(Matt Davies via GoComics.com)
As a starting point: It is always wrong to hit women, children, or people who are smaller than the hitter. Violence is not the solution, no matter how much it may seem like a solution. Certainly your parents never hit you, quite probably not even a swat on the backside. Because they were smarter and wiser and more educated than that… and because you were lucky.
#WhyIStayed I was hit at home growing up. How was I to have learned relationships could be different?
— dazylady (@dazyladyblog) September 9, 2014
That tweet came from a Washington Post interview with Beverley Gooden, the woman who started the #WhyIStayed hashtag:
… Gooden listed nearly a dozen reasons it took her a year to leave her ex-husband: “he said he would change”; “I thought love would conquer all”; “my pastor told me that God hates divorce.” She ended them all with “#WhyIStayed.” She wasn’t trying to justify remaining in an abusive relationship, she said, but to illuminate why it is so difficult for women to leave. The situations Palmer and Gooden found themselves in are all too common. The National Coalition for Prevention of Domestic Violence estimates that 25 percent of women experience intimate partner violence, and according to the National Domestic Abuse hotline, it takes an average of seven tries for a victim to leave an abusive relationship…
It makes us feel better if we can tell ourselves that abusers are just off-the-chart monsters, chemically-inflamed head trauma cases who batter the gold-digging, religiously-blinded closet masochists naturally drawn to such specimens. That’s not how it happens, in this imperfect world. Charlayne Hunter-Gault, in the New Yorker, on “The Oscar Pistorius-Ray Rice Moment“:
…But the domestic abuse and murder of women is not limited to a single place, whether South Africa or a hotel-casino in Atlantic City. The World Health Organization calls violence against women “a global health problem,” with its most recent statistics showing that thirty-five per cent of women worldwide have been victims of domestic violence, and thirty-eight per cent of murders of women were committed by an intimate partner. Sonke’s executive director, Dean Peacock, said, “Multiple surveys carried out in nearly all regions of the world have found that the strongest factors associated with men’s use of violence against women are social norms that support men’s collective dominance over women.” Peacock added, “Children’s exposure to violence in the home, alcohol abuse, and easy access to guns all contribute to the unsafe environment women and children find themselves in.”…
And that’s the other big dirty secret: As the hippy-dippy classroom posters put it, Children learn what they live…
I grew up in a physically abusive household, one that was just slightly more “hands-on” than most of the other blue-collar Irish or Italian or Polish households in our Bronx neighborhood. My mother (the unmedicated manic-depressive) would bait my father (the functional alcoholic) into hitting her. She’d also take out her rages on us kids, or we’d just get in the way of her rage at the unfairness of the world. Growing up that way made me fearless, in some ways. It also left me with some unsocial habits of which it would take years to break myself. During my freshman year of college, a classmate tapped me on the shoulder during a heated discussion, and I automatically took a swing at him. (Fortunately, he was an acquaintance, and an excellent dodger.) It’s one of the many, many reasons I chose never to have kids.
Pretending that domestic violence — against partners or children — is just an exceptional failure by outliers lets the rest of us sleep better (#notallsportsprofessionals) but it’s demonstrably not how our flawed society works. I have a fuzzy idea that the National Football League Players Association offers rookies classes in things like money management, since so many underprivileged newbies failed to pass the “woo hoo six-digit signing bonus!!!…” test. Perhaps it would be more honest to offer NEW RULES GUYS: NO HITTING CIVILIANS, NOT EVEN WHEN THEY TOTALLY ASK FOR IT classes, rather than pretend that kind of behavior doesn’t happen in our nice clean civilized country?
Mnemosyne
Although he didn’t agree at the time, probably the best thing that ever happened to my nephew is that he agreed to go to a boarding school for kids with psychiatric issues before he got himself arrested. Because when you grow up watching your dad knock your mother out, you learn that the best way to handle conflict is to physically force the other person to do what you want, even if you consciously don’t want to be like that parent in other ways.
Fortunately for me, my parents figured out pretty early on that spanking didn’t do anything to change my behavior, and they started relying on this book instead, which is still recommended today for parents with ADHD kids.
PurpleGirl
My sister married an alcoholic who probably hit her. I don’t remember seeing black eyes or other marks. What I remember is hearing their fights and his rage-filled rants coming up from their apartment. (They lived under us.) I hated it. In many ways I’m single and childless because I didn’t see their relationship as a loving one and my parents’ relationship with me is another long story. I just knew that I didn’t to be involved with men like my BIL or my father.
Tenar Darell
@Mnemosyne: Did Peterson pull that book or parental rights card? I have tried very hard to avoid the story today, mostly by reading about criminal justice/race relations & urban fantasy stories on my porch while getting a sunburn because I forgot I’d still need sunblock.
Completely O/T: What was the name of that early almost all African American silent on TCM last week? I got to the recommendation about a half hour late, and d’oh, didn’t write it down!
Mart
Mother, the functional alcoholic, had a drawer of impliments to swat the six of us with. If in a hurry, the shoe came off, better hope it was not a high heel. Every time said I will never hit you in the head, and this hurts me more than it hurts us. Her dad, word has it, was exceptionally violent. Similar stories on my wife’s side. We read Dr. Spock and figured makes sense to treat a human the same as a dog, and not strike it. So it gets better.
I did lose it once and gave a swat to the eldest in kindergarten. She turned around and said she was going to report me to DCFS. It really does get better.
Strange how folks that would never accept a person whipping a puppy with a switch will say Peterson was raised that way, how could he know better?
KG
When I played sports, I was a hyper competitive asshole in many many ways. I was a perfectionist, even though I was far from the best player on my team. I was the first in last out two more reps than everyone else guy. And despite a few altercations with guys on other teams, I have never actually thrown a punch at another person in anger. Part of the reason, I believe, is because I trained in the martial arts for 12 years or so. I earned a second degree black belt. And one of the things I was taught, and tried to pass on to my students, was that if you can avoid the fight you’re better for it.
That’s the long way around for me saying I don’t understand how someone could beat another person. I can understand a heated argument leading to a punch being thrown. But I can’t understand systematic abuse.
Mnemosyne
@Tenar Darell:
The book I’m pretty sure Peterson was reading is a horrible book called To Train Up A Child, by Michael Pearl, which advises corporal punishment for infants. Parent Effectiveness Training is the book Peterson needed instead. ;-)
And the movie from last week was Within Our Gates, which was the second feature made by Oscar Micheaux. If you have cable TV with TCM, you can still watch it using WatchTCM (from their website).
Also, feel free to stop on by my blog linked at my name — I’m not writing about silent movies, but the Pre-Code era is the era directly after the silents and involves a lot of people who made the transition from silent to sound.
sfinny
Always joked that I had fast reflexes because my mother would throw various tools at me during home improvement projects. Never realized that it was not the usual thing until I ended up in therapy in college. Was an eye opening experience.
John Weiss
I know why parents beat their children, or their spouses or anyone for that matter. I know what ‘red rage’ is like. You know what I mean, some of you, to literally see red.
Perhaps that demon that lives in many of us is the reason. I learned to keep that debbil securely locked away.
But it’s still there.
scav
There are some grand faces in here from the turn of the century (yeah, the one we used to assume) for those needing a break from our enlightened own. Hugh Mangum of Durham, photographer, you’ll probably like him.
Debbie(aussie)
Thanks Anne. I was disciplined by my father (read spanked) until I was a young teen. The resentment has been deep. So have the arguments about ‘disciplining’ my children, particularly my ADD son, because I do not believe spanking solves anything. My kids are now 28 & 32 and I am very proud of them both. If violence is unacceptable in our community, how can it be acceptable within the family.
I found this article in the Guardian interesting http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/sep/12/oscar-pistorius-reeva-steenkamp-murder-normal-relationship
Tenar Darell
@Mnemosyne: Thanks. Convinced me about Night Nurse. My first memories of Stanwyck are Big Valley. The first time I saw Lady Eve was amazed how good (huge) her range was.
mai naem
My parents disciplined us kids a few times. I saw the pics of Petersen’s kid and,no, my parents definitely did not hit us like that. I was probably hit by my parents half a dozen times before I was twelve. I think my two older sisters and brother got punished more than I did but regardless it was far far less than a daily event. We were generally slapped on the face, smacked with a leather sandal or pinched. I personally don’t think it was a big deal. With my parents I really think they were under a lot of stress and had way more kids than they could handle. They should have stopped at 2 kids. I don’t have kids but from what I know, none of my nieces or nephew have gotten physically abused. I think they would consider a cell phone use ban a much bigger punishment than getting corporal punishment!
TriassicSands
Wrong. As a starting point it is always wrong to hit other people — whether they are smaller, weaker, bigger, stronger, or exactly the same size as you are.
The quoted text is problematic at best — it sounds suspiciously like it is OK to hit people who are bigger or stronger than you are. People who are bigger and stronger have an added responsibility, since they can more easily hurt the other person, but they do not have unique culpability.
If the smaller, weaker person introduces physical violence to a relationship, they do not magically become martyrs or innocent if the stronger person retaliates and hurts the smaller person.
This is very different from a woman wearing provocative clothing in a bad neighborhood and when she’s attacked people saying she got what she deserved. She has a right to dress that way and no one has any right to touch or otherwise accost her based on her attire. But people don’t have the right to hit other people – size and strength are irrelevant. The provocatively dressed woman is 100% innocent, while the smaller person who hits first is 100% guilty. What the bigger, stronger person does then is 100% his (or her) responsibility. Ray Rice should face criminal charges, but so should his wife, if she hit him first.
Va Highlander
Yeah, that’s it. I just wasn’t lucky.
At 52, it’s fun to look back at my life and wonder how much was luck and how much was merit. I sometimes wonder whether it matters.
divF
There are two incidences of corporal punishment I was involved in, one on the receiving end, the other on the giving end.
(1) when I was six and my brother was four, we lived in an area that was next to a rapidly running river, separated from the housing a area by a chain-link fence. We were absolutely forbidden to go down to the river. Of course, my brother and I did so one day by crawling under the fence and were caught from having wet shoes. We duly received a spanking from my father when he got home. Now, I don’t remember the spanking, just that it happened. When I was an adult I asked my father about the incident and he said that it was heart-breaking for my parents to spank us, but they felt that the danger to two small children playing at that river was so great that they had to impress on us emphatically that it was forbidden. It worked – we never went down to the river again.
(2) 20 years ago I was the regular babysitter for one of my nephews, to whom I was (and still am) very attached. At a family gathering when he was two years old, he started to run out into a busy residential street in front of his house. I saw him, grabbed him in the nick of time, and swatted him on his backside and shouted “No!” in a loud voice. I was so upset and worried about his safety that it was almost reflexive. A few days later, I went down to his parents’ house in tears to apologize. They laughed and said that the look on my nephew’s face was one of shock, rather than pain (his diaper absorbed most of the impact ), and that my reaction was understandable given the near-miss of his getting hit by a car. I don’t know that it made a difference. However, he has managed to survive childhood and is at the moment living with us while he is going to college.
I guess the take-aways from this for me is that any kind of punishment (physical or emotional) is sometimes necessary, but rarely so. Kids want the approval of their parents and other adults they are attached to, and if things are working correctly, that should provide enough leverage without violence.
That is, until they are teenagers, then that leverage goes way down, and your best bet is to choose your battles carefully :-).
OzarkHillbilly
@John Weiss: He never goes away. He is always there, day and night, waiting for that sweet release, for that moment when He can make things right, show them, make them pay.
I have mentioned this before, I was physically, psychologically, emotionally abused by a nun when 10 and 11. It was so foreign to my mother that years later she told me, “I knew something was wrong, but didn’t know what.” This was the 60s and Nuns screaming and yelling and beating kids was the norm so no one at school thought much of it, and Ma was raised Southern Baptist so she just had no idea. The old man was on the road all the time putting out fires. I suspect Ma didn’t want to dump any family problems on him when he came home.
At the age of 12 I began to abuse my little sister.Ma had gone back to school and it fell to me to get her ready and off to school, but she wouldn’t do anything I told her. (She is still a spoiled brat) I stopped after she screamed how much she hated me one time and I could see the absolute utter hatred in her eyes. It scared me.
But the Demon didn’t go away.
People wonder how Peterson could do what he did. It’s easy, it was done to him. I have had this discussion with many over the years where I mention that I do not believe in corporal punishment, that it is just plain wrong, that beating a child only teaches them that “I am bigger than you, therefor I can do this and you have to take it.” Too many times to count I have been met with the reply, “Well, my parents spanked me and I turned out alright.” Sometimes they go on to relate tales of the belt and the switch and mention, “But I don’t do that to my kids, just a few quick swats on the butt.” It always kind of cracks me up to hear about the time some body spanked a son or daughter because they had punched their sister or brother. Logic much?
If you are a parent, you know you can’t tell another parent they are doing it wrong. At this point you just shut up and hope that something in what you said sparks a thought process.
Gvg
I have no personal knowledge but an acquaintance who was a social worker described her first encounter with a smaller woman they thought was being abused who turned out to be the abuser of her larger husband. they thought he was a liar but she lost her temper and started hitting him and others in the court room. Quite dramatic and funny since it turned out for the best. Freind says husband was saying “see, I told you” while he was getting beat up. Husband was larger and they all made assumptions. most cases I hear of are the woman as victim though.
Anne Laurie
@OzarkHillbilly:
True, that. A British educator had the perfect response for that: “Well, it made you the sort of person who thinks it’s okay to hit little children… “
satby
The Irish have a long history of domestic abuse, just watch the Quiet Man sometime to see how normalized it was for people. I was the oldest and very headstrong and got most of the spankings from both parents. But the boys in school got it worst from the nuns and brothers. And the parents selected Catholic schooling not just for the religious training but also because of the corporal punishment. The sea change in attitude of how acceptable such violence is has happened in my lifetime, and I am glad.
Cermet
All I can say is WTF!!!! It is NEVER, EVER proper to hit any fellow human being – even if the same size or bigger – without first being attacked by said person! Violence is violence – period; and should never be tolerated or justified by appeal to size/strength differences. Boy, did you blow this entry – domestic or social violence is ok if the person is bigger?! Really?
Cervantes
Or anybody — or dogs, cats, etc., for that matter.
And war is nothing but violence writ large — yet people who wouldn’t hit a child will justify war regardless.
Cervantes
@TriassicSands:
@Cermet:
I assume she was just trying to say: “Pick on someone your own size.”
evodevo
” it takes an average of seven tries for a victim to leave an abusive relationship… ”
And here in Ky you are probably still not done with them – stalking is the usual MO, followed thereafter with escalating threats, and then, sometimes, the ole’ murder/suicide strategy. “If I can’t have you, then no one will!!” Most of these types are obsessive to the point of insanity, and nothing except incarceration will stop it. An acquaintance of mine divorced, and her extremely manipulative and possessive ex took up residence in a camper in her driveway to keep an eye on her. And he wasn’t anywhere near as nuts as some I have known.
…..
A study done in ’06 found 1 in 3 women had experienced abuse, and 49 were killed over a 3 year period. Ky has had to get proactive about this s^&t, and began actively enforcing EPOs, instead of the formerly laissez-faire attitude. Turned out, as a study showed, it saved the state $85 mil in one year alone in associated legal costs. Nothing like money to get the lege on board. They still don’t deal with what I would call “dating” abuse situations – you have to have lived together for an EPO to be issued. Domestic violence incidents increased from ’08 to ’11 and now are dropping. Following the economics, I suppose.
Gex
chalk me up as yet another person who decided I would not have children until after I fixed the damage caused by an abusive father and a neglectful mother. unfortunately when you are a woman, you run out of time. so many people have seen me with children now, applying my hard earned knowledge about limbic connection, attachment theory, and personality development and tell me I would be a great mother. but even after years and years of work, I still have trouble with serious depression and occasionally uncontrollable rage. so no kids for me.
but that is preferable than passing that shit on.
Cervantes
@Gex:
I am so sorry you’ve had to live with all that.
At the same time I am glad and grateful that you’ve found ways to help kids develop in good health. Thanks.
Jim parente
@Gex: Gex, I am a man but you perfectly described my up-bringing and my decision to stay single. The Demon is controlled but still in residence. Thanks for your insights.
Frankensteinbeck
I think it’s a lot more than that. Our society obsessively ignores that crimes against children are mostly committed in the home, blames the victim in everything from rape prosecution to welfare, and tells injured athletes that they’re weak. Cross out the name of the political issue, and the arguments used on FOX sound like a 24 hour pride rally for domestic abusers. Abuse is such a big problem in our society, it is socially acceptable that a large chunk of the population defends it in code words, almost exactly like they do racism.
@John Weiss:
Nothing, and I’ve seen a fair amount of violence in my life, caused me anger like raising children. I have never otherwise felt such sudden, overpowering flashes of violent rage. I think I held it down to cuffing the kids twice, because the guilt even immediately afterwards was crushing. Thankfully, they don’t remember me ever hitting them, only me stopping others from doing so.
@TriassicSands: and @Gvg:
Thank you. To pretend that men hurt women and it’s a one way street makes the problem worse.
StringOnAStick
My parents weren’t the hitting type, though he did threaten to punch me recently when I tried to talk to him about his obvious age-related decline in driving skills. I am a 5’3″ woman, and my dad is a rageaholic who is only getting worse thanks to being 83, drinking way too much, and a steady diet of Fox News; the same combo has turned my previously rational mother into the same hate and rage machine.
Part of them may love me because I am one of their kids, but they hate me as a person (I’m a DFH, you know, the main person who is destroying their precious ‘Murika). My life is better when I don’t spend any time with them; their nasty behavior and love of letting out the Red Monster means they have lost the right to expect me to tolerate it when they treat me like their beaten dog, or that I should thank them for that kind of attention. I have other sisters who are “acceptable” because they aren’t filthy DFH’s, so they get to deal with them; I’m done. They are even more out of control of their emotions now, and I’ve reached my lifetime limit on being their target.
No, they didn’t hit, but they sure implanted a ton of psychological damage that I only now feel like I have gotten the upper hand on. 56 is pretty late for that, but it is also why I never had kids. I am OK with that decision and I will not live my remaining years sad over a past I can not change. The only thing we have is now; the past can’t be changed and the future is promised to no one.
Cervantes
@StringOnAStick: Even to a total stranger a million miles away, this much is obvious: the estrangement is their loss entirely. Stay well.
StringOnAStick
@Cervantes: Thank you. There is a lot of pressure from the “but they’re your parents, you have to be there for them!” crowd in this society in general. Fortunately I don’t get any of that from people I know other than the one sister who has what anyone can see is an unnatural and unhealthy attachment to them. That’s how she’s chosen to respond to their psychological abuse, and it sure explains her nearly suicidal choices in husbands.
Guilt was part of their psychological abuse pattern though, and that is probably the toughest one to keep under control. I keep getting better at escaping it!
JustRuss
@TriassicSands:
Thank you. When I watch the elevator video, I see two people committing assault. That in no way justifies Rice’s actions, it’s entirely possible for both of them to be in the wrong. But she doesn’t get a free pass because she’s the smaller of the two.
jame
Philip Larkin, This Be The Verse
They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.
But they were fucked up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
And half at one another’s throats.
Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don’t have any kids yourself.