There’s this commercial on t.v. (I saw it in the theater before a mivie also). In fact, the commercial begins by seeming like an ad for a new movie. But the commercial is about domestic abuse.
It starts off about how “If your husband hits you, pushes you around, isolates you from your friends and family…it’s abuse”
Yeah, yeah. Noones arguing about that. Not at all. But then it says “…if he ever yells at you…it’s abuse”.
Now wait a minute. Since when is yelling at your spouse abuse? I mean, they act like if you EVER yell. I can see if you’re yelling all the time but…!
So if my wife comes home with the car all smashed up, I’m abusing her because I’d yell?
What if I came home smelling like another woman? If my wife yells at me she’s abusing me? Bullshit!
Married couples yell at each other sometimes. It doesn’t mean they’re abusing one another or that it’s violent.
I am not going to say how serious it is, I am not an expert, or anything. It varies depending on the situation.
I don’t think that occasional yelling is “abuse”, especially when there are unusual circumstances. And yeah, it depends on the relationship. Some people are just “loud”. What might seem “excessive yelling” to one family might be the normal loving bellowing for another family.
But if there’s a lot of screaming, outbursts, rage, yelling, hateful insults, “you’re worthless”, “I hate you” over and over and over again, that’s verbal abuse. Even if it’s not yelling, but the message of “You’re worthless” is continually hammered in, over and over - it’s abusive behavior.
Not the same as being hit, but man - it sucks. Especially when it’s targeted towards a kid (especially a small kid) it REALLY sucks. It can really warp a kid. It’s no picnic for an adult to be the target of verbal abuse either.
Yeah, You’re right. But they weren’t very specific in that ad, which was otherwise rather compelling to watch. They weren’t specific at all. Some people are kind of dumb and might think ANY yelling at all, no matter what, is abuse.
I can see somewhere a husband bitching because he just opened up a $600 phone bill to the Psychic Hotline and the wife is thinking…“hmm. He’s abusing me because he’s yelling”. Then somewhere else a guy is hitting his wife over the head with a chair and she’s thinking “I can’t leave. I love him”. Weird.
Well, Hastur, I can think of a couple of times…like yelling “TUCK then ZIP”, for instance, or “The cat’s in attack mode!”, or minor little annoyances like his eyebrows are on fire. There’s also “Lock up the guns, I ran out of meds!” to be considered, too.
As for angry yelling, generally I say that dinner will be ready when it’s ready, and anyone who wishes it to be ready sooner had better help prepare it. I usually yell this while waving around a butcher knife, which makes it (the yelling) VERY effective.
Hi. I live in a perfect fantasy world, where nothing ever goes wrong, where everyone always has their way, and nobody ever gets emotional or upset. The concept of “yelling” is foreign to me, as we never have any yelling in this perfect fantasy world of mine. Care to explain it?
My job requires that I get training every so often regarding domestic violence. Invariably, at these sessions, there is at least one trainer who states that any raising of the voice is in itself abusive.That might be a good position to take when you’re working with the victims. It definitely is not a good position to take when you’re training people who presumably are not abused. It takes no account of cultural or individual idifferences,and causes people to discount anything else that trainer says.
I fail to see how it can be a good position, as it is simply not true. When people get angry, they tend to get louder. Simply raising your voice can not be construed as abusive, as your requiring people to adhere to an impossibly high standard (ie, don’t get angry – ever).
By the same token, I don’t have to raise my voice to be verbally abusive. I can say “You are a worthless bitch and everybody hates you” in a calm, rational, quiet voice. That’s far more abusive than the occasional yell-fest.
If you yell once over something its not abuse , it also depends on the words you say while yelling
But if you contuine to yell anything over say 10 minutes then it qualifies as abuse
Some people consider yelling as a step to physical violence espically when one is numb for the yelling (usually this happens when ones yelled ta for hours on end day after day )
Gotta admit this is true. There’s yelling and then there’s yelling. You get my family together (all 200 of us) in Chicago for a reunion or something and that’s what we do…we yell at each other. And play cards. We do a lot of that.
But 200 Chicago Jews in a brownstone (OK, it just feels like 200. It’s more like 50 or so) on the North Side?
This is a good point. Anger serves a purpose. Besides, my husband and I may raise our voices on occasion, but we can usually satisfactorily resolve disagreements (even major ones) in a couple of minutes. Would it be better to have a “discussion” for an hour or two? I don’t think so–at least not for us.
As others have said, this is very different than constant yelling and/or insulting people.
Eh, this sounds like more “zero tolerance” bullshit.
My father was a yeller-everything had to be at full volume.
Spill the milk? "Why the hell don’t you watch what you’re doing!!!?"
Like I set out to dump 8 oz of moo juice all over the kitchen floor at 7:30 in morning.:rolleyes:
I determined long ago that no one ** and I mean no fucking one** has the right to scream at me in anger. I am, of course, distinguishing between the **" Holy shit-that tree’s going to fall on your head" ** yell and the “You stupid idiot-you had a fender bender and I’m pissed” yell.
Hey-I’m an adult, I work for a living, and I don’t deliberately set out screw up and complicate my life. If I do, I’m the one who’s going to work extra had to pay for the bent tailgate. I’m the one who’s going to have to clean up whatever mess I’ve created. What does yelling at me solve that speaking to me in a calm tone of voice won’t accomplish? Mr. ‘zania and I determined long ago that we if wouldn’t tolerate a certain type of behavior from a boss or stranger, we wouldn’t inflict it upon each other.
I know people that thrive on screaming matches. More power to them. I don’t.
I think maybe the yeller (assuming he/she does not intend to inflict abuse on the spouse) should also take into account what kind of person he/she married.
I have a friend whose husband doesn’t even like it if, say, he’s upstairs and she’s downstairs and she hollers, “Honey, can you bring me my tweezers when you come back down?” from the bottom of the staircase.
Dude can’t handle the raising of voices, whether or not anybody’s even angry.
Knowing this, then, puts my friend in the position of having to consider how raising her voice will affect him and govern herself accordingly. So if she’s deliberately waiting until he goes upstairs, just so she can fuck with him by yelling, “Hey, do you want cheese on your tacos?” at him then, well… maybe that’s abuse.
I myself (despite being born into the consummate Loud Family) had a similar “delicate-child” sensitivity, but only to Anger-Yelling (any yelling regarding taco preferences was welcome).
As a result, my grandma treated me with kid gloves; if she was unhappy with something I was doing, she’d say quietly, “Now, I don’t mean to scold you, but you can’t do that, OK?” Meanwhile, my cousins got screamed at, spanked, and threatened within an inch of their lives (one of her favorite phrases was, “I’ll slap you to sleep!”), and pretty much laughed it off and kept on setting Barbie’s hair on fire.
