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For people with an abusive partner, lockdown means captivity

theguardian.com

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Re: For people with an abusive partner, lockdown means captivity

#91

Post by retrac »

55555 wrote: post #47
jasondclinton wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the most HN comment I've seen in a week. You tried not to blame the victim and acknowledge poverty is the trap but then came off as doing that in the context of personal responsibility shaming. Poverty or the fear of poverty is the real decision maker here; the math is as unforgiving as orbital mechanics. And please don't reply, "But there are programs!" Governments and NGOs convince voters and donors that th…

What percent of unwillingness to leave abusive situations is truly due to poverty? I would have guessed the vast majority was due to love, self esteem, sunk cost, etc.

Remember that in at least some social classes, women still have much lower earning potential than men.

The traditional dynamic of the breadwinner husband who works a job that pays relatively well, and the wife who is a homemaker or works part-time for much lower pay, is definitely not dead. For an older woman without much education and job experience, the prospect of striking out on her own economically can be quite bleak.

Re: For people with an abusive partner, lockdown means captivity

#93

Post by cies »

zepto wrote: post #69
kick wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When trying to protect people (or, more accurately, trying not to hurt people) in low-information or high-stress situations (both very common for abusive situations), you can't throw something that essential into the second paragraph of a document that few outside of pundits will ever read. The goal would be for the exception to be noticeable-enough that it ended up in most headlines. How to achieve that is an intere…

Realistically, people who stay in abusive relationships were already stuck. The problem wasn’t cause by the lockdown. Only compounded. Changing the presentation of a document won’t change this. What would, is a society that doesn’t tolerate the problem, and provides material support for the abused. We are a long way from that.

Someone who cannot leave a relationship in which abuse did not just take place once, but repeated (hence "abusive"); when what should society do that it should not already be doing to everyone?

* ensure you have food and shelter

* ensure reasonably safe

* ensure that children are admitted to some school

* ensure you dont sink into deep poverty

When a society cannot help on these points, what use is requesting these for the small sub category of marginalized that are so because of an abusive relationship, that they themselves are usually to some extend are continued to be pulled back into?

Re: For people with an abusive partner, lockdown means captivity

#94

Post by Spivak »

nabnob wrote: post #79
maerF0x0 wrote: post #37

In addition, sadly there are nearly 0 shelters for men. https://nypost.com/2017/10/29/these-shelters-help-male-victi...

I've noticed people only ever bring this up to derail conversations around women's shelters. Do you spread information on this topic and try to raise awareness in a proactive way, or do you only bring this up in reaction to comments about women's shelters?

It's the same thing every year on International Women's Day but then International Men's Day comes along and it's crickets.

The reason there are women's shelters exit at all is because a passionate group of women stepped up and put in the work to set them up, run the day-to-day operations, get legislation passed for funding and grants, put in the development work to get charitable donations, work with food pantries, clothing donors, grocery stores and a million other things you need to run a nonprofit.

I can only speak to my area, but if you're a man in an abusive relationship and escape and turn up on the door of one of the shelters that on paper only accepts women they're not gonna just kick you out in the cold.

Re: For people with an abusive partner, lockdown means captivity

#95

Post by nabnob »

jasondclinton wrote: post #10
duxup wrote: post #3

I feel like this is a valid concern, but really when it comes to abusive relationships ... a lockdown isn't the problem / aggravating circumstance /etc. I worked with kids who came from abusive / were in abusive families. The volume of abused partners who willingly stayed with the abuser was astonishingly high. They would even follow an abuser from one town to the next, even with services and options to not do so ava…

This is the most HN comment I've seen in a week. You tried not to blame the victim and acknowledge poverty is the trap but then came off as doing that in the context of personal responsibility shaming. Poverty or the fear of poverty is the real decision maker here; the math is as unforgiving as orbital mechanics. And please don't reply, "But there are programs!" Governments and NGOs convince voters and donors that th…

As someone who does a lot of work in the area of stopping abusers, and also has my own experiences as a victim of an abuser - for a long time I placed all the responsibility and agency on the man who abused me and didn't want to see that I actually made bad choices and ignored early red flags when I was involved with him. This doesn't mean that it was my fault that he was abusive, it just means that I can make better choices in the future and not let this happen to me again. When I used to view this abuser as entirely responsible for his abuse, it made me feel like I was helpless to prevent this from happening to me again. Abusers tend to target women who are insecure and don't know how to stand up for themselves and set boundaries, so I absolutely believe that teaching women how to notice red flags (ignoring boundaries, gaslighting, blatant disrespect, lies) can help keep them safe.

It's definitely more important to make sure abusers face consequences, but I think it's mechanical to ignore that women who are victimized can learn skills to protect themselves as well.

Edit: There's a dialectical relationship between the abusive man and his female victim. The abusive man has more power initially, but in order for the victim to leave the abusive relationship, she has to choose to prioritize her own safety and well-being (rather than listen to the abuser's manipulation). A lot of female victims tend to be victims of multiple men, so a solution to domestic abuse must address both aspects, and it is possible to address the victim's agency in an empathetic and caring way without insinuating that she is at fault for being a victim. There are resources that address this, like Lundy Barcroft's "Why Does He Do That?"

In my case, I really had no concept of boundaries or what a healthy relationship looked like until I was well into adulthood. I only realized this four years after I was in an abusive relationship.

Also, I definitely think that the main priority should be ensuring that abusers face consequences, and the justice system completely fails victims of domestic violence in this area. Without this, telling women to learn better skills is just victim blaming.

Re: For people with an abusive partner, lockdown means captivity

#96

Post by _ea1k »

jasonlotito wrote: post #84
OrangeMango wrote: post #15

Where I am, the second paragraph of the executive order establishing the "lockdown" explicitly states that victims of domestic violence are exempt and are urged to leave for a safer location. It makes clear further in the order that services provided are considered essential and should remain open and that transportation is also essential and should remain available. The news media simply does a terrible job of commu…

> The news media simply does a terrible job of communicating what exactly these "lockdowns" mean. If you only read the headlines or listen to tweets that butcher what exactly is being talked about. The stories generally go into further detail and provide links to further information if you want to dig into the details. People keep talking about how bad the "news media" is doing, and yet, if you actually read the stor…

> If you only read the headlines or listen to tweets that butcher what exactly is being talked about.

I'm amazed at how many people do that, even when the headline ends in a question.

Re: For people with an abusive partner, lockdown means captivity

#97

Post by [deleted] »

nabnob wrote: post #79
maerF0x0 wrote: post #37

In addition, sadly there are nearly 0 shelters for men. https://nypost.com/2017/10/29/these-shelters-help-male-victi...

I've noticed people only ever bring this up to derail conversations around women's shelters. Do you spread information on this topic and try to raise awareness in a proactive way, or do you only bring this up in reaction to comments about women's shelters?

[deleted]

Re: For people with an abusive partner, lockdown means captivity

#98

Post by leetcrew »

lmkg wrote: post #27
OrangeMango wrote: post #15

Where I am, the second paragraph of the executive order establishing the "lockdown" explicitly states that victims of domestic violence are exempt and are urged to leave for a safer location. It makes clear further in the order that services provided are considered essential and should remain open and that transportation is also essential and should remain available. The news media simply does a terrible job of commu…

Which do you think matters more to a person in an abusive situation? A. Paragraph two of some legal document somewhere B. "If you leave the house, I'll call the cops and tell them you're breaking quarantine, and then you'll go to jail and I'll be the only person who can get you out." I don't disagree with your last paragraph: There are other related issues and maybe some of them are worse. But how this actually plays…

is this a realistic hypothetical? most people in abusive situations either don't have another place to go in the first place, or the abuser has leverage (eg, a child) to keep them in that home. wouldn't the threat of calling the cops be only a marginal source of leverage?

Re: For people with an abusive partner, lockdown means captivity

#99

Post by carapace »

jasondclinton wrote: post #52
carapace wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To me it seems like you're falling into the trap of thinking that poverty somehow diminishes the agency and responsibility of the person.

Poverty does two things to us: limits our degrees of freedom (available choices) and diminishes our decision-making capacity (a famine/crisis response[1]). In extreme cases, poverty leads to sleep deprivation in which we cannot make even basic rational decisions. [1] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/20518805-scarcity

I've been poor most of my life. I don't need to read a book to know that it sucks. I would say that wealth enhances life, not that poverty necessarily diminishes it.

The OP's point stands: most people who choose to stay with their abuser are not starving and sleep-deprived to the point of being unable to even have a choice, eh? There's something else going on. (Are there no wealthy people who fail to leave abusers?)

Anyhow, the question you raise in a sib comment is more important: how can we help victims of abuse choose (and succeed) to leave their abusers?

Re: For people with an abusive partner, lockdown means captivity

#100

Post by KuhlMensch »

pvaldes wrote: post #85

I think that the situation can have more positive than negative effects in this sense. A major problem with abused people is that they assume that their current life is more predictable (comforting) than the other options (being jobless, poor and alone and having a low self-estimate), so they relativize and hide the situation because they fear more the uncertainty. Maybe they will solve the problem temporarily trying…

I'm afraid that is absolutely NOT what we can expect. It is unfortunately much more statistical: The more time couples spend together when there is abuse, the more likely abuse will occur. There may be outlying scenarios like the ones you put forward, but in general, the risk of harm simply, increases.
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