fallacies. Your posts are filled with them.
Hey, that’s not insultling, to compare a battered woman to a child at all.
No, actually, I have an extremely low opinion of you.
Thanks for reading my mind, though.
Yeah, because the guy’s comments were so peachy keen and wonderful. You’re defending this guy and I wasted my time reading your shit. Thanks for sharing.
I never defended him. But I like to give people the benefit of the doubt. It’s very clear that the ignorant reported simply tried to ambush him with a loaded question. And the news source that you provided is the very station that she worked for.
I don’t care about your opinion of me. Just do the world a favor and stay away from abused women, please.
I don’t get this argument at all. It’s one thing to advise a woman to get out of an abusive relationship for her own safety, but it’s ridiculous to suggest that she has a duty to, or that her failure to do so somehow makes the beatings less of a crime.
She’s the one who hasn’t done anything wrong. Who can fault her for being reluctant to walk out on her entire life (house, possessions, connections, etc.)? The beater should be put in jail. Then she can safely divorce him, take half or more of their net worth, and set up her own life.
It’s offensive to suggest that the solution to domestic violence is escape. That may be a necessary short-term fix, but all it does it set up a situation where the strong can displace the weak without fear of reprisal.