My Black Eye

Thanks to a fall, face forward, on an uneven sidewalk, I have the first black eye I have ever had in my life-- somewhat of a misnomer, as it's really one side of my face-- but my eye is particularly horribly fascinating. I feel like Jake LaMotta as he calls for the razorblade to slit his eyelid (or was that Rocky?)

Life goes on; I treated myself to breakfast at Murphy's, worked half a day, bought cat food, spent two wasted hours in Baystate's emergency room before I decided to leave and then dealt with the (fortunately short-lived) catastrophe of having my car key break off in my door lock with no spare to be had.

Some time fairly early in the day, I noticed that most of the people with whom I was having some interaction were not making eye contact with me. They probably think I got beat up by a guy, I realized-- and do you know, at some point I found I was feeling a sense of embarrassment and shame-- as if I really had been beaten.

January 1st, following yet another brutal murder of a Springfield woman, I posted about some of the concerns that keep women from accessing help. Two weeks later the Boston Globe reported a statewide shortage of shelter beds in Massachusetts; on many days a hundred women will call the domestic violence hotline seeking shelter when there is only one bed available anywhere in the state.

Some women pick up the phone. Some women with a black eye stay home. A black eye from someone hitting you never goes away, even when others can't see it anymore.

Sometimes I don't think things have changed for the better all that much. But still-- here's the numbers to have handy:

• SafeLink: 1-877-785-2020 (toll-free) SafeLink is the Massachusetts statewide domestic violence hotline and is operated by Casa Myrna Vazquez, Inc. in Boston. SafeLink is answered by trained advocates 24 hours a day in English, Spanish and TTY (1-877-521-2601). It also has the capacity to provide multilingual translation in more than 140 languages.
  

• National Domestic Violence Hotline: 1-800-799-SAFE (7233) or 1-800-787-3224 (TTY).

Art found on a building in the Lower East Side

Please: no more murdered women and children in Springfield in 2008!

Patrick Johnson at the Springfield Republican has a story today tallying up the domestic violence murders in Springfield this year. Three women and five children died at the hands of those they should have been able to trust the most.

It's worth posting both the local domestic violence hotline and the national number. Locally, call ARCH, 413-733-7100. Anywhere in Massachusetts, call SafeLink, 1-877-853-2020.

So often the male perpetrators of these crimes kill themselves after they kill their wives and their children. Why don't they just kill themselves first?

Here's an understatement: domestic violence is a complicated issue. Women are not the only victims; children and men suffer, also. It's not rare for violence to be mutual-- although when it comes to the death of a partner, women are almost always the victims.

Interestingly enough, Johnson's article says that the police were never called to the victims' residences, no restraining orders were ever filed, and no neighbors ever complained about excessive noise.

Perhaps this is because the pendulum has swung so far in the other direction to protect women that women often see the "cure" as potentially as damaging as the violence.

An all too common scenario goes like this: you and your husband are having a fight, and voices get loud. (There may or may not be physical violence accompanying this argument.) You have children in the home. A neighbor calls the police. What happens next depends on whether or not the police suspect violence has taken place. But one thing that will surely happen is that the police will file a 51A-- a Care and Protection order-- with the Department of Social Services. DSS will require that you get a restraining order against your husband and remove him from your home and your life. If you fail to do so, your children may be taken away from you. This is a heavy chain of consequences to bear. Many families that need help are destroyed, and, I think, many women who really do need help won't take the risk of asking for it.

I'm not one who thinks that state intervention and incarceration should be the first step and is automatically the best step to solve every social ill. I believe that women who need to be safe should have a place to go. Once upon a time, battered women's shelters were run by dedicated community volunteers. Now they are funded by the Department of Social Services. And everybody and his brother-- every police officer, teacher, doctor, nurse, case manager and social worker-- is a mandated reporter.

For a deeper and contextualized look at violence against women, check out Incite! Women of Color Against Violence. For a look at a violence against men site that is NOT an anti-woman site (even if i don't agree with every perspective), see Battered Men. There's a hopeful page on the Family Violence Prevention Fund about raising boys into men. Check out their home page for more general information.