A Further Response to the Red Headed Girl

After the discussion started by both Red Head Girl part 1 and 2, as well as the response, my friend sent me another response to clarify and extrapolate on the points he had made, and clear up any misconceptions people may have had. Agree or disagree it's well worth reading and I strongly suggest you do so.

'Ok, so I was a bit flippant with my response to the red headed girl. Let me elaborate.

First of all, there exists an entire battery of legal safeguards for domestic abuse victims. 10 years ago, 20 years ago, I admit, domestic abuse was just as likely to be laughed off and dismissed with "oh she was asking for it" as it was to be dealt with. This is categorically and emphatically wrong. It's a simplistic and misogynistic response to an inherently complicated situation and behavior pattern. Nobody "asks" for it, any more than someone is "asking" to be raped because of they way they're dressed or "asking" to be burgled because they leave a door unlocked. And like I said, years ago, domestic abuse was just as likely to be laughed off and dismissed with "Don't be so clumsy next time" as it was to be dealt with.

But this is now. Society has made leaps and bounds in terms of progress. Penalties have increased in harshness. Resources are available publicly and privately; they're no longer marginalized or confined to back alleys and shelters run out of someone's personal home. Police departments are taking proactive measurements to attempt to stop the problem before it escalates from a punch to a kick to a hospital visit to a death. For instance, the state in which I currently reside mandates that when a police officer shows up to a domestic dispute call, he/she is required to arrest someone for it. Even if you and your partner are having a loud play argument about which shirt looks better on someone, if someone calls the police and says "This couple is arguing", the police officer is required, by law, to arrest someone. And so in situations like the one I described, he would have been required to arrest someone. It is no longer incumbent upon the officer's discretion as to whether or not he/she arrest someone. They HAVE TO arrest someone in any and all cases of a response to a domestic abuse situation they arrive at.

There are restraining orders. I can hear you saying now, "Of course he's not going to follow the restraining order! What's the point!" You're right. The abuser isn't going to follow it. Everyone knows that. But the point of the restraining order is so that when the abuser inevitably returns, usually with malicious intent, they can be arrested on the spot, without having to prove anything or show evidence. Proof was already shown to get the restraining order. In certain cases, the court can even issue a domestic restraining order against a person without the victim's agreement or desire, this case, making it so that the if the next time the police respond, the jail term is longer and the penalty harsher.

So, to reduce the victim's options to two negative choices, in my opinion, is oversimplification. There are numerous laws on the books in every state to protect victims, and domestic abuse is taken extremely seriously by law enforcement.

No one's saying it's easy to walk away. There are finances, there may be children, a whole life nobody can be expected to just simply uproot, even if their life itself is at stake. I don't have any easy responses to any of this. It is my fault my response to the red headed girl came off as flippant.

Furthermore, I acknowledge my abject lack of knowledge in this subject. I am, in affect, trying to talk street without ever having gone to the school of hard knocks. My opinions, and responses and feeling on this subject are predicated on the very few domestic abuse situations I've witnessed, either as a civilian ride along with a police officer, or as the friend of acquaintance of a victim.

My point was that, in my experience, while it's a simplification to say "He/she lets is happen to themselves", there is also personal accountability. Stephen's right; sometimes, the victim loves their abuser. But Lexi's right as well. Where does personal accountability enter the equation? I once saw the police place a boyfriend under arrest for domestic abuse. As two officers are walking him out of the door, the girlfriend, with two swollen cheeks, a black eye, and a missing tooth, starts screaming at the officers, hurling racial and professional epithets at them. She doesn't want to see her boyfriend incarcerated, even though she knows that this pattern of abuse is only going to escalate and get worse and worse and more and more life-threatening. She is screaming at the top of her lungs and sobbing, begging him not to be taken away, even though there's no way around the simple fact that he just physically assaulted her in a quite serious manner. Obviously, no one can go up to this woman and say "You need to walk away. It's going to get worse and worse and he's going to do permanent damage to you". That's too simple. The expectation that she would listen to this is ridiculous. Of course she's not going to. She loves her boyfriend, even if he beats the living shit out of her at his convenience.

That's my point. Nobody can render a victim any assistance of any kind until they decide that they won't be victims anymore. And to say that this woman, or any victim, only has two choices available to them, both ending in varying degrees of more abuse is, I feel, a simplification. The laws exist to get people out of this cycle, to help people, to punish their abusers and to keep them safe. If they can't utilize the laws, the police, the courts to help them, and they can't walk away, what would you have them do? It is not incumbent upon society to swoop into every troubled household and extract the victims.

We are past the days of small bail, small fines, 30 days in jail, and five police responses to the same residence in the same night. There is tremendous pressure upon police officers and courts to prosecute domestic abuses and prosecute them harshly. Is it a perfect legal system? Nobody's stupid enough to declare that. But once again, if they aren't going to utilize the legal system for help, what's the alternative? Some people are going to slip through. That's inevitable. But no professional legal authority who takes their job seriously is going to laugh it off. They're not going to dismiss it and say "Don't fall down the stairs next time". Domestic abuse is one of the new hot buttons in law enforcement, along with the explosion of growth in street gangs or digital crimes, for instance. One of the reasons for this is because of the realization that for a long time it was dealt with so flippantly and victims were marginalized.

When I mentioned a "victim culture", I didn't elaborate, and that is my own fault. When I say "victim culture" I mean people who put bandages on their wrists when they don't self-mutilate, people who are vocal about being medicated, people who brag about being previously abused (I have witnessed this. First-hand), people who use the fact that they see a therapist as something of perceived social value. Therapy can obviously help; I don't disagree. But like Lexi said, just talking isn't going to anything. A person has to be willing to make the mental and emotional steps to progress past their previous hardships. To me, it seems, at least among our generation, (Generation Y or the millennials, I think we're called), having "problems" has become cool. In my opinion, there is now a real social value inherent in taking mood medication, seeing a therapist, or having some sort of other stage-whisper concealed mental or emotional problem. And this is hardly applicable across the board and I don't mean to marginalize the people who have legitimate problems and wish they didn't and don't want their friends or the public at large to know about them.

But you really haven't seen the tremendous growth in social value of being "depressed"? And people are conditioned to publicize their problems because society rallies around them and they'll feel loved and cared for. You haven't seen the growth of people who like to publicize the fact that they drink heavily, or take non-prescription adderall (I don't know how to spell that) or oxycontin or otherwise engage in obvious risky and self-destructive behavior simply for the attention and perceived popularity it'll bring them? Sometimes, these are cries for help, and that hasn't changed over the last 10, or 20, or 30 years. But as I've seen it, and once again, this is predicated on my own experiences, the people who do this neither want nor need help. They just want people to know they're "disturbed" or "have problems" because they feel it will being them increased social worth or popularity or attention simply for attention's sake. And my point is, society responds to this. Every time.

Of course, there's an element of chicken-and-egg in this. Is it that as psychology has gotten more advanced, problems identified easier, that more people are seeking solutions and help? Or has a better understanding of psychology simply yielded more people who want to have problems, and so manifest them to get attention? I don't know. But that's the way I see it.'

For information on how you can support Domestic Violence Prevention groups, please see Steve's post here.