Do You Feel Lucky?

(and feel free to comment! My older posts are certainly no less relevant to the burning concerns of the day.)

Thursday, February 27, 2014

The Tough Topics #29: Domestic Abuse.

Get this straight. There's nothing funny about domestic abuse. SERIOUS. I don't care if it's wife-on-wife, husband-on-husband, wife-on-husband or the traditional, no matter what: that shit's foul. Here's the person you swore up and down to love, honor, have, hold, ravish, cherish, and what have you, and for fuck's sake to make violence upon their person!!??? I don't care what the god damn justification is!! There is never a justification to be the one to escalate from a situation of words to one of violence!

Obviously if the other is the escalator, then you're in a bad situation stuck with either fight or flee, unless you're a gifted deescalator. But that's not the point. The point is it's not justified for the person who is the one who escalates. It's not justified to raise those stakes. It's not. It's just not. I mean, you could easily make the same case of you versus strangers! Fighting is after all for fucking pussies. But the idea of striking someone to harm, someone you've sworn to love for life...that's especially off-base. What a sour note. And note, when I say "fighting's for pussies," I don't mean vagines, there! It's a different sense of the word, there is nothing cowardly about a vagina. In fact when you think about it, arguably a vagina is the single most courageous bodily organ there is. Weird how sometimes the etymology of a word can turn and diverge to evolve two senses that are pretty much antonymic! Anathema to each other. But in any case.

The point is that domestic abuse is the exclusive province of motherfuckers, and I don't mean that in the literal, usually oedipal incest way nor do I mean it in the laudatory "this person is a bad ass" Samuel L. Jackson portraying Jules in Pulp Fiction way with a sweet fucking wallet to lend the scene that extra whallop! No. I mean in the sense of when you meet some fucking god damn motherfucker who it turns out beats the spouse. Admittedly maybe I just defined it in a circular way, but I defy you to deny the validity on that.

Here's another point: "spouse" to me just means a person who espouses a love for life for someone, to share a life with that someone, who does so in some public way, and where the one espoused at reciprocates in kind. In fact, in some states that alone is enough to say BAM! MARRIED! You presented yourself as spouses and you lived together as if. Therefore you are - assuming it's One Man One Woman, which in my view is bull to the shit power in a country where government shall make no establishment of religion. Those of you who need to, please see separate tough topic on the first fucking amendment please.

You get what I'm saying here. Probably I'm belaboring something or other needlessly.

4 comments:

dogimo said...

You know what, I can't find the dang thing! Maybe it's still in 'Drafts.' I thought I did a "Tough Topics" on the 1st Amendment. But maybe I didn't? I mean, what could be more clear-cut than the first amendment right?

Anyhow. This article here makes about the right case:

A Word on the Establishment Clause

Albeit a bit more stridently than I'd do on here.

Mel said...

The only point I would raise is that a situation of words can already be a situation of violence, no escalation to physical assault is required for it to be deemed "domestic violence", at least not here in Australia.

Some of the most insidious perpetrators of domestic violence never raise a hand, never lay a finger on their spouse.

tl;dr but here in Australia the Domestic and Family Violence Protection Act 2012 says domestic violence behaviour includes when another person you are in a relationship with:
• is physically or sexually abusive to you, or
• is emotionally or psychologically abusive to you, or
• is economically abusive to you, or
• is threatening, or
• is coercive, or
• in any other way controls or dominates you and causes you to fear for your safety or wellbeing or that of someone else.

Jen said...

On a serious note, I highly recommend Lundy Bancroft's book "Why Does He DO That?", and Lundy Bancroft's blog on domestic abuse: http://lundybancroft.blogspot.com/

While Bancroft in his book does acknowledge that there can be abuse within same-sex partnerships, his years of experience have taught him that in traditional marriages, the man, not the woman, is almost ALWAYS the abuser. It is a myth that "woman are spousal abusers just as often."

dogimo said...

Mel, even though I accept that verbal abuse is abuse, and can be every bit as damaging to the one who is systematically abused, still I believe there are two separate offenses there. As distinctions go, it may mean nothing. I'm not even saying one is worse than the other! I just don't really know how to talk about verbal abuse.

Jen, I don't know that I've ever heard anyone seriously maintain the woman is just as often the abuser! Weird that that's a myth. I certainly wouldn't buy it. It's pretty well documented that men are almost always the homicidal psychopaths. I've always assumed testosterone had something to do with these kinds of preponderances.