In his latest column, Cary Tennis advises a woman in an abusive marriage. His advice touches on themes of the history of women's subjugation to men, male privilege, and the connection between fear and anger. It's a candid and fresh perspective on these topics that doesn't rely on Public Service Announcement speak to make a point, nor is his point as one-sided as PSAs.
I read this and, though I think about these issues often, learned something new and was reminded of the sort of nuance that can be lost in considering these clearly-wrong topics. Just because we take a singular stand against domestic violence doesn't mean domestic violence is singular in meaning. Tennis' response reminded me of that today.
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2 comments:
I'm not sure yet if I agree with some of his extrapolations- ie that the man is violent because he has been trained to kill, or that the fight necessarily has its roots in male domestic privelege. It's not that I doubt them. I just still have to think about them.
Other than that, he did a great job of balancing his opinions with reminders that it is very personal to her.
And it's really on point when he says that the full impact of the incidents may be yet to come. In the conversations I've had about domestic violence, that's an aspect of it that is often ignored- that your future self (just as much as your present self who wants to believe it's all going to be OK) is at stake.
Oh, I don't think Tennis was suggesting that the husband is violent because he's a trained soldier. He was instead saying that being a trained soldier makes him an unfair opponent.
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