Aside from a sprinkling of leaders and 1 or 2 “great people” – who are male bodies anyway – and despite being 50% of the population I should be happy we just got that, I’m told. Well, I’ve been advocating flipping the ratios of government offices so that we have a majority of women instead of men for a long time – nothing wrong with that, right? My overall point being that women constantly get that we should be happy with whatever bone someone throws us, but to reverse the situation would be utterly ridiculous and inconceivable. And I suppose you can say that politics is such a different thing in comparison to representation in a game, but that’s the problem – women are so rarely represented in an equal manner ANYWHERE. And we’re expected to just be happy with what we’ve got. We live in the man channel baby! (Chick flick = film with more than two women. Chick books = books about women. Some sort of equal representation of experiences might dilute testosterone or something.)

I’m cutting the angry part. Read at your own risk.

First story of the day I see, Rihanna was beaten to a bloody pulp and left unconscious in the street by a no good piece of shit. (Kanye West – “Give him a break.” At least I know you’re a no good piece of shit too!) But of course she must have done something to provoke him. Yeah. Let’s continue to be a world full of domestic violence and rape apologists because then we’ll never actually have to address the problem – abusers and rapists rather than the women they beat and rape and murder. Let’s keep letting these men off the hook in favor of concentrating on the woman’s actions.

Add to that the Muslim woman who was beheaded by her husband because she filed for divorce. (Why she stays – often a woman is seen as “stupid” for staying and continuing to take abuse, except that violence escalates when she makes the move to leave, and this is often when he will kill her.) Of course, that’s one story from today, and there are always more and more and more both here and around the globe. I want to know what a world looks like where we take violence against women seriously.

In a similar vein, something that has been pissing me off for a long time – also filed in the “men use religion for all sorts of heinous things” and “women are chattel” categories – Christian nutjobs who deny women the right to leave an abusive husband because “it doesn’t say so in the Bible.” I’m looking at you Rick Warren, and all your small brained misogynistic cronies. Take your (written by men, surprise surprise) Bible and shove it.

Also, the Rock for Life cretins who believe it’s their right as patriarchal Christian men to restrict a woman’s access to abortion and birth control. I was also horrified to see them glorify women who opt not to have abortions despite their lives being in danger. Remember, the cells growing in your body are far more important than you. To say otherwise would actually grant you person-hood and that’s only reserved for men.

You can all take your patriarchy and your religion elsewhere. In fact, go to El Salvador where women are put in jail for 30-50 years if they have an abortion, and you can all hold hands and sing Kumbaya till someone has an unwanted pregnancy (In part due to your mind-boggling restrictions on birth control. Get me a hanger. The constant effort to control the reproductive and sexual lives of women enrages me. But hey, FREE VIAGRA!).

I planned to write a longer post on all these things – Rick Warren, El Salvador and Rock for Life men, but the whole thing just gets me so angry that I really haven’t been able to untwist my brain from the knots they give me.

Speaking of patriarchal Christian men, how can I not mention Mike Huckabee, a man who freed a rapist despite victim’s pleas and advocates that women submit to their husbands. Yeah, I’d certainly trust you to take care of me! “Do the Right Thing” my ass. Please return to whatever hole you came from. Whatever God has in store for you, I hope she makes it good. Eye for an eye and all that, right? Your presidential campaign videos, in which you sat around with Chuck Norris (won’t even start with him) with a cowboy motif (representative of a genocidal era) and talked about how we need a real man for president was truly sickening. You need to get hit with the clue bat, sit down and STFU.

Last but not least, Cara blogged about a Japanese computer game called “RapeLay” in which “The entire objective of the game is to rape women with varying levels of violence — sometimes stalking them first, sometimes using gang rape scenarios, and sometimes forcing them into abortions afterward.” And here I was disgusted at the level of rape and misogyny in Conan the Barbarian and GTA games!

The point isn’t “oh my god, this game is going to create rapists.” The point is “oh my god, this game is going to make rapists think that people are on their side.” Which, of course, too many people actually are already, through their rape apologist jokes and excuses. The premise of the game reinforces the idea of rape as okay and not a big deal. It reinforces the idea that women exist for the sexual pleasure and abuse of men. And the preview of the game Boing Boing, which does not include any actual rapes but only attempted rapes, also ends up reinforcing the dangerous and stereotypical idea of your “real” rape victim who always cries, calls out in distress and overall completely breaks down at actual violence or threats of it.

This post has a lot more vitriol than I usually like to display. I’ve been feeling angry and sad over the pieces of news all day, and I’m just angry at the world right now. People are sick. In blocking these things out for the last few months I seem to have lost a degree of numbness. I am going back to Civ IV. Let me know when the financial crisis has blown the world up for good.

ETA: Twisty’s post sort of restored a little bit of my sanity.

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ETA: I’m sad to realize that I probably didn’t find out from most of the blogs I read about one of October’s themes because they’re always covering issues concerning domestic violence and rape. It’s not exactly an issue that, if properly dealt with, would have an awareness month. (And the same can be said of some of the other themes as well.)

Why Doesn’t She Leave?

by Marie De Santis – Women’s Justice Center

There’s a seemingly simple little exercise we’ve done dozens of times at workshops on violence against women. The usual responses, however, are anything but simple. They’re confounding and cause for concern.

Recently we repeated the exercise with a conference room full of 70 social workers, advocates, therapists, and mental health workers. “Why don’t some domestic violence victims leave the relationship,” we ask? “Call out the reasons!”

The answers, as always, come fast and freely. “Because she doesn’t think she can make it on her own.” “Not enough money to feed the children.” “She feels obligated to her marital vows.” “It’s learned helplessness.” “She doesn’t believe she deserves better.” “She doesn’t know where to go.” “She wants the children to have a father.” etc.

I jot down the familiar list until the group exhausts their thoughts. And there, again, is the enigma. How, at this date, with this group, – with almost every group – do so many miss the obvious? To be sure there’s truth and need for remedy in every reason given. But the one thing that should top the list, the thing that freezes so many women in place, is not even mentioned at all.

Women often don’t leave domestic violence because they know that when they do leave the danger of more severe violence increases dramatically. Violence, and the sheer terror of it, is one of the principle reasons women don’t leave. And the women are right!

The women know these dangers. They know them because they’ve already experienced the violent responses when they’ve attempted to assert themselves, even minimally, within the relationship. They know because the perpetrators have usually threatened precisely what they intend to if she does try to leave.

“Instead of Helping Me, They Sunk Me Even More”

The women also know these dangers are heightened still more because so many officials, first responders, and courts are also in denial of the gravity of her situation. And she’s right again. Despite the modern-day rhetoric about treating domestic violence seriously, the reality is that the critical protections she needs when leaving are still as precarious and unpredictable as a roll of the dice. One responder may help effectively. The next may ignore, mock, underestimate, misdiagnose, walk away, blame her, take her kids, shunt her into social services, arrest her, send her to counseling, or one way or another refuse to implement real power on her behalf, abandoning her to a perpetrator who is now more enraged than ever.

The paths leading up to so many domestic violence homicides are paved with officials’ failures to protect. Just weeks before she was murdered by her estranged husband, Maria hauntingly summed up her own, and so many others’ experiences with officials. “Instead of helping me,” she said, “They sunk me even more.”

You can work tirelessly and compassionately to social work, counsel, and support the victim. But if you ignore this critical piece of making sure the system puts failsafe brakes on the perpetrator and his violence, it will be for naught. The perpetrator will continue to stalk and terrorize or worse. The victim will still be trapped in the violent relationship no matter where she has moved and how much independence she has attained. In fact, the freer she is, the angrier he gets.

And if you look just a little closer, you’ll see that for domestic violence victims there really is no such thing as leaving, or escaping, until the system does, in fact, step up and effectively stop the perpetrator. There is no Mason Dixon line over which women can run and escape and be home free. The perpetrators can and do hunt her down anywhere.

Domestic Violence! Not ‘Domesticated Violence’, nor ‘Violence Lite’!

It’s interesting. When you do the same exercise, but merely shift to other forms of violent relationships, a group’s responses are dramatically different. “Why doesn’t the field slave,” for example, “Run away from the plantation in the middle of the night while the master sleeps?” The answers are immediate and unequivocal. “Because the slaves know they’ll get hunted down.” “Because they know if they’re caught they’ll get beaten like never before.” “Because they stand a good chance of getting killed.”

The first answers out are never ‘learned helplessness’, ‘low self esteem’, or ‘not enough money’ even though there’s no question these same psycho-social factors are just as much at work. In fact, if one were to lead off their explanations as to ‘why slaves don’t leave’ with the ‘learned helplessness’ or ‘not enough money’ aspect, the insult of it would ring perfectly clear.

Whether you ask the question in regard to slaves, prisoners of war, kidnap victims, concentration camp captives, or residents of violent regimes, etc., the horrific dynamics and dangers of attempting to escape are well understood by everyone. Some victims of these violent relationships do, in fact, make a run for it. Some succeed. Some are killed. Some are recaptured and punished unmercifully.

Most victims, however, never go beyond an initial evaluation of the risks. The obvious dangers are just too great. They stay. Violence works. Violence, and the sheer terrorizing threat of it, has always, everywhere, worked better than anything else to keep victims compliant and pinned in place.

So why the glaring blind spot in regard to domestic violence victims? Why are women denied even the validation of the dangerous dynamics of her dilemma? Why do so many people still hold a view, as cloaked as it may be in paternal tones, that is more in sync with the perpetrator’s stance than with the victim’s? The view that the problem rests with her. That it’s she that needs to be propped up and fixed.

As if this violence that plagues women around the world is a ‘domesticated violence’, or ‘violence lite’!

The Patriarchy Still Rules! And Still Needs to be Upended!

The glaring blind spot is rooted deep in the self-preservation mechanisms of patriarchal rule. If the violent repression of women were to be recognized on a par with other violent repressions it would require nothing short of upending the missions of law enforcement, prosecutors, courts, and service organizations, and not just the adjustment of rhetoric we have now. The male-dominated power structure resists implementing its real powers on behalf of women in order to preserve the power for itself. That’s fairly obvious.

But what about the blind spot of so many social workers, advocates, and therapists? Those who care about the women, and dedicate their lives to helping them? Perhaps it’s one more layer of the battered women’s syndrome that needs to be exposed. Because if we ourselves truly recognize the gravity of women’s plight, we, too, have to move beyond the safety zones of the nurturing, supportive roles we find so comfortable.

We will be compelled to step out, challenge, watchdog, fight, demand, and make sure that the powerful, male-dominated institutions are, in fact, upended, and that they, indeed, begin to implement their full powers on behalf of women, and against the perpetrators. Only then will domestic violence victims truly have a real choice to leave.

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