Domestic Violence: Women's Ways
By Rod Van Mechelen | Originally Posted July 1996
What will become of a society that is unwilling to set aside the politics of confrontation and treat each and every one with respect?
The Wolf Pack Story
1996 Bellevue, Wash. - In Secrets About Men Every Woman Should Know, Barbara de Angelis (John Gray’s ex-wife and source of most of the few insights in Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus that do not pander to sexist stereotypes) tells a little story about how prehistoric men guarded their cave dwelling families from the wolves. While the wolf packed howled outside the cave, and his frightened family, paralyzed with fear, huddled inside the cave, the equally frightened cave man had to set aside his fear, ignore the wailing children, and focus on staving off the wolves.
If his woman made a scene about it, caterwauling with fear and distracting him from the more important task at hand, he could smack her one and tell her to shut up, because under those conditions her whining could get them all killed.
These days, of course, wolf packs generally do not threaten us, and men who strike women are scorned, as they should be. But the verbal violence of women continues unabated, as they find new ways to assault the psyches of men with their cries for attention, demands for vulnerability, and, when men do allow themselves to be distracted and open up, their scolding evaluations and admonitions that said men must change, not feel what they feel, not be who they are.
It’s time for the cave man to speak up.
Watch out for the Cave Man
In Women and Love, Shere Hite relates the tale of a woman whose boyfriend was experiencing a string of bad luck. When the going gets tough, a man’s gotta do what this man did: focus on getting back on his feet. In a man’s world, if someone knocks you down, that’s their fault; if you don’t pick yourself up, that’s your fault.
So what did his girlfriend do?
My lover lost his job (due to the company closing), had the wheels stolen off his Corvette, and learned his father was dying, all in a four-month period. He was on the edge. I tried to push him to reveal his feelings and he struck out in violence instead and slapped me.
He was "on the edge," so she pushed him? Hello! Is anybody home? She hammered him with verbal blows until he burst. In biblical times, her actions would have been recognized as violent in nature. In our more "enlightened" time, of course, we ignore the verbal violence of the chatterboxer to focus entirely on the physical violence of the men who flail out in self-defense.
It’s time for that to change. Violence is violence, and we need to once again recognize the ways in which women abuse men.
Women’s ways
Decades ago, the various ways women commit violence, both subtle and gross, were recognized. Unfortunately, society reacted with derision, treating male victims with scorn, and female perpetrators with amusement.
Icons of female brutality have included "Mama" wielding a rolling pin; chatterboxing females jabbering men to distraction; little girls striking little boys, then crying foul when the boys strike back; the third party violence of the vixen who provokes men to fight over her; the backbiter whispering malicious rumors; the Arctic attitude of the woman who keeps the "cold shoulder" and "silent treatment" in her arsenal; the woman who makes her husband the bad guy to the children by scolding, "just wait until your father gets home"; the emotional violence of women who pout, throw tantrums, complain that their husbands are not successful enough, or that they spend too much time working and not enough time catering to her whims and wishes; the "tease," coquette, the sharp-tongued, gray-pallored, French bun bedecked biddy who, from her lofty perch atop the pedestal of female moral superiority, clucks, scolds and punishes boys as she protects her little "angels."
To these we can now add women who file false charges of assault, physical abuse, sex abuse or rape; women who physically abuse their husbands or boyfriends, or who provoke men to violence, then get away with it by relying on the indifference of the courts toward male victims; the economic violence of women who see sexual harassment in innocent compliments and use these to destroy a man’s career, or who rely on Affirmative Action programs to leapfrog passed more qualified male applicants; women in management and HR positions who use AA to help less qualified female applicants leapfrog passed more qualified male applicants (deny it happens); women who actively use or turn a blind eye to a "Justice" system that punishes men more harshly than women for the same crimes; women who perpetuate the feminist lie that women are a minority when it suits their purpose, then turn around and complain that women should be running things because they represent 52 percent of the population. And the list goes on.
Every normal person knows women, like men, are subject to the same impulses to commit good and evil, and act on them, not always in the same way, but just as often. What will come of a society in which the evil women do is largely ignored while the evil men do is amplified in the public eye? A culture that is unwilling to set aside the politics of confrontation, treat one another like human beings and work to resolve the issues that confront us, rather than indulge in the demonization of the opposition?
What will become of the cave woman and her cave kids when her cave man stalks off in disgust and leaves her all alone?
Regards
Rod Van Mechelen
