No, It's Not Okay

Inspirational song: Mama Said Knock You Out (LL Cool J)

I was doing a little housecleaning today. It was a Sunday, around one in the afternoon, and I sighed in the direction of my television (which was off), as my thoughts turned to football. I've always been a hardcore fan of the game. I was wishing the next month or so would pass quickly, so the season would hurry up and arrive. Not thirty minutes later, after pausing to peruse the internet, and play a video commentary, my warm fuzzy feeling about football diminished to a sour stomach and frustration aimed at the NFL and at society as a whole. The news broke this weekend of a security video showing a very famous football player dragging his unconscious fiancee out of an elevator, unceremoniously dumping her limp body on the floor, and acting entirely unconcerned over her well-being for several minutes, even when another man approaches the scene. The story as it is being reported is that he punched her, knocking her out, during a "domestic dispute." From here, the story branches off into so many layers that enrage me, I don't know where to start to catalog them. First off, I am not seeing that he is facing criminal charges of any kind for beating his wife. If they had been a less affluent couple, both of them would be trapped in the criminal justice system, at the very least until fines had been paid, classes attended, and lawyers paid. (Yes, in some states she could be facing a nightmare too, if there was an indication that she participated in a fight.) The second part that offends me is that after he did this, this woman went forward and married him. And then finally, when faced with this incident, the NFL commissioner suspended this player for a mere two football games, less than the punishment for one player stomping on another player's helmet during a game, and much less than a notorious quarterback received for dogfighting.

I cannot fathom how we have allowed domestic violence to continue to be ingrained into our culture. For hundreds, thousands of years, it was codified into law, that violence against women, especially wives, was allowed. Encouraged even. But in our more enlightened time, with laws designed specifically to protect women, a culture of permissiveness toward domestic violence remains. It's ignored in high schools and colleges, and victims are doubted, sometimes nationally mocked and persecuted online. It's an underlying message in our music, in our movies, and in our books. It's in advertising. All of these things reflect our attitudes, and as long as it's glorified thusly, at some level, we are still condoning it. This is not to say we aren't improving. Ad campaigns from the 50s or 60s, suggesting it was okay to spank your wife over bad coffee or shopping choices, shock our senses now. But there is still a frighteningly long way to go in advertising, which continues to objectify and demean women. I've been a longtime reader of historical romance novels, and when I think back to the content of those books from when I was a teenager, I am appalled. They really were "bodice rippers," with horrible scenes of brutality and date rape, as if a woman only needed to be coerced into sex to fall in love with a "cad" she dislikes. Thankfully, the last twenty years or so of these novels has seen a dramatic change in content, with storylines that depend on mutual affection more than Stockholm syndrome. For the record, don't confuse the romance genre with that awful 50 Shades nonsense, that apparently had less to do with consensual BDSM behavior, and everything to do with stalking, abuse, and disrespect. (And no, I have no intention of reading that shit.)

I wanted my children to be forever clear of abusive relationships, and I started trying to shape their attitudes as soon as I could get through to them. They were tweens when I started telling them that I didn't care who they brought home as romantic partners (male, female, any race, any nationality, any political party), as long as they treated them well. And that clause read backwards as well as forwards: my daughters were not to accept partners who disrespected or abused them, and I would not tolerate them disrespecting or abusing their own partners. It's my only rule. Without this, I cannot give my support to the relationship. I wasn't shy about saying these things to their friends, either. More than once I heard teenage girls justifying the abstract notion of hitting boys, for some reason or another, based on the history of men beating women over the course of recorded history. I immediately butted into the conversations to contradict this line of thinking, insisting that no one deserves abuse, and that domestic violence was never appropriate, no matter who was hitting whom. I don't know whether I got through to anyone. If just one of those kids who heard me took my words to heart, it's a start. It's never okay. For anyone.