This is part 2 of my series on Violence Against Women. It was sparked by the violent events at my Alma Mater, UC Santa Barbara, last week.
Pleasing
To my female friends and readers: do you try to please your husband or boyfriend on a regular basis? Are you able to? If you are and they appreciate it, great. I hope they are trying to please you in equal measure.
But what about when you can’t please them? What happens when nothing you do is good enough? What do you do when the man says you aren’t thin enough, pretty enough or a good enough homemaker, child raiser or money maker? Then what? What do you do when you aren’t good enough in bed, aren’t wild enough in public, aren’t sexy enough in your attitude? Then what? Are you hit? Abused? denigrated? assaulted? What do you do to stop it?
Avoiding
If you are like most women I have talked to who are in that situation, you will try everything to make them not be angry, not be violent, not be dissatisfied. And if they are never satisfied have you stopped trying to please? I imagine that is very scary because he has power. power to hurt, power to seek revenge, power to make your life even more miserable.
Divorce
People often cite divorce statistics saying 50% of marriage end in divorce. They use it as a way to condemn modern society. But I think there is another reason. A good reason. And it’s because women have started saying ‘No More’. I know it’s not the whole reason, but I do know it is a BIG reason. More and more women are no longer willing to be the punching bag, verbally or physically. They no longer have to just suffer through it, they can get out and they do. I think that is a good thing.
Here and Now
If you think I am just talking about this as an abstraction, I am not. I have a friend in the here and now who is seriously contemplating divorce for precisely this reason. Her husband will not support her efforts to be fit, to be strong, to have friends, to be even minimally independent. Does she want to have an affair and blow the family fortune? No, she just wants a life, that’s all. She is more than happy to tell him all about it, to introduce him to her various friends and activities. But he not only doesn’t support her, but actively tries to stop her. He denigrates her and threatens her with divorce again and again. He isn’t stabbing her with a real knife, but he is stabbing her with his words.
What Men Can Do
It’s not easy for me to always understand what women go through since I don’t live it directly. But the truth is many women deal with this all the time in one way or another.
What I try to do now that I didn’t do before is to listen and believe them. They aren’t lying to us and they aren’t making it up. They are facing it and would like to at least be respected enough to be heard and believed. It won’t harm us to listen and react with the love and respect we would want for ourselves.
You can see the entire series so far here.
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Drawing and Commentary by Marty Coleman
Quote by Anonymous
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