October 7, 2014 by IdealisticRebel

Domestic Violence Awareness Month

If a man or a woman stays in a violent home, their life will continually rotate around the cycle of violence. Help is available. Look at this cycle and see if it is familiar to you.

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You do not deserve to be hit, slapped, kicked, punched

mentally abused, ridiculed, forced to have sex, or suffer trauma.

Millions of Americans are living in violent homes. The children witness the violence. This is very bad for children to see. A son, even if he tries to protect the victim, statistically he will grow up to be an abuser. A daughter, learns to be a victim. Growing up in a abusive home will effect children for the rest of their lives.

If the daughter of the violent home grows up, down deep, if a boyfriend or girlfriend begin to batter them, unconsciously they believe that it is what they deserve. They don’t. Nothing they could say or do would justify their being battered. Fear is a huge part of this relationship.

When a person feels fear and knows that they live in violence, everything they do could bring about abuse. The kids are fighting, his boss chewed him out. The grocery store did not have his favorite beer. It could be that he didn’t like the dinner you cooked. It could be because your Mother sent you a present and the FedEx guy who brought it to the door smiled to brightly at you or seemed too friendly.

It could also be that your son’s report card wasn’t as good as usual and his teacher wrote a note that he has been acting out at recess and occasionally in the classroom. Schools have zero tolerance these days and you are terrified that he will hit your son. Often in these cases, tension begins to build until it feels as if it were thick enough to cut with a night. You have two choices. One is to just play the evening out. Knowing that you will put your body between the children and the batterer. You are sick with worry and you don’t want to have to go to the hospital again. They know, even though you deny it every time you end up in the ER.

Your other choice is to tell the hospital staff that you are not safe at home. They will call the police. He will be arrested. Beginning this process, can quickly change your entire life. It could also make it worse because you belong to him. That ownership, he feels, gives him the right to do anything to you that he wants to do. If you stay long enough, you will die of your injuries or from a heart attack because you are living will huge amounts of stress every day of your life. You can’t blame yourself, no matter how often he/she tells you it is your fault. You can’t tell by looking if someone is an abuser. It may not even start until the honeymoon, or pregnancy or with no obvious trigger.

There are millions of people ready and willing to help you. To make sure you have shelter. To make sure your injuries are documented and treated. They will see to it that your children go to a safe school, have help with homework, and will provide someone to talk with them and listen to what they have to say. You don’t have to stay. You are worth much more than a life of violence. Since Domestic Violence in generational, the only way to protect future generations is to get out and stay out. Do it for your children if you can’t do it for yourself.

Male or female, no one deserves to feel unsafe in their own homes. It is a horrible way to live and it damages you and all of your children. Taxi drivers know where shelters are and will take you to one. Once the shelter door closes behind you, you have taken the first step in making a new life for yourself, or yourself and your family. Namaste.

You can get out. There is help for you.

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August 10, 2012 by IdealisticRebel

Still I Rise

Holden Beach, NC Photo by Barbara Mattio

Women are not born feminists. Some are born tom boys, some are girly, some are born strongly principled. Some girls have a deep spiritual longing.

So then, what makes a feminist? Life creates feminists. Lovers bring joy, happiness and relationship to life. Some of them not only break hearts, they break our trust. Some of them break an arm or a rib or perhaps,”just” tell us we are nothing.

Women grow up and most go to college and some find that some professors don’t like women students. Some women have to be subjected to sexual harassment . Some women are bullied because they aren’t pretty enough or they are smarter than many of the males in class.

Women sometimes get all dolled up and go out with the girls. Some men think this means they are prey and stalk until they can go in for the kill.

All women realize that today we make $.77 for every dollar a man makes. For the same work. In addition, some must work in a hostile workplace.

I became a feminist because of some of the above scenarios and because I read a lot of history. I became aware that women have always been treated as possessions. Women have “needed” to be owned and controlled. I began reading about the European witch trials and found out that millions of women and children were horribly murdered because their knowledge of herbs and knowing which ones to use for healing made them different. This was a very serious matter if the was no man around to keep her in check. You could be in trouble for being good with animals. Today, we call that being a dog whisperer. or a horse whisperer. It used to mean you were a witch.

When I wanted to have a tubal ligation to prevent further pregnancy I had to bring a paper home from the doctor. This was 1972. My husband had to sign it for me to have the surgery. It was my own body. It belonged to me. But society didn’t see it that way, it belonged to him.

Have you ever gone shopping and hid what you purchased in the trunk? Did then later on sneak it into the house and your closet? That is the sneakiness that develops when we don’t have our own money and are not allowed to make our own choices.

We have gotten past the part where women are not encouraged to go to college unless it was to find a husband. Many women today have advanced degrees and still make less than a man or the same work and same degree. Women continue to be the minority in math and the sciences yet millions are capable to earning degrees in math and science.

Young women today don’t understand that they are entitled to be an equal partner in their relationships. They have the right to make their own money, to practice contraception and to have sex only when they want it. They don’t have to cooperate with their partner unless they wish to.

“You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may trod me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I rise.

Does my sassiness upset you?
Why are you beset with gloom?
‘Cause I walk like I’ve got oil wells
Pumping in my living room.

Just like moons and like suns,
With the certainty of tides,
Just like hopes springing high,
Still I rise.

Did you want to see me broken?
Bowed head and lowered eyes?
Shoulders falling down like teardrops,
Weakened by my soulful cries.

Does my haughtiness offend you?
Don’t you take it awful hard
‘Cause I laugh like I’ve got gold mines
Diggin’ in my own back yard.

You may shoot me with your words,
You may cut me with your eyes,
You may kill me with your hatefulness,
But, still, like air, I’ll rise.

Does my sexiness upset you?
Does it come as a surprise
That I dance like I’ve got diamonds
At the meeting of my thighs?

Out of the huts of history’s shame
I rise
Up from a past that’s rooted in pain
I rise
I’m a black ocean, leaping and wide,
Welling and swelling I bear the tide.

Leaving behind nights of terror and fear
I rise
Into a daybreak that’s wondrously clear
I rise
Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,
I am the dream and the hope of the slave.
I rise.
I rise.
I rise.

——Maya Angelou

I dedicate this blog to all of the oppressed peoples in the world. I especially dedicate it to those who have died due to hatred and violence. We won’t give up or go back!