Every so often someone will ask me why I'm a feminist--some of the more nefarious folks will ask why I'm a "gender traitor"--I saw the video below today via Feministing. It is truly horrible to watch the manner in which this man treats his wife, how he manipulates her in every way, and how he turned her children against her. It is this case, and the countless undocumented others just like it, that make me a feminist. This is the reason that I am proud to be part of the White Ribbon Campaign.
It contains graphic language and violence, so watch at your own discretion. I would also suggest avoiding the comments in the thread, as the usual band of misogynists on YouTube have appeared.
6 comments:
I stumbled across this at Feministing today too - and watched it in its entirety, as upsetting as it was. I can't imagine how anyone could defend this behaviour but I'm not in the humour to check out the YouTube comments - the thought of anyone trying to justify this or make light of it is just too sad.
Not only sad, but infuriating as well. When I first visited the YouTube location, the most recent comments featured horrible racist statements as well as referring to the woman in the video as some of the most awful words in the English language.
There are times when I wonder if the people who says these sorts of things truly believe them or if they're just "saying them to get a rise" out of people. I'm not actually sure which one would be worse.
I remember one time on Oprah, it was about women in abusive relationships. There was one lady that was pretty much locked in her house like 24/7... I think her husband actually locked the front door from the outside so she couldn't get out. And she stayed with this guy for a very long time before she decided she needed to get out.
I often wonder if Susie had stayed with Darren if their relationship could have become something like the video you posted... Maybe minus the hitting...
Terrifying, isn't it? As the video said, it usually takes a woman 7 attempts to get out until she succeeds, and the violence usually increases during that period.
I can't help but wonder how much of this callous attitude on display at youtube and elsewhere is due at least partially to the brutality against women in mainstream pornography.
AlterNet has a good article about the increasing violence and degradation in porn:
http://tinyurl.com/2hrpnw
I'd wager you a fiver that there's a pretty strong chance the little misogynist trolls roaming YouTube (and indeed pretty much the entire Internet) are very badly porn-warped.
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