Cauldron

I like books.

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I live in a small town and enjoy writing about the inhabitants. I spend most of my time perusing through used book stores looking for that one great book that I don't have; consequently, I have rooms filled with books. I am a book addict.

Saturday, April 19, 2008

Oh yeah, women ask for it, we know this is true!

Women do not push buttons to get beat, they don’t do it, they don’t I swear. I know that sometimes in Hollywood there are these movies where some women will just be like these little yappy dogs running behind the strong silent men trying to get them to hit them, but that is a patriarchal stereotype and it is there to convince men and women that some women deserve to be beat. In real life, men who hit don’t need provocation and women who are hit don’t want it, don’t like it, and learn behaviors to try to prevent it, but sometimes you just get so damn tired of being shut up and bullied that you do say something like no or stop or shut up or I didn’t do that you did or supper was ready hours ago and it’s three in the morning, or I ironed that shirt. You see it’s these men who bully women and they bully them and after a while the woman can’t take it and says something back or blows her top and does counter attack.
I remember waking up and hearing him in the bathroom. I looked at the clock and it was two and I pulled the blanket around me and tried to get my breathing back to the deep sleep breathing. He tapped my shoulder and told me to get up and I played asleep and he tapped harder and I said, what. He said get up. I did get up and I did fix him supper and I did join him at the table. He said the food tasted like shit so in my anger and not thinking about what might happen, I grabbed the plate and dropped it and its contents into the garbage can and I said you wake my ass up and I make you food and you don’t like it, fix your own damned food. He said something like you fucking bitch and I said something like you sorry son of a bitch and he slapped me and I slapped him back and that’s when it began.
Later, my arm was dangling; you know how they dangle when the bone has been snapped in to two pieces. My eyes, yes both, were already swelling shut, because you see, I was more concerned with protecting my pregnant belly than my face. My gown was soaked with blood and was sticking to my back from the rug burns on my back caused from him dragging me across the living room carpet. One cop took him outside and the other stood with me, waiting on the ambulance. He kept telling me to sit down but I didn’t want to get blood on the sofa so I stood and if my arm hadn’t hurt, I would have not gone to the hospital.
The cop didn’t ask me what happened, but when the EMTs were loading me in the ambulance, the cop that had talked to my ex said, he really feels badly and I could take him to jail but he’d lose his job and I can’t see how that would help you guys. I’ve seen this stuff and know from experience, it’s just best if you bite your tongue—don’t set him off. Yeah, that’s it, I set him off, I wanted to push his buttons, I wanted to get my face knocked in and my arm broken and my skin peeled off my side, yeah, that’s why men abuse, they are really the victims, they are just so fucking tired of being pushed around that they have to defend themselves. Do ya think?

3 Comments:

Blogger delagar said...

Rats. I'm sorry. You know that's not what I was after, do you? I'm sorry everyone went after you about it, too. Fuck.

7:30 PM  
Blogger jo(e) said...

(o)

1:11 PM  
Blogger zelda1 said...

Delagar, it's okay, you don't have to apologize. I get a little carried away when I hear things like, "some women do want it." I know that is not the message you are sending about Martin but it opened this conversation about abuse and when Novice Writer and Young About To Be PhD weighed it on it, well, I couldn't believe that people still believed that women somehow ask for it. It's the patriarchy, they have done this to us, all of us. Women who are raped are asking for it, women who are beat, deserve it. Okay, enough.

6:26 AM  

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