When I was with this guy as a teenager/in my early twenties, where I drew the line was he hitting me. He never did hit me, but he messed me up on so many fronts. He messed up my self esteem, he manipulated me, he gaslit me into thinking I was crazy and undesirable, he made me believe he was ‘managing’ me, and he made me believe he was doing me a favour.
All of these were easy because my mother used to beat me like shit and my father, I don’t even know my father. He just upped, left and never came back.
So my sense of self worth was really messed by the family construct. If your own parents, both of them in my case, couldn’t care less about you, then anyone that put up with you must be really ‘doing you a favour’.
I felt anyone that didn’t hit me or desire to hit me must be on my side.
And so this man, knowing my story, didn’t hit me. That told my brain he was a friend and not my enemy.
And so I put up with the emotional and psychological abuse.
Here’s the thing; I didn’t even recognize it was abuse. I felt it was normal.
I felt what was abnormal was he hitting me.
And I got so messed up I escaped with just a hair’s breadth. I escaped because of my tenacity to be alright, to heal. I’m quite stubborn and my stubbornness to heal has helped me thus far.
The marriage institution, which is the bed rock of the family institution, has its integral roots in the oppression of women. Violence against women is sanctioned within the jurisdiction of marriage. The woman is below the man and so the man can do with the woman as he deems fit. So we can scream “domestic violence” from today ’til tomorrow, it will keep happening as long as the marriage institution exists.
But people STILL want to marry so we’d rather just stick to the silly rat race of screaming “domestic violence” day in day out until we’re blue in the face. We’ll ask the woman to arm herself financially, physically and mentally against the other party, as if she’s going to war. What about kúkú asking the woman to not go inside that war in the first place?
What is the point if I have to be with someone with whom I have to always be on my guard? With whom I don’t totally trust and feel safe because the rules of the cult group, this cult called marriage, are there to hurt me? We’ll never ask for the marriage institution to be scrapped; even when we know that’s where the problem is. That is the root. After reading this post, some people will still foolishly come and say theirs will be better. They have a special anointing y’know?
When the marriage institution has taken hold, the family institution comes into play. The ‘marriage’ slowly evolves into ‘family’.
Violence being normalized in the family institution is even worse than that of the marriage institution. We can, at least, uselessly scream “domestic violence” in the marriage institution, but do we scream “violence” in whatever form, immediately the family institution comes into play?
And so when a woman gets married, she subconsciously already assimilates it that violence is okay. All the man she’s marrying has to do is to do the barest minimum, just a bit better than the family institution she’s coming from.
And so in my case, if I had married a man that provides for me and doesn’t beat me, but controls my life, destroys my self esteem until I become a living corpse, I would not go anywhere.
If a woman is being abused by her husband, you ask her to leave.
The family she’s going back to will usually say no. She must not.
BECAUSE violence is normalized in the family institution.
And sometimes, dare I tell you, she may not even want to leave herself, because she’s okay with the lesser evil. Where would she go back to? To her family?
Under whom it would be totally okay to be abused?
We all need human connections. We all need that one person, or a group of people, who gives us a sense of belonging. This need is paramount for the functioning of every human being. It’s a need. A need that every human wants to exploit in another person.
If a woman can get a better sense of belonging with that abusive person and doesn’t have any better elsewhere, of course she will stay. The human population is not regarded as one big family; it’s fragmented into bits and pieces and these bits don’t owe one another any obligations and duties so every individual gotta find bits and pieces to belong to.
And we call the woman all sorts of names for staying with her own bits and pieces. Is the world going to be there for her? To become her family? To give her a sense of belonging? A sense of safety? Is it not “me and my family” everywhere?
I’ve run away from home for quite a while. If I get married, I won’t in Jesus’ name, but if I do, and my husband starts abusing me financially and verbally and whatnots, I will NOT leave and go back home. I will NOT leave, except I have a better option.
BECAUSE I need that sense of belonging afterall. Because we all do.
And the sense of belonging need is very difficult to satisfy without being objectified, without being owned.
Individuals want to own, organizations want to, even the so-called revolutionary organizations.
Owning people and making them possessions has been the order of the day.
So it’s really difficult to satisfy the sense of belonging need without some level of ownership.
And this idea of owning people and objectifying people, this has been the problem all along.
Because you cannot own anybody without dehumanizing them.
And from the dehumanization springs up the various oppressive structures we battle; sexism, racism, ageism et cetera.
You cannot be sexist to someone without objectifying them first. If you still see them as humans, you cannot be sexist to them.
You cannot be homophobic and ask to kill members of the LGBTQ+ community or get mad at them in any way without you objectifying them first. If you see them as humans, you will rationalize that they have the rights to do whatever they want to do with their own genitals. You do not own them, and they’re not objects to be controlled according to what you think they should do.
But it’s easier to call the woman who stays with an abusive partner a fool than to think about all these things.
The question is, which may come across as rude, do you even have the capacity to think about these things?
You will not condemn the marriage institution that objectifies women and sanctions violence against women, because you want to marry too. When you’re asked why, you can’t give any reasonable and objective answer. You just want to marry is all.
You will not condemn the family institution because you want a sense of belonging, and the family is there to give you that. Even if they’re toxic, you stick with them.
You will not condemn religious institutions that say women are lower, our voices must not be heard and men can strike women and even give instructions on how to. Because you need some opium to lessen the pain, and religion is your opium. Because you have been brainwashed, you’d rather keep mute and pointedly be blind, deaf and dumb. THAT woman is the problem abeg. She should have left!
You will not condemn the idea of capitalism that objectifies people and elevates pieces of paper and profits over people. Because you want to own too. Because you want to make profits and hoard and call resources “yours”, even when they belong to all of us logically. And still, it’s that woman that wants to own and be owned, she’s the one you blame and feel better than.
It’s always about the individuals, it’s never about systemic structures.
As if anyone would go “felt cute, might be beaten by my kind husband someday and I won’t leave, idk.”
As if I willingly chose to stay with a man that abused me, and not because I couldn’t get a better sense of belonging elsewhere.
‘If he’s not hitting me, then he loves me!”
It’s easier to open mouth waa and condemn that woman, or say you’ll STILL marry and you’ll be better than that woman.
It’s so much easier to scream “four legs good, two legs bad” since men are the villains and women are the angels just being victimized and who never oppress anyone else in return and leave it at that.
The question is why? Why all these lazy resistances?
Because…
Because…
Let me show you something I came across today…
“What makes you think human beings are sentient and aware? There’s no evidence for it. Human beings never think for themselves, they find it too uncomfortable. For the most part, members of our species simply repeat what they are told-and become upset if they are exposed to any different view. The characteristic human trait is not awareness but conformity, and the characteristic result is religious warfare. Other animals fight for territory or food; but, uniquely in the animal kingdom, human beings fight for their ‘beliefs.’ The reason is that beliefs guide behavior which has evolutionary importance among human beings. But at a time when our behavior may well lead us to extinction, I see no reason to assume we have any awareness at all. We are stubborn, self-destructive conformists. Any other view of our species is just a self-congratulatory delusion. Next question.
~Michael Crichton
This person has tried to answer the question respectfully.
I’m too pissed at the more popular lazy resistances I see everywhere to be respectful so I’ll answer simply in one simple sentence.
BECAUSE humans are socially stupid.
Written by Sisí Afrika.
