I'm actually rather shocked that many people here think that if a girl is really getting up in her boyfriend's face and hassling him, she deserves whatever she gets.
Nobody thinks that, stop trying to attribute it to anyone.
On the other hand, if anyone lays an unwanted hand on you, you have the right to remove that hand and doing so is not violence or abuse.
I'm amazed that you don't think that "no" means "no."
It is violence. It's merely potentially justified violence. Violence is not necessarily terribly morally wrong in all contexts, though it always represents a transactional failure.
If it happens repeatedly, then it's repeated violence against a particular target with whom you share a prior relationship, which makes it clearly abuse.
If it happens repeatedly, then the person being defensive needs to learn some better transactional strategies.
You're using a different definition of violence than I am.
Violence can mean simply a physical use of force or it can mean an unjust use of force.
I'm curious as to at what point does verbal harassment warrant a physical response in your morality?
Never.
I would say that verbal harassment in the form of not vacating the premises when asked repeatedly could justify physically removing someone, if it can be done without harming them. Like, pushing them out the door forcefully but non-violently. Sort of how if I tell my daughter to go to her room and she refuses, I pick her up and carry her there.
That said, while I think it would be justifiable, it could also be counterproductive and result in escalation depending on the circumstances. I just don't think it's inherently immoral.
ElJeffe on
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Violence between lovers is always wrong. Always. Always. ALWAYS. Now I'm going to leave this thread.
I know you're probably prejudiced due to some fact, you fight tooth and nail against this.
However you should become more open minded about this, but not in the mocking "You're right, it's okay to hit wimmen!" response you've probably thought up.
This thread has a lot of quality discussion, people are actually learning. Take some of it into perspective.
I, for one, think the 'abuser' in the scenario is still wrong because he had other options he could have at least tried first (ie: Pulling away, taking her hands off him).
That said, I agree with a lot that has been said here.
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ThomamelasOnly one man can kill this many Russians. Bring his guitar to me! Registered Userregular
I can speak personally, from what I have learned with my struggle with alcohol, that the stigma can act in different ways and often in both ways as described: as motivation to both hide and confront the problem. This is a "stages of understanding" dilemma, and often to begin the stigma causes a deep-seeded burial of the issue. "I'm not an alcoholic because I'm a good person" was my mantra while I drank myself to sleep for years and years. "I'm not an alcoholic because I'm a good person and can control myself with help and support" comes from the same place viewed at a different angle.
In either case, the stigma does, in fact, act to merely amplify one's emotions and thoughts. It goes from denial into recovery with stigma acting as a "boost" to the guilt and shame that the individual already feels, but either buries or confronts.
Except the same behavior happens in a class of abuser that doesn't suffer from the stigma. This is the point I want to drive home. Female abusers use variations on the same theme when discussing their abuse. It's nice from an empathy stand point to want to apply one situation to another but it's a good fit. The statements aren't "I'm not an abuser because I'm a good person" it's "I'm not an abuser". Or if responsibility happens, it's placed squarely on the shoulders of the victim. "If they were better then this wouldn't happen". In the mind of an abuser there isn't an issue. Even the tearful "I only hit you because I love you" is rarely anything more then a tool to get the victim to help in their own abuse.
Thomamelas on
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Nova_CI have the needThe need for speedRegistered Userregular
edited June 2010
I'm not sure the stigma doesn't extend to female abusers. I think the terms 'domestic violence' and 'abuse' have carried enough stigma for long enough that when a woman admits to herself that she's an abuser, the stigma is present. Society may not hold her to the same account, depending, but a woman simply admitting that she's an abuser will bring to mind images of violence, in this case, perpetrated by her.
I can speak personally, from what I have learned with my struggle with alcohol, that the stigma can act in different ways and often in both ways as described: as motivation to both hide and confront the problem. This is a "stages of understanding" dilemma, and often to begin the stigma causes a deep-seeded burial of the issue. "I'm not an alcoholic because I'm a good person" was my mantra while I drank myself to sleep for years and years. "I'm not an alcoholic because I'm a good person and can control myself with help and support" comes from the same place viewed at a different angle.
In either case, the stigma does, in fact, act to merely amplify one's emotions and thoughts. It goes from denial into recovery with stigma acting as a "boost" to the guilt and shame that the individual already feels, but either buries or confronts.
Except the same behavior happens in a class of abuser that doesn't suffer from the stigma. This is the point I want to drive home. Female abusers use variations on the same theme when discussing their abuse. It's nice from an empathy stand point to want to apply one situation to another but it's a good fit. The statements aren't "I'm not an abuser because I'm a good person" it's "I'm not an abuser". Or if responsibility happens, it's placed squarely on the shoulders of the victim. "If they were better then this wouldn't happen". In the mind of an abuser there isn't an issue. Even the tearful "I only hit you because I love you" is rarely anything more then a tool to get the victim to help in their own abuse.
With regards to the original scenario and the idea of a "Push". I think that context is important.
There's a difference between pushing someone away as a reaction to something and pushing someone as an attack.
After that, it's a matter of proportion and "reasonableness". I would say that physically moving someone away from you to avoid unwanted physical contact is one thing - sending someone flying across the room, or to the ground, or into something for wanting a hug is another.
To be honest - its a pretty hairy line most of the time - I can understand why police get into situations over "reasonable force". It's pretty subjective.
Fallingman on
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ThomamelasOnly one man can kill this many Russians. Bring his guitar to me! Registered Userregular
I'm not sure the stigma doesn't extend to female abusers. I think the terms 'domestic violence' and 'abuse' have carried enough stigma for long enough that when a woman admits to herself that she's an abuser, the stigma is present. Society may not hold her to the same account, depending, but a woman simply admitting that she's an abuser will bring to mind images of violence, in this case, perpetrated by her.
Even if the abuse was purely emotional.
Sure. But at the point you're describing the abuser has admitted they are an abuser. Stigma or not it's going to hit them the sheer amount of damage they cause. The discussion was if the stigma acts to prevent them from seeking help.
In our situation, a small woman is pushed by her boyfriend after he gets pissed off and storms away to calm down. She tries to console him but he just tells her to go away, he needs his space. He does this 12 times before she tries to hug him and he shoves her away. After he has calmed down he still justifies his shove stating "You kept pestering me and I asked you to go away."
I'd say it's impossible to tell whether or not domestic abuse is occurring without more context and/or history. Is this a regular occurrence? Was it an extremely forceful shove (...I think I read a few posts where people said, 'a shove is a shove'? That's absurd. The amount of kinetic energy applied makes a huge difference in the outcome & connotation, as does the build of the person being repelled. Someone shouldering their way through two healthy adult males down a hallway is doing something rude - someone decking an 80 year old man with a bad hip or shoving a wheelchair bound person down a flight of stairs is doing something criminal)? Does the guy or girl often do things to assert control over their partner? What does 'pestering' mean, specifically?
To put some twists on it, we've also discussed other variants. What if the roles were reversed and a petite woman shoved a man? Does the source of anger matter in this case?
Part of the discussion, where she kept bugging him has been argued as battery. Does this matter? Both battery and assault are illegal.
Well, I mean, I'm sure most people are aware that abuse can and does happen where petite girls terrorize much more physically built guys. My best friend from high school went through that very thing; it was incredible to watch someone almost twice my weight get dominated & traumatized by someone about 10 lbs lighter than me.
I'd say that the source of anger from either party does matter (though not in isolated terms) because abusers will typically invent things to explode over. Again, this is where history & context are important. If the guy is always coming up with excuses to bash around his girlfriend, or if the girlfriend is always coming up with reasons to belittle / shriek at her boyfriend, you know that the relationship has become (or has always been) an abusive one.
The Ender on
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Nova_CI have the needThe need for speedRegistered Userregular
I'm not sure the stigma doesn't extend to female abusers. I think the terms 'domestic violence' and 'abuse' have carried enough stigma for long enough that when a woman admits to herself that she's an abuser, the stigma is present. Society may not hold her to the same account, depending, but a woman simply admitting that she's an abuser will bring to mind images of violence, in this case, perpetrated by her.
Even if the abuse was purely emotional.
Sure. But at the point you're describing the abuser has admitted they are an abuser. Stigma or not it's going to hit them the sheer amount of damage they cause. The discussion was if the stigma acts to prevent them from seeking help.
Hm. The denial itself can still be driven by the perceived stigma for a woman. That is, not denying it requires one to face that they are an abuser, which is stigmatized on it's own, regardless of gender or type of abuse.
I think the denial that sits outside of the stigma is believing, I mean truly believing that whatever one is doing does not qualify as abuse. Which a stigma against abuse would be irrelevant to.
With regards to the original scenario and the idea of a "Push". I think that context is important.
There's a difference between pushing someone away as a reaction to something and pushing someone as an attack.
After that, it's a matter of proportion and "reasonableness". I would say that physically moving someone away from you to avoid unwanted physical contact is one thing - sending someone flying across the room, or to the ground, or into something for wanting a hug is another.
To be honest - its a pretty hairy line most of the time - I can understand why police get into situations over "reasonable force". It's pretty subjective.
Verbal and psychological abuse are also horrible things that would make you a bad person. But they are often glossed over because protracted psychological abuse campaigns aren't nearly as great media grabbers as "so and so lost his temper and punched her in the face".
EDIT- reread what you were saying, missed the point the first time.
There's also the fact that verbal/psychological abuse rarely leaves visible clues for other people to pick up on, so unless you as a third party actually witness the behavior it's almost impossible to say "yes, this is verbally abusive".
Doesn't make it any less damaging though
I dated somebody that had borderline personality disorder for several years. Her behavior ran from fine, to highly erratic, and at times violent. Running around the place smashing things, threatening to hurt herself if I left, ect. But always, within an hour, she'd do a complete 180 and everything would be fine. I justified my staying in the relationship because she had a diagnosed illness and was seeing a doctor for this, even if the doctor was more a knee jerk reaction on her part with the "see I am doing something about this" line dropped constantly.
I'm not sure if I'd classify it as abusive. Because there really wasn't any malicious intent involved. I'd more say it was the side affect of an actual problem she had that manifested itself in some truly bizare behavior. At some point I started to blame myself for the various outbursts since there had to be something wrong with me. The outbursts were never in public and were so random I'd spend time sitting there trying to figure out just what I could have done during the day to have caused this explosion.
The end result was I got so frazzled I ended up spending a lot of the nights drinking myself through the situation as a coping mechanism and ended up screwing up a bunch of my life.
To people on the outside looking in, nobody say the regular disasters or really knew what was going on. The behavior was so spectacular and out of place with her public persona that trying to describe it to people outside of my close circle of friends that had witnessed it once or twice didn't help. And since I was the man in the situation, it was often hinted at or called into question outright as to what I was doing to cause all of this.
It was really a confusing situation.
EDIT- I'd say that by the end of the relationship, I'd become so fed up with the entire thing that I wasn't helping either. At that point I'd stopped caring completely.
You left out the part where the fuckwit dangled her laptop out the window and threatened to drop it if she left him.
Doesn't matter. Is he right to do that? Hell no. Is she right to constantly try and hug him when he says to leave him alone? No.
It's rarely okay to hit a woman (before anyone leaps on my throat: Google the news story about Erin Toughill beating her husband. If the woman can kick the mans ass, it's much less horrible ;-) ) but if someone, ANYONE is pestering you with unwanted attention, a hug, etc.? Hell yeah you're entitled to shove them away. Don't do it to HURT them. Just to get them away from you. Take into account your strength vs their size.
The Muffin Man on
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ThomamelasOnly one man can kill this many Russians. Bring his guitar to me! Registered Userregular
I'm not sure the stigma doesn't extend to female abusers. I think the terms 'domestic violence' and 'abuse' have carried enough stigma for long enough that when a woman admits to herself that she's an abuser, the stigma is present. Society may not hold her to the same account, depending, but a woman simply admitting that she's an abuser will bring to mind images of violence, in this case, perpetrated by her.
Even if the abuse was purely emotional.
Sure. But at the point you're describing the abuser has admitted they are an abuser. Stigma or not it's going to hit them the sheer amount of damage they cause. The discussion was if the stigma acts to prevent them from seeking help.
Hm. The denial itself can still be driven by the perceived stigma for a woman. That is, not denying it requires one to face that they are an abuser, which is stigmatized on it's own, regardless of gender or type of abuse.
I think the denial that sits outside of the stigma is believing, I mean truly believing that whatever one is doing does not qualify as abuse. Which a stigma against abuse would be irrelevant to.
Except the denial doesn't come from the stigma. It's the same set of issues before the stigma. Same excuses, same behavior patterns. The abuser hasn't changed much. Our understanding of them has but the behavior patterns tend to be the same. Victims change their behavior. They have to lie more. It's really comforting to blame the stigma because it's an easy solution and it's one the average person can change. But I'm still looking for some actual evidence that it reduces abuser treatment rates.
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Nova_CI have the needThe need for speedRegistered Userregular
edited June 2010
I wasn't trying to argue with you Thom, not really. Just trying to understand something I haven't really put a lot of thought into before. I don't know and don't really have an opinion on whether or not the stigma reduces treatment rates. I was more just going along the lines that I think the stigma transcends the gender boundary, even if public perception of abuse rates has not.
The shove was probably an overreaction. Protecting his physical space from somebody who will not take "leave me alone" for an answer, and insists on touching you because they want to? I don't have a big problem with that.
mythago on
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You left out the part where the fuckwit dangled her laptop out the window and threatened to drop it if she left him.
Doesn't matter. Is he right to do that? Hell no. Is she right to constantly try and hug him when he says to leave him alone? No.
It's rarely okay to hit a woman (before anyone leaps on my throat: Google the news story about Erin Toughill beating her husband. If the woman can kick the mans ass, it's much less horrible ;-) ) but if someone, ANYONE is pestering you with unwanted attention, a hug, etc.? Hell yeah you're entitled to shove them away. Don't do it to HURT them. Just to get them away from you. Take into account your strength vs their size.
Well, I agree with you that shoving / hitting can be an okay thing within certain contexts, and I agree that the guy has every right to physically repel the girl if she will not take 'No' for an answer, but I totally disagree that the laptop incident 'doesn't matter'. It provides extra context. Now, that shouldn't be the end of the story, but it really doesn't look like the guy in this isolated situation was the reasonable one, and it's not usually a good sign when one party is taking hostages as a threat in order to assert their dominance over another. I mean, note the doublethink being imposed: she isn't allowed to go near the guy or hug him (things that are usually considered 'part of the deal' when you're in a relationship), but if she decides that's not what she bargained for for dating material, she's not allowed to leave either (or, at least, not without fierce reprisal).
As the meme goes, I would like to know more. As lots of people have said, it's easy to condemn someone for the one time they went flying off the handle when they're otherwise okay people, and it's impossible to say that this relationship is an abusive one based solely on this one snapshot.
The Ender on
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HenroidMexican kicked from Immigration ThreadCentrism is Racism :3Registered Userregular
edited June 2010
The laptop incident matters if we're discussing the specific H/A thread event. It doesn't matter if we're discussing the general concept of people pushing / shoving someone away after having asked to be left alone.
You left out the part where the fuckwit dangled her laptop out the window and threatened to drop it if she left him.
Doesn't matter. Is he right to do that? Hell no. Is she right to constantly try and hug him when he says to leave him alone? No.
It's rarely okay to hit a woman (before anyone leaps on my throat: Google the news story about Erin Toughill beating her husband. If the woman can kick the mans ass, it's much less horrible ;-) ) but if someone, ANYONE is pestering you with unwanted attention, a hug, etc.? Hell yeah you're entitled to shove them away. Don't do it to HURT them. Just to get them away from you. Take into account your strength vs their size.
Well, I agree with you that shoving / hitting can be an okay thing within certain contexts, and I agree that the guy has every right to physically repel the girl if she will not take 'No' for an answer, but I totally disagree that the laptop incident 'doesn't matter'. It provides extra context. Now, that shouldn't be the end of the story, but it really doesn't look like the guy in this isolated situation was the reasonable one, and it's not usually a good sign when one party is taking hostages as a threat in order to assert their dominance over another. I mean, note the doublethink being imposed: she isn't allowed to go near the guy or hug him (things that are usually considered 'part of the deal' when you're in a relationship), but if she decides that's not what she bargained for for dating material, she's not allowed to leave either (or, at least, not without fierce reprisal).
As the meme goes, I would like to know more. As lots of people have said, it's easy to condemn someone for the one time they went flying off the handle when they're otherwise okay people, and it's impossible to say that this relationship is an abusive one based solely on this one snapshot.
I mean it doesn't matter in that no means no. It's not a yes if it's a guy, or if he/she was being a dick/bitch, or whatever. If they say "leave me alone" you should leave them alone.
You're using a different definition of violence than I am.
Violence can mean simply a physical use of force or it can mean an unjust use of force.
I'm referring to the second.
Hrm.
I think every use of physical force against another human being is unfortunate. It carries with it the possibility that somebody could be hurt, potentially seriously hurt. It means somebody feels out of control, powerless.
This is why I refer to it as a transactional failure. A physical altercation is a general protection fault in the human social subroutine.
So whether it is just or not, it is to be avoided.
Feral on
every person who doesn't like an acquired taste always seems to think everyone who likes it is faking it. it should be an official fallacy.
I wasn't trying to argue with you Thom, not really. Just trying to understand something I haven't really put a lot of thought into before. I don't know and don't really have an opinion on whether or not the stigma reduces treatment rates. I was more just going along the lines that I think the stigma transcends the gender boundary, even if public perception of abuse rates has not.
I believe that the argument is that the "stigma" keeps the issue in public eye and makes it an attractive political move for the left to fund shelters and programs for both abused and abuser. That by removing (if we could snap our fingers, etc.) this stigma we would, essentially, cause the issue to leave the public eye and we'd see less funding for those same programs.
Which strikes me as an issue with the political system, and certainly doesn't justify anything.
Thom should explain himself, I'd like some clarity on this. Not to mention my cynic-tinged glasses make everything a little more negative.
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ThomamelasOnly one man can kill this many Russians. Bring his guitar to me! Registered Userregular
I wasn't trying to argue with you Thom, not really. Just trying to understand something I haven't really put a lot of thought into before. I don't know and don't really have an opinion on whether or not the stigma reduces treatment rates. I was more just going along the lines that I think the stigma transcends the gender boundary, even if public perception of abuse rates has not.
I believe that the argument is that the "stigma" keeps the issue in public eye and makes it an attractive political move for the left to fund shelters and programs for both abused and abuser. That by removing (if we could snap our fingers, etc.) this stigma we would, essentially, cause the issue to leave the public eye and we'd see less funding for those same programs.
Which strikes me as an issue with the political system, and certainly doesn't justify anything.
Thom should explain himself, I'd like some clarity on this. Not to mention my cynic-tinged glasses make everything a little more negative.
The stigma adds a negative perception to it. Dropping the stigma sends a message to victims that what's going on is normal. Not something to be shunned but something normal. Which is a message that plays into the abuse. The stigma is one of the few deeply embedded social messages that says other wise. And it works on a deep level. Removing that removes one of the most effective tools for showing the victim that what's going on isn't right. That they shouldn't be being hit. That's my single biggest fear about removing it because there isn't a message to replace it. There are plenty that enforce the shame, others that mock it but the messaging that builds the stigma is the most effect tool. For most of the survivors I know, the decision to get out was a personal one. We weren't dragged out, no one came to our rescue or if they did we drove them off out of fear.
And the political aspect exists. Removing the shame removes some of the moral imperative to eliminate it. And I've had too much experience with MRAs who want to speak for me, I know damn good and well that eliminating the domestic abuse shelters is something they see as a high priority. They see things like the Duluth Model not as flawed but an attack on them. Instead of wanting to fix it they want to tear it down and destroy it so it can't attack them again. Is it a flaw in the political system? Yes. Can it be fixed? Maybe. Will it be? Not in my lifetime.
As long as you teach that domestic abuse is wrong, then you'll have a stigma with it. There isn't a way to avoid that. So if you're gonna drop the stigma, you have to change the message. And no one has shown any actual benefit to changing the message.
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You're using a different definition of violence than I am.
Violence can mean simply a physical use of force or it can mean an unjust use of force.
I'm referring to the second.
I would say that verbal harassment in the form of not vacating the premises when asked repeatedly could justify physically removing someone, if it can be done without harming them. Like, pushing them out the door forcefully but non-violently. Sort of how if I tell my daughter to go to her room and she refuses, I pick her up and carry her there.
That said, while I think it would be justifiable, it could also be counterproductive and result in escalation depending on the circumstances. I just don't think it's inherently immoral.
I know you're probably prejudiced due to some fact, you fight tooth and nail against this.
However you should become more open minded about this, but not in the mocking "You're right, it's okay to hit wimmen!" response you've probably thought up.
This thread has a lot of quality discussion, people are actually learning. Take some of it into perspective.
I, for one, think the 'abuser' in the scenario is still wrong because he had other options he could have at least tried first (ie: Pulling away, taking her hands off him).
That said, I agree with a lot that has been said here.
Except the same behavior happens in a class of abuser that doesn't suffer from the stigma. This is the point I want to drive home. Female abusers use variations on the same theme when discussing their abuse. It's nice from an empathy stand point to want to apply one situation to another but it's a good fit. The statements aren't "I'm not an abuser because I'm a good person" it's "I'm not an abuser". Or if responsibility happens, it's placed squarely on the shoulders of the victim. "If they were better then this wouldn't happen". In the mind of an abuser there isn't an issue. Even the tearful "I only hit you because I love you" is rarely anything more then a tool to get the victim to help in their own abuse.
Even if the abuse was purely emotional.
Oh goodness yes, it's a terrible cycle
There's a difference between pushing someone away as a reaction to something and pushing someone as an attack.
After that, it's a matter of proportion and "reasonableness". I would say that physically moving someone away from you to avoid unwanted physical contact is one thing - sending someone flying across the room, or to the ground, or into something for wanting a hug is another.
To be honest - its a pretty hairy line most of the time - I can understand why police get into situations over "reasonable force". It's pretty subjective.
Sure. But at the point you're describing the abuser has admitted they are an abuser. Stigma or not it's going to hit them the sheer amount of damage they cause. The discussion was if the stigma acts to prevent them from seeking help.
I'd say it's impossible to tell whether or not domestic abuse is occurring without more context and/or history. Is this a regular occurrence? Was it an extremely forceful shove (...I think I read a few posts where people said, 'a shove is a shove'? That's absurd. The amount of kinetic energy applied makes a huge difference in the outcome & connotation, as does the build of the person being repelled. Someone shouldering their way through two healthy adult males down a hallway is doing something rude - someone decking an 80 year old man with a bad hip or shoving a wheelchair bound person down a flight of stairs is doing something criminal)? Does the guy or girl often do things to assert control over their partner? What does 'pestering' mean, specifically?
Well, I mean, I'm sure most people are aware that abuse can and does happen where petite girls terrorize much more physically built guys. My best friend from high school went through that very thing; it was incredible to watch someone almost twice my weight get dominated & traumatized by someone about 10 lbs lighter than me.
I'd say that the source of anger from either party does matter (though not in isolated terms) because abusers will typically invent things to explode over. Again, this is where history & context are important. If the guy is always coming up with excuses to bash around his girlfriend, or if the girlfriend is always coming up with reasons to belittle / shriek at her boyfriend, you know that the relationship has become (or has always been) an abusive one.
Hm. The denial itself can still be driven by the perceived stigma for a woman. That is, not denying it requires one to face that they are an abuser, which is stigmatized on it's own, regardless of gender or type of abuse.
I think the denial that sits outside of the stigma is believing, I mean truly believing that whatever one is doing does not qualify as abuse. Which a stigma against abuse would be irrelevant to.
I dated somebody that had borderline personality disorder for several years. Her behavior ran from fine, to highly erratic, and at times violent. Running around the place smashing things, threatening to hurt herself if I left, ect. But always, within an hour, she'd do a complete 180 and everything would be fine. I justified my staying in the relationship because she had a diagnosed illness and was seeing a doctor for this, even if the doctor was more a knee jerk reaction on her part with the "see I am doing something about this" line dropped constantly.
I'm not sure if I'd classify it as abusive. Because there really wasn't any malicious intent involved. I'd more say it was the side affect of an actual problem she had that manifested itself in some truly bizare behavior. At some point I started to blame myself for the various outbursts since there had to be something wrong with me. The outbursts were never in public and were so random I'd spend time sitting there trying to figure out just what I could have done during the day to have caused this explosion.
The end result was I got so frazzled I ended up spending a lot of the nights drinking myself through the situation as a coping mechanism and ended up screwing up a bunch of my life.
To people on the outside looking in, nobody say the regular disasters or really knew what was going on. The behavior was so spectacular and out of place with her public persona that trying to describe it to people outside of my close circle of friends that had witnessed it once or twice didn't help. And since I was the man in the situation, it was often hinted at or called into question outright as to what I was doing to cause all of this.
It was really a confusing situation.
EDIT- I'd say that by the end of the relationship, I'd become so fed up with the entire thing that I wasn't helping either. At that point I'd stopped caring completely.
Doesn't matter. Is he right to do that? Hell no. Is she right to constantly try and hug him when he says to leave him alone? No.
It's rarely okay to hit a woman (before anyone leaps on my throat: Google the news story about Erin Toughill beating her husband. If the woman can kick the mans ass, it's much less horrible ;-) ) but if someone, ANYONE is pestering you with unwanted attention, a hug, etc.? Hell yeah you're entitled to shove them away. Don't do it to HURT them. Just to get them away from you. Take into account your strength vs their size.
Except the denial doesn't come from the stigma. It's the same set of issues before the stigma. Same excuses, same behavior patterns. The abuser hasn't changed much. Our understanding of them has but the behavior patterns tend to be the same. Victims change their behavior. They have to lie more. It's really comforting to blame the stigma because it's an easy solution and it's one the average person can change. But I'm still looking for some actual evidence that it reduces abuser treatment rates.
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Well, I agree with you that shoving / hitting can be an okay thing within certain contexts, and I agree that the guy has every right to physically repel the girl if she will not take 'No' for an answer, but I totally disagree that the laptop incident 'doesn't matter'. It provides extra context. Now, that shouldn't be the end of the story, but it really doesn't look like the guy in this isolated situation was the reasonable one, and it's not usually a good sign when one party is taking hostages as a threat in order to assert their dominance over another. I mean, note the doublethink being imposed: she isn't allowed to go near the guy or hug him (things that are usually considered 'part of the deal' when you're in a relationship), but if she decides that's not what she bargained for for dating material, she's not allowed to leave either (or, at least, not without fierce reprisal).
As the meme goes, I would like to know more. As lots of people have said, it's easy to condemn someone for the one time they went flying off the handle when they're otherwise okay people, and it's impossible to say that this relationship is an abusive one based solely on this one snapshot.
Which is it?
I mean it doesn't matter in that no means no. It's not a yes if it's a guy, or if he/she was being a dick/bitch, or whatever. If they say "leave me alone" you should leave them alone.
Hrm.
I think every use of physical force against another human being is unfortunate. It carries with it the possibility that somebody could be hurt, potentially seriously hurt. It means somebody feels out of control, powerless.
This is why I refer to it as a transactional failure. A physical altercation is a general protection fault in the human social subroutine.
So whether it is just or not, it is to be avoided.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
I believe that the argument is that the "stigma" keeps the issue in public eye and makes it an attractive political move for the left to fund shelters and programs for both abused and abuser. That by removing (if we could snap our fingers, etc.) this stigma we would, essentially, cause the issue to leave the public eye and we'd see less funding for those same programs.
Which strikes me as an issue with the political system, and certainly doesn't justify anything.
Thom should explain himself, I'd like some clarity on this. Not to mention my cynic-tinged glasses make everything a little more negative.
The stigma adds a negative perception to it. Dropping the stigma sends a message to victims that what's going on is normal. Not something to be shunned but something normal. Which is a message that plays into the abuse. The stigma is one of the few deeply embedded social messages that says other wise. And it works on a deep level. Removing that removes one of the most effective tools for showing the victim that what's going on isn't right. That they shouldn't be being hit. That's my single biggest fear about removing it because there isn't a message to replace it. There are plenty that enforce the shame, others that mock it but the messaging that builds the stigma is the most effect tool. For most of the survivors I know, the decision to get out was a personal one. We weren't dragged out, no one came to our rescue or if they did we drove them off out of fear.
And the political aspect exists. Removing the shame removes some of the moral imperative to eliminate it. And I've had too much experience with MRAs who want to speak for me, I know damn good and well that eliminating the domestic abuse shelters is something they see as a high priority. They see things like the Duluth Model not as flawed but an attack on them. Instead of wanting to fix it they want to tear it down and destroy it so it can't attack them again. Is it a flaw in the political system? Yes. Can it be fixed? Maybe. Will it be? Not in my lifetime.
As long as you teach that domestic abuse is wrong, then you'll have a stigma with it. There isn't a way to avoid that. So if you're gonna drop the stigma, you have to change the message. And no one has shown any actual benefit to changing the message.