Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned
TW: an essay on making it out of a domestic violence relationship.
“She is outside the city, at the edge of the city—the city is man, ruled by masculine law—and there she is. …”
Hélène Cixous, “Castration or Decapitation?”
“I know it was bad, but some girls have it worse.” I am lying on a new lover’s chest and I have just told him about the stitching of my soul.
He makes me feel safe, in a way that no lover has ever made me feel before. He is calm and has no sharp edges, only leveled words and really soft hair and delicate hands that hold me without leaving a mark. Later, I will compare him to the ocean on a calm day after all I knew was storms.
“Some girls don’t have to go through it at all.”
I’ve never forgotten those words.
***
Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs apologises in the video. He is not asking for forgiveness, he says, but he is sorry. For months on end, he has denied being a man with fists too big and anger too loud. Now video evidence demonstrates otherwise, and he ushers an apology to meet the mounting public outcry. I wince and think: someone who only says sorry once their actions have been laid bare is not usually sorry at all. I wince and I watch and I think: I am angry. I am a woman with little to no weapons, wanting to wage a war against aggressive men who wear entitlement as an armour.
There are too many women, all over the world, dying at the helm of men. We are being beaten, humiliated, burnt alive. We are being told our dresses are too short, to keep our keys between our fingers when we’re out late at night, or just not be out at night at all. Then we are told the world wants to help us, that there are ways out if we look hard enough, that the government is putting in measures to protect us, all the while hearing that ‘it’s not all men’, ‘she might be lying’, ‘so many women are just out to tarnish his reputation’.
I am angry that we must consider what fabric we drape over our flesh before we leave the house. That we call our best friends when we’re walking down alleyways alone just in case something happens. I am angry that we are told help is readily available, that there is a conversation that seeks to justify the violence of a man, that our fury for being hunted is decimated to the label of moodiness.
The other day I sat whilst another woman told me about how she was elected to be on jury duty for a sexual assault case. “She walked into the courtroom in the tiniest skirt.”, so the story began. Of course she was attacked, it was implied.
I am angry that it is more taboo to be a victim than it is to be a perpetrator. That men’s violence is simmered down to an issue of their natural dominance and not a choice they actively make. That other women can be complicit in perpetuating the same norms that enslave them. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, a philosopher prolific in the 1700’s, described women as “not as part of the human species” , instead deeming them “gentle, domestic brutes”. He captured a truth that has reverberated throughout society before and society since: women are to be restrained in all ways, and should only exist on the periphery, never being too loud or showy or special, lest they be targeted for their shining light and brutality.
***
There’s an interesting quiet when you’re sobbing alone on the floor after the person you love most has just finished their attack.
They’re in the next room- the person you adore- and you’re holding your knees to your chest, cradling yourself. They’re in the next room and they’re probably feeling guilt, or shame, or anger. And your sobs are loud- so loud that the neighbour can definitely hear them through the paper-thin walls of your apartment, but there’s an eerie silence that takes up space all around you.
As if a new dimension has opened up, just for you and the person you love most. A dimension that the two of you could slip into and make a home out of. That you keep trying to make a home out of.
You’re on the floor, and your cries are almost monster, and you just want them to come and join you in this new dimension; to sit by you, and hold you, and take your face in their hands and whisper “I’m sorry, we are in love, and from now on, only love. No more fists, only love.”
Except, they don’t.
Except, they usually storm out of their room and yell some more, rocking back and forth in your own cradle, until they realise that you are done fighting, that you have gone to the other dimension without them. Sometimes this makes them angrier, and sometimes it softens their edges.
The other dimension is really, really cold when you’re there alone. It’s soundless, a void, and the rain is falling all around you, except it isn’t rain, it’s your own tears, and you are almost drowning, and there is no one to blame except yourself. That is what you tell yourself, over and over and over again.
You can hear their voice, ringing out, beckoning you from the world you have escaped from, “You need to stop making me so angry.”
The rain is still falling and you are wondering how this has become your life. How soft you’ve made the disaster, how comfortable you’ve made the bruises.
“If you didn’t make me so angry, I wouldn’t hurt you. I don’t like hurting you, I love you.”
Those words are enough to bring you out of your dimension for a minute. They love you, they love you, they love you.
Somehow, this is enough. Somehow it is true, it is your fault. You need to tidy your own anger, reign in your trust issues. You are still wondering how this has become your life, but your sobs are less vulgar. The frame begins to clear and you’re not drowning any longer. You’re there, with them, in the life you two have built.
Sitting on the soft carpet you realise it is not so bad, existing in the swing of turmoil. You can feel the disaster the same way other people feel the calm: it is comforting, it is home.
They love you and they are sorry, so you meet their eyes, and now they are crying, and you are the one inviting them in again. Back from the other dimension, meeting them in theirs. Now you are cradling them, whispering, “I’m sorry, we are in love, and from now on, only love. No more fights, only love.”
***
Am I ready to write about my rage? What weight do I have to add to the argument? Does my voice add or take away from the noise?
“The first rule of misogyny,” Kate Manne writes in her book Entitled: How Male Privilege Hurts Women, “is that you do not complain about such mistreatment.” This is a message that is consistently uttered to females. To speak about the raging impulses of men is to point a finger, and to point a finger demonstrates an issue to be fixed. For men, it would be much easier for women to bow their heads and swallow the injustices.
More than being ready to write about my rage, do I understand the tunnels of male violence enough to present an argument they could not fault? Are there gaps in my knowledge?
Loopholes they can sinew themselves around? How strong is my armour against a man who believes he has done no wrong? Many abusive men truly believe they have done no wrong.
I am angry that the intricacy of a woman’s inner life is too often used as a weapon against her, but the intricacy of a man’s inner life is their escape route. At how much time and spirit is lost, at the symptoms that go unnoticed, at the life sacrificed, the truths not believed, or worse- shamed- and later, rationalised.
Years after leaving my abusive ex-partner, he needs me, and I, the ever-willing female, let him need me. He needs shelter for the night, and as I drive us back to my home, he laughs and says, “I still can’t believe you told the police I’m a girl basher.”
In western countries, women’s shelters did not exist until the 1970’s. This means that women having a safe place to escape is only relatively new. Before this, women were condemned to either continue existing in a place that was not safe, or risk the lives of themselves and their children.
Because our freedom is still relatively new, the shackles we once wore still leave burn marks around our wrists. The trauma of our mothers and grandmothers and aunts lives just beneath our skin, and so we are taught that from a man, we can expect dominance, and that to avoid the consequences of their dominance, we must fall into line.
Accessing help in the 21st century is not as easy as many believe. There are barriers to barge through, formalities to navigate, forms that cannot be left unsigned. Rental agreements, phone contracts, joint bills, and shared car registration are just a few things that need to be untangled for a woman to be free of an abusive partner. And to get those things? She usually needs a signature from the same danger she escaped from. It is not as easy as getting in the car and driving away.
It is the physical tethers women are forced to free themselves from when they decide to leave a violent man that make me angry. In a world that tells us help is on standby, where is it when it is needed? Women are told they should leave, but are offered no hands to help pull them out by the world that tends to believe in the innocence of a man until there is video footage of his attack.
Sean Combs says there is ‘no excuse’ for his behaviour, but isn’t excusing his behaviour exactly what he has been doing? Isn’t it what many people do when they dismiss the small violences of men until they amount to larger ones?
I am angry that ‘good guys’ exclude themselves from the issue. That if we deny sex, we are the enemy, but if we allow it, we become the whore. That men expect me to smile and swallow.
Rosario Villajos says: “I would love for men to experience women’s fear of being raped.” I am angry that this is a fear women have to carry.
Women are told that they should leave, and that they should tell their story, and that the angry man should be punished, but the many violences women feel are not truly heard at all. The small violences have the darndest longevity: walking too far ahead of us after an argument, sneering at our opinions, shushing us when we speak. The small acts of violence compound until they are so large they cannot be spoken, much less believed.
Rebecca Solnit writes, “If no one listens when you say your ex husband is trying to kill you, if no one believes you when you say you are in pain, if no one hears you when you say help, if you don’t dare say help, if you have been trained not to bother people by saying help”, then how is a woman ever supposed to be free?
The world tells you that men should not hit women. But, when you hear the world talk about the latest football scandal whereby a player who has hit his girlfriend is regarded as being the victim of a _____ hungry woman looking for her five seconds of fame, then what safe place do you have to put your story? When the fear of not being believed, of being painted as a promiscuous, out-of-line, attention-seeking woman, outweighs the pain you feel from the man you love, why would you leave, let alone seek the help needed to detangle yourself from his grip?
Because, usually, the woman must face the arduous task of leaving the man she loves on her own. It is, more often than not, the man who claims to love her who does the most damage. A man who she knows inside and out, whose pain she can see and hear and feel. Women are trained to bear the load of men who have so much to carry, and when the man she loves hurts her, it can feel like nothing more than another burden for her to take on and heal.
I am angry that we are blamed for loving too long, or too hard, or not enough. That we carry the weight of domestic labour. That women’s access to medical treatment is more difficult than it is for men. That iPhones are designed to fit in a man’s hand. I am angry that women must defend themselves for not leaving, or for speaking their truth, and then pick up their bones as they try to unlove what was once the centre of their world.
Am I ready to write about my rage? Am I allowed to? When I find it so hard myself to gather even a spectre of hatred for a man who had no qualms in bruising my flesh?
***
Sometimes when I try to write, I feel as though I am not being honest because I feel like all my words echo this: that I am still defending my abuser.
The lens I see through instructs me to witness his actions through his pain.
The truth is this: I wasn’t scared of him. He never broke any of my bones or fractured my skull or poured acid on my flesh.
The truth is this: sometimes, with curled fists and a heart full of sorrow, I’d stoke his anger on purpose. I’d alter my demeanour in such a way that I knew he would notice. I’d turn from him in my sleep, I’d roll my eyes at his laugh, I’d leave his texts on read.
The truth is this: one time, I was the one who ripped his shirt. I threw a full tub of Milo hard into the wall and I didn’t clean the mess for weeks. I watched as it soaked into the carpet, made it all brown and gooey, the sugar melting into the fabric after the fight was long over.
The truth is this: I loved him while I knew the love was misshaped.
The truth is this: some nights I begged him to make the fatal blow.
The truth is this: I craved his touch after an argument. I remember a throbbing and bruised upper lip as I straddled him on the couch and cried into his shoulder, knowing that he was the cause and cure of the pain.
The truth is this: I wasn’t blinded by love. I kept the sheet over my eyes because I didn’t want to lose him. Because I thought losing him meant losing everything.
The truth is this: the choices were all mine; the love and the pain and the fury was all mine. There is no love I conjure that I have not participated in.
The truth is this: I did not realise how bad the situation was until a police officer staring at me in a dimly-lit, dusty chamber of a police station, sat upon a grey chair behind a stale wooden desk told me, with no humour, that she would label my situation as severe.
***
The thought of watching Sean Combs attacking Cassie Ventura makes my stomach flip, but I watch because I feel, in some twisted way, that I must. To witness her pain brings anger back into my bones, and, selfishly, sometimes I need to see horrible things to remind me of my rage. When I watch, I have a flashback. I can recall how exasperatingly tiny a woman feels when a towering man lays his hands on your flesh and throws you around a room as though you are nothing more than a doll.
I am angry that Diddy says sorry on social media, and that the statute of limitations means he could do something so vile, so violent, and not be charged for it.
I am angry that her pain had to be showed and relived in front of the world just for her to be heard. That even when she is heard, she can still be powerless.
I am angry that my ex partner’s birthday is coming up and that I will have to fight my fingers before they send him a happy birthday message. I am angry that being angry at men makes me wince. I am sad that domestic violence perpetrators are condemned in prison but not on the street. That a man’s anger for another man is confined to a setting where it can be controlled, pointed to, because a judge has verified it. Because a woman’s word is never enough. I am angry that our words are drowned out in boardrooms, in households, in love. I am angry that I am angry at Diddy, but not at the man who hurt me.
So am I allowed to write about my rage? With a skewed brain and a beating heart, I am another woman forced to detangle herself, who remembers being the doll, who let the calm man walk away because once disaster settles in your bones, it is so hard to remain in the still of the ocean.
