i have thought a lot about the “violence as protection” method of being a supportive male to my female friends (which includes my wife) and how the violence could help or hurt the situation.
here are two examples, both of which involve me thinking about violence but not following through–one because i didn’t need to and the second because i chose not too.
1. scared on the subway
while riding the subway in NYC, a large man of differing ethnicity became incoherently verbally violent. he started lumbering around, gesticulating and making racist comments. he didn’t appear to me to be the typical homeless subway ranter who are generally harmless in effect–saying weird shit very loudly but never really doing anything physical (other than wetting themselves). he seemed relatively lucid but not completely which made me think: he’s either slightly drunk or high. he’s not so bad off that he can’t walk up and down the aisle on the train, but he’s consumed enough to not know to shut his mouth. at this point, i was just assessing the potential for danger–which i always do with my over-analytical mind when riding the subway.
when he started making statements about how “white pussy” was the root of all evil and lumbering toward me and my wife, then i started getting myself ready. my wife has red hair, and often stands out even among other whities. she also has “some junk in her trunk” and is more likely to get hit on in harlem than midtown. knowing that, i was very afraid that my wife would be an easy object for this guy to target his “white pussy” rant towards. and not knowing how violent he was capable of being, i readied myself for whatever violence i might need to protect my wife.
i decided that if he should make a move toward her that i should just go straight for his nose. i figured that would be the easiest way to make him redirect his attention to himself long enough for me to get my wife to the door and be ready to jump out at the next stop.
fortunately, he was more drunk than i surmised, as he fell asleep standing up (right in front of us) holding on to the pole. my wife and i were able to get off at the next stop with no harm done other than some very elevated adrenaline levels in my blood stream. after a cigarette, i was fine.
interestingly enough, my wife wasn’t that worried about him. i can’t remember why. maybe she had just written him off as crazy.
2. the ass-grabbing customer
a friend of mine was a waitress in small town arkansas. while eating at her restaurant, i saw a local (read: redneck) grab her ass and make some lude comments at her.
i was angry and analytical and started thinking about how i could do something to show him that he doesn’t have the right to treat her like that: twist his fingers and hopefully break one, pop him in the nose, put a cigarette in his eye.
but then i started thinking about how my friend is going to have to live with the consequences of whatever i do. yeah, maybe i could fuck this guy over for a minute (or get beat up trying to, at least). but i’m just visiting. she lives here and works here. this guy is bound to come back around again, and who will defend my friend against him then–when he’s both horny and vengeful? i realized that my protective feelings would just make it worse for her. even if i worked here with her, i couldn’t be there for her at every turn. what if this guy decides to take his anger at being “put in his place” out on her? he could follow her home or find any number of ways to get her by herself. and what if he has friends?
i talked to my friend about it later, and she was glad that i hadn’t done anything for those very reasons. she knew that she could keep his aggression to a tolerable minimum by not feeding into it. and she knew that if she stayed just out of reach but as a visible object, he was likely to keep tipping her decently.
in the first example, the entire conflict could have ended in flight. i do enough damage to let me and my wife get away. it’s a big city, and we are really not likely to ever see this guy again. in the second, the conflict would not have ended, and my friend would have had to carry the conflict on without me. i would have just been fueling a fire that she was working to keep at bay.
it hurts me that most violence towards women–especially sexual or other intimacy-related violence–doesn’t come from strangers. i can’t think of a single female friend who has not been the victim of some kind of relationship violence–and most of them were outright raped or otherwise physically abused in the relationship, if not both.
as the husband of a rape victim, i have had to live through the effects of her traumas. she had to learn how to let me hold her. we had to work to make distinctions between me and her victimizer: like “when i’m angry it’s something we can talk about” or “when things get serious it doesn’t mean i’m going to hurt you.” we’ll never be past all of this. we’ve made great progress, but there will always be more to overcome.
willem, i liked that you brought up the concept of sickness. i think about the difference between treating a symptom and treating the real illness. there is a time for each, but only one will bring lasting relief. i think misogyny is very much a symptom of civilization–not that it is exclusive to the civ, but it definitely flows freely from the plethora of pathologies that civilization has given us.