"Scandal ripples through entertainment industry and beyond as Harvey Weinstein's accusers grow in number" - CBC news
How the open dirty secret remained unchallenged for so long is difficult to understand.
Law enforcement, the justice system, corporate American, everyday men and women and the victims themselves can't navigate rationally through the behaviors that accompany and follow relationship violence and abuse.
Yet it's imperative that we do come to understand how it works. We need to know so we can avoid the trap ourselves and teach others how. So we can quit blaming the victims. So we can raise a generation that doesn't accept or condone such violence.
"Why didn't she just....?" is a common refrain when we hear about abusive relationship. "If it was so bad, why didn't she....tell someone, report it to the police, breakup the relationship?"
"If it was so bad, why did she...keep seeing him, continue living with him, embark on a business relationship with him, speak well of him to others, text him, befriend him on facebook?"
I explore violent relationships in my recent novel, SHADOW RIDERS. It's my hope that readers will come to understand a little better the thought processes and emotional complexities that entangle women in violent relationships.
My novel is just a small start to understanding, to getting the conversation going.
As a writer, I feel compelled to at least try to understand this pressing social issue and at most, to make a positive change in my world.
#WantingToMakeADifference is brought to you by SHADOW RIDERS
"...anticipation and fear, sympathy and revulsion." SHADOW RIDERS
Eileen Schuh, Author
FIREWALLS
FATAL ERROR
Schrödinger's Cat
THE TRAZ
Web site: http://www.eileenschuh.com
Blog: http://eileenschuh.blogspot.com
2 comments:
Eileen -
In order to understand behavior between dominant abusive people and those around them, it is my opinion that one must delve into evolutionary biology and the primate ancestry which humans still have hard wired into their genes. As culturally "modern" as we are, there are still patterns of behavior which are linked to that which all primates - and many other mammals share. Among dominant males, not only are other males considered "prey", to be used and abused as chosen, but females - because of the important gender roles they play - also are viewed in a special light, as "prey" Genghis Khan did not become the most successful male in human history, thus passing on his genes to millions of men alive today, by being "politically correct."
There is no evidence that a thousand years of "civilization" can change human behavior: what is being decried here, is a cultural and social violation of behavior - not anything that could be eliminated through evolution.
If humans were ever existentially threatened - by an event such as radical climate change or nuclear war - the ones who would survive would be the ones who submitted to the dominant male of a tribe who was able to coerce enough men and women to follow him, to fend off other, hostile groups.
A simple reading of Europe after the fall of the Romans in the fifth century, presents this in spades: not until after the Napoleonic Wars of the nineteenth century, did anything like a peaceful period lasting for any length of time, appear.
Of course, then tensions built up, and we witnessed the destruction of Europe over three decades in the early twentieth century. Since that time, Europe has been steadily dying.
Given the demographic processes which are underway in Europe right now, in a century, the populations of Europe will look radically different, genetically. And they will have a far different culture.
Thank you for the post.
Jim
I don't see any reason why survivors couldn't be the followers of a dominant female of a tribe who was able to coerce enough men and women to follow her and fend off competitors. There have been, still are, and will continue to be many successful matriarchal societies.
Male dominance is not programmed into our genes. It may, though, be programmed into our culture.
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