Perfect answer.
As a woman, I would assume people know my husband doesn’t beat me, and if they ask what happened, I would tell them the truth, and if they asked if I were being abused, I would tell them ‘no.’
No big deal.
Yes, I regret that I didn’t ask a co-worker about a bruise on her face since we found out later that she was being beaten and couldn’t see a way out. I was young and don’t know that I would have been able to help on my own, but we worked with strong women who would have known what to do.
Speaking from experience - yes, actually some people do. Some people assume ANY significant injury a woman suffers must be from abuse.
It was just one injury, but I did have to repeatedly assure a few folks that no, my spouse did not beat me. Really, he didn’t.
As a guy, I’d avoid going out with her for a bit so as to not draw any attention and trust that she’d tell yentas what really happened
This happened to my parents. My mother passed out from a new blood pressure medication, hit her face on the sink, and got two black eyes. The next day, my father misjudged an overhead beam while pulling a small sailboat out from under the house, and got a large scratch on his face.
My mother told me, "we just told people we fought. But she could make that joke because no one would ever think my dad might have hit her.
She did have an awkward bit when she attended a seminar on domestic abuse, while wearing dark glasses over her bruises. I believe she did tell the other attendees why she had black eyes, as they didn’t know him, and it was just too weird to not answer that question.
Well, to be fair, it was because of something you did. Presumably.
Regards,
Shodan
Tell the truth and soldier on till it dis down. There’s nothing else TO do.
But telling the truth includes repeating "I do not believe in hittingmy wife and refuse to do so under any circumstances. Thank you for being concerned for her well-being.
I’m nor uew.
A decade ago a very pretty, very young co-worker of mine came into work with an eye injury. She claimed that she had fallen and injured herself, which sounded improbable to me given the nature of the injury. My very first thought, and that of her other freinds at work, was that her boyfriend had beaten her up. I don’t think our reaction was atypical
This is just an awkward subject all around with people who don’t know you well.
I work for a DV services center and it gets awkward sometimes when I tell people what I do. My Uber driver the other day tried to initiate some domestic violence-related small talk. ‘‘I just can’t wrap my head around it, why someone would ever hit their wife. I mean, I’ve been angry at her before, but I’ve never felt the need to resort to violence.’’
Not really sure what to say to that. Good for you for not beating your partner! Some people do? Am I morally obligated to turn that into some kind of teachable moment? I’m just trying to get home, man, and this is a heavy fucking subject. Ditto the guy at my writer’s group who announced he would ‘‘slap the shit’’ out of a woman character he was critiquing and then looked guiltily at me and said, ‘‘Well, not literally.’’ I’m proud of what I do, but it seems to have made me a magnet for people’s weird assumptions and hang-ups about these issues in ways I’m honestly not prepared to deal with.
What I really don’t like, and what is getting under my skin about the premise of the OP - is the generalization of abuse as something that men do to women.
With the Uber guy, I told him the usual spiel, that there are a host of socioeconomic factors going into the cycle of violence and all that, and then I told him FWIW I’ve never felt the need to hit my husband, either. He seemed surprised by that response, because domestic violence of women against men is invisible to most people. I try to make it visible whenever possible.
Growing up I’ve witnessed DV both with men and women as perpetrators but I feel like people make light of women’s abuse against men all the time, and I hate it. In my direct experience, the nature of the beast is different, the power dynamic works through different mechanisms, the consequences may be different (statistically there are far more strangled/raped/dead/maimed women than men in DV situations), but it’s abuse all the same. To me the possibility that I might abuse my husband is more real than the possibility that he might abuse me. (I have zero personal history of violence myself, I just grew up with a violent woman in my own home and I have experienced the urge to be violent so I understand viscerally the fight-or-flight mentality that leads to it.)
There’s a terrible history of DV on my husband’s side of the family (mostly his grandparents and uncles, but in at least one incident his Dad) and the family jokes about spousal abuse all the time, and it’s terrible and awkward specifically because everybody knows they go home and beat the shit out of their wives. But my husband’s Dad feels the need to crack jokes about me beating his son and it really pisses me off. I think in his mind it’s okay to suggest that because I’m the woman and Sr. Weasel is the man and a woman is not a real threat to him. But it is a real threat for many people and it was for me growing up. I really find the implication infuriating.
At the same time, my husband and I pretend beat each other up all the time, with sound effects and kidney punches, but it’s not DV role-play, it’s more literal action RPG role play. I realize the nuances here may escape some people. But a major important factor of why that’s funny between us and not funny for other people to joke about is that we have intimate knowledge of one another and implicit trust.
I get so angry just with the jokes, I cannot fathom how I would feel if someone actually thought I was beating my husband.