Physical & Emotional Abuse Support Group
Abuse is a general term for the treatment of someone that causes some kind of harm (to the abused person, to the abusers themselves, or to someone else) that is unlawful or wrongful. No one deserves abuse, period. Abuse can be emotional, physical, or sexual.
I felt like it might help me to vent about the issue of "socially acceptable" forms of abuse, but I want to do so in a way that might be constructive too so that maybe others here can add to it and benefit too.
By "socially acceptable" abuse I am referring to acts of abuse that society in general most often dismisses as somehow not being abuse, or views as something to laugh at or ridicule the victims about.
I've come up with a list of examples of such abuse and will try to elaborate on why they're abuse. However, many of these might be ones that apply more to men since I'm writing all this from a male perspective. But I'll try to include as many examples that apply to women too in order to reduce any bias or unfair representation of abused women.
If anyone here has anything to add to the list or things already on it, please feel free to contribute. Even if it's just commentary or suggestions on how to keep the subject matter unbiased and less likely to offend or upset any members who have experienced any of these types of abuse.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
DOUBLE STANDARDS IN ABUSE: When you stop and think about abusive behavior you start to notice that there are many abusive acts that society seems to deem acceptable for one gender to commit while still calling abuse what it is when the other gender does it.
There are many examples of this in popular culture. Such as a woman in movies or TV shows being verbally abusive, possessive or controlling in ways that if a man were depicted doing in a movie/ show most people would be disgusted and see him as abusive.
Some examples of this: 1) A wife in a sitcom constantly belittling/insulting her husband or kids tends to get laughs from the audience. Albeit some sitcoms get laughs when the husband does that instead of the wife, generally it seems to be seen as darker and more like abuse (at least in serious shows/movies).
2) In movies/shows when the girlfriend or wife gets angry at her partner and starts repeatedly slapping/hitting/kicking/throwing things at him people tend to view the abuse as somehow justified and laugh at it. However, when the genders are reversed in these types of scenes viewers tend to not laugh and they see the abuser as the monster they are.
As a rule of thumb I say to imagine if the genders were reversed in a given situation. If people would see something as abusive for someone of one gender to do, then people need to treat it as abusive if someone of the opposite gender does it too.
WOMEN HITTING MEN: This one may seem like it should be obvious, but if you look at pop culture and other media today (or even out in public) you can see that this act if abuse is usually minimized and treated as "humorous". For a moment try to think of the reactions you typically see from people witnessing a woman physically assaulting a man. Do you notice how many people automatically assume that the man somehow "deserves it" and therefor it's fine for a woman to beat him up?
When the victim is male and the abuser female people tend to see this type of abuse as "okay" or funny. However, if the roles are reversed in an otherwise identical scenario people tend to become angry and call for action to be taken against the abuser (as they should).
This has actually been studied by journalists and researchers. In at least one experiment I've seen they had two sets of actors play the roles of a fighting couple in a public park with plenty of people around. One pair acted out a scenario where the woman was angry and physically/verbally abusing her male partner. The other pair of actors acted out an identical scenario in s similar location in the park at at different time, but reversed the roles so it was the man as the abuser and the woman was the victim.
In the scenario where the man was the victim nobody stepped in to try breaking things up; nobody tried or threatened to call the cops; nobody tried to help the victim; people witnessing the abuse tended to laugh and/or cheer for the woman assaulting her partner.
In the other scenario the results were just the opposite. People witnessing the fight tried stepping in the break it up; people threatened to call the cops on the abusive male partner; some attempted to physically stop him; and some stepped in to try comforting the woman.
MALE RAPE VICTIMS: In this case I'm not talking about whether there are more or less male rape victims than female victims. I'm actually going to talk about another issue they face.
In some parts of the US if a woman rapes a man and becomes pregnant as a result, she can sue her victim for child support if she keeps the child. This can even happen if she was an adult and her victim was a child at the time of the rape. (There are at least 2 somewhat recent cases of this covered in news articles if you look it up online. There could be even more considering how privacy laws regarding legal proceedings involving minors work in the US.)
Can you imagine being raped as a child and even after your rapist is caught and convicted they get out after a few years due to unfair leniency? Then your rapist takes you to court and sues you for child support and the courts force you to pay your rapist support money for 18 years?
This is unfortunately something society has deemed "acceptable" since it's "for the good of the child" (referring to the one the rapist conceives). This is despite the fact that rapists probably shouldn't be raising a child (especially if they're a pedophile).
This type of abuse is one that scares me. I live in the state with the highest rates of rape in the entire US. On top of that there was a case a number of years back where a woman got some guy debilitatingly drunk and took him to his house, but stayed the night. Throughout the night she kept trying to rape him with the goal of getting pregnant. Luckily the guy was able to push her away each time when her attempts woke him up, and I think she went to jail in the end.
Also, in college a friend of mine almost fell victim to a woman like that. He was black out drunk at a bar and some of his other friends noticed in time to pull him out of the taxi the girl trying to take advantage of him was pulling him into.
To be honest the fear of this type of abuse through the legal system is enough to make me seriously consider getting a vasectomy in order to protect myself.
FEMALE RAPE VICTIMS: Female rape victims can actually face a similar form of abuse through the legal system.
Basically, if a raped woman doesn't press charges or the rapist isn't charged/convicted and the woman has her rapist's child as a result of the rape the rapist can harass her through the legal system. Rapists in these cases are able to use the courts to continuously abuse their victims with legal action regarding custody, contact and visitation with the child. You can probably imagine how nightmarish this form of abuse is for the victim.
There NEEDS to be some serious reforms made to the legal system to prevent people (of any gender) from using the courts to further abuse their victims.
"SLUT" SHAMING: In this example I am talking about how many people seem to make abusive comments towards or about women (and men too) based on how they dress. This includes everything from denying a woman (or man) the basic level of respect any human being deserves, all the way up to saying rape victims deserved it based on what they were wearing.
People should not be condoning the abuse of others based on what they wear. This also includes abuse directed at the poor and homeless who are forced to wear worn out or dirty clothing.
However, I do feel that there are lines that are not appropriate to cross with how one dresses. If someone is wearing something so over-the-top "skanky", revealing and sexually promiscuous in public that you feel the need to get tested for STDs just from standing near them at a bus stop, then they probably shouldn't be dressed like that in public.
In public we all have to be mindful that we are in a shared space and that many people are not comfortable being around someone dressed in an OVERLY sexual/provocative outfit.
After thinking about this I came up with an example of how this can feel to some guys, but explained in a way that should convey the feeling to women in a relevant manner: imagine riding the bus to work and nearly every day you end up next to one or two middle aged men dressed in full gimp suits, but nobody ever says anything or makes them leave since they're technically wearing clothes that don't reveal enough to be considered indecent exposure. That's the level of discomfort I am talking about.
To clarify, I am not saying that these cases deserve abuse in any way either. However, dealing with people who dress in such ways should be done in a respectful way that expresses how they are making the people around them feel, and to politely ask them to tone it down a little. Not by treating them in abusive ways.
By "socially acceptable" abuse I am referring to acts of abuse that society in general most often dismisses as somehow not being abuse, or views as something to laugh at or ridicule the victims about.
I've come up with a list of examples of such abuse and will try to elaborate on why they're abuse. However, many of these might be ones that apply more to men since I'm writing all this from a male perspective. But I'll try to include as many examples that apply to women too in order to reduce any bias or unfair representation of abused women.
If anyone here has anything to add to the list or things already on it, please feel free to contribute. Even if it's just commentary or suggestions on how to keep the subject matter unbiased and less likely to offend or upset any members who have experienced any of these types of abuse.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
DOUBLE STANDARDS IN ABUSE: When you stop and think about abusive behavior you start to notice that there are many abusive acts that society seems to deem acceptable for one gender to commit while still calling abuse what it is when the other gender does it.
There are many examples of this in popular culture. Such as a woman in movies or TV shows being verbally abusive, possessive or controlling in ways that if a man were depicted doing in a movie/ show most people would be disgusted and see him as abusive.
Some examples of this: 1) A wife in a sitcom constantly belittling/insulting her husband or kids tends to get laughs from the audience. Albeit some sitcoms get laughs when the husband does that instead of the wife, generally it seems to be seen as darker and more like abuse (at least in serious shows/movies).
2) In movies/shows when the girlfriend or wife gets angry at her partner and starts repeatedly slapping/hitting/kicking/throwing things at him people tend to view the abuse as somehow justified and laugh at it. However, when the genders are reversed in these types of scenes viewers tend to not laugh and they see the abuser as the monster they are.
As a rule of thumb I say to imagine if the genders were reversed in a given situation. If people would see something as abusive for someone of one gender to do, then people need to treat it as abusive if someone of the opposite gender does it too.
WOMEN HITTING MEN: This one may seem like it should be obvious, but if you look at pop culture and other media today (or even out in public) you can see that this act if abuse is usually minimized and treated as "humorous". For a moment try to think of the reactions you typically see from people witnessing a woman physically assaulting a man. Do you notice how many people automatically assume that the man somehow "deserves it" and therefor it's fine for a woman to beat him up?
When the victim is male and the abuser female people tend to see this type of abuse as "okay" or funny. However, if the roles are reversed in an otherwise identical scenario people tend to become angry and call for action to be taken against the abuser (as they should).
This has actually been studied by journalists and researchers. In at least one experiment I've seen they had two sets of actors play the roles of a fighting couple in a public park with plenty of people around. One pair acted out a scenario where the woman was angry and physically/verbally abusing her male partner. The other pair of actors acted out an identical scenario in s similar location in the park at at different time, but reversed the roles so it was the man as the abuser and the woman was the victim.
In the scenario where the man was the victim nobody stepped in to try breaking things up; nobody tried or threatened to call the cops; nobody tried to help the victim; people witnessing the abuse tended to laugh and/or cheer for the woman assaulting her partner.
In the other scenario the results were just the opposite. People witnessing the fight tried stepping in the break it up; people threatened to call the cops on the abusive male partner; some attempted to physically stop him; and some stepped in to try comforting the woman.
MALE RAPE VICTIMS: In this case I'm not talking about whether there are more or less male rape victims than female victims. I'm actually going to talk about another issue they face.
In some parts of the US if a woman rapes a man and becomes pregnant as a result, she can sue her victim for child support if she keeps the child. This can even happen if she was an adult and her victim was a child at the time of the rape. (There are at least 2 somewhat recent cases of this covered in news articles if you look it up online. There could be even more considering how privacy laws regarding legal proceedings involving minors work in the US.)
Can you imagine being raped as a child and even after your rapist is caught and convicted they get out after a few years due to unfair leniency? Then your rapist takes you to court and sues you for child support and the courts force you to pay your rapist support money for 18 years?
This is unfortunately something society has deemed "acceptable" since it's "for the good of the child" (referring to the one the rapist conceives). This is despite the fact that rapists probably shouldn't be raising a child (especially if they're a pedophile).
This type of abuse is one that scares me. I live in the state with the highest rates of rape in the entire US. On top of that there was a case a number of years back where a woman got some guy debilitatingly drunk and took him to his house, but stayed the night. Throughout the night she kept trying to rape him with the goal of getting pregnant. Luckily the guy was able to push her away each time when her attempts woke him up, and I think she went to jail in the end.
Also, in college a friend of mine almost fell victim to a woman like that. He was black out drunk at a bar and some of his other friends noticed in time to pull him out of the taxi the girl trying to take advantage of him was pulling him into.
To be honest the fear of this type of abuse through the legal system is enough to make me seriously consider getting a vasectomy in order to protect myself.
FEMALE RAPE VICTIMS: Female rape victims can actually face a similar form of abuse through the legal system.
Basically, if a raped woman doesn't press charges or the rapist isn't charged/convicted and the woman has her rapist's child as a result of the rape the rapist can harass her through the legal system. Rapists in these cases are able to use the courts to continuously abuse their victims with legal action regarding custody, contact and visitation with the child. You can probably imagine how nightmarish this form of abuse is for the victim.
There NEEDS to be some serious reforms made to the legal system to prevent people (of any gender) from using the courts to further abuse their victims.
"SLUT" SHAMING: In this example I am talking about how many people seem to make abusive comments towards or about women (and men too) based on how they dress. This includes everything from denying a woman (or man) the basic level of respect any human being deserves, all the way up to saying rape victims deserved it based on what they were wearing.
People should not be condoning the abuse of others based on what they wear. This also includes abuse directed at the poor and homeless who are forced to wear worn out or dirty clothing.
However, I do feel that there are lines that are not appropriate to cross with how one dresses. If someone is wearing something so over-the-top "skanky", revealing and sexually promiscuous in public that you feel the need to get tested for STDs just from standing near them at a bus stop, then they probably shouldn't be dressed like that in public.
In public we all have to be mindful that we are in a shared space and that many people are not comfortable being around someone dressed in an OVERLY sexual/provocative outfit.
After thinking about this I came up with an example of how this can feel to some guys, but explained in a way that should convey the feeling to women in a relevant manner: imagine riding the bus to work and nearly every day you end up next to one or two middle aged men dressed in full gimp suits, but nobody ever says anything or makes them leave since they're technically wearing clothes that don't reveal enough to be considered indecent exposure. That's the level of discomfort I am talking about.
To clarify, I am not saying that these cases deserve abuse in any way either. However, dealing with people who dress in such ways should be done in a respectful way that expresses how they are making the people around them feel, and to politely ask them to tone it down a little. Not by treating them in abusive ways.
This act of abuse is the charging of criminally high costs for medical treatment and insurance.
In the state I live the cost of medical services is twice that of every other state. On top of that it is very expensive to afford even the cheapest insurance plan that you're required to have in the US.
If you can't afford it then you have to get Medicaid, which in my state requires that you cannot have more than a certain amount of money (an amount nowhere remotely near enough to afford insurance) or you lose Medicaid. Otherwise you have to file for the exemption that allows you to go without insurance due to being too poor and not be fined an absurdly high amount of money for being too poor.
On top of that most doctors in my state refuse to even accept Medicaid.
And of course very little is ever actually done to address this problem or firmly tell the healthcare and insurance providers it is not acceptable to abuse people in such a terrible way.
In the meantime I'll just bump this discussion for more people to see.
And while I respect differing opinions & will defend your right to dress the way you please and not according to how anyone else dictates, I would also want that right to wear what I please.
Here is another way of looking at this issue:
Let's reverse the situation.
If someone didn't like how you dressed and told you, would accept that? Would what they said make you change how you dressed?
I could be wrong, but is it not possible that you might even consider it abusive? (That does happen in many abusive situations.) And I would also guess that deep down, you don't believe anyone else has the right to tell you how to dress, talk, think or act.
It seems that the "dress code" is an understandable trigger.
~healing hugs~
Know what I was wearing at the time?
Normal blue jeans (ones that fit without being baggy or tight fitting) and some average shirt (with no text or designs on it) that my mother had ironed for me to wear to school that.
So I ask that everyone reading this please keep in mind that I am not trying to bash women's rights or all feminists with what I'm about to share.
"RADICAL" (for lack of better term) FEMINISM: First I should give a little background on this. In a recent college course I took on criminology we had to learn about the mainstream feminist views and theories about crime.
To summarize what those views were: most/all crime is because of men and masculinity; and men are prone to being criminals since they are restricted in how much they can control the world around them and their partners in this day and age.
Keep in mind these were criminology theories coming from representatives of mainstream modern feminism, not from radical man-hating feminists.
I know not all modern feminists are like that (blaming men for crime and saying all men are inherently prone to being violent criminals), but I never see any representatives of modern feminism speak out against that standpoint. Sometimes I see some who offhandedly brush away questions about that by saying they don't actually believe those sexist viewpoints. However, I never see any of them step up and make any public announcements/news-letters/articles that speak out against it.
Anyways, I feel like it's become a socially "acceptable" form of abuse to make sexist statements like those and preach them as "fact".
It hurts being labelled as inherently prone to being a horrible person based on your gender, and being unable to speak up for yourself about it without being called "sexist" or against women's rights.
Again, I apologize if this came across as bashing feminists. That is not my intent.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feminist_school_of_criminology
No mention of that in the wikipedia entry.
I'd like to point out that a true feminist (ergo, my own self, my aunt, my mom, my friends, and many others) regard it thusly: If you break the same law, you do the same time. It's equality under the law, blind justice, end of story, or the whole thing fails. Alongside equal pay for equal work, for example. Same principle. Same input, same results. When a female lawyer argues against it using the Men Are Brutes argument, I dislike it intensely. I've survived a Woman Brute. Believe me, to see her taken as seriously as an "abuser" as my dad? Would've spared me a life of nightmares and scars.
Men who use their XY status and women who use their XX status as "excuses" or "reasons" are equally bullying, IMO. Been there, survived that, and PTSD board knows me well because of it.
That said, we get mixed messages from men, too. "Woemn are morally weaker" was a message preached, literally, for a millennium in Christianity. Yet, paradoxically, women were "morally superior" for their "feminine" attributes of compassion, and so were the Moral Guardians in the Home in the late 1800s in Victorian society. Then there's "women are cunning, and slippery and tempt men to bad things".... as if men never do the reverse. Frankly, the whole thing is quite cluster-fuddled, on both sides, from what I can tell.
I think the worst of it is that while feminism tries to encourage one mindset, you have a few loudmouths who make the rest look bad (and we do speak against them, btw), just as a few jackbutts make all men look bad. Serial rapists? Not an endorsement for men. Certain prominent female attorneys who insist no woman can be to blame? To me, perpetuate the "women are helpless losers" myth that is, to me, *anti*-feminist.
Not sure if this is at all relevant, but I've worked in construction, which is a male-oriented profession, and run into sh*t, and seen male nurses (nursing being female-dominated) get away with sh*t that a female would be fired for, so to me it goes both ways.
I don't think it's about any -ism. I think it's our species. We're just effed up.
My hubby needed to see a therapist for a while after he left his last job. His (female) boss was such a rabid little ferret that her verbal abuse drove workers to quit, but she unloaded mostly on *males*. I despise that little ferret. The fact she's some "feminist icon" for being a CEO doesn't change the fact she's a raging beyotch who abuses her power to denigrate people. Mind you, Donald Trump does that, and people want him to be President of the US, so someone explain *that*?
Long and rambling, I apologize, but this is a very complex and painful issue for us as individuals and as a society. It takes a LONG time to change minds, and you can only change minds when you get past *fear*, and fear is pretty deeply ingrained.
Aplogiies for popping up on a board to which I do not belong. I could, but honestly, my PTSD is my main focus.
Cheers, and I hope I didn't offend or confuse, though I probably did,
Leo
The abuse of Transgender is quite disgusting, its not accepted. It's sometimes sexualised though as being kinda liberal and seen then as you're this all of a sudden sex fiend who is applauded by kinky folk. As for Intersex I would say most people wouldnt even know what that is, however Intersex you cant immediately see.
Also the way Asian women are fetishised. Thats accepted abuse, its racist and sexist. There are probably quite a few race stereotypes that are accepted abuse that could stem from here.
In my city whenever a vote comes up regarding equal rights for or protecting the rights of transgender people (ex: prohibiting discrimination in housing and being hired for jobs) the big local church group (the minister of which has his own radio and TV stations for his church) launches huge and very hateful campaigns against giving them equal rights.
They put out commercials that border on flat out blatant hate speech against transgender people, labeling them as sexual deviants who everyone needs to discriminate against in order to protect our children from them.
I've even known a lesbian who has to keep her orientation secret or her landlord will evict her (and thanks to people like the local church group, the landlord is free to do so).
It is not right for people to be abused in these ways based on their gender identity or sexual orientation. The law should be protecting them, but it clearly isn't due to so many people condoning the abuse.
With regards to fetishizing people, this too is not alright. It's one thing to be attracted to someone based on whatever characteristics they have, but it's wrong to treat a category of people as sexual objects based on those characteristics.
I feel part of the problem is how people are raised in today's society.
With men, many are brought up to believe that it is ideal to try to fit into a fetishized category (ex: tall, tan and muscular with broad shoulders) and have women with that fetish desire them. They see this as what they are expected to strive for and base part of their success in life on being able to achieve this. That being the case, it can be difficult for many men to understand how it is wrong to fetishize women in the same way. Especially when it's often our mothers who push these ideals on their sons of fitting into fetishized categories.
Both sexes need to stop fetishizing each other, but given human nature this seems unlikely to happen anytime soon.
It's healthy for people to have preferences they look for in a partner, but if their preferences are the ONLY thing they look for in a partner (as in they objectify potential partners as sexual objects with those desired traits and not as a person) then it becomes very unhealthy.
After the example involving radical feminism one of the people I was abused by in another group showed up and posted here putting up a bit of a saint act. I doubt it was coincidence either. I guess I'm just still a little on edge over the idea of them showing up here again.
That more or less sums up most of my experiences with feminism. Of course anytime I bring up any of the abuse perpetrated by the radicals people jump down my throat about how I "can't say anything negative about any aspect of feminism" or it means that I'm a woman hater or against women's rights.