Pride News Canada's Leader In African Canadian & Caribbean News, Views & Lifestyle
By L. Ardor
Pride Columnist
According to the World Health Organization, on average 30 percent of women who have been in a relationship, report that they have experienced some form of physical or sexual violence by their partner. What does that look like? Most famously, that looks like: “What’s Love Got To Do With It?”
We’ve all clutched our hearts, clapped our hands in typical Caribbean fashion and cursed out Ike Turner played by Laurence Fishburne for brutally beating on Tina Turner played by Angela Bassett. When a bruised and battered Tina ran across the street, and finally away from Ike, we all cheered, and talked loudly about the resilience and strength of women.
We play her songs, done her high heels, and declare that love is nothing but a second hand emotion—sweet old fashioned notion—who needs a heart, when a heart can be broken. And we cheer.
Yet, on September 9, Janay Rice now wife of football player, Ray Rice, reminded us that we don’t always get to cheer. When news broke of the video showing Ray physically assaulting his then fiancée Janay in an elevator, which lead to his indefinite suspension from the National Football League (NFL), Janay angrily took to her Instagram page to publicly defend the man that she loves.
The man who, after flat-lining her in the elevator, dragged her like a sack of heavy trash, and nudged her limp body with his foot.
“No one knows the pain that the media & unwanted options from the public has caused my family. To make us relive a moment in our lives that we regret every day is a horrible thing,” she said. Oh Janay.
We’ve always known it. Women stay in abusive relationships. Thirty percent looks like our grandmothers, mothers, aunts, sisters, girlfriends, and colleagues. Out of the 100 women you come in contact with daily, covering the spectrum of age, race, and lifestyle, 30 of them have been, or are being physically or sexually abused by their significant other. Will that change the way you interact with those around you? Thirty percent may look like you.
That number does not begin to include emotional, mental, or psychological abuse we’ve all experienced at one point in our life. A past relationship was filled with emotional abuse, and when he taught me how to kill a man with a baseball bat, I realized that he had the very real ability to harm me, and that fear grew until it began to consume me. So I broke up with him over text message, and he cursed the day I was born. We all have our stories.
We have been socialized to believe that there needs to be a hierarchy of power when it comes to relationships, marriages, and parenting. One half of the partnership needs controlling, and in many instances that happens to be us, women; we the weaker, more fragile half of the partnership need the physical guidance of slap to the face, or the emotional bullying of isolation and feelings of worthlessness packaged in appearances of worth.
Because let’s face it, we are mouthy, we are opinionated, we are intelligent, and we are all he has. We can be his saviour. Our unconditional, unwavering love for him can chase away his darkness, and bring him into our light. Yes, sometimes we mess up, do stupid things, and so the love of our man in the form of a fist is what will make it right.
When he hits, it’s our fault, we didn’t do our womanly duties right enough for him, his rage is our fault. How many of our grandmothers and mothers have stayed in an abusive relationship because they were asked by a woman they trusted: “What did you do to cause it?” Socialization is an ugly little mongrel isn’t it?
We can all fill the community talk circle with speculations on why men hit the women they love. We can create beautiful hashtags loudly declaring, “#WhyIStayed” in response to the countless Janay Rice’s of the world. Yet, what we can’t seem to do is stop. Men can’t seem to stop dishonoring their spirit by refusing to understand, and grow past the destructive cycle they have accepted as correct, and stop hitting the women in their lives that they love.
Women can’t seem to stop dishonoring their spirit by refusing to understand and grow past the destructive cycle they have accepted as correct, and stop allowing the men in their lives whom they love, and who love them, to use them as a physical, emotional and mental punching bag.
It’s never that easy though, is it? Sadly, no. Fear and ignorance are the best of friends, and we women have been the victims of their bullying, so much so that we believe the lies told about our divinity. Our spiritual awareness, and ability to discern, and reason has been impaired by loud and malignant outside influences to the point where we are no longer connected to our own divinity as women and men. We can no longer hear our spirits think.
When we do awake to our dire situation, often the justice system can do nothing for us until the abuse becomes fatal. Our children become pawns in a sick and twisted game, and more often than we hear about, the children end up paying the price with their lives.
What can we do to stop the cycle on a community level? KweenFlyy, a dear friend of mine tweeted: “claustrophobic, shackling & fearful love isn’t love. Love of the truest kind should be freeing & magnetizing. You run TO love…not from it…. I believe some people are just conditioned to see love as a place of confinement…”
I think a great place to start, is to first acknowledge that we have failed in teaching our legacies what love is, and what it should look like, because we have in some way lost our own compass.
Raise your voice and speak loudly! Share your stories; create safe spaces for the women that you know, and the women you don’t know. Listen to your children, and listen to the children in your village, pay attention to their personality, changes in how they express themselves, and do not let nagging inner voices go unheeded. No one likes the nosy neighbor, yet sometimes you have to be the nosy neighbour, because sometimes the nosy neighbor saves lives.
Love each other openly. Encourage self-love movements. Expect more from your men, and partners in your life. If you are still in process of healing, take care to not rush into a new relationship, that’s how the idolized rescuing prince status gets handed to those that do not deserve it.
Understand with grace that not every woman has the courage, strength, or even desire to run across the street and away from her Ike Turner. Let’s cheer for her, until she gets the courage to cheer for herself.
L. Ardor is a writer who believes that everything in life stems from love. Her mission is to spread her philosophy to all brave enough to embrace. You can find Ms. Ardor on twitter: @LaLaArdor.
