They're powerful, and are generally applied very liberally in abusive relationships. Typical tools of emotional abuse, all being demonstrated here. Name-calling, accusations, shaming, and blaming. "Well, if you weren't such a shitty lover, maybe I wouldn't need to fuck other guys!" "Me? No, you're the one who's been sleeping around. "You've been sleeping around, haven't you? You asshole." Let me make the illustration being given here a little more explicit: Just like she throws with the arm of her brother. They couldn't feel so angry, so passionate about their failures if they didn't really, really love them. Hence, it's very specifically getting hit and abused and "corrected" that makes battered people know that they're loved, that their abuser's heart is theirs. The really terrible thing about this is that with enough exposure, if an abused person is attempting a relationship with someone who isn't abusive, they tend to interpret the lack of cutting words and beatings as apathy - as a lack of love on the part of their lover. The passion of the anger is interpreted as indicative of exactly how much, how passionately their abuser cares about them. Meanwhile, battered parties tend to see being beaten as a sign of love. The looming threat ensures compliance, their complete possession of their property. The abused must listen very precisely, an obedient servant, or their means of enforcing compliance, physical violence, will come out. They can do what they want, but the beaten party cannot. The blood is rare, and sweet as cherry wine.īatterers tend to see people as objects, possessions rather than as human beings with individual wills. The way she tells me I'm hers and she is mine, Lots of things accomplish that goal, from very gradually increasing violence to threats to actual love on the battered party's side. And at the slightest misstep, that passionate and fiery anger is there.Īn abuser would never do anything to the abused that the abused wouldn't attempt to hide or dismiss upon being asked about it. The victim treads very carefully, but they're on a wire, often deliberately provided with physically impossible expectations to ensure failure. That moment when someone is so frustrated, so passionately angry that they are already instinctively moving into stances only suited to physical altercations. Complete, unequivocal anger paired with intolerant indignation. Tiny pupils, slightly narrowed eyes, straight lips, reddening skin, and a very direct and tense stare with the head angled slightly downwards. This song, in particular, pulls back so much of my childhood.įor me, this evokes a painfully specific facial expression. Sure, there are probably full-on batter-fests, but my understanding (and experience) of reality is that domestic abuse is generally a lot more subtle and nuanced than that. Physical abuse doesn't happen in a vacuum, and in practice tends to exist primarily to punctuate and reinforce emotional abuse. I don't understand why so many are hesitant to interpret this song literally.
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