When Chic Hits The Fan

Nothing Imeldific about it, but yes the room next to our bedroom is entirely for my collection of shoes. I just love stilettos! They make my legs look longer and leaner. I can’t count how many Louboutins, Ferragamos, and Manolo Blahniks I own. Some of them, I haven’t even worn yet.

My husband spoils me, alright. But we have a deal: I don’t ask where he goes and I tell him where I am all the time. No problem, really. I get to keep 5 credit cards in exchange. I’m a high-maintenance, low-impact wife. I keep my days creatively busy at the spa, with about 3 bodyguards outside on lean days. Their names all end in y, that’s all I know. Maybe, their names are Tenny, Jemmy, and Lenny.

Funny. My husband wants me all dolled up when he needs to bring me along to those blah and duh dinners with his fellow members of the House of Representatives. Yet, something always happens back home when a man so much as kept his eyes on me for 10 seconds. Geez, that means I’m going to have another Fanny session!

Fanny is my stylist, by the way. Oh, yes, I have one all for myself! Thanks to my husband who keeps Fanny on a juicy payroll. Saves a lot, really, since this glorious gay saves me from going to the hospital – which my dear husband most definitely doesn’t want me to do.

You see, Fanny is super talented. And busy with me, too, since I have a twice-weekly soiree with the other Congressional wives. I always manage to escape, though, the company of these absolutely ridiculous and totally obese women just before they start planning the monthly medical and dental missions, and gift-giving projects in yet another devastated area. ‘Devastated’ is a word I always hear at these meetings, apart from personal trainer and DI (that’s Dance Instructor, for you).

A Fanny session goes like this: he applies around three to four shades of waterproof foundation on parts of my face and body that have come to take on some kind of color other than my complexion. Not that my skin is multi-toned. It’s really not that fair. Must be because my maternal great grandmother is Puerto Rican. I guess, it just takes this much number of shades to expertly hide the many hues of purple. The Shu Uemura Limited Edition REBIRTH Spring Mode Makeup Collection line is the best. Fanny swears by it.

Last night, was really bad.

My husband wanted again one of those wham-bams, but I couldn’t take it anymore. The pain is too much for two to three days, so I can’t do it everyday. It’s like…well… rape but I know that it can’t be rape because we’re married.

I must have whined a little in disapproval before he grabbed me in bed. I did exactly the very thing he ordered me never to do: whine to let him know I don’t want to do it.

Like it has happened many times before, he went ballistic in three seconds. It happened so fast! He got up, yanked me out of bed and threw me against a wall. I can’t remember which wall. I must have slammed on more than one. The world was spinning after I hit a huge vase resting on a pedestal. I crashed to the floor along with the porcelain. I didn’t know porcelain could break easily, but I felt a big shard slicing under my jaw.

I lunged at him with what’s left of my strength. He grabbed a handful of my hair. We ended up in the next room. I flew to my sea of shoes. He rushed to me, quickly yanked me up and just as he was about to throw me again onto another wall, I was able to grab a shoe.

With all my might, I hit him with the pointed heel on anywhere I can. I saw blood, though I don’t know whose. I can hardly open my eye with all the blood down my face.

In a flash, he was able to wrestle the shoe from my hand and the next thing I knew some warm liquid was spurting from my head. My knees were growing too weak. From my slowly dimming vision, I see my husband walk to the bedroom phone and dial a number.

A thought crossed my fuzzy mind before everything blacked out. Fanny can’t fix this one, this time.

And me and my husband have a big family reunion, on his side, coming up this weekend. Oh, and I’ve got to go to my designer today to try that outfit I had him do last week. He never gets it right around the waist.

Battered Men: Victims of Domestic Violence?

Domestic Violence (DV) and Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) are not confined to any age, sex, race, culture, religion, education, employment, or marital status. Anybody can be a victim. Domestic Violence is not a gender issue. Both men and women can be abused.

Domestic violence is a human issue – just like all violence. In domestic relations, women are as inclined as men to engage in physically abusive acts. Yet societal consciousness has ascribed the issue with a masculine behavior of assault, thereby rendering a false and inaccurate view of the problem. This popular view has led to social policies that are frail in addressing the problem of domestic violence successfully. One look at efforts of giant policy think tanks such as the United Nations and you can see that social and developmental policies regarding domestic violence take the popular view. Yet, the social malaise is just observably getting worse.

California State University Professor Martin Fiebert summarizes almost 200 studies online about assaults by women on their intimate partners. Last updated in May 2008, the bibliography examines 219 scholarly investigations, of which 170 are empirical studies and 49 are reviews and/or analyses. The aggregate sample size in the reviewed studies exceeds 221,300. The findings disclose that women are as physically aggressive, or more aggressive, than men in their relationships with their spouses or male partners. This sociological data shows that women initiate domestic violence as often as men do, that women use weapons more than men, and that 38% of injured victims are men.

On a wider scale, so as to merit logical generalizations, little is currently known about the actual number of men who are in an abusive domestic relationship. The biggest reason behind this is that fewer incidents are reported. Male victims are often ashamed that others will perceive them as weak or less of a man. They think that the police will not take their allegation seriously since “only men are the abusers.” They feel that people will not believe them.

Men’s gender-bias psyché further hampers them from admitting that they are, indeed, victims of DV. Even if the abusive incident happens publicly, men can justify their inaction by saying that they will never retaliate. Thus, they interpret the abuse as a sign of strength or masculinity, credited to them. When psychological and emotional abuse becomes cyclical, as domestic violence is wont to be, men begin to believe that they deserve the abuse. Loss of self-esteem is one of the harshest effects of domestic violence – for both men and women.

Reasons, triggers, methods, and consequences vary for intimate partner abuse against men by women and against women by men. The common denominator, however, lies in motive. As in abuse of women, abuse of men is also about control. Domestic violence is about control of power – physical, emotional, psychological, and economic. Control that has gone crazy.

To gain that control, an abuser will manifest behavior that assuages his or her emotional torment that he or she is out of control. Some of these forms of behavior are screaming, verbal abuse, silence, withholding attention, affection, and sex, inflicting of physical pain, drinking, doing drugs, and other addictive behaviors. These bury the pain felt inside – for the moment.

Another common ground for abuse inflicted by both men and women is the phenomenon of the abuse cycle. Tension builds up – verbal attacks increase – violence explodes – the abused accuses the abuser – the abuser repents and asks for forgiveness – the abuser promises that the incident will never happen again – the abuser woos back the abused – the abused forgives the abuser – the two are back in each other’s arms – peace and quiet for a while – then tension builds up again – verbal attacks increase once more, and so on and so forth – in a cyclical mode. The cycle of abuse can be summarized into 5 phases: Tension – Explosion – Discussion – Honeymoon – Peace – then back to Tension.

The dynamics of domestic violence is the common denominator between abuses done on men by women and on women by men. The biggest difference, however, seems to lie in the preponderance of abuse. Maybe because there is more data on female victims and less on male victims that is why it is said that most victims of DV are women.

The United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM) states that at least one out of every three women around the world is a victim of violence against women. She has been beaten, forced to have sex, emotionally and psychologically abused, and economically deprived in her lifetime. In all these forms of oppression, her abuser is most likely someone she knows – and oftentimes, she had trusted. Right now, what is known is that violence against women (VAW) is a problem of pandemic proportions.

What do you know? What do you believe?