Growing up in my mothers house was at times, most of the time actually, not pleasant, she had a terrible temper and even without the act of violence there was always a tense atmosphere. My poor dad would experience my mothers frequent verbal outbursts but never her physical ones, oh no she kept that for my brother and I.
I remember at about four years old my mother told my dad she was going to stab my brother, who was about five or six at the time, she held in her hand a huge kitchen knife and if my dad hadn't have stopped her who knows what would have happened. Shortly after that incident my dad had my mother admitted to a psychiatric unit for a rest, hoping that that would give her the help she needed, unfortunately it didn't and further mental and physical abuse entailed. We were told by friends and family that we needed to protect my mother, that she wasn't in her right mind and that she never meant what she did, that we should forgive her. What I want to know is why we should forgive her, why should she be protected, just because she is a woman doesn't mean she has a free pass to abuse others!
Throughout my life in my mothers home I was terrified of what she was going to do next, not just to my brother but to me, she wasn't stable, she had a volatile temper and it was like walking on eggshells around her.
My brother ended up locking himself away in his room every day after school wondering what she was going to do next, more often than not she would bound into his room shouting and screaming, slamming doors and telling him how useless he was and how he would end up like my dad, a man as she saw as the sh!t she had stepped in (my dad by the way is a good man and has been happily remarried now for many years).
When it wasn't my brother it was me, only she didn't just use words on me but she used her fists to punch me in the face and yank on my hair. She told me on many occasion that I wouldn't be good at this or that and that no one loved me, that I would never be the person she was. The physical abuse only ended when I was 27, my brother and I had been talking about dad and she had become enraged, she grabbed a handful of my hair and started punching me in the face, my brother had to pull her off, let me tell you that was the last time she ever laid hands on me. Since that moment I have kept my distance, I see her once a year at her birthday and silently thank God that she no longer remembers me, she has dementia and is in a home, I thank God that she can no longer hurt me.
I know many people will say that she is your mother and the only one you will ever have, that you should always love your mother and protect her, well in the same breath shouldn't she have been that way with us, shouldn't she have done everything she could to protect us? Why are we so scared of labeling women as abusers, why are we so scared to admit that women are as capable, if not more so, as men where physical and mental abuse is concerned? Why do we women and some men choose to brush it aside when women commit acts of violence? Not all women are the nurturing, loving and caring people we want them to be, all you have to do is look at the daily news now to see the aggression that some women display.
My mother was a domestic violence offender, she was brutal, she was mean, but because she was a woman it was brushed under the carpet and never spoken about. We have created a society where women are seen as golden and men are seen as violent and abusive. When will we see equality in all aspects of the home and society.
If you see or fear domestic violence is being committed shouldn't you do something about it no matter what gender the perpetrator?! I for one have no problem standing up for others be it man or woman.
I have a friend who's wife punched him in the face, she was ordered to undergo counseling but no charges were ever brought because it might hurt her career, the husband had no say in the matter and to this day she is still abusive to him. My friends wife told me of the violence and she laughed about it, I told her exactly what I thought of her and that I think she should have been jailed for it.
My husbands ex wife was also a domestic violence offender, after one incident she threatened to call the police if he left the house, he told her to go ahead, she made the call but it was him that actually had the police come out. The police took him out of the house and went in to talk to her, never once talking to my husband and asking him what he wanted, he was covered in blood and battered and bruised, they left the house and nothing was ever done. If you think there are two sides to the story there are in fact three, one of them coming from an independent source saying that she has seen the abusive committed and that was the ex wife that had committed it. She finally left my husband and took their children to be with another man, the children have also been party to domestic violence and as my husband tried to protect his children by going to Child Protective Services he was warned if he made any more complaints he would be put in jail for harassment, wow I ask you, is that fair? The children young as they were, told their daddy that mommy and her boyfriends were hitting them with belts, pots and pans and even had bottle rockets thrown at them and that they were scared, the CPS workers refused to help protect the children because she was their mother and she knew best and that in their eyes hitting small children with belts was totally acceptable.
I'm sorry but hitting a small child is never ok, hitting another person is never ok, yet mothers seem to get away with it all the time. We have become so gender biased in favor of women that we have lost touch with reality. Both sexes are capable of great atrocities, but only one of the sexes, men, is ever seen as capable. I can only hope that one day society wakes up and realizes that both men and women are equally responsible for their actions and should be prosecuted as such.
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