Read this article if:
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You’re a man suffering violence from a woman
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You’re a woman who’s prone to being violent
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You just want to understand why some women are like this
“In violence, we forget who we are.” Mary McCarthy
We are honored and delighted that the great Erin Pizzey has written for Feminine Zone again, and is working with us to promote awareness of her latest research into violent women. Domestic violence against men is one of the last taboos – men don’t like talking about it much, neither do the women. And the ‘agencies’ – the Police, social services and so on almost refuse to believe that it exists. Erin strongly believes that these women are themselves victims as well as the men they beat up, and she is looking to speak to more women so that she can understand more about this phenomenon. Read her fascinating article, and if it’s appropriate, respond to her questionnaire at the end.
“I fell in love and then I woke up in a nightmare.” This was said to me by a man a few weeks ago but it could just as easily been said by a woman. Born and raised in a household where both my parents were dysfunctional and violent I was aware of the damage they inflicted on me and my brother and sister. Now some forty years after opening the first refuge in the world in Chiswick London in 1971, I want to learn more about how women react to their often violent and abusive childhood experiences because much is known and studied about male violence but very little is written about women and any attempt to discuss female violence is met with rabid attacks and howls of ‘blaming the victim.’
In my experience I found that in most relationships the violence is consensual – both partners are equally responsible for what goes on behind the front door. In those cases we rarely hear from either partner unless the children of those doomed relationships are drawn to the attention of the schools and then the courts or the psychiatrist’s office. However when one of the partners is an innocent victim of their partner’s violence if they happen to be a woman, they can at least find comfort and refuge but for men, at the moment, there is nothing. If he is involved with a violent woman he risks the laughter of his friends and a truly frosty reception from all the agencies.
Bob is a police officer and also a martial arts expert. ‘She came to my class in the Dojo and made a big play for me. I was flattered and within a few weeks she moved into my place. We seemed to do nothing but fight with each other and then she’d say she was sorry but the fighting got worse. I knew I’d never hit her but I hated the way I felt after a fight. She’d come for me and scratch my face and punch me. She’d spit in my face and scream ‘go on, hit me, hit me.’ She can’t hit me as hard as a man can but it still hurts and I’m devastated. She throws all my clothes out of the front door and when I’m at work she ‘phones my mobile constantly and accuses me of having sex with my students. I’m not physically afraid of her but I am terrified of her moods. I walk on egg shells. I feel sick when she is in a bad mood. She throws things at me. I have to get out but she tells me she’ll kill herself if I leave her. I can’t tell anyone because nobody would believe that I’d let a woman scratch me up.’
‘I never dreamed that sex could be like this?’ James risked everything for a woman he met at an art exhibition. ‘I was willing to leave my wife, the house and the children for her. I’ve been possessed, absorbed and driven mad by her. I can’t eat, sleep or live without her but in the end I had to leave her I never thought of myself as suicidal but I have been. At the end of the four years I no longer recognized myself. I felt old, ugly and unlovable. In the end I had no friends she insulted all of them. She crashed my car, telephoned my boss and hurled abuse at him. Told my parents I was a wife beater and called the police on many occasions. I haven’t seen her for about three months and I don’t answer her messages but I think about her every day and I have this craving to go back. Most people don’t understand that a relationship can be just as addictive as drugs and alcohol and just as lethal.
In most cases I deal with the men say that the wild sex usually happens when they have been drinking or taking drugs – not always but in the majority of cases. What most of the men don’t understand is that the alcohol and the drugs are just the gateway to the often fragmented memories of the abuse the woman suffered as a child. If a child experiences consistent pain and sexual abusive in the very early years the neural pathways in the brain fail to develop normally and thereafter the child will seek pleasure through pain. I talked to a woman who felt no compulsion to self harm while she was with her violent lover but now she escaped him she was overwhelmed with the urge to cut herself. Men tell me that their partner will provoke situations where she creates a huge fight and demands to be hit. ‘Then she’s hot to trot,’ one man said bewildered by the whole relationship.
‘Has it ever crossed your mind,’ I say to the men after they have recounted their sexual history. ‘That she is not in the moment with you but back in her own nightmare of abuse and you have unwittingly taken the role of the perpetrator?’ This will explain why after a night of frenzied fighting and love making she turns all the anger and rage she feels against her abuser onto her lover.
Many years ago I had a shelter in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Some of the women taking refuge from their partners talked to me about the men in their lives who had been fighting in Vietnam. Post Traumatic Stress Disorder meant that when they came back into the family some incidents could trigger a traumatic memory of the war they left behind. Lost in the past they became extremely violent towards their partners and sometimes the children. I realize that adults born into a setting where violence and sexual abuse was their daily experience of life also suffered from the same syndrome. Jenny came into the refuge claiming that her partner beat her but it soon became apparent that Jenny was a deeply troubled young woman. She was a big learning experience for me because on morning after she had tried the patience of everyone in the refuge I was called to admonish her. As I walked towards her she fell to the floor raising her arms above her head screaming ‘…please don’t hit me, please don’t hit me.’ I looked down at her contorted face and I said quietly, ‘Jenny I’ll never hit you.’ I lifted her up and hugged her and that was the first time I recognized that Post Traumatic Stress Disorder occurs not just as a result of a war experience but also in victims of domestic violence. Jenny’s partner was grateful that she no longer accused him of domestic violence. After many months of councilling they were able to look forward to a warm loving relationship.
Usually I end up pointing out to the confused and bruised men who ask for help that they have to recognize that the woman they believe they love are too damaged to sustain a close relationship. What their partner needed to do was to seek help first and then once they had a chance to address their traumatic past they could move on secure in the knowledge that once the past is examined and understood they could then move on. No longer would they continually and repetitively make the past their future.
If anyone reading this article would like help me by answering the following questions I can continue my research into the effects of violence and sexual abuse on children’s lives. At the moment we drag fragile and damaged adults through courts and we punish them. We demonize them; we take away their children or their right to see their children. What we don’t do is to recognize that children born into a nightmare often become a nightmare. The way forward is through compassion and understanding.
Erin Pizzey ©
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If you have a personal experience of this phenomenon, then please respond to Erin, and of course, you can also write in the Forum.
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