I am remembering that old adage, “you learn something new everyday.”
It is funny the things we learn along the way of life. What is not funny are the things we have to unlearn.
As children, my siblings, cousins, and I all got a very stern message about what we now call domestic violence. The message was simple: domestic violence is bad. The message, however, differed according to gender.
For my female cousins, the message translated into “if a man ever hits you, leave immediately because that will not be the last time he hits you.”
For my brothers, male cousins, and myself, the message was expressed thusly, “don’t ever hit a woman.”
As a witness to my mother being battered by my father, the message to me as a male was not hard to accept, to embrace, to own. I reviled the very act and my earliest memories include – along with Ernie & Bert, Grape Ne-Hi’s, the smell of incense in church, Manny Fernandez & Larry Little, Stevie Wonder & Spinners’ hits – a solemn vow never to strike a woman.
I also remember feeling that, as my grandmother and aunts were preaching adamantly about the heinous sin of a man hitting a woman, the strong abusing the weak, the hard hurting the soft, the message was especially directed at me and my brothers because we were the seed of that man committing that evil deed.
Ironically, the girls were never told not to hit and, of course, the boys were never told not allow being hit. We received an important message, in halves and as a result we received a flawed message.
I write to you and to posterity as both a witness to domestic violence and as a survivor of domestic violence.
This testimonial comes after long thought and painful reflection, as an attempt not to slander but, God willing, to empower. The conflicted gender roles in this country, the unreconciled attitudes and expectations of sex in this dysfunctional society have begotten a climate in which they cycle of victim and abuser self-perpetuates and often double-designates many individuals as both victim and abuser.
Little boys are taught not to cry, not to show any emotion outside of those that betoken confidence, bordering on arrogance. “Be a man!” is a phrase wrought with vague, undefined often contradictory roles and responsibilities. Men are conquerors , men are bread-winners, men are kings, kings are deities, and God Itself is assigned a male identity.
Men rape, men beat, men are dictators and dictators are men because men have dicks. We are also taught that women that assume the role of a “dictator” are not dictators because they do not have dicks; such women are bitches.
Because men are all of these things, there is no room left over, no quarter given to anything else for a man. Hence, men cannot be victims.
“You look pretty fit.”
That is what a police officer told me last week as I spent almost thirty minutes lobbying, almost pleading, to have him or his partner oblige my request to file a police report against my batterer, my abusers, my estranged wife.
“Well, how big is she?” I was asked, almost mockingly, as if is size had a correlation to a threat to safety. After all, Steve McNair was significantly larger (not to mention very fit) than the tiny woman that murdered him.
For most of our marriage, my wife punched, kicked, scratched, shoved, slapped, and/or choked me on various occasions. “Why did you stay?” the officer asked me, implying that if I was beaten, it was my fault. Men cannot be victims unless they are victims of themselves.
As I write, I am attempting to get a restraining order filed against my abuser, who happens to be a woman, a very attractive, charming, and articulate woman. This is my second attempt to have the justice system – obligated to protect, to support my efforts, my right to protect myself – protect me.
The first attempt failed miserably because, in spite of not lying under oath and submitting as evidence photographs of injuries inflicted by my abuser, my wife, the man sitting in the black robe upon the wooden bench peaked out from beneath the blindfold of justice. The man charged with and himself under oath to be impartial in the delivery of justice took notice of sex and, with the differences therein taken in to account, minimized evidence.
“While it is evident that there has been domestic violence here, the burden of proof is upon you [man] and you have failed to present a strong enough case. Motion denied.”
All morning long, the same man in the black robe sitting upon the wooden bench meted out restraining orders like Jesus the hillside baker. None of the preceding cases submitted any evidence other than emotional testimony. I was taught to be a man and men are taught not to show emotion. My stoic demeanor, very manly, conveyed to the court a lack of fear, an absence of threat. I was taught to hide being a victim and, thus, I was taught to be a victim.
As I seek a second time to obtain a restraining order, on the heels of my abuser, my accuser (“I’ll say you hit me because I am a woman and they never believe a man.”), my estranged wife coming to a class I was teaching, first into the classroom while I was teaching and, afterwards, waiting in the parking lot almost three hours for me to leave the building after class … as I attempt to raise awareness about what I am not alone in enduring, I realize that I open myself to more abuse.
Our society has been to taught to associate the mere mention of a restraining order as a check against the abuses committed by men, because men are abusers. The mere mention of a restraining order stains a man as trouble. In cases like mine and many other silent ones, the victim is being victimized.
The victim is being victimized because men are not supposed to be victims unless they allow themselves to be victims. So, in abandoning the power we are all taught makes a man a monster, the man who is victimized is a coward deserving of society’s contempt.
The victim is being victimized because in being stigmatized by association with not only cowardice but also the “drama” of a restraining order, the man seeks refuge and some fraction of salvageable dignity in an undignified circumstance in silence.
It is in silence that all abusers and false accusers thrive.
It is time we all break the slience.
