Thanksgiving is the time for family. Regardless of how we feel about holidays we are inundated with the holiday spirit. It’s almost as if you don’t spend time with your family you are in the wrong. Yet if you are survivor of abuse from family members or family friends, you have a difficult choice to make.
Your abuser may be a father, mother, brother, or sister and they may be at the family gathering. Do you want to put yourself in that situation? Will you even be able to enjoy it? Even if your abuser isn’t present. The presence of judgmental or defensive family members could make it a tense situation. If your abuser is someone close to them, they may take the opportunity to defend your abuser. They may attack your character. They may reiterate how they don’t believe you. They may blame you.
What is supposed to be a time for celebration with those we love the most can often be a tense ordeal filled with seething anger and resentment. This is why survivors isolate during the holidays. We aren’t getting together with family, even the one’s we want to see. Thanksgiving and other holidays seem false to us. Their promises feel hollow. You turn on the television and you are hit with commercial after commercial reminding you of everything that the holidays aren’t in your life. Even walking down the street and seeing all the houses with their holiday lights can be overwhelming.
The holiday season pushes many of us to deal with issues we aren’t ready for.
Getting together with family is compelling and when we choose not to we are judged and questioned. We feel outcast. But there’s something you should know. There are millions of survivors out there just like you, feeling the same mixed emotions. We just don’t talk about it.
I am a survivor of abuse and an advocate for others. I have the same choices to make during this time of year and they never are easy. I try to focus on who I really want to see. I focus on who can support me emotionally. The people that know my truth and accept it.
You do have a choice. If it means sharing a turkey dinner with that one true friend who stood by you in tough times then you are truly lucky. If you brave that get together knowing your abuser is there, no one should judge you and the choices you make. If you end up alone on Thursday evening, don’t be so hard on yourself.
Surviving the holidays is about getting through to the other side. Try your best. You and your well-being matter most over any holiday.
If you know a friend or family member who has a difficult time and isolates, give them a call. Your call may be the one that matters most.
We wish you a healthy and supportive Thanksgiving!
Recently I blogged about the ‘safety report’ released by the University of Washington and it’s certainly inaccurate assessment of incidents of rape and domestic violence in the UW community. Inaccurate was putting it lightly. Not in the stratosphere of reality would be a better assessment of what really amounts to a public relations document.
My entire point is that students and parents just want to know what’s going on in the community that they live in. Simple. You and I know that colleges have a phobia towards anything that can adversely effect their vaunted reputations. So we will never get an accurate assessment as long as administrators are involved in illegal crimes on campus.
Then the Amherst story blows up. One brave student tells her story in the school paper. You may still ask why victims don’t report? Why reported cases don’t get included in college safety reports? This is a classic example. It is so classic it inspired victims from other campuses to come forward because her story was just like theirs.
The prescription for rape on campuses is suck it up. If you can’t then maybe you need to go elsewhere. That is the approach of campus culture. College administrators can’t have too many victims coming forward because then the truth comes out. This truth is a system that discourages and silences it’s victims. A culture that has institutionalized revictimization.
We don’t believe you. If you want to continue down this road then it’s up to you to prove that you were violated here. That’s the essence of revictimization.
This takes me back to the UW safety report and the number of reported cases on campus for the 2011 school year.
7.
Whose reality does that number represent? It certainly doesn’t represent the students on campus. In the end, it only protects the rapists, who will strike again. We know what the administrators will do. What will you do?
Some recent discussions have brought to light about what it means to be a survivor. How should survivors behave? What is the role of the advocate in helping survivors heal? What things should we take into account when speaking to other survivors? Leave comments and questions when you have them.
We’ve had great interest in the My Name Is Project and are waiting with much anticipation for you to submit your survivor video stories in support of this project.
Recently I had the priviledge of participating in the Oprah two-part event on male survivors of child abuse. The first show aired last Friday and began with an emotional opening where the entire audience of 200 male survivors held up pictures of themselves at the age when they were first abused.
It was a powerful moment, standing amongst all those men, holding up a picture of who I was before my life changed so traumatically.
(Wo)Men Speak Out has an idea based on that powerful moment on Oprah. We are working on a new video montage which will hopefully include pictures of all of you. We all have our individual stories. But we have a collective story of abuse that is worth telling to everyone who has felt trauma in their lives, and to those who haven’t.
So this is a call out to ALL SURVIVORS. If you are interested in participating in this montage, send us a high resolution picture of you holding a picture of yourself at the age of your abuse under your chin. Also, include the age of abuse and you can optionally include your name as well. We will collect all of the submissions and create a video montage telling a shared story of abuse.
We need as many submissions as we can because we want this to show the magnitude of abuse and at the same time the human face of survivorship.
Also, keep your personal video submissions coming in. We need to create our video community of survivor stories to inspire all of our brothers and sisters who are right now suffering in silence. The only way we can do it is with your stories.
Thank you for participating in this project. Break the silence. To live.
It’s been a few years since I first posted the video My Name is Chris on Youtube. I wanted to create a snapshot of my life. I have been silent about my abuse for over 2 decades and this video is my admission that it has affected almost everything about me. I wanted that happy childhood dream. But I finally knew that there was nothing I could do to take my childhood back, to wipe away the abuse. I couldn’t even pretend anymore that the abuse didn’t exist.
So I made My Name is Chris, and I cry just a little every time I watch it. Recently I had the privilege of taking part in a two-part Oprah special on male survivors of child abuse. Oprah wanted an audience of 200 male survivors to show a face to the millions of men who are abused and never talk about it.
Shortly after the filming I received an email from Jarrod Marcum Noftsger. He was among the 200 men. He wanted to let me know that My Name is Chris helped his recovery. In fact, he made is own version of the video, called My Name is Jarrod, as a way of coming to terms with his own horrific abuse.
There are millions of survivors out there who want to tell their stories. Yet, we feel isolated and unable to express the deepest pain in our lives. The My Name Is Project is there to provide a survivor a way to express it.
So our project is simple:
1. Create your own My Name is… video. There are many programs to make nice montages. I made My Name is Chris with One True Media. If you have any production questions feel free to email me at christopher@womenspeakoutnow.com. I’m no video wizard but i’ll do my best to help. I want your video to be as representative of your voice as much as possible.
2. Post your video on Youtube as a “response” to My Name is Chris. Our video can be found here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MYBkMzQrknk. This way, we stay connected and others can see all of the videos in the project stream.
Click here for a quick tutorial for those who aren’t sure how to add a video in response to ours.
3. Feel free to incorporate what elements you want from My Name is Chris, but your video should have the taste of your personal experience to it. We want to learn about your personal adversity and growth. It can be happy, it can be sad. As long as it is real we want it to be a part of this project.
4. Email Chris along the way with your thoughts, experiences, and questions and to let us know that you have contributed to the “My Name is…” project.
Our goal is to create a community of “My Name is…” videos which tell the collective stories of abuse and trauma in our communities. The short term goal is 50 before the end of 2010. 50 videos. Men and Women. Together. Starting with My Name is Chris and My Name is Jarrod. We need 48 more before January of 2011. We can only do it with your voice.
Sharing your story is the greatest gift you can give to another survivor. When I made My Name is Chris I was only trying to heal from my pain. Imagine the impact our collective montage of stories will have on survivors who need to hear that they are not alone and that their pain matters.
Just gonna stand there and watch me burn
Well that’s all right because I like the way it hurts
Just gonna stand there and hear me cry
Well that’s all right because I love the way you lie
I love the way you lie
Videos have always been a very powerful medium for me. I have read hundreds of books on trauma. I’ve attended countless conferences and worked in the field of abuse for almost 10 years. But nothing says “this is your life” like seeing an abusive relationship played out on camera. Eminem and Rihanna collaborated in a music video called “Love the Way You Lie.” It is an amazingly accurate portrayal of the cycle of violence that exists in abusive relationships. It mirrored so closely to my own past experiences that I needed to walk away from it the first time I watched it.
A paradox is a situation which defies intuition and presents a seeming contradiction. To me, love and domestic violence is one such paradox. I can count the intimate relationships I have been in that have been abusive. Relationships where I fell in love with partners who continually abused me. Growing up in a family that was emotionally, physically and sexually abusive, it’s not surprising that I would find myself living what I learned to be “normal”. Somehow though, contrary to my actions, I always knew that “normal” shouldn’t include suffering.
I fell fast for a man who, from the first day I met him, treated me like I was disposable. He had an extremely violent past with jail time to prove it. Everyone viewed him in his circle as unpredictable and dangerous. One day he was the most loving, funny, charismatic and romantic man I’d ever dated. Like the flick of a switch he could be a womanizing, drug using, alcoholic, male chauvinist.
I can’t tell you what it really is, I can only tell you what it feels like
And right now it’s a steel knife in my windpipe
I can’t breathe but I still fight while I can fight
As long as the wrong feels right it’s like I’m in flight
High off her love, drunk from my hate, it’s like I’m huffin’ paint
And I love it the more I suffer, I suffocate
And right before I’m about to drown, she resuscitates me, she f**kin’ hates me
And I love it, “wait, where you goin’?”
“I’m leavin’ you,” “no you ain’t come back”
We’re runnin’ right back, here we go again
So insane, cause when it’s goin’ good it’s goin’ great
I’m superman with the wind in his back, she’s Lois Lane
But when it’s bad it’s awful, I feel so ashamed I snap
Whose that dude? I don’t even know his name
I laid hands on her
I never stoop so low again
I guess I don’t know my own strength
I was attracted to the “bad boy.” The guy who would both protect me but inadvertently would become more and more obsessive over me. The label of “abusive” and “obsessive” did not exist in my reality however, not until later. This is because on some level I believed all the things he said to me about who I was and how I affected the relationship negatively. Each violent outburst was a direct consequence of something that I had done to invoke it. That’s the cycle of domestic violence. Ever escalating. Manipulative. Demoralizing.
You ever love somebody so much you can barely breathe
When you’re with ’em
You meet and neither one of you even knows what hit ’em
Got that warm fuzzy feeling
Yeah, them those chills you used to get ’em
Now you’re getting fucking sick of looking at ’em
You swore you’d never hit ’em; never do nothing to hurt ’em
Now you’re in each other’s face spewing venom in your words when you spit them
You push pull each other’s hair, scratch claw hit ’em
Throw ’em down pin ’em
So lost in the moments when you’re in them
It’s the rage that took over it controls you both
So they say you’re best to go your separate ways
Guess if they don’t know you ’cause today that was yesterday
Yesterday is over, it’s a different day
Sound like broken records playing over but you promised her
Next time you show restraint
You don’t get another chance
Life is no Nintendo game
But you lied again
Now you get to watch her leave out the window
I guess that’s why they call it window pane
There was a moment in the relationship that, to me, was the beginning of the end. We had gone out for a night of drinking and dancing with friends. At the end of the evening, I playfully threw a pretzel at him as he walked away from me. Before I knew what was happening, he turned and lunged at my face with his fist. I knew in that moment that if he would be that violent in front of others, there was no line he wouldn’t cross behind closed doors. The violence had in that moment become unmanageable and I knew I had to get out.
There are people who would ask why I didn’t leave at the first sign of violence. Why it took him becoming violent in public for me to decide I had enough. Pointing out that violence whether in private or public is unacceptable. It’s true. It seems so black and white, but it’s not. For me, abusive behavior was intertwined with love. The first man in my life, my father, was a violent man. His behaviors laid for me an understanding that love and violence were normal. My mother herself was abused. I saw this day after day in my home. That all was forgiven and forgotten until the next time that it was forgiven and forgotten.
Now I know we said things, did things that we didn’t mean
And we fall back into the same patterns, same routine
But your temper’s just as bad as mine is
You’re the same as me
But when it comes to love you’re just as blinded
Baby, please come back
It wasn’t you, baby it was me
Maybe our relationship isn’t as crazy as it seems
Maybe that’s what happens when a tornado meets a volcano
All I know is I love you too much to walk away though
Come inside, pick up your bags off the sidewalk
Don’t you hear sincerity in my voice when I talk
I told you this is my fault
Look me in the eyeball
Next time I’m pissed, I’ll aim my fist at the drywall
Next time. There won’t be no next time I apologize even though I know its lies
I had been in relationships that were non-violent but could never function properly in them. I didn’t love myself, didn’t believe I deserved to be loved and couldn’t receive that which I know now to be real love. I did everything I could to get out of those relationships, to hurt before getting hurt myself. Though I didn’t know it at the time, it’s these relationships that reminded me that there was something better out there.
Abuse doesn’t just start the first day you meet someone. It is a gradual, ever changing pattern of events that are rationalized and forgiven until the next time and the next and the next. Until one day, you find yourself so entrenched in the pattern, so emotionally dejected, that by the time you realize you are in a domestic violence situation, you feel powerless to leave. Hopeless.
I wish I could tell you that after that experience, I never again found myself in another abusive relationship. Years later, I would find myself in another pattern of emotional abuse. I recognized it, I excused it. It repeated itself. This time though I reached out to friends and when I did, I was able to get the help I needed to start a path to healing myself and open up to healthier relationships.
It saddens me to think that I wasn’t strong enough to see through the piles of teddy bears and chocolate the second time around. That I didn’t love myself enough to demand respect. That I rationalized again and again for behaviors that were completely unacceptable. Despite these feelings, I know now that I was not responsible for their behaviors and that none of what happened was my fault. Because I reached out for help I didn’t stay as long the last time, recognizing more readily what was happening to me. I left and made a promise to myself that I would never again be in a relationship with anyone who would treat me that way.
If you are in an abusive relationship it is important to know that you are not alone and that the abuse is not your fault. There is a better life waiting for you. One free of suffering.
No one deserves to be abused. Get the help you need and deserve. You are not alone.
National Domestic Violence Hotline 1−800−799−SAFE(7233) or TTY 1−800−787−3224
I appreciate and understand the value of shocking an audience. Our society thrives on keeping us ignorant, passive, and docile. It doesn’t like change, and a lot of that attitude has rubbed off on many of us. So every so often we need to be outraged into action. But not all shock is beneficial, even if intentions are good.
Take for example this Danish campaign’s, Children Exposed To Violence At Home, latest offering that seeks to educate us on the issue of gender violence. They created a video game called Hit The Bitch. It depicts a young woman making several comments to the computer screen. Your task is to use a floating hand to smack her in the face. On the top of the screen are two meters. One is for Pussy, which sits at 100%. The other is Gangsta, which sits at 0%. The more you smack the woman, the more your Pussy meter decreases and your Gangsta meter increases. It works to men’s perceived insecurities because we all want to be gangsta’s right?
As the woman’s face becomes more visibly bloodied and bruised, and your Gangsta meter reaches 100%, it is then replaced by 100% Idiot. Then we hear a short public service announcement of the dangers of violence. This is the message of this game.
I don’t question the intent of the game. I just wonder how helpful something like this really is. As a man, I can’t help but be offended by the depiction of men. You are only given the option to smack the woman. There are no options to avoid confrontation, only to hit.
The only benefit to this game is for those who finish it.
If for some reason I begin the game and find it too offensive to continue, I am left with no public service message. Just the idea that men can only deal with conflict by committing violence. Or that refusing to hit a woman equates to being a complete pussy. It’s an incredibly misguided and false depiction of men and how we behave when confronted.
So the men who need to learn a lesson finish the game presumably and are treated with the designation of 100% idiot (which is questionably constructive in it’s own right) and are treated to the violence awareness message. The men who don’t finish the game come away feeling marginalized and alienated. This is a great shame because it’s the men who would refuse to finish a game like this that would be most likely to want to help in a cause like this.
The end result simply leaves our greatest potential allies disempowered by reinforcing false stereotypes. Shock value can be useful given care. When applied haphazardly it can be potentially devastating. The message itself being entirely lost in the process of shock. Make no mistake. It is lost, or at the least overshadowed and easily misinterpreted. Just for the sake of delivery.
Hit The Bitch?
Sorry. That’s just no game to me.
Ophelia’s opinion:
As a survivor of intimate partner violence, I am extremely sensitive to this particular issue. As an advocate, I come into contact every day with victims who are still in abusive relationships. I have seen many different campaigns to end domestic violence. There are different schools of thought in the trauma community surrounding campaigns that should and should not be used to promote awareness. A virtual line of sorts, that must be tread carefully to ensure that public awareness will not in contrast affect victims and survivors of violence more negatively. Oftentimes, people who have no personal experience with the issue are the same people creating these campaigns.
After learning of the game, Hit The Bitch, I became interested in seeing what kind of reception it received amongst the public. I’ve spent some time searching on the internet for blogs discussing the game and comments left by people familiar with it. The vast majority of comments endorsed abuse and violence against women. Obviously, the message meant to deter violence has potentially encouraged it.
As a female survivor, I can tell you that I felt the impact of those face-slaps. It is a very raw and triggering reminder that abuse is a very serious issue and one that, to this day, isn’t be adequately addressed. The woman in this video is not a pixilated computer character but rather video footage of an actual woman. Her bruises, facial expressions and responses are very real. Watching her being abused was a flashback into a very personal and demoralizing act of violence. It brought back the feelings of helplessness, isolation and fear that accompany domestic violence.
It sets a dangerous precedent when you put those experiences in a gaming format, which is designed for fun and enjoyment. The often subliminal, unspoken conflict here is that if something is put in a game then it must be okay and acceptable. It could equally be fine to laugh and make light of this virtual woman because it’s just a game right? So one wonders if this game educates our communities or simply reinforces negative stereotypes.
The lesson of this game is presented as almost an afterthought. An acceptable “in” for gamers to act out abusive behaviors some may already believe are acceptable. Violence in the gaming world can translate to the real world. It grooms young adults to what is an acceptable standard in our society. Lacking a strong and convincing conclusion makes it easy to disregard what can be learned from engaging in violent activity, whether real or on a computer.
If Hit the Bitch is viewed by the majority as acceptable, I wonder what is next in the gaming world. A virtual rape scene or child abuse scenario where the player actively molests the victims?
Those “advocating” against violence must be very cautious to pursue campaigns that eliminate confusing messages and pay careful attention to unintended consequences. Undoubtedly, supporters of this campaign may unknowingly cause more harm than good.
Often, we hear of men who molest young girls and women and receive too little jail time or often, no penalty at all for their crimes. Tonight, on television was a story of a mother who was the co-abuser to her daughter of seven years old. The reason for her decision, she wanted to “prove her love” to her husband. The ultimate sacrifice, in her mind would surely win over his commitment and perhaps allow some sense of normalcy to their lives. Normalcy stemmed from incest, an interesting and obviously distorted reasoning, an excuse to commitment the ultimate betrayal.
These stories are not new to me, having read hundreds of thousands of emails over the years depicting torturous and unbelievable acts of abuse. However, it always takes a moment longer for me to come to terms with mothers who turn on their own children, in order to gain the “love” of a man in their life. They themselves, abuse victims in the hell that is intimate partner violence. Part of me feels torn by the understanding that they face their own fear and pain and yet, I cannot condone the line that is crossed from victim to abuser. There were so many levels to this particular case, but what I was struck by was an issue that screams true for so many women; needing a man in order to feel validated, worthy, loved. Often, women (and men) who are survivors of abuse will do find themselves doing things and allowing things to be done without questioning the impact of their decision. There is a laundry list of reason why such things happen, but one very important factor is conditioning.
If you are told that you are useless and unworthy each and every day of your life, parts of you, if not all of you will begin to believe it. There is truth behind the saying “thoughts are things” in that what you believe you become. If you are a vulnerable child your choice and sense of reality outside of your caregivers is drastically reduced and the name and expectations placed upon you will be your burden until you are old enough or fortunate enough to learn otherwise. For all of us, I believe this means being our own teachers.
A few years ago, I found myself in a relationship with a man twenty years my elder. I didn’t realize at that time, that a large part of my connection to him was based on my relationship with my father. An odd and somewhat disconcerting realization. However, one that looking back and being a survivor of incest, makes a lot of sense to me now. To make a long story short, I allowed myself to stay in this relationship and undergo behavior that I now see as abusive on many levels.
I fell in love with this man, and allowed him to control me in order to gain his affection and approval, much like I did with my father. The difference here is that I was no longer the abused child of four years old, instead a grown woman making adult choices. The catch? On many levels, in the decisions that I made in that relationship (and others like it), my inner child, the one who learned what love was from her father, was still seeking love in the same way from men who could not give her what she needed. Self-worth, validation, self-respect, a true sense of self are all things that we must find in ourselves and that cannot be resolved by others.
I see myself as fortunate to have gotten out of that relationship before marriage or children. I can only imagine how much more complicated life would have been had my life changed even slightly to the left of where it is today. I see my mother and sister in my own experience, yet they were not as fortunate. My sister passed away several years ago and my mother spent thirty years with an abusive husband. I see the choices that they made. I try not to judge them and yet, sometimes I do, still.
I wish for all women and men to see their worth and never make choices that will endanger themselves or their children. We must break the cycle now before it is too late.
We’ve had great interest in the 
Just gonna stand there and watch me burn
(Wo)Men Speak Out's Blog 