On a recent subway ride, I overheard a conversation between two friends, both men. One was married and casually updating his commute companion on his recent travel. The married friend shared how he had given his wife a hard time about applying for TSA Pre-check for their family, but now, as a converted member, he lauds the benefits of the elite airport convenience. “My wife kept encouraging me to get pre-check, but I was just against it. I gave her a hard time for a while,” he said with ease.
It was an innocuous comment — one of those off-the-cuff, seemingly harmless statements one might throw in conversation as an aside to a more in-depth point. But his recount of the story and the ease with which he shared it sent a chill down my spine. I thought about his wife’s experience of repeatedly encountering resistance to something so mundane and yet beneficial for him. I thought about the mental labor she exerted to bring her husband along. I wondered how often she had to negotiate his obstinance. I recalled my own experiences of unnecessary resistance in my domestic partnerships; the constant grazing against an impenetrable wall to get things done; the exhaustion of having every recommendation and request picked apart without cause; and I was yet again reminded that at every turn, women are not taken seriously or listened to — even in our own homes and even when we’re working in the best interest of our families and communities.
This socialized resistance to women speaking is one of the reasons intimate partner violence and abuse against women is prevalent in our society. Before we proceed, I want to offer a moment of respite, acknowledge a truth, and align on terminology.
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The offer of respite is this: the remainder of this essay will explore individual and systemic violence against women. If these topics are hard for you to encounter, please care for your well-being and stop reading at this point. I’m grateful for your readership. What matters most to me is that your heart, mind, and spirit are in the right place to explore this conversation.
The truth is this: women can be perpetrators of gendered violence, but when we talk about different forms of intimate partner and gendered violence (physical, sexual, psychological, financial, etc.), men are overwhelmingly more likely to initiate varying forms of violence against girls and women. If you are not yet ready to accept this truth, I invite you to explore why that might be the case. If resistance to this truth is your default reaction, I recommend re-starting and reading the essay slowly.
The alignment of terminology is this: when I refer to intimate partner violence, I am talking about the intentional act of eliciting harm against someone in a relationship. In the context of this essay, I am exploring the effects of intimate partner violence against women* and society’s inability to confront gendered violence against women, especially Black women, as a hindrance to our liberation as a people.
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In my previous marriage, I didn’t have the language for the abuse I encountered. The belittling, name-calling, passive-aggressive sabotaging of my efforts, manipulation, betrayal, gaslighting, public humiliation, and coercive control were not discernible to me. It wasn’t until, through separation, I completely cut off contact (at the wise advice of a pastor) and moved towards healing that I learned the myriad ways abuse could show up. I even learned that my proclivity to violence was a form of reactive abuse.
More than a decade later, I still find myself picking at the scabs of the pain from my past. The bruises were internal, but they were no less painful. Dealing with the psychological trauma was compounded by the conversations at the periphery of my divorce. Some suggested that my ex-husband’s behaviors and ultimate betrayal were a result of me being “too bossy” or that I didn’t let him “be a man.” Perhaps he wouldn’t have held such ire for me if I were more palatable or submissive. Through ending my first marriage, I learned a difficult lesson that many survivors of abuse experience if they are fortunate enough to come out on the other side: society colludes to excuse the brokenness of men and, in turn, the violence of men.
When you go through the grueling process of healing, your perceptiveness of how much abuse shows up in our culture is heightened. Moreover, you see how widely abuse against women is accepted and, in many cases, made permissible.
I don’t believe that men are innately violent.
What I know is that boys and men are socialized to dominate, and through their quest for domination, they are expected to harm whoever and whatever gets in their path to achieving this goal. We use terms like patriarchy so often that we fail to properly contextualize what they mean and why the framework of a patriarchal society is harmful to women, children, and men. In a patriarchal society, girls and women are at the bequest of men’s violence. We are not beings but objects that men collect on their path to domination. And when a man finds himself unsatisfied on his journey towards domination, the women in his path become the whipping posts that men exert their frustrations. Oh —hell hath no fury like an unhappy and unsatisfied man. He will break the spirit, joy, esteem, and even the bones of the women in his life — especially if he has a partner.
In the condo I shared with my ex-husband, the walls were bare. The space was modest, but it was the first home I purchased, and I wanted to make it our own. I recall wanting to add more life and texture to our home, so I suggested painting the walls by first starting with one wall, the largest wall in our living room, to introduce color. My ex-husband’s berating response to what I assumed was an innocent recommendation was so vitriolic and unkind that I spent the remainder of our short-lived marriage afraid to ask for anything else. At the time, he was wrestling with his own pain, and everything that could bring me joy or give me hope outside of the context of our relationship was scorched in the fire of his internalized contempt. Invitations to spend time with my friends were rejected, and my youthful ambitions were met with eye rolls and quips that I was always trying to do something. If his world was small, mine was to be smaller. Even today — while in a loving, healthy, nurturing, and safe marriage — I’m reluctant to disclose what brings me joy. I’m scared the areas of my life that light me up will be taken by a man to be torn down from the peak of my heart and kicked to the ground in spite.
So it is with men who are lured by the false trappings of the patriarchy. The narrowness of masculinity imprisons boys, young men, and men from living whole and enriching lives in which they can be whatever it is that is edifying and good for them. In the hollowness of this prison, they find rage. This societal grooming starts early.
When a young boy feels rejected by a young girl, he will react with physical and verbal violence. Rather than correcting his socialized entitlement, society tells him he deserves more. On the other side of this violence is a young girl who learns that her autonomy is an issue when a boy doesn’t get what he wants.
When women speak out against abuse and violence, we are not believed. In many cases, we are blamed for the violence even when video evidence supports our claims. Victims of sexual violence are asked what they did to provoke the lust of a man, even if the victims are young women and girls. This is truer if the girls are Black. Women who are physically and verbally abused by their partners are blamed for picking such a partner or not leaving, even though data proves that perpetrators of abuse are very good at hiding their patterns, and a woman is most likely to be killed when trying to escape domestic violence.
The other day, I learned a new framework, the violence of rhetoric, which, in short, describes how societal and cultural rhetoric is used to uphold systems of power, particularly in instances of gendered violence against women. Silencing or diminishing women’s stories of abuse is a form of violent rhetoric. Those who study racial politics often describe racism as an ocean we’re all swimming in. Racism is everywhere. Taking this concept of racism being everywhere, replacing violence against women as the ocean, and the framework of the violence of rhetoric, we see how pervasive the colluding has become.
I believe the people in my life at the time meant well when rationalizing my ex-husband’s behavior. They couldn’t have seen how they were subconsciously working in partnership with an inherently abusive system that sees women’s cries as innately dramatic and fool-hardy. I don’t think they understood the harm they were causing by centering my ex-husband’s needs while overlooking my pain and victimhood. It took time to shed the shame and guilt, but I’ve arrived at acceptance. That time in my life will forever be a part of me. I’m thankful I didn’t succumb to the pain. There were moments I almost did.
I believe that when men reject women’s voices and stories, these men are fighting to uphold their perceived power and that in acknowledging women’s experiences, they are forced to confront their complicity in an abusive culture and are perhaps forced to confront their stories of being abused by the men in their lives. I believe that when women silence other women, they are captives of internalized misogyny and are clinging to a false form of safety. In abandoning fictive sisterhood, they run to the patriarchy, looking for refuge, only to find themselves dispensable.
It’s reductive to say believe women. We must first value girls and women in the same way boys and men are valued. We must see the existence of girls and women as inherently good and necessary. We must reject the idea that girls and women are here solely for the benefit of men and to be men’s utility. If we start with women’s inherent value, perhaps what we say as women will matter even when (especially when) we say no. Perhaps our words won’t immediately be resisted and rejected. Until then, women will keep choosing the bear.
***I use the terms “woman” and “women” throughout this essay. In doing so, I am also speaking to the experiences of femmes and trans-women.
S.
Powerful essay! Thank you for your vulnerability Shakirah and your willingness to share. acknowledging the healing journey it requires to contextualize your own experience of gender-based violence in a moving and meaningful piece like this one.
Thank you