Despite its great achievements,
the Domestic Violence Revolution Is Stalled, Evan Stark argues, a provocative
conclusion he documents by showing that Interventions Have Failed to improve women’s
long-term safety in relationships or to hold perpetrators accountable.
Stark traces This Failure to
terrifying detail how men a
startling paradox, that the Singular Focus on Violence against
women Masks an even More Devastating reality. In millions of
abusive relationships, Men Use
a largely unidentified form of Subjugation that more closely Resembles Kidnapping or Indentured Servitude than assault. He calls
this pattern coercive control. Drawing on sources that range from FBI
statistics and film to dozens of actual cases from his thirty years of
experience as an award-winning researcher, advocate, and forensic expert, Stark
shows:
"How Men Can Extend Their Dominance of Women, Over Time and through Social Space in ways that Subvert Women’s Autonomy, Isolate Them, and Infiltrate the Most Intimate Corners of Her Life". See more at: American Mothers Political Party
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Violence: Just One, in the endless, and many, in combination with other methods, to Maintain Complete Control, and Total Domination of Women.
I was asked to do a video biography. This was one of the hardest things I have done. It was easy for myself to actually advocate and "just do" what needed to be done, when the time was right. But dig personally back into just myself, taking pieces and trying to timeline backwards, well it just didn't work that way for me. Perhaps it is too painful, perhaps because it does not feel whole without my sisters in unity. (I think that is it).
Most of my sisters, know that I am on hiatus at the moment. I continue to seek answers, solutions and a wholeness to bring back to, and contribute along with my mothers and my sisters. You see, we all are in this together, our suffering is not just ours, it is humanity's. We know from "gut' instinct, and pure love of heart, that we must change the perception of domestic violence, because it is wrong in every sense. We must somehow "UN-minimize” it and bring it back around to what it truly is. Because we know from our own personal journeys, that this IS a stripping of our very humanity, our autonomy, our very basic human right to our self.
Of course, October, (our only small, yet minimal, alleged time to speak) about some of the horrors, in the stripping of our humanity, just one of many used against us (violence). That one month, that twenty five years ago was set aside for the color purple, the color that no one "gets", like the color "pink" does, on the backs of beverages and sugar packages in the stores. Regardless of the fact that the "Leading Cause of Death to Pregnant Women" is from the same dominating monsters/ property owners/fathers/so called intimate others/ boyfriends/husbands.
The Nazi's and the Slave Master’s, impregnated women the same way. Yet, we remain very much imprisoned and bound by societies accepted cultural norms of treating women worse than cattle.
We are a class of people whose basic human rights to self, to freedom, to life, have been and continue to be violated, not just by those "slave owners" who sought to dominate us in every aspect of our lives, but by an entire system and social culture that is so very accepting and supportive of the continued oppression of women and her children. One day what has happened to us, will go down in history as one of the worlds worst, mass human destruction.
We are not "domestic", we are not "dispute", we are not "high conflict", we are not just "violence", and we are certainly not "shared parenting" "alienation or any other psych term, coined to maintain control over women and children. Not unlike "draptomania" that was given to slaves when they wanted to be free of their masters. The solution was to beat them severely. Just as now, the solution is to take her children, and make her jump through decades of impossible hoops, to which we do, because of our children. In that strength and in that complete determination, our oppressors have under estimated us. Because you see, it is that very same drive that we will overcome, we will set ourselves free.
After 20 long hard years, in the trenches, with mothers, my sisters, comrades and friends, who hold each other up, who are sure to never let any voice be silenced, I salute you!
[ohhh and p.s. I remain in my personal boycott of "Domestic Violence Awareness Month" for personal reasons, as I have, the past few years. I think that when WE and not the powers that be, create our own expression and our own truths and our own way to speak, without minimizing the totality of the treatment of women, then I shall sing from every roof top].
The Path Unpaved
(a poem for the Humanist's Path for Freedom & Human Rights)
I've walked this path alone so often,
I know it's form by heart.
And now, as always, my footing's unsure,
on its unstable and rocky start.
I second-guess each step I take,
for fear I'll slip and fall,
That one wrong step will lend me to,
an end that ends it all.
One misplaced foot, one careless word,
an avalanche begins;
The tug of war of heart and mind,
till one of them finally wins.
Each time I've walked this troubled path,
It’s ended journey not together,
Each time I fear that to walk it again,
will tear me apart forever.
I haven't the strength to walk it alone,
nor the energy, if only I knew..
As every time I take this route,
I fear it may be my last too.
I don't know how to stop the pain,
Of traveling down this road again.
I've fought it time and over,
only to start it over again.
Yet each and every day I persevere,
As I steady my Unstable start:
I know that only change can come
From all of Passions Heart.
So if I must, I’ll rest awhile.
Ignore the Siren song.
Take comfort in the truth I dare
Unshakably, I will try to stand eternally strong.
© AngelFury - 2005
