From Behind the Curtain

by Molly Ivors

Wow, two posts in two days. But this one's been stewing for a few.

The Truth: I have never been struck by a man. Ever. I don't think that has so much to do with me (my sister, raised by the same parents, was beaten by her husband), but probably more with the men with whom I have chosen to surround myself, Thers included. Violence just isn't part of their nature.

Perhaps that's why I have been so deeply disturbed by this video, posted by three sites I admire very much: Hecate, Echidne, and Pandagon. The idea of someone dressing down their spouse like that, let alone on camera and in front of their children, horrifies me more than I can say. The physical violence, though not beside the point, is simply an extension of the verbal abuse. I don't know how one gets to that place: I've never been there. But I also don't know how he got to the place where this was not only okay, but admirable, something he wanted to document for posterity, to teach his son how to handle women, and to justify his own behavior.

The video was made in 2003, not so long ago. I was thinking of this while reading Judith Warner's blog in the NYTimes today. She opines here that Thelma & Louise, that bastion of early 90's feminist fury, is now a relic of an earlier time:

“Thelma and Louise” is primarily a movie about sexual violence. It’s about all the myriad forms that sexual violence can take – from the psychic violence done to Thelma, who at 18 married her boyfriend of four long years, to the shattering physical violence of Louise’s long-buried rape, to the verbal and gestural violence done to both women by the endless stream of drive-by harassers who pollute their road trip. It’s about the long-term effects of such psychic and physical violence: the childlike Thelma, blindly drawn to men who victimize her again and again, the raging Louise, shut down on the surface but harboring a burning, ultimately self-immolating, rage.

..........

Yet in 1991 it was altogether understandable that a movie about sexual violence would be turned into a fable about women’s general social and political progress. It made perfect sense then to conflate sexual violence – in all its verbal, psychic, physical and political forms — with sexual politics. That year, the William Kennedy Smith rape case went to trial, belittling and publicly humiliating the victim; Anita Hill confronted Clarence Thomas and emerged besmirched while he reigned victorious; and Roe v. Wade seemed destined for extinction.

All true, and yet we live in a world where verbal and sexual abuse of women is still, if not the norm, a regular practice for a significant subculture.

Many of the comments on the YouTube video blame the victim for her own abuse, either siding directly with the abuser ("haha that girl had it coming, she belongs in the kitchen./ i mean seriously look at how shes dressed, if your woman isn’t acting right, hit her easy as that./works for me.") or suggesting that by marrying a black man, she was asking for it ("A mentally defective women who defiles herself with groids got exactly what she deserved. The same lesson should be served to the brain-dead liberal twats who refer to honesty about negros as “racist”. "). Such responses are chilling, not only because they ignore copious amounts of research into the nature of victimization and abusive relationships, but also because they ignore the key point here: she did get out. Lucky to be alive, as the judge notes toward the end of the video, and late, but out.

The racism angle here is particularly galling, since this story follows so closely on the heels of this one, in which a group of whites kidnapped a young black woman for the sole purpose of sexual torture.

Deputies found the 23-year-old victim Saturday after going to the home in Big Creek, about 35 miles southwest of Charleston, to investigate an anonymous tip. One of the suspects, Frankie Brewster, was sitting on the front porch and told deputies she was alone, but moments later the victim limped toward the door, her arms outstretched, saying "help me," the sheriff's department said in a news release.

Besides being sexually assaulted, the victim was stabbed four times in the left leg and beaten, Porter said. Both of her eyes were black and blue. Deputies said the woman's wounds were inflicted at least a week ago.

During her capture, the victim was forced to eat rat and dog feces and drink from the toilet, according to the criminal complaint filed in magistrate court. The woman also was choked with a cable cord and her hair cut, it alleges.

One of those arrested, Karen Burton, is accused of cutting the woman's ankle with a knife. She used the N-word in telling the woman she was victimized because she is black, according to the criminal complaint.

Deputies say the woman was also doused with hot water while being sexually assaulted.

"We have called the feds," Chief Deputy V.K. Dingess with the Logan County Sheriff's Department said Monday. "They may pick this up as a hate crime."

You think?

What really impressed me about this case is that half the perpetrators were women--mothers, even--and some of the sexual violence included what was essentially female-on-female rape. That's relatively unusual, statistically speaking, and so notable.

Without excusing the behaviors, it's worth noting that in both cases, the abusers were economically and culturally disempowered: the husband of the woman in New York was an unemployed musician sure that she was sneaking around with men at work, and the  rednecks live in a part of West Virginia where there is just, well, nothing. Once there was coal; now there's just public assistance, pretty much. In each case, they were looking for someone else that they could force to eat shit (literally, in WV). We live in an increasingly brutal and openly racist age, where hatred is as close as the tree outside your high school, and a woman with two infant children is castigated not for being a bad mother with substance abuse issues, but because she's not the same shape she was at 17.

And so no, Judith Warner, unfortunately the world of Thelma & Louise is not a relic of an earlier, less hopeful time. Yes, many young women today refuse to be victimized, and yes, we now know about date rape and domestic abuse. But knowledge is not the only thing that matters. Warner claims that rape claims, for example, are down 75% from the early 90's, but as several of her commenters note, these are dodgy numbers at best, and rape often goes unreported. From my own observation of young women, many feel that if they were along for part of the ride, they have tacitly consented to intercourse, whether it was their intention or not. This may explain the drop in numbers, if indeed there has been such a drop.

But as the two cases I note here clearly demonstrate, violence against women--whether intimate relations or strangers from the internet--is alive and well,  and the fact that Thelma & Louise could not be made now is not a sign of progress, but of regression.

Comments

[Daphne Chyprious]

AKA The Pappy Finn Syndrome: gotta be better than someone. It's why some people adopt dogs.

[K. Ron Silkwood]

I could only watch 42 seconds of the video. The husband wearing a cross was a nice touch.

Jeebus. I got nothing about the video or Molly Ivors' post. I just feel very fucking sad.

[Vertalio]

Got that shit going on right next door to me. She's trying to teach her two daughters that he's wrong, and hanging in there for now.
Bastard.

Descended from apes?
Still apes.

[Sarah Deere]

Thers, yes. It is no better, matter of fact, probably worse, due to the decline in income or even being able to find jobs. We seem to be a culture that needs to blame,. needs to be "better than", and that will be both racist and sexist. Women will suffer from the current economic climate, make no mistake. I have experienced this, though yrs ago, and it is ugly. It is depressing and soul-scathing....it should not be perpetrated on anyone, yet it is, over and over and over again. It has made me distrustful of your gender, though I know in my head that not all men act this way. Just difficult to be rational about it.

[APISHAPA]

I have been hit by a man. I am not black and neither is he. He came from a wealthy family. I have a good job and a Master's degree in engineering. I was never abused either verbally or physically at home growing up. I have no excuses. I do not know why I married this man or why I stayed for so long.

He was emotionally abusive to me and both verbally and physically abusive to my oldest son (who was not his). I always thought he was trying to make me so miserable that I would send my son away to save him. I should have.

I told myself again and again that if I did this or that he would change. I was wrong. I did tell him early on that if he ever hit my kid again I would kill him. He apparently took that seriously, because though he continued to belittle my son and me, he kept his hands to himself after that. I had plenty of warning about him. When we were married less than three months he stole my checkbook, bought a "mini 14" and several clips of ammunition and went shooting up his first wife's house. He was charged with attempted murder and convicted of felony assault. I paid for his lawyer, sent him to alcohol treatment and stayed for seven more years.

I had three children with him, I was pregnant with the last when my divorce went through. It has taken all these years for my son to forgive me, and I do not blame him for feeling the way he did.

I spent years getting up and going to work and worrying all day about what the hell was going on at home. I dreaded going home, but I raced home every night to make sure he was never alone in the house with my husband. If I had to work late or go out of town. I always sent him to his friend's house. I lived like this for so long that I began to think it was normal. This was just how things were. I do not know how I got so fucked up. I was raised to stand up for myself, yet I allowed this man to treat me and my little boy like this.

My other three children have never understood why my oldest hates their father so much. They have not seen their father for several years, because he began to abuse them verbally and I told him if he wanted to see them, we could go to court.

I will never marry again. I have not even dated for almost 9 years. I cannot risk making another stupid mistake.

[APISHAPA]

I have been hit by a man. I am not black and neither is he. He came from a wealthy family. I have a good job and a Master's degree in engineering. I was never abused either verbally or physically at home growing up. I have no excuses. I do not know why I married this man or why I stayed for so long.

He was emotionally abusive to me and both verbally and physically abusive to my oldest son (who was not his). I always thought he was trying to make me so miserable that I would send my son away to save him. I should have.

I told myself again and again that if I did this or that he would change. I was wrong. I did tell him early on that if he ever hit my kid again I would kill him. He apparently took that seriously, because though he continued to belittle my son and me, he kept his hands to himself after that. I had plenty of warning about him. When we were married less than three months he stole my checkbook, bought a "mini 14" and several clips of ammunition and went shooting up his first wife's house. He was charged with attempted murder and convicted of felony assault. I paid for his lawyer, sent him to alcohol treatment and stayed for seven more years.

I had three children with him, I was pregnant with the last when my divorce went through. It has taken all these years for my son to forgive me, and I do not blame him for feeling the way he did.

I spent years getting up and going to work and worrying all day about what the hell was going on at home. I dreaded going home, but I raced home every night to make sure he was never alone in the house with my husband. If I had to work late or go out of town. I always sent him to his friend's house. I lived like this for so long that I began to think it was normal. This was just how things were. I do not know how I got so fucked up. I was raised to stand up for myself, yet I allowed this man to treat me and my little boy like this.

My other three children have never understood why my oldest hates their father so much. They have not seen their father for several years, because he began to abuse them verbally and I told him if he wanted to see them, we could go to court.

I will never marry again. I have not even dated for almost 9 years. I cannot risk making another stupid mistake.