tracing patterns

In a moving defense of a survivor who has come forward about intimate partner violence in the leadership of the Manitoba New Democratic Party, journalist Melissa Martin writes:

Seven years ago, on a breezy day in late August, my live-in partner put his hands around my throat and slammed me into our couch. We’d been arguing, again, and this time his anger lashed out like lightning, a sudden electric shock.

In retrospect, the attack didn’t last long: a handful of heartbeats, a few seconds. At the time, it felt never-ending. All I could see were the dark pools of his eyes, which stared cold and glassy and hollow. All I could hear was a silence. I believe that “then” doesn’t always have to mean “ever”

Last week, I drove an old friend to the airport. He’d moved away many years ago. So as I recounted my last relationship — with the flatness of time and years of practice — it fell on him as a fresh horror.

"I would have killed that guy, if I knew," my friend said.

I shrugged. "Nah," I replied. "Let’s not go there. He’s not a bad guy."

And it’s true, believe it or not, that I don’t consider the man who hurt me to be an irredeemably bad person. Years later, unprompted, he wrote me to apologize. It was a sincere apology, issued without requests or qualifications.

Because the apology was offered honestly, I accepted. Somewhere inside, old scars became mended.

So there’s no torch for him in my heart now, but no anger either. He was not a healthy person back then, but I believe that "then" doesn’t always have to mean "ever." For him and everyone around him, I want only for him to be better.

Yet if he were ever to step forward as a leader, and some enterprising reporter asked me about our time together, I would tell them what happened. I would tell them about those few seconds in August 2010, his hands, my fear.

In this post, Buddhini Samarisinghe writes about the way that abusers use a history of trauma to excuse harm and enable further abuse. She writes:

I know that the man who abused me used his baggage to entrap me. I know that I explained away a lot of his abusive behaviors because of his baggage. The man who abused me is a skilled manipulator. Gaslighting is second nature to him, and he would spin stories to fit his agenda without batting an eyelid.

As a survivor of his abuse, it’s hard for me to separate the truth from his lies. I spend a lot of my time trying to do this – alone, with friends, with my therapist. Sometimes, questioning the things he told me feels wrong because of the essence of the question. Think about it – “did he really experience childhood abuse or was he just saying that so I would feel sorry for him?” Now try to imagine how awful a childhood abuse survivor would feel to have their experiences questioned like this.

As a survivor of his abuse, I often notice that I am expected to take these extenuating circumstances into account when I consider his abuse. As if his baggage is somehow an excuse for what he did. As if I owe him empathy – as if I owe him the courtesy – to take these things into account when I take stock of my devastated sense of self. I hate how I am expected to be kind and empathetic and watch my language when I talk about this man who harmed me because he (allegedly) has a history of mental illness, substance abuse, childhood abuse. Accounting for his baggage and nuancing how I express my hurt and anger feels wrong. 

In this essay, Thomas Macaulay Millar examines the research on sexual assault, highlighting the prominence of acquaintance rape. His recommendations are worth reading:

I’m directing this to men who inhabit het-identified social spaces, and I’m not really limiting it more than that. Women are already doing what they can to prevent rape; brokering a peace with the fear is part of their lives that we can never fully understand. We’re the ones who are not doing our jobs.

Here’s what we need to do. We need to spot the rapists, and we need to shut down the social structures that give them a license to operate. They are in the population, among us. They have an average of six victims, women that they know, and therefore likely some women you know. They use force sometimes, but mostly they use intoxicants. They don’t accidentally end up in a room with a woman too drunk or high to consent or resist; they plan on getting there and that’s where they end up.

Listen. The women you know will tell you when the men they thought they could trust assaulted them; if and only if they know you won’t stonewall, deny, blame or judge. Let them tell you that they got drunk, and woke up with your buddy on top of them. Listen. Don’t defend that guy. That guy is more likely than not a recidivist. He has probably done it before. He will probably do it again.

Change the culture. To rape again and again, these men need silence. They need to know that the right combination of factors — alcohol and sex shame, mostly — will keep their victims quiet. Otherwise, they would be identified earlier and have a harder time finding victims. The women in your life need to be able to talk frankly about sexual assault. They need to be able to tell you, and they need to know that they can tell you, and not be stonewalled, denied, blamed or judged.

Listen. The men in your lives will tell you what they do. As long as the R word doesn’t get attached, rapists do self-report. The guy who says he sees a woman too drunk to know where she is as an opportunity is not joking. He’s telling you how he sees it. The guy who says, “bros before hos,” is asking you to make a pact.

The Pact. The social structure that allows the predators to hide in plain sight, to sit at the bar at the same table with everyone, take a target home, rape her, and stay in the same social circle because she can’t or won’t tell anyone, or because nobody does anything if she does. The pact to make excuses, to look for mitigation, to patch things over, to believe that what happens to our friends — what our friends do to our friends — is not (using Whoopi Goldberg’s pathetic apologetics) “rape-rape.”

Change the culture. We are not going to pull six or ten or twelve million men out of the U.S. population over any short period, so if we are going to put a dent in the prevalence of rape, we need to change the environment that the rapist operates in. Choose not to be part of a rape-supportive environment. Rape jokes are not jokes. Woman-hating jokes are not jokes. These guys are telling you what they think. When you laugh along to get their approval, you give them yours. You tell them that the social license to operate is in force; that you’ll go along with the pact to turn your eyes away from the evidence; to make excuses for them; to assume it’s a mistake, of the first time, or a confusing situation. You’re telling them that they’re at low risk.

I saw economist James Galbraith not long ago — an economist beloved of progressives everywhere. Galbraith said, among other things, “First rule of economics: incentives work.” He was speaking in another context, but this applies to rape. The overwhelming prevalence of acquaintance over stranger rapes and of intoxication over overt force, and the relative rarity of weapon use and physical injuries, is easily explained. Rapists know what works. They like to rape, they want to keep doing it, they want not to be caught. It is in their interest to be very sensitive to which accounts of rape are believed and which are attacked and to know which targets and methods are lowest-risk for them.

What they do is what works. They rape their drunk acquaintances because it works. They rape their drunk acquaintances because we let them.

We need to revoke the rapists’ social license to operate. We need to stop asking, “why do we think he didn’t know she wasn’t consenting,” which is the first question now, really. First as a cultural matter — leaving the legal matter aside — we need to adopt the stance that sexual interaction ought to always be had in a state of affirmative consent by all participants; that anything else is aberrant. If someone says, “I was sexually assaulted,” the first question should be, “why was a person continuing with sexual activity when zir partner did not want to?”

This is what it is: real rape happens when the attacker is drunk and the target is drunker and alone and isolated. That’s rape-rape. If he gets away with it, it will be, on average, rape-rape-rape-rape-rape-rape. If we refuse to listen, he can continue to pretend that the rapist is some guy in the parking lot late at night, when it’s actually him, in our friends’ bedrooms half an hour after last call. If we let that happen, we’re part of the problem.

This harrowing long-read by Melissa Jeltsen and Dana Liebelson outlines the intersection of state violence and intimate partner abuse:

Another woman involved with Fox News has filed a lawsuit against the news outlet, detailing a harrowing account at the hands of a network employee, as well as retaliatory actions taken by network executives when she came forward -- including attempting to preempt a disclosure of coerced sex by leaking to a tabloid an alleged affair between the survivor and abuser. The New York Times reports:

The charges in this recent lawsuit echo accusations made by several other current and former Fox News employees after the sexual harassment scandal at the network burst into public view last year, exposing a culture where women said they had faced harassment and feared reporting inappropriate behavior. 

In an incredible op-ed, actress and director Amber Tamblyn recounts the cost of coming forward for women, writing:

When I was 21, I went into the office of a producer of the television show I was starring in to discuss a big problem. By this point I had been acting for more than a decade, and the show was very successful and beloved. Still, I was nervous about facing the firing squad of Emmys that sat behind him and saying what I had to say.

A crew member had kept showing up to my apartment after work unannounced, going into my trailer while I wasn’t in it, and staring daggers at me from across the set. I liked him at first. He was very sweet and kind in the beginning. We flirted a bit on set. But I was in a relationship. And liking someone certainly didn’t merit the kind of behavior he was exhibiting, which was making me feel unsafe.

My hands were freezing and I balled my wardrobe skirt up around my fists as I spoke. It was all caught in my throat — my embarrassment that it had gotten to this point. The producer listened. Then he said, “Well, there are two sides to every story.”

For women in America who come forward with stories of harassment, abuse and sexual assault, there are not two sides to every story, however noble that principle might seem. Women do not get to have a side. They get to have an interrogation. Too often, they are questioned mercilessly about whether their side is legitimate. Especially if that side happens to accuse a man of stature, then that woman has to consider the scrutiny and repercussions she’ll be subjected to by sharing her side.

Every day, women across the country consider the risks. That is our day job and our night shift. We have a diploma in risk consideration. Consider that skirt. Consider that dark alley. Consider questioning your boss. Consider what your daughter will think of you. Consider what your mother will think of what your daughter will think of you. Consider how it will be twisted and used against you in a court of law. Consider whether you did, perhaps, really ask for it. Consider your weight. Consider dieting. Consider agelessness. Consider silence.

But let me be clear: Abuse. Abuse, did not make you stronger. It showed you how strong, how full of life force you already were. Abuse did not show you the way with his fists, you showed yourself out with your own two fucking feet.

And let me be clearer: Abuse.. Abuse, did not build you. You are not his work of art. Abuse did not build you. You are not his work of art.

In response to the much publicized stunt of a man who vowed to play his piano until the woman who rejected him relented and took him back, Tauriq Moosa writes an impassioned critique of our society’s twisted ideas -- and portrayals -- of romance: 

Rejection is painful, but that pain doesn’t give anyone license to disregard another individual’s assertion of boundaries – which is what rejection is: a drawing of lines excluding us. People are allowed to draw up whatever boundaries they like in terms of who they wish to spend time with or date. As adults we should learn to accept this and move on. But men have long been taught to disregard boundaries, as any glance at statistics of street harassment demonstrates.

People learn behaviours as they grow up in many ways, and it’s not just parents but society and pop culture that teach us what’s acceptable. And these things teach us that such entitled behaviour is not only welcome, but a normal part of relationships. One of the highest rated sitcoms of all time, The Big Bang Theory, has a lead female character outline the basis of her romantic relationship with the male lead by saying: “He started to slowly wear me down.” Cue laughter. On another occasion: “He didn’t trick me, he just wore me down.” More laughs.

Instead of being welcomed willingly into her life, he had to “wear” down her boundaries until she felt forced to let him in. That’s not a love story, that’s a home invasion. Films like Love Actually, The Notebook, and many others tell us that men’s persistence in the face of rejection is admirable. It’s a “struggle” that a heterosexual man must go through to “get the girl.”

After the assault, Stephanie went home and looked up an article on consent that she recalled reading when she was younger. She posted it on Facebook with the note, "I think the world is due for a timely reminder about consent.”

This commonplace act of seeking and sharing the words of others to describe or communicate our own experiences would feature in her rapist’s acquittal. While reading her decision, Ontario Court Justice Leslie Chapin said "the fact that she did look up articles about consent when she was home, leads me to think that there was some genuine confusion on her part as to whether or not she was consenting."

As Manisha Krishnan reported for Vice, she’s not the only rape complainant who has seen her social media output combed by the defense. During the course of her investigation, Krishnan was told by a Vancouver privacy consultant that the best bet for survivors is to shut down their social media accounts completely once they report a crime and to not talk about anything publicly until the proceedings are over. 

The journey to heal from trauma is a long one. In this piece on the BGD Blog, social worker and trauma-sensitive yoga instructor, Carmen Leah Ascencio describes six crucial things to help survivors on their journey to reintegration after trauma. Among them, she notes:

Know that trauma is remembered in the body, one has to do more than talk it out to heal.

Part of what is most difficult in recovering from trauma is the way our brain records and stores memories about trauma. Survivors not only have to contend with the negative stories they have internalized about themselves because of something bad that someone else did to them, but they also have to deal with their brains and nervous systems not being able to understand when they are in danger and when they are not. 

People who have experienced violence or abuse don’t remember traumatic events; they re-experience them. Traumatic memories are stored in the part of the brain responsible for human emotions and the fight or flight response. When a traumatic memory surfaces, the parts of the brain linked to emotions and physical functioning are stimulated, causing survivors to feel like the traumatic event is happening in the present rather than like it is something in the past.

In this long-read about gaslighting, Nora Samaran shows us an instance of gaslighting in action. Using an innocuous example of a friend who is not able (for whatever reason) to express his feelings and who lies about the meaning of his reaction, Samaran skillfully shows us just how destructive gaslighting is not only in terms of our ability to calibrate our understanding of others, but also in terms of our ability to trust ourselves -- even when the misdirection is not a big deal. She writes:

I phone a close male friend I’ve known for many years. I’m upset, and I’d like to vent, maybe hear some supportive loving words and maybe ask advice. This friend sometimes feels physiologically overwhelmed by emoting, and sometimes finds it brings him closer to people and welcomes it. In this moment, he snaps “I can’t talk right now, here,” and tosses the phone to his female partner, who enjoys these kinds of conversations.

I feel mildly hurt by the abruptness and since we’re all very close, I mention it to the partner, who relays that to him. He says from across the room “No no, I’m not upset at all with you, I just am washing dishes and getting dinner ready, that’s all.” She relays this to me: “his tone of voice had completely nothing to do with anything you said, it’s just him feeling stressed about dinner.” 

We all agree that’s all it was and I repeat those words. I believe it completely. I think I must have misread him, and say, “Oh, sorry! It’s totally okay!” and apologize for asking to talk when he’s got things on the stove. I decide my perception -- that he has just snapped at me while I am upset and tossed the phone away without any kind words, as if I’ve done something to make him angry -- must have been just me completely misreading him. I abandon my perceptions and calibrate my understanding of his needs with this new information; he’s okay with listening to emotions, just not at this time of the day.

When I say “sorry,” however, I feel a little funny -- some part of me is not sure if I’m apologizing for my timing, or for having emotions. I think I am wrong to feel shaken at being snapped at. I doubt my perception. His words directly contradict what my limbic brain is telling me is happening. 

We don’t talk about it and I add to my repertoire of knowledge that that is just what my friend looks like when he’s multitasking, and that it wasn’t a response to me being upset at all. Because that is what he said.

A few months later we are talking and he’s been doing some emotional work on some of his own feelings, increasing his capacity to handle emotion. He says “hey, you know that time you called needing an ear and I snapped at you and threw the phone away without checking with you, then said I wasn’t upset with you and was just busy doing dishes and making dinner? I actually was having a really big physiological response to your emotions and couldn’t deal." This isn’t shared as a big revelation; he’s known for a while it was the case and just is sharing because he’s excited about what he’s learning. Nobody is upset at anybody in this moment -- it’s just an interesting conversation about feelings.

I stop. I realize that my perceptions had been accurate the first time. I try to take in that I had erased my perceptions of that small moment. And not only that: in order to be a good and loving friend, I had internalized a new pattern of information about the meaning of my friend’s behavior, which means I had continued denying my perceptions for weeks, any time I thought back on that moment.

And that maybe I didn’t need to; maybe my perceptions were fine. He had snapped at me, and tossed the phone off like a hot potato, and seemed really emotionally overwhelmed, but I had taken in “just doing dishes not upset with you” and recalibrated my reading of him with that info, because I trust him and I wanted to take in his words about himself. 

And yet in a very ordinary, everyday way, his words about himself were not actually true. More to the point, they did not match my body’s knowledge about what had just happened: his emotional overwhelm. His overwhelm was not, in itself, a big deal; people can have different bandwidths for emotions at different times. If he’d said “I’m feeling overwhelmed by emoting right now,” we’d both have been in the same reality and my response would still have been “oh, okay, all good, I’ll talk to her instead.”

I realize that while I can, in the moment, respect his needs either way, it would have been much less harmful to me to trust my own perceptions over his words, which were emotionally dishonest.cI could have heard his words “not upset with you at all, just have my hands full with dishes and dinner," and thought “okay, he seems to just be feeling emotionally overwhelmed, and I guess he doesn’t feel able to say so, so he’s saying something else. That’s okay.”