Domestic Abuse is not "fighting" or "arguing". Minimizing it or justifying it doesn't help anyone except the abuser. Let's call it what it is.
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I was sitting in the doctor’s office with my husband of nearly 20 years, and he was asking to be put on anti-depressants again. He had been on anti-depressants for years, but had unaccountably stopped taking them after he retired. His depression had always manifested as anger. At this point, I wasn’t sure that his behavior changes were completely related to depression, but as they had coincided with being off the anti-depressants, I thought it was worth considering. I’m not entirely sure why he agreed to go to the doctor’s office -- it certainly didn’t appear to be because he cared what I thought or how his behavior was hurting me. But he went. And when I heard him telling the doctor why he wanted to be on anti-depressants again, my heart sank. “My wife and I are fighting all of the time,” he said. “She wants me to take the stuff.”
The doctor looked over at me, probably noting the complete disbelief on my face. And wrote the prescription.
On November 28, 2018, American Airlines Flight 3284 from Chicago to Toronto turned around after 15 minutes in the air, and returned to Chicago. The official statement was that “a fight broke out between a couple on board.” Police told NBC in Chicago that the flight turned around due to a “small verbal argument” between the couple, and that no one was injured. But one passenger tweet that a flight attendant said the husband punched his wife in the face. No charges were filed.
I think that the Chicago Police, American Airlines and the journalists who wrote the original pieces spelled ‘domestic violence’ wrong. It is not, contrary to what seems to be popular belief, spelled ‘a-r-g-u-m-e-n-t’.
In this day and age, when we are supposed to be coming more aware of the effects of the patriarchy on women, and more concerned with violence against women, it is absolutely appalling that any journalist would write an article ostensibly about “a small verbal argument” when said argument included a punch in the face. To me, and perhaps because of my own dirty lens, it seems like American Airlines, The Chicago Police, and the various journalists who reported the story were minimizing domestic violence. I care about that because I have been the victim of domestic violence, and when someone minimizes the behavior, they are minimizing my experience and, perhaps, minimizing ME.
When my husband retired and stopped taking his Prozac, he became an anger addict. It seemed that he could not go more than three days without having a tantrum. With months, it was three or more tantrums a day. He cursed at me and called me names -- “fat ***” was a favorite. He criticized me constantly. Nothing I did seemed to please him. I cooked his favorite beef stew, and he screamed at me, “there are carrots in here! You know I hate cooked carrots! That’s like a slap in my face!” The next time, I made it without carrots and he screamed, “This isn’t stew! This is just beef with potatoes. You couldn’t even go to the effort of making a REAL stew!” There was no way to please him -- the bar was always moving.
When he wasn’t raging at me, he was manipulating me. “If you really cared about me, you’d make the stew the way I like it.” I felt guilty, as though I hadn’t been trying hard enough to please him, even though I turned myself inside out to try to please him. One day, I sat next to him in the car, knuckles white and hanging on to the seat for dear life while he wove in and out of traffic that was nearly bumper-t0-bumper at speeds in excess of 90 miles per hour in a deluge. He was raging at me the entire time because I had stopped to go to the bathroom too often. He believed that one should only get off the freeway when one was out of gas. I differed. I prayed, and I bargained with God that if I lived through this, I would never let him get behind the wheel again. And then I started getting my ducks in a row to leave him.
Verbal abuse isn’t “arguing” or “fighting.” Neither is control or manipulation.
The incident that prompted the visit to the doctor’s office wasn’t “fighting,” either. He didn’t like the way I was driving, and he yanked the wheel to the right, putting us in the ditch. And then he dragged me out from behind the wheel and threw me to the ground. He put his hands on me; he could have killed both of us.
Domestic violence is so much more than “fighting with my wife all the time.” It’s an attempt by an abuser to grasp power in the relationship by blaming, controlling, shaming or assaulting the partner. Let’s call it what it is. Pretending it is something else only helps to keep the abused partner from taking her power back. Minimizing a punch in the face discourages the victim from seeking help or finding a way out. That’s not “an argument;” a punch in the face is violence. Justifying verbal abuse by saying “He’s just stressed out from work,” or “He doesn’t mean the cruel things he says” tells the victim that she doesn’t count. He’s already telling her she doesn’t count every day and in every way. Let us not perpetuate the damage.
Maybe the only way we can help the victim of verbal abuse or domestic violence is to call it what it is. So let’s do that.
