violence

LindseyMarie97

Old men have always loved me, in more than one way. I’m a 20 year old college student and was formerly in the resturaunt and hotel business and have gotten many comments. “Bring my food bitch” from an old drunk at the bar “where’s the skirt?” As a housekeeper. I have literally gotten marriage proposals from customers as a server by a man older than my father. All of this fed in my confidence issues which made it unfathomably easy for me to get sodamized in an abusive relationship and put up with it for almost 3 years. Which is now in my past and I am currently in therapy but we need to teach our sons to be respectful so we don’t get as many harmful men.

Joanne

After two years living with a violent abusive housemate I decided to voice my concerns to the landlord. His response? “If the atmosphere is so threatening, why haven’t you just moved out?” I just sat in my bedroom and cried. Basically either calling me a hysterical woman, or a liar or both. It just mirrors the situation of domestic violence victims where people ask “why didn’t she just leave?” instead of condemning the abuser. More to the point I shouldn’t have to leave my home because a man is threatening and intimidating me, it’s my home too. Anyway, fast forward six months to an incident after being woken up again at 4am by our housemate and two male strangers returning home drunk to our house, my female housemate gets up to find vomit all over her towels. She’s understandably angry and confronts him over this. She’s angry with him but not threatening. He leaves and doesn’t return for two days (on a day which he knows I always stay over at my partner’s so the house will be empty apart from him and my female housemate) and he runs into the kitchen launching a sustained verbal and very nearly physical attack on her. She repeatedly tries to speak to him in a logical reasoned manner but he simply screams at her “I do not want to listen to you, I just want to yell at you”. It was so bad that she handed in her notice to the landlord the next day and reported him to the police. The landlords response? “Well there are no witnesses, the police can’t prove anything and you are moving out anyway”. Now I work in criminal prosecution and I know that there was more than enough evidence for her to press charges if she had wanted to, however she was too frightened of repercussions to do so. Both the landlord and my housemate clearly have problems with women. They treat us like liars or hysterical fantasists when all we were was scared of being in the house with somebody who was clearly violent and clearly had a problem with women. He had a problem with me because we worked in the sector however I was more qualified than him (I’m a trainee Solicitor, he is a paralegal but tells everybody he’s a lawyer). The saddest thing about this is that we informed the landlord of our concerns six months previously and he did nothing. I have saved all of this correspondence to show the police should I ever need to. This man is dangerous and I have no doubt in my mind he is a future domestic violence perpetrator but nobody will listen to us.

Bianca Gillam

So I experienced assault at the hands of a man who did not agree with my views – I called him out on some sexist comments he’d made, and a few of our mutual friends had berated him for it, and he became convinced that I was spreading lies against him and trying to turn people against him. He got very drunk and his paranoia escalated to the point where he pushed me up against a bar, trapped me with his arms either side of me, and repeatedly threatened my life. I have had this experience, and my feelings about it, invalidated my so many of my peers (females included), who have said things such as ‘you overreacted’, ‘he was just drunk’, ‘he wouldn’t have actually hurt you’ etc. As part of reclaiming this experience I have written a poem, which I wanted to post here. For any woman who has ever been scared of a man. For any woman who has felt helpless and weak at the hands of a man. I stand with you against violence towards women. ‘between a rock and a hard place’ my spine hits wood, blocking any movement. his strong arms slam down on either side of me, cover my other avenues of escape. he spits bile in my direction, stewed for weeks, unexpressed until now. i am conscious of my own smallness. i wish i could be smaller, shrinking into insignificance, shrinking to a thumbsized girl who could run away on little legs, below his line of vision. but i cannot shrink. he is unyielding aggression, i am small, yielding, too small to protect myself but not small enough to escape. he says he’ll take my life – he could. my fragile heart panics, starts beating faster, beats adrenaline through my veins. neither fight nor flight are an option. i am helpless. i am nothing. he is everything. and suddenly he is gone. ‘you’re lucky’ they say ‘it could’ve been worse’ ‘he was out of control, he was drunk, he didn’t know what he was doing.’ i am lucky. he could have torn me limb from limb, with no apparent awareness of his actions. he could’ve really lost control, followed through with his threat. i am lucky. it could have been worse. and there is not a thing that i could have done about it.