As a child, I remember my father telling me, after he caught me hitting my brother, that one day he’d be bigger than me and would hit me back if I didn’t watch out and start being nicer to him. He was right! My little brother’s both rapidly outgrew me, but they never hit me. By all accounts, I was lucky. Those two could have flattened me.
Watching my own pipis grow up, the pipi princess being the younger and smaller, I notice if anyone is going to lash out it’s her. Sometimes I think her older brother should just thump her, so she knows how it feels when my repeated telling’s off and timeouts fail to make a dent on her conscience. But like my brothers, he won’t hit her, he’s too well taught.
Anyone who has read my nobody’s child post knows that in our family, it was my mother with the anger issues. Yet, 30 yrs later, she tells people she was a battered wife, because my father would wrestle her to the ground to stop her hitting him or to get pills away.
Violent Acres gives a great account of female violence in her series about getting married at 15.
Women hold all the cards. The woman is always the victim and if they did use violence, it was in self defense.
LIES!
In an era where women hold themselves to a feminine ideal, in the workplace and on the home front. Where we proudly align ourselves under the banner “Girls can do anything” and take on men in all roles. We fail to recognize that we too have a dark side and we are capable of violence.
No it’s not something to be proud of, I don’t expect anyone to drag their spouse to the forefront and say look at that black eye, I did it better than a man could!
I do think though, that if womankind is going to grow and be equal amongst men, we have to accept that we can indeed do anything, including perpetrating violence. This is an issue we need to take ownership of.
It’s naive in the extreme to believe that women can take on all the same pressures in the world as men, yet not have any of the same issues. Women can have stress, women can have heart attacks and women can and do, beat their spouses without provocation.
It’s about time we stood up and were counted.
Oh and no, I don’t beat my husband, my father taught me well. The Prince is a lot bigger than me and although I am pretty secure in the knowledge that he wouldn’t hit me back…. there’s always a chance he might, and if I’d hit him, I’d deserve it!
