I've been avoiding this blog because I still need to write about my experience going up against him in court, but I'm just not ready. So I'm not going to write about it now. I am instead going to write about an article that is making me really emotional and that I hope that you all read. I saw this article on a friend's Facebook page, and almost regretted reading it because everything is still so raw for me. The article is titled, "Don't blame the victim, or the photographer" and it is in response to a photo essay by Sara Naomi Lewkowicz for Time Magazine, and mostly the readers' comments. Here are links to the article: Don't blame the victim, or the photographer and the photo essay: Photographer as Witness: A Portrait of Domestic Violence
I didn't read most of the 1831 comments on the photo essay because I'm afraid it will be too hard. Reading "Don't blame the victim" and its reports of comments such as, "She is not the victim. She is the perpetrator" in response to the woman who is being choked and threatened by a raging, aggressive man, was hard enough.
I can't fucking stand this.
How can people so massively misunderstand and choose not to see the truth? IT IS NOT HER FAULT. It was not my fault. It is nobody's fault except the person who chooses to put their hands on another person.
My favorite quote of the article is something that my therapist tends to repeat to me weekly, "There are limitless variations on the lies people tell themselves about
women like Maggie who are beaten by their partners. The truth is so much
more straightforward: Women are abused by men who are abusers" and later "Abuse is committed by abusers, who alone are responsible for their violence."
No matter how much Buttface's emotional abuse wants to invade my every thought, my therapist is there to tell me that no matter what reason I come up with to blame it on myself, "Women are abused by men who are abusers". But besides the incredibly traumatic and twisted lies that Buttface got me to believe about myself, I also have to deal with society and society's fucked up opinions about domestic violence.
Some that are mentioned in the article: that she should have seen it coming (victim blaming), she stays because she likes it (uh...sick and twisted, ignorant, and oh, yeah, victim blaming), and that she deserved it because she was cheating on her husband (deserved it??? ENRAGING, and still, victim blaming).
Some that have been used in response to me: that I was being vindictive for wanting justice, that I didn't deserve justice because he a) gave me so much and b) hadn't come after me (you know, since the last time he came after me...), and that I didn't deserve justice because I wasn't doing it on (choose a person)'s time frame, but instead (gasp!) on my own.
I am so sickened by this all that I'm having a hard time putting coherent thoughts together about it.
Why is this kind of thinking so common and worse, so accepted? It shocks me every day that anyone could possibly blame me for this. This is not the 1950s (not that it was EVER okay to blame the victim, I just really thought that we had come farther than this!).
A strategy that was used against me in court is that I started arguments, even that I was the aggressor. Oy. So many things to say to that one. a) this is not true and b) how would this person know (that we lived with for exactly one month) what all of our arguments were like and c) (here's the important one) WHY WOULD IT MATTER? Again, it's not true, but even if I screamed at Buttface, all day, every day for the entire three years that we were together, SO??? That doesn't make it my fault! That doesn't mean I deserved it. I never once even came close to putting my hands on him. He Chose to put his hands on me and that makes it only his fault.
How did we get to a place (or stay in a place, I guess) in our society where someone can deserve to be beaten?? I have a lot of theories and they're mostly about male privilege, but I don't accept any of them, and I refuse to let them inside of me, because it is more simple than that. Never, ever, ever is physical violence okay.
The commenters apparently even search so hard for a way to make it not the perpetrator's fault that they try then to blame the photographer. For not intervening. This is a tough and controversial subject, as those of you who followed the NYC subway death/photographer ethical debate, but it should not be the main story here (p.s. she did intervene, as you will find out in the article. Still not the story). The story should be the abuser.
Just like this blog shouldn't be about me. It shouldn't be about my attempts to rebuild my life, it should be about his. Because he should be the one ostracized in society, he should have the consequences for his actions that are solely his fault. He should not be able to look at himself in the mirror. And anyone that thinks that I had anything to do with it should not be able to either.
I'm sorry that this happened to you, Maggie (and everyone else this happens to), as I said in my comment. It was not your fault and you are not to blame. You are so brave for letting the world see this part of your life, and you should not be ashamed. I'm sorry for all the hurtful comments. I hope that you're not reading them, but that doesn't make them go away. I am working to change erroneous conceptions and by sharing your story, you certainly are too.
