Giving domestic abuse the cold shoulder

What if we refused to turn a blind eye to the harmful attitudes and behaviours of abusers and instead turned a cold shoulder to them?

My guess is, things would change. Not overnight, but slowly, steadily and meaningfully. One of the most difficult things for victims is realising that no one seems to care what they are enduring or have endured. What they went through is seen as just a ‘toxic relationship’ rather than a targeted and sustained campaign of abuse. Most often, it’s written off as ‘a private matter’ or, if you’ve been told this by the police, ‘a civil matter’ which is professional code for ‘not our problem; we’re not getting involved’.

This campaign is about changing these attitudes in subtle ways. When we jump on the bandwagon of ‘it has nothing to do with me, I won’t get involved’, we are saying to victims: ‘this is your problem alone’ and it allows the abuser to avoid accountability.

Standing up to abuse doesn’t have to mean ‘getting involved’ with either the abuser or the victim directly, at all. Rather, it’s about refusing to participate in a system where the abuser feels safe and validated to continue abusing whilst victims feel unseen, unheard and may even be made to feel they are somehow deserving of the abuse.

I wish to be clear that this isn’t about casting abusers out of our society. I dream of a world where no one is cast out, but where everyone is held accountable for their actions. This is about challenging, in very subtle ways, the harmful attitudes and beliefs held by abusers, which are too often dismissed by society as just an eccentricity. Like the rest of us, abusers seek social acceptance. When they make disparaging comments about their partners, perhaps disguised as jokes, they are testing the waters to see how far they can safely push things.

So, how do we tell the difference between a funny joke and a cruel one? This is where your intuition kicks in. I think most of us know the line, or at least, have our own ‘lines’ that when crossed, give us the ‘ick’. It’s that ‘off feeling’ you get when a joke doesn’t quite land. “Don’t come around to our house for dinner, the missus will poison you,” could be a genuinely funny joke about someone’s wife (especially if told in the context of a particularly unfortunate culinary incident). But if it’s part of a long list of jokes based on how hopeless a woman is as a wife, mother or person generally, it loses its humour.

Sustained jokes like “she’s hopeless, isn’t she?” Or “she’s really let herself go, hasn’t she?” are probably never funny. Anything that shames a person’s choices such as what they choose to eat or wear or diminishes a person’s work achievements or hobbies (“some of us have real jobs”) are probably massive red flags. But I believe we all innately know this. All you have to do is follow your gut.

A rule of thumb if you’re still struggling is to NEVER laugh at jokes which rely on tearing down the intended target especially if they are already subject to a power imbalance (so jokes with a misogynist, racist, homophobic or transphobic basis etc.). If you feel comfortable calling someone out on it, do so, but not reacting at all is often just as powerful. Remember, they need your laughter for it to be a joke. When you don’t laugh, it’s no longer a joke, but an offensive comment.

Victims know that public put-downs disguised as jokes are one of the subtlest ways their abusers wield power. By criticising their appearance, behaviour or preferences in front of groups of people, it both humiliates them and shows them just how many people condone their abuser’s behaviour. It is designed to isolate the victim, to make them feel no one will ever step in to help them so why bother seeking help.

I’ll give you a personal example of a small but powerful interaction I observed between my abuser and a friend of his. One morning, my abuser telephoned a friend of his whom I had met for the first time the night before. He put his friend on loudspeaker so I could hear their conversation but the friend did not know he was on loudspeaker. My abuser asked him what he thought of my breasts. I was heavily pregnant at the time. My abuser’s friend, to his credit, did not take the bait. I could hear the awkwardness in his voice as he avoided that question and instead answered that I had a pretty face and seemed nice. Bravo to that friend. He took one small step in the right direction and we can all do the same.