Got a hat? I'll eat it

I don’t judge people who minimise my abuse. I don’t judge people who ask how I could have missed the signs. I don’t even judge people who think maybe I deserved it just a little bit because I was stupid enough to keep forgiving someone until it got so bad.

OK, maybe I do judge the ‘she deserved it’ crowd, because no one deserves to be abused, but I try really hard not to. Why? Because that person was me …once.

I have always believed women. I have always held space for women. From the moment I first learned what it was, I have never denied the insidious nature of domestic abuse or the profound systemic failings which sustain the environment necessary for it to flourish. But denial and minimisation are different animals, and I am just as guilty of minimising abuse (both my own and others’) as the next person.

What’s the difference, you ask?

Denial might include attitudes like this:

‘Men have a right to treat women that way,’

'She deserved to be abused’

‘She must be making it up.'

'If she were telling the truth she would have left sooner or at least reported it.’

Minimisation might include attitudes like this:

‘I believe her and no one deserves to be abused, but why didn’t she leave sooner or do something to help herself?’

'She is a mother, why didn’t she think about her children rather than staying silent and allowing them to be impacted too?’

‘I believe he treated her badly, but she’s got support from her family and friends, enough money to pay for lawyers, and enough education to understand what abuse is, so if she didn’t try to stop it, it makes me doubt how bad it was.’

‘Maybe it was just a toxic relationship and not actually abuse.’

Be honest, have you ever thought any of those things? I have.

Many of us even minimise our own abuse, at least at first, convincing ourselves that ‘he was just having a bad day’, ‘but we have good times too’ or ‘he didn’t hit me, so it’s not that bad. Maybe he can change.’  

It pains me to admit that I was once one of those who thought ‘it could never happen to me’ and that even if it did, I’d recognise it immediately, call it out and get that man out of my life faster than you could shout ‘radical feminist’.

Yet, I stayed. Not as long as many, but I stayed. I forgave. I hoped. I prayed it would all just go away, that I wouldn’t have to turn around to everyone in my life and admit I’d got it so badly wrong: that the same person I was raving about two minutes ago and with whom I was expecting a baby aged 43, was a dangerous abuser.

We must start challenging the harmful stereotypes we hold about what abuse, abusers and victims really look like (hint: we look like everyone else). It’s perfectly OK for doubts to creep in, for questions to form, for judgments to be made silently. But we can all challenge our own doubts, questions and judgments. We can all offer ourselves and others an alternative narrative of what might have happened if it leads to more compassion in that moment.

Instead of the above ideas about why a woman stayed silent or stayed at all, consider the other possibilities. We usually can never know the real reason, so assuming that the victim had a good reason is better than assuming she didn't as it makes us better allies.

Perhaps she couldn’t say anything because she was scared, or embarrassed, or because he’d threatened her or her children’s safety. Perhaps, she still hasn’t yet fully understood that what happened to her was abuse. Perhaps, she’s still in that cycle of ‘was it really that bad? Was I actually being abused?”. Maybe despite appearing to have so much social and financial support, she grew up in an abusive household which normalised her abuser’s behaviour and maybe she knows her own family will take her abuser's side not her own?

We can’t see into anyone else’s home let alone their head. So instead of judgment let’s choose compassion and care. You never know when it will be your turn to eat your own hat.