Revisiting the age-old question. (This post examines domestic and sexual violence, including the psychology of abusers and a review of what we can learn from interviews with perpetrators).
This hit me hard: “Women often do the hard work of tolerating, managing, and accommodating the violence of men and boys as well as other women and girls as if it’s the price you must pay for family. All victims do.”
Thanks! Yeah, the word accommodation comes up for me a lot…you just end up spending so much energy on the other person’s abuse and trying to contain it.
This hit me, too, Brianne. About 10 years ago, I went through training to become a certified crisis counselor, and it annoyed me that a chunk of the training was devoted to understanding things like how boys are socialized to be aggressive and to mistreat women and how anger is the only emotion boys and men are allowed to express. I get it intellectually, and yes, those things need to change. But it still bothered me to feel like it was kind of on us women to understand.
This struck me the most, Lauren: "If domestic and sexual violence were simply caused by cycles of abuse, there would be a hell of a lot more girls and women causing harm."
This hit me hard: “Women often do the hard work of tolerating, managing, and accommodating the violence of men and boys as well as other women and girls as if it’s the price you must pay for family. All victims do.”
Thanks! Yeah, the word accommodation comes up for me a lot…you just end up spending so much energy on the other person’s abuse and trying to contain it.
This hit me, too, Brianne. About 10 years ago, I went through training to become a certified crisis counselor, and it annoyed me that a chunk of the training was devoted to understanding things like how boys are socialized to be aggressive and to mistreat women and how anger is the only emotion boys and men are allowed to express. I get it intellectually, and yes, those things need to change. But it still bothered me to feel like it was kind of on us women to understand.
This struck me the most, Lauren: "If domestic and sexual violence were simply caused by cycles of abuse, there would be a hell of a lot more girls and women causing harm."