When I hit my husband (when I was young–it was six years ago and I still feel guilty) it hurt him. I hurt him. My husband is 6’4 and had nearly 100 lbs on me at the time. He looks like a big intimidating guy andI was just venting frustration and I hurt him.
What’s my point? It doesn’t matter if she didn’t leave bruises. I didn’t leave bruises. It didn’t mean it didn’t fucking hurt and it certainly didn’t mean it was justified, and I can’t imagine why yosemite keeps hammering the point that we don’t know if he was hurt. You’re right, we don’t. But goddamnit, anybody who’s been hit knows it fucking hurts. Otherwise, people wouldn’t do it. You don’t hit somebody to show love. You hit somebody because you want them to feel pain. You lash out when you’re in pain because you want to “share the wealth.”
I keep repeating it because people seemed to want to imply that he was hurt (as in black and blue hurt) and that doesn’t seem to be the case, unless you want to call torie a liar. It doesn’t mean that the hitting was nothin’, or that it isn’t an alarming problem, but it doesn’t mean that she beat the living crap out of him and now he’s sore and limping.
Uh, no, not necessarily. I just told a tale on this thread of my sister (also a non-fragile girl) hitting me, and it didn’t hurt at ALL. Not at all. It was upsetting, and she definitely shouldn’t have done it, but caused me no physical pain. Hitting doesn’t always mean causing pain to the subject. It can, but it is not a guarantee of it.
Uh, well, of course. Who here has suggested otherwise? That’s why torie is seeking counselling. Because hitting is not right, and she shouldn’t be doing it. But hitting does not always mean “inflicting grave physical pain or damage.” No matter what her size or physical appearance.
The point is that it’s idiotic to assume that a woman can’t hurt a man.
The point is that that assumption is often based on the absurd notion that women are weak frail little creatures.
The point is that torie is, by all appearances, anything but a weak frail little creature.
Therefore, it is extra-super-idiotic to assume that she couldn’t possibly have hurt the guy simply because she happens to possess two X chromosomes.
And why do you think you’re so weak, anyway? Do you have medical problems? If so, I’m sorry, but that means that you’re the exception, not the rule. If you don’t have medical problems, you’re probably nowhere near as weak as you seem to think you are. Not knowing the proper technique to throw an effective punch /= weak.
Also, I find your hysterical questions about whether I think torie is a “liar” to be ridiculous, and quite out of character for you. I never accused her of lying. torie believes that she didn’t bruise the guy. But she has no way of knowing whether that’s the truth. I wouldn’t be surprised if he was ashamed to admit that she hurt him. That’s one of the biggest overall obstacles to men admitting to domestic violence. And besides, whether she left a bruise is irrelevant. She could have hurt him plenty and not left a mark.
Clearly, torie has some problems that she has to work through and I’m sure her friends IRL and on the boards will be supportive of her. Yes, she needs to know that she’s not a bad person (she’s not), but crossing the line between being supportive and flirting is a little oogy.
I’m glad she knows what she did was wrong and it seeking counseling about it. I hope she will talk to her counselor about some of her other issues as well.
Typing more so it doesn’t seem like one of those holier-than-thou one line drivebys that piss me off. Not trying to make a point, just asking the question.
The “flirting” is Diane’s issue, not that torie needs help or that hitting anyone is wrong. This is the judgement call but I’m not going to judge. I’ve done stupid shit in my life so I’ll throw no stones. I’ve sought out cheap male attention (online, calling up a male pal) after having fights with my ex-husband but it didn’t make me feel any better. To know that I “needed” some sort of attention from a man, any man, made me feel pathetic. But that was me. I can not and will not assume to know torie’s mindset now or then.
I hope she takes time to find herself and hopefully love herself, no man can do it for her.
Please copy and paste where I implied that. I said that it doesn’t always, 100% of the time, cause physical pain. I have first-hand experience with this.
What? Where are you getting this from?
What? Please copy and paste where I implied anything like that.
How about we ALL just admit that we are not the boyfriend, who don’t know JACK SHIT about what he felt or did not feel. How about we ALL just admit that torie’s physical appearance proves absolutely, 100% NOTHING about what the boyfriend felt, what pain or discomfort he may or may not have felt. We know absolutely NOTHING. We just have torie’s word that he didn’t get any bruises. Does that mean he didn’t feel a sting? Don’t know. Does that mean that he wasn’t upset? Don’t know. Does that mean that he was amused? Don’t know. Does that mean that he was turned on? Don’t know. Does that mean that he was reminded to buy some more Baskin Robbins ice cream next time he goes out? Don’t know.
You don’t know, I don’t know, nobody knows. We have this one nugget of information: she hit him around the chest and shoulders and he didn’t have any bruises. He did not call the police. She is seeking counseling because she knows what she did was wrong and alarming and she doesn’t want to do it again.
So why exactly are we all discussing what she looks like, as if that is going to shed any new light on anything? It doesn’t. Either way. Perhaps if she were obviously a bodybuilder or something, then it might be an interesting wrinkle (but still no proof of what transpired or what he felt), but as it is, her appearance isn’t all that enlightening. Unless you can trot the boyfriend in here and have him give his first-hand account of what happened, then all of this is just a bunch of bullshit speculation.
Y’know what, I’ve gotta say, I’m impressed. This particular thread seems to be chock-a-block with with the kind of people who could, even on a bad day, make Mother Theresa look like Tupac Shakur.
Honest to god.
Look, people react in horrible ways to different stressors all the time. Afterward, the best of them feel horribly about it, and come to their places of comfort, looking for some, well, comfort. Seems to me that’s all Torie did, and for her troubles, she got shredded.
Fine, it’s an opinion. But…
I’d like to wager each one of you nobel-prize hopefuls with the following tidbit;
You can say all day long that it’s wrong to hit people, and you’d be right. But I’d bet you, anything you care to wager, that in the right circumstances, I could stand in front of you and without laying a hand on you, force you to hit me, and you don’t even know me, much less love me.
Of course, it’s wrong. You’d know it. I’d know it. That scarcely matters.
These things happen every single day. Not every raised hand is domestic abuse, if things were so fucking black and white, there wouldn’t be a single solitary person walking about free. We’d all be in the pokey.
Call me sexist, fine. But it is, like it or not, more acceptable, at least IMO, for a woman, pushed to her outer limits, to overreact with physical violence. Generally speaking, IME, it takes longer for a woman to reach that point. They’re smarter than us men, so they resort to other conniving, and manipulation long before they’re pushed to the break.
Men get to the angry sooner, and we’re wired to be physical
so the violence comes along at a good clip, and the best of us know how to channel it, before it gets to the surface.
End of the day. Yes, torie did a bad thing. However. She seeks help for it, she copped to it being a bad thing, and THAT, is the first step.
I think we (welp, not me) got sidetracked. Diane didn’t think the flirting was appropriate and she has a right to her opinion. As everyone here has a right to theirs. The namecalling and such is just so much fuel on the fire. Does this thread really need more fuel?
If it’s the flirting, then I don’t know why we are still going on about it. We have established hitting a person is wrong, and that torie is receiving the help she wants to have. We have established that she wanted someone to make her feel better about herself and a few of us did that. We have established that the rest of you felt that this was wrong, that torie should not have asked for our sympathy because she does not deserve it.
I can’t remember when I’ve ever been so disgusted with a pack of people in my life. I’ve read LOTS of shitty things on this message board over the years, but I always thought that while the things the people were saying were morally reprehensible, at least they were probably still decent people on some level. I first opened this thread a few hours ago and it’s just now that my hands have stopped shaking enough to be able to type.
And it was only because, thankfully, there are still a few people here with enough sense to be able to come in and call it what it is – a feeding frenzy. But at least sharks in the water just come up and gnaw on you, they don’t spend hours judging you, mocking you, and trying to make you feel like total shit before they kill you.
At least this thread and the other one have taught me one thing. I used to think that there was no such thing as a person who was so spiteful and hateful as to be “inherently unlovable.” Now I’m not so sure.
I blame the instigator:
Yeah, I’m sure you’re real torn up about having to start a Pit thread. In the other forums, you can spew out all the hateful shit you want, and you won’t get called on it as long as you’re careful about how you word it.
I’m glad to see that you were quickly able to get over your personal revulsion with the Pit, however, and could get back to flinging insults, belittling people, mocking people, shouting people down when they didn’t agree with you, and general name-calling. You are one classy lady, and it’s a damn shame you had to bring yourself to this.
You’re right, now it’s not. It was, before you and your cronies came in and decided to shit all over everyone involved in that thread. You take your “oh, I was so misunderstood” tone in your OP, completely oblivious to the fact that not only did you miss the whole fucking point of the original thread, you had to call everyone else “pathetic” while you did it.
I am sorry that you are such a socially inept, cold, spiteful, callous, monstrous bitch that you simply can’t comprehend the idea that a bunch of total strangers would make an effort to help out other strangers when they’re feeling down, and as a result think of themselves as a community. But God damn you for mocking or belittling the people who can and do.
And because you can’t conceive of strangers being pointlessly kind to each other, apprently you don’t read much of MPSIMS. Apart from the threads with titles like “He dumped me” so you can jump in and get your schadenfreude on. Because if you had, you would realize that the Straight Dope Message Board is notmatch.com. One of the customs on that board, in that community, is to cheer people up with meaningless flirting. Is it juvenile? Certainly. Does it help? In a lot of cases, yes. Does it go anywhere? Almost never, and you’d have to be a dangerously undersexed freak to think that there’s anything serious about it.
But that’s all you can see. You kept going on about reversing the sexes involved as if that made a damn bit of difference. One of y’all – I’m too pissed to remember who, exactly – went on about her “cute little ass.” You talk about guys waving their hairy asses. You talk about cocks. And blowjobs. You can’t stop talking about cocks, if your “dialogue” with ShaolinRabbit is any indication. Jeez, I’m a gay man and I don’t talk about cocks that much.
And you have to drag everything else down to that level. You have to mock and belittle the people who posted their smiley-face hearts because they God forbid wanted to try and cheer up someone who was going through a tough time and wanted to help her get out of it before they tried to start judging her. You have to get with your pals and crack jokes and give each other high-fives and slap each other on the back.
You talk about how “I’m not the bad guy! All’s I’m saying is that domestic violence is unacceptable.” Yeah, thanks for cluing us in. I thought that domestic violence was just fine; now I’m going to go back and have to change all the threads where we said it was acceptable. Oh but wait. I’m not actually seeing any threads where anyone said it was acceptable. At least, I wasn’t until you started all this nonsense.
Okay, then “And you guys were all waving your hairy asses in her face and trying to make out with her!” Right, I’ll have to go back and cancel all the dates torie got from SDMB guys who were going to jump into the sack with her. Oh but wait. There weren’t any. They were just saying completely harmless stuff to try and cheer her up.
Okay, then “If somebody puts their private life online, they deserve whatever they get!” That’s the most bullshit argument in the history of online “debate;” you might just as well have pointed out that your First Amendment rights were at risk and compared all the “pathetic” people in that thread to Hitler. Just because you can say something, doesn’t mean you should.
And of course, you accuse everyone else of missing the point.
What I’m seeing is not some poster staying true to her principles, unafraid to point out that domestic violence is unacceptable, and a bunch of people who mistook what she was saying. What I’m seeing is a self-important, sanctimonious asshole, who went into a thread she didn’t see the point of, spouted off her opinion in the most self-righteous and insulting way possible, and then started screaming at everyone else for saying something that they clearly weren’t.
Since I’m cursed with this whole “basic human dignity” and “empathy” that you seem to lack, I’m obligated to try to see things from your perspective. Let’s assume, for the sake of argument, that you’re really not the heartless bitch you spend your whole OP trying to convince everyone you’re not (and then contradicting with the behavior in the rest of this thread). Let’s assume that you really did simply fail to see the part where torie said “Obviously I went into mental health counseling immediately.” Let’s assume that you really did take all the flirting from other guys seriously. Here’s how a normal person would’ve responded:
“It’s troubling to me that you’re so quick to dismiss the act of violence against someone, even in anger and even if he chose not to press charges. I’d recommend not just that you seek counseling, but that you wait until you’ve made real progress before you attempt to start another relationship. This is a bad sign and it’s important to take it seriously. I wish you luck. And guys, I’d advise you take this seriously as well. Help the OP as you see fit, but suggesting a relationship is not a good idea.”
See? Notice how I was able to get my point across? See how I was able to say what was on my mind without calling everyone “pathetic?” Or talking about her “cute little ass?” Or talking about cocks and hairy asses and blow jobs? Or mocking anyone? Or calling them fat? Or making cracks and giving high-fives to my buddies? It’s easy. Consider this Strunk and White’s Elements of Style For Dealing With People Like Human Beings Instead of Acting Like A Raging Self-Important Asshole.
And now, I see that torie has been forced not only to have the other thread closed, but to deal with page after page of people insulting her and belittling her in this thread. I hope you’re as pleased with yourself as you seem to be. You should be – you’ve done quite a lot! Now, not only has torie lost her boyfriend and her home, is having to go through counselling for a mistake that she made and acknowledges she made, but she’s lost one of the groups of people she thought she could turn to for help. One of the groups of people she trusted to give her help. Oh yeah, and she got to have people detailing everything she did wrong, and picking her picture apart. Like we’re in some kind of Roman Coliseum.
Tell you what: there’s a place not too far from here that offers counseling to men who’ve been abusive to their spouses, to help them try to get their lives back together. I’ll give you the address, and y’all can get together and heckle and judge them like a bunch of cackling hens. Make sure you take your buddies with you, so you can all congratulate each other and give each other high-fives.
Some folks think that it was “flirting”, some called it sympathy. It’s perspective. I’m not too sure it was the sympathy that was considered “icky”. I think Diane and those of similar thought would have been fine with sympathy. Just MHO.
Word. Boy, I thought my sister-in-law was the Queen of Assholish Self-Righteousness, but after reading this thread, she’s a rank amateur. SolGrundy, You said what I wanted to say much better than I could.
Hey SolGrundy: If you ever get over this way look me up and I’ll buy you a beer.
Thanks for going to the trouble to post the detailed message that I was too lazy & stupid to write.
Riiight. Because if you don’t like the discussion, it’s a “feeding frenzy” or a “bunch of hyenas” or a “pile-on.”
I also just love the people who declare that we should stop discussing these issues because they don’t like the discussion.
If anyone is being a “self-important asshole,” it’s those people. How dare they come in and disparage those of us who still wish to discuss issues related to torie’s original thread? How is it “assholish” to discuss female-on-male domestic violence?
So lemme get something right, it is a feeding frenzie when more than what? 2? 3? 10? people have the same feelings on something and voice their opinions? When does it officially turn into a frenzie? Is it only a feeding frenzie when YOU disagree?
When does the other side cross the line from sticking up for someone into the self-appointed group vigilante super heros rushing in to rescue the poor, bloody corpse of the defenseless? How long until they resort to the twisting/creating the words of the “sharks” to create false evilness :::cough::: nyctea:::cough to make the frenzie appear more bloody?
Gawdamn fucking drama queens.
This Pit thread was created, not so much over the fact that Torie beat her ex (although that is the spine of this entire mess), but that some people thought it was okay that she beat him because he “deserved it”. That is was okay because she is only a “defenseless, weak female”. Even more so, is the validation and endorsement she received when she started getting responses to her request for flirts. I was not so much Pitting her for the attack, as I Pitted her for the request for flirts and Pitted those who honored that request.
It is disgusting.
Even more disgusting are the justifications for her actions that people have written here.
She’s “just” a weak girl, so how bad could it have hurt?
He deserved it because he emotionally hurt her and caused her to loss a job and made her homeless. (A perfect example of the above mentioned “creation of false evilness”).
And so on.
I have asked for people to reverse gender rolls and explain to me whether or not their feelings would change, especially on the request for flirts and even more so, the responses to the request. All I have gotten are guesses on how this guy may or may not have felt. Whether or not she left bruises. None of that matters. Maybe she didn’t hurt him, but there are female on male abuses that happen where the man IS hurt (again, we have no way to know for sure in this case). Maybe I am looking at Torie’s situation on a less direct level and seeing it more as a case of abuse where the abuser went on to minimize the situation and turn it into a giggling flirtfest. Had a man done that, almost every one of her defenders would be calling for his neck.
Everything else this thread has turned into is the making of a few over dramatic people who are creating shit where there is none. Creating shit to be pissed off about when they run out of shit to be pissed off about.
The homeless thing, the job thing, the fat thing (nice touch Binarydrone).
It isn’t that this has turned into a feeding frenzie, it has turned into a mass of confused bullshit pulled from the asses of those who are looking to be pissed off.
Yosemite – We don’t know how the guy felt. Maybe it didn’t physically hurt, but do you think it may have humiliated and demoralized him? Is that type of hurt okay? What if the roles were reversed and he didn’t leave a bruise or physically hurt her much? Would that be okay?
Maureen – WTF are you talking about? You do realize that it is pretty much a no-no to bring up LJ threads, right?
nyctea – The “dumb” comment was not used because I don’t have a response to your argument. There comes a time when it is pretty apparent that the person I am arguing/debating is creating shit out of thin air, lying, or is just too stupid for me to continue responding to with any sort of effort. You passed that point pages ago.
SolGrundy and ShaolinRabbit – Love the mini feeding frenzie the two of you have going on. Keep spewing your incoherent yammering bile and you’ll receive no response from me. You want to debate the topic and have me respect and consider your views? Show me you are more than blabbering, hysterical idiots and I will gladly listen and consider anything you have to say.
