I have writ­ten about abuse before, more than once actu­ally.  Over the past couple of months I have spent hours research­ing through med­ical journ­als about the many forms of abuse. I have also spent many hours read­ing on-line journ­als, read­ing Twitter posts/comments, look­ing through dis­cus­sions on Fetlife and ques­tions answered on Formspring. I have taken time to observe people I am sur­roun­ded by — both strangers and acquaint­ances as well as  friends.  I have watched the news, listened to life exper­i­ences and reflec­ted on my own inter­ac­tions — both what I have said and or done and what oth­ers have said and or done to me.

Through my pro­cess I have come to real­ise just how skewed the word and defin­i­tion of abuse is. To begin, abuse is not sin­gu­lar. There is verbal abuse, emo­tional abuse, psy­cho­lo­gical abuse and phys­ical abuse (to name a few).  Depending on what dic­tion­ary one is read­ing, the defin­i­tions range and can be inter­preted in many dif­fer­ent ways.  For my own san­ity I am not going to divulge or dis­cuss the numer­ous defin­i­tions but rather share my defin­i­tion of abuse. My defin­i­tion is simple, it is not split into cat­egor­ies and their is no hier­archy of really bad abuse and not so bad abuse.

Abuse is using power, coer­cion, manip­u­la­tion, hatred, anger, resent­ment, jeal­ousy and fear in a man­ner that will cause a per­son to feel pain, to be left afraid, to ques­tion his/her worth, to have doubt in him/herself, to no longer love or like him/herself. Intent is import­ant, for me when defin­ing abuse. The intent to con­trol, to cause dam­age to a per­sons mind, a per­sons body, a per­sons soul is abus­ive and I do not tol­er­ate or accept abuse. I do not accept the sen­tence, “I did not know bet­ter” when one abuses another. I do not accept “that is just how he/she deals with his/her anger”. I do not accept women hit­ting men, yelling at men, throw­ing items at men nor do I accept men hit­ting, yelling and or throw­ing items at a woman. I do not accept women hit­ting women, yelling at women, throw­ing items at women nor do I accept men hit­ting, yelling and or throw­ing items at men. I do not accept name call­ing, bul­ly­ing and any other form of verbal degrad­a­tion. When it comes to abuse it is often dif­fi­cult for me to stay true to my free­dom of speech because where does one draw the line?  Is it my right to name call? Freedom of speech might say so. I do not agree with name call­ing though. I find it abus­ive. Words are a doubled edge sword: the greatest of instru­ments, the cruellest of weapons.

Part of my “research” was to watch pop­u­lar real­ity tele­vi­sion shows as well as listen and watch music videos.  I must say I was shocked at what I wit­nessed in those tele­vi­sion pro­grams: women punch­ing, yes punch­ing men in the face; men throw­ing other men up against fences, hit­ting men across the face knock­ing them uncon­scious; women pulling other women’s hair, women spread­ing rumours, shout­ing insults, defam­ing peoples repu­ta­tion. The beha­viour I wit­nessed was shock­ing; how­ever, what saddened me was the lack of con­sequence that occurred after the phys­ical, emo­tional and sexual abuse. After mak­ing numer­ous tele­phone calls, writ­ing numer­ous e-mails I was informed that there were no legal con­sequences, regard­less of the abuse that took place. What I found even more dis­cour­aging was that when I spoke with other people, ask­ing for dif­fer­ent thoughts and opin­ions I found the major­ity of people felt the abuse was “funny” and that people “got what was com­ing to them”.

Long. Shocked. Pause.

“Got what was com­ing to them.” How on earth did soci­ety get to this place? A place where crime, viol­ence, abuse is nat­ural, expec­ted and dare I say enter­tain­ment? Abuse and the lack of con­cern is every­where, I am cer­tain no one place on earth is free from it. Abuse hap­pens in schools, at the work place, in social circles, behind closed doors of friends and fam­ily. Abuse hap­pens at the gym, in a shop­ping mall, in classrooms, in dun­geons and in every­day con­ver­sa­tion whether that be face to face or on-line. In fact, I believe abuse might actu­ally be higher within the vir­tual high­way because abusers are cow­ards and what bet­ter way to abuse than through a com­puter screen and with words that hold no identity.

I have exper­i­enced abuse. I have exper­i­enced, in my opin­ion, a great deal of abuse. When I was little I was called fat, kids spit on me, kicked me and at one time even locked me in a closet for a couple of hours. When I was a teen­ager I was called names such as cock tease, slut, bitch, whore and stu­pid. I had teen­age boys accost me, grabbing my breasts, pinch­ing my bum, a few even attemp­ted to slide their hands up my skirt. As a young adult dan­cing in a night club I was pushed up against a bath­room stall, a very strong woman pin­ning me telling me she wanted me as her lover, her beer coated breath burn­ing my neck. Throughout my career I have been beaten, held host­age, shot at, cut with a knife and had two teen­age boys try to sexu­ally assault me. I have par­ti­cip­ated in rela­tion­ships where my part­ner resor­ted to name call­ing and belittling tac­tics in order to beat my self esteem out of me.  In all the exper­i­ences I just shared not once did I want nor invite such behaviour.

When I was little I spent a great deal of time cry­ing when alone and with other class­mates I put smiles on my face, laugh­ing with their evil tor­ments hop­ing my forced “joy” would stop them from their con­tinual unwanted verbal abuse. In high school I nervously laughed off the unwanted advances, push­ing paw­ing hands away, keep­ing silent as not to draw even more atten­tion to myself. While in my 20’s I avoided using bath­rooms alto­gether while at night clubs, fear­ful my act of polite beha­viour of open­ing the wash room door might lead to someone think­ing my cour­tesy was an invit­a­tion to assault me. Every day at work I brushed off the numer­ous attempts of harm to my body mak­ing jokes and or “con­vin­cing” myself it was all part of my job. In those moments when my boy­friend pinched at my flesh remind­ing me it would be best not to eat for an entire day in hopes I could look pretty I warped my mind into think­ing he was merely help­ing me main­tain a healthy weight; it was much harder try­ing to con­vince myself he was actu­ally help­ing me with my stud­ies by call­ing me stu­pid, I some­how could not manip­u­late that sen­ti­ment into a per­ver­ted sense of helpfulness.

I share my exper­i­ences not for pity and not for empathy. I share because my exper­i­ences are not unique, are not lim­ited to only me. When I shared what happened to me through­out my life with some friends and acquaint­ances I was in awe at how many said, “well kids are like that”. With the excep­tion of the extreme situ­ations I encountered at work, almost all of the people I spoke with dis­missed such beha­viours using cow­ardly state­ments as, “kids well be kids” or “no harm done, you are fine”.

“No harm done?” How is it pos­sible for someone to even believe such a sen­ti­ment? Of course harm was done because abuse was exper­i­enced. This is what fright­ens me, this lack of com­pas­sion and out­rage to such mali­cious beha­viours. It is almost as though human beings are becom­ing desens­it­ized to viol­ence, to abuse. I see this removal every time I come across a poster or sign depict­ing abuse in what is an attempt at humour. I find this often on  sites such as Fetlife in people’s photo albums. There are many images of women with two black eyes with state­ments about how she should not have asked twice or the posters with a woman’s head flail­ing to the side as a man’s open hand smacks her face and the cap­tion under­neath speaks of how “you too could enjoy smack­ing a bitch”.  Of course many people who par­ti­cip­ate in kink related activ­it­ies and life styles find this accept­able because of the life they lead; how­ever for me it is not okay, in fact it is shock­ing. When we put humour to such vile abuse I believe we con­tinue to abuse those who have been harmed, who have felt the prickly palm of verbal attacks, emo­tional attacks, phys­ical attacks. I also believe we per­petu­ate a soci­ety that per­mits abuse, that accepts it as part of our nature and that, that ter­ri­fies me.

People seem com­pla­cent with what hap­pens as though it is not his or her respons­ib­il­ity to stop an action if he or she is not per­son­ally affected. There is a sig­ni­fic­ant dif­fer­ence in “mind­ing one’s busi­ness” and ignor­ing the pleas of someone who might not be able to defend or pro­tect him/herself. When I am on-line and I read hatred filled com­ments I am enraged and I do speak up. I speak up because abuse is not accept­able. Does the world hear me?

ABUSE IS NOT ACCEPTABLE! ABUSE IS NOT ACCEPTABLE! ABUSE IS NOT ACCEPTABLE! ABUSE IS NOT ACCEPTABLE!

And ignor­ing abuse is not accept­able either. Turning the other cheek is not accept­able. Saying “it is what it is” is not accept­able.  I genu­inely believe we as a soci­ety have grown lazy and instead of mak­ing the effort, instead of tak­ing time to stop beha­viours, to edu­cate, to sit and listen to someone who is hurt and or sad people turn away, they turn their ipods on louder, they pull their cell phone out and text — they do everything but stop and help. They do everything but put their hand up and say no. No more to abuse. No more to name call­ing. No more to bul­ly­ing. No more to accept­ing degrad­ing and hurt­ful words. No more.

There have been times in my life where I was silent, uncer­tain if I had the strength or right to speak up. I have espe­cially felt this when watch­ing or listen­ing to those who explore and live a world of kink, of bond­age and dis­cip­line of sad­ism and mas­ochism of con­trol and although I respect that I may not agree with all actions, some­times it is not a case of “to each his/her own”. Sometimes it is not accept­able and I will use my voice now. Just as I will use my voice when I read someone’s hurt­ful and abus­ive com­ments and or ques­tions or state­ments on-line.  It is time for people to take account­ab­il­ity and respons­ib­il­ity for his/her actions. It is time to stand up for com­mon decency. It is time to say no to gos­sip and rumour spread­ing. It is time to stand up and say “no you can not invade my per­sonal space”. It is time to inter­rupt someone who is mak­ing a “joke” about beat­ing a woman into submission.

I am an advoc­ate of tol­er­ance. I speak of it openly and it is some­thing I believe this world would bene­fit from, the human race would bene­fit from. I do not believe in tol­er­ance for abuse though. I have zero tol­er­ance for abuse. There is no reason or explan­a­tion that can defend abuse. It is wrong. It is unac­cept­able. It is not tol­er­ated. Not in my life.

We all have a voice. We can use it to harm. We can use it to des­troy. I choose to use my voice to grow. I use my voice to learn. I use my voice to stop destruction.

This is the time for no more excuses.

~His