It’s a familiar story. Girl meets boy. Boy starts abusing girl. Boy cuts girl off from her family and friends and takes away any financial power she has, making it feel impossible for her to escape.

Dr. Ludy Green, author of Ending Domestic Violence Captivity: A Guide to Economic Freedom, knows the tale all too well. As a child, she saw how her mother became trapped in an abusive relationship. “She couldn’t leave the relationship because she couldn’t provide us with education, a comfortable home, and care in the house,” says Dr. Green. After the death of her mother, she left South America and immigrated to the U.S. to go to college. She ended up volunteering at My Sister’s Place, a women’s shelter in Washington, D.C., to help women overcome domestic violence.

Her volunteer work uncovered a disturbing pattern: Like her mother, these women felt that they couldn’t escape their situations because they didn’t have the means to support themselves. Not only had their abusers taken away their ability to feel safe and worthy, they had also taken away their ability to act with autonomy.

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This pattern came to be known as economic abuse, which is when abusers use money as a way to further shift the balance of power in their favor. That’s why, in 2001, after years of working and saving her money, Dr. Green founded Second Chance Employment Services, an organization that serves women at risk of financial abuse by helping them get jobs and learn about personal finance. It’s a rewarding line of work. Unfortunately, it’s also a necessary one.

“I meet people on a daily basis, and what I see is very devastating. It is a cancer on society, we need to combat it,” says Dr. Green. About 1 in 3 women will experience some form of domestic abuse at some point in their lives. And the rate is higher for certain demographics, like non-Hispanic Black women (43.7%), Native American and Alaskan Native women (46%), multi-racial, non-Hispanic women (53.8%), bisexual women (61%), and disabled women, who are 40% more likely to experience intimate partner violence than women without a disability. And where physical abuse exists, economic (or financial) abuse is usually there. It occurs in 94–99% of domestic violence cases. And like domestic abuse, financial abuse is contingent upon isolation and silence.

Money is a taboo subject in many cultures. And when personal finance is seen as a private matter, it’s more difficult to have healthy conversations about money, which perpetuates financial abuse. To make it harder for abusers to achieve that all-encompassing kind of control that leaves people feeling trapped by their circumstances, we need to remove the money taboo, and make finance more accessible and equitable for all.

Financial abuse is a slow, destructive burn. It often comes on gradually, and it can take many forms, like strict limitations on work or spending, outright seizure of earnings, using the other person’s credit without their knowledge, and more. The specifics may differ from case to case, but one thing remains the same — domestic abuse is about power and control, and economic abuse ensures the abuser has control over how the victim accesses and spends money. Over time, the results can be devastating.

“[Abusers] don’t just destroy a woman, they destroy the children, they destroy the whole family. When it starts, it may be small things. But by the time they open their eyes, they realize it was all a trick,” says Dr. Green.

Christine Hennigan, a certified financial planner and certified divorce financial analyst based out of West Chester, Pennsylvania, knows the impact of long-term financial abuse, too. After 10 years as a CFP, she added her second practice after seeing the devastating effects of legal strategy without financial strategy.

Hennigan recalls one client who was separated from her husband and living in the family home with their children one winter. “He waited till the night of a snowstorm and decided to shut off the heat and electricity. Her kids were in the next room saying, ‘are we poor now?’ [The house] was still in his name and he thought that would be a riot,” she says. “He wasn’t necessarily withholding or hiding money from her, but he was financially abusive. And the way he made her feel, and the way he made her kids feel about her… It was one of the worst nights of her entire life.”

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“In every group within our culture, domestic violence occurs. But those who are able to get out of those situations more readily are those who have economic power because they have more choices,” says Angela Schultz, program director at Redevelopment Opportunities for Women (ROW), which provides financial literacy services to women who’ve been impacted by domestic violence, poverty, and homelessness.

Part of the problem of financial abuse is that it’s difficult to detect. Many victims don’t even know it’s happening, and when they do realize it, they feel ashamed that they don’t know enough about money to get themselves out. ROW’s Economic Action Program (REAP) exists in part to repair the damage wrought by financial abuse, partially through classes that focus on starting a dialogue about finances in a safe, group setting populated by survivors and led by a group facilitator.

“A lot of people will come to the classes and they will not even recognize that they experienced some part of economic abuse,” says Schultz.

The classes are dependent on creating an atmosphere of trust — not only because participants come from abusive situations, but also because the topic at hand, while vital to the process of rebuilding, is treated as taboo in most societies.

“You don’t talk about how much you make, you don’t talk about your credit score. You’re not going to talk about abuse in the first place, so you’re not going to talk about your financial situation because that’s like a double layer,” explains Schultz.

Part of the problem of financial abuse is that it’s difficult to detect.
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In REAP classes, the group structure is designed to break down the barriers of isolation that abusers have built. Unlike the power structure employed by traditional financial literacy programs, which operate according to a teacher-student model, REAP classes empower participants by creating a level playing field and tapping into the strength that comes from community and shared experience.

“There’s a huge difference if [financial education is] delivered by someone who’s a banker versus a group facilitator,” says Schultz. “The facilitator is not there as the expert in the room. Everyone brings their skill set and knowledge to the table.”

This educational model subverts the experience of domestic abuse by giving financial power and autonomy back to the people who’ve been robbed of it. Money may seem secondary compared to the emotional impact of domestic violence, but it’s the number one factor in determining whether a survivor will have to go back to their abuser. And confronting that element of abuse is a vital part of the healing process.

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Money isn’t just a means to power, it is power. It dictates everything from the place you live and the food you eat to the education you get and opportunities you’re exposed to. Our culture of silence around money effectively cuts us off from that power by making it harder for us to have empowering conversations about this thing that is so vital to our lives. This limits our autonomy because without unhindered access to that power, we cannot freely make choices about how we live, how we relate to the world and how we move through it. Removing the money taboo is vital to ending domestic abuse.

But changes to cultural norms are always met with resistance. And the status quo has made navigating our financial lives within the context of the money taboo tricky. On one hand, speaking up about our salary can be detrimental if it’s in the context of a job interview. (A fact which several cities and states have recently recognized by banning such questions during interviews.) On the other hand, staying silent at work can perpetuate gender-, race-, and ability-based pay gaps between our peers and coworkers.

Our culture of silence around money makes it harder for us to have empowering conversations.
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But rather than walk the fine line between silence and disclosure, the cultural tendency is to shy away from the realities of our finances and keep quiet. Talking about your salary is still awkward, and invites scrutiny, comparison, and jealousy. Beyond that, finance itself can also be confusing, and there’s a social expectation that everyone has a certain level of financial literacy, which obscures the fact that most people have a hard time navigating money.

“Someone will come into my office and their body language is passive, apologetic, and embarrassed; they’re coming for help. I try to dispel that by reassuring them that they are the majority, not the minority,” says CFP Hennigan. “They think that all their girlfriends and all their colleagues at work have all their stuff together and understand everything. In reality they’re in the same boat. They just don’t realize it.”

In classifying finance as a private matter, we are robbed of the strength that comes from a collective knowledge base, and we are cut off from vital support.

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Abolishing the money taboo wouldn’t require full disclosure of every detail of our finances, like the specifics of our salary or the size of our retirement accounts. It’s about creating a society that allows people to ask for help, creating safe spaces for discussion, and demystifying financial topics, which are often shrouded by industry jargon.

“I think women in general should openly discuss finances and their concerns about finances more. I think it’s healthy to have general discussions about finances,” says Hennigan, adding: “There’s definitely a thirst for knowledge.”

In a way, the structure of our financial system mimics the tactics employed by abusers. The weapon of choice is language, which is used to shift the balance of power away from the masses toward select gatekeepers. This is, of course, by design. But that collective silence perpetuates this power imbalance and clears the way for both the wage gap and economic abuse.

We can remove the barrier of economic abuse — which is vital to the fight against domestic abuse — by speaking up, by sharing our knowledge, and by normalizing financial conversations. And for those who are caught up in the cycle of domestic violence, it could pave the way toward freedom.

“Regardless of how manipulated or controlled they feel about their situation or their finances, there is always a way out. There are professionals out there that can help,” says Hennigan. “If I had a dollar for every time a woman said, ‘I wish I had met you five or 10 years ago’ — it just breaks my heart. They’re not stuck, they’re not.”

There is a way out of financial abuse. The first step is talking about it.

Content warning: descriptions of emotional and physical abuse

When her husband held her over the balcony of their 16th-floor apartment, Natalia Tunikova knew fighting him off was a matter of life or death. Driven by desperation, she grabbed the first thing her hands could find on the kitchen table—a knife. In the process of fending him off, ultimately freeing herself, she stabbed him.

Reflecting on the history of her abuse, Tunikova, a 42-year-old lawyer and mother, said:

“At first he used to just slap me to ‘teach me a lesson.’ Each time it lasted longer. I would shake from the top of my head to my fingertips. I never tried to defend myself, I just froze. I couldn’t even shout. Before each attack, I would see his crazy eyes. Then he’d charge at me and grab my throat. That night I practically said goodbye to life.”

However, even though Tunikova managed to escape from her terrifying ordeal on the balcony, it turned out that she was far from free.

Dmitry, her attacker, called an ambulance, and the paramedics called the police—who proceeded to arrest the bruised and traumatized Tunikova. She was then detained for 48 hours before spending the following week in the hospital recovering from a head injury. Not only was her husband never arrested, the lawsuit Tunikova brought against him for abusing her was dismissed.

Meanwhile, Tunikova faced up to eight years in prison for fighting him off.

Not only was her husband never arrested, the lawsuit Tunikova brought against him for abusing her was dismissed.
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After a three-year-long legal battle, Tunikova was found guilty of causing serious bodily injury, using force in excess of the limits needed to defend oneself. She was sentenced to six months of correctional labor and forced to pay over $4000 as compensation to her abuser.

Unfortunately, Tunikova’s tale is far from unique.

Domestic violence is endemic in Russia, with an estimated absolute minimum of 40,000 women affected each year, and at least 12,000–14,000 women dying at the hands of their abusers annually—about 33 women per day, according to Russian government statistics. That’s 20 times the U.S. fatality rate. Worse, these official numbers are thought to be a very conservative estimate, since much of the abuse goes unreported.

According to the Moscow-based ANNA National Center for the Prevention of Violence, some 72% of women who sought assistance from a national helpline never reported their abuse to police. Worse still, many of the women who do report the abuse to authorities are simply sent back to their abusers, a function of authorities failing to take allegations seriously and the common cultural belief that domestic violence is a “private family matter.” Many women, in fact, shrug off domestic violence with the old Russian proverb, “If he beats you, it means he loves you.”

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The situation was already so bleak that in 2015 the United Nations took the step of stating its “concern” about the prevalence of domestic violence in Russia: “The state party has not taken sustained measures to modify or eliminate discriminatory stereotypes and negative traditional attitudes” that are “the root causes of violence against women.”

Given such a grim backdrop, it’s nearly impossible to believe that the Russian administration would make it easier for domestic violence to go unpunished. Yet, in February of last year, Russian president Vladimir Putin signed a law decriminalizing any violence that does not cause serious injury, defined as one that requires hospital treatment. Since then, beatings that leave bruises, scratches, or bleeding, but that do not cause broken bones or a concussion, are no longer a criminal offense. Now, perpetrators who are found guilty of such violence face only a minimal fine, up to 15 days’ administrative arrest, or compulsory community service. Criminal charges can only be pressed if there is a second beating within the same year.

The law was proposed by ultra-conservative lawmaker Yelena Mizulina in order to limit state meddling in the family and to “preserve the tradition of parental authority.” She told the Russian parliament that it’s ridiculous that a person could be branded a criminal for a “slap.” On another occasion, she stated publicly that women “don’t take offense when they see a man beat his wife” and that “a man beating his wife is less offensive than when a woman humiliates a man.”

The vote by Russia’s lower house of parliament on the legislation passed 380 to 3 before moving to the upper chamber of parliament, who also accepted the proposed legislation, before Putin signed it into law.

Beatings that leave bruises, scratches, or bleeding, but that do not cause broken bones or a concussion, are no longer a criminal offense.
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The softened approach to domestic abuse is part of the wave of conservatism that has swept through Russia since the fall of the officially atheist Soviet Union 25 years ago. The ideological vacuum created by the collapse of communism has been replaced by traditional conservative values; according to a 2017 Pew study, more than 70% of Russians identify as Orthodox, up from about 30% in 1991.

The increasingly close partnership between the Kremlin and the Orthodox Church holds Putin up as a protector of the traditional values of Russia, in the face of the “decadent” and “wild” values of the West.

Last year’s domestic violence legislation did, however, spark criticism—both abroad and in Russia. The British government, for instance, released an official statement calling the law “deeply disappointing” and held that it “sends the wrong message.” And while the Trump administration officially remained mum, the law was widely covered by American media.

As for Tunikova, she was shocked. “It was already very difficult for women to prosecute their abusers, now it’ll be practically impossible.”

The new law effectively put an end to the criminal case that Irina, a mother of two children, had spent more than a year putting together against her husband Alexei. The violence started in 2007 when Irina was pregnant with her first child, and it only continued to escalate—in severity and frequency—over the years. By the time her son was three, Alexei had started to punch him; when Irina intervened, the violence turned on her.

In 2014, while laying in the hospital recovering from being punched over 40 times, strangled, and dragged across her apartment floor by her hair — all in front of her children — she decided she had to get a divorce, or she could end up dead.

“I did everything right: I collected evidence and wrote my testimony, but with the new law, I could no longer make a criminal case. The only punishment he got was 120 hours of community service for two episodes of beating during the marriage,” Irina told me over the phone.

“The law sends a signal that Russia doesn’t take domestic violence seriously,” Alena Sadikova told me. She runs Kitezh, a shelter in Moscow for women and children that tends to be a last resort for those who can’t find protection elsewhere.

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Maria Dovytan, a Russian lawyer specializing in cases involving domestic violence, added that women don’t see any point in going to the police now: “Before, there were measures to prevent the violence and protect victims, which are now gone. These are the two things they most need. As a lawyer, I see that it’s much harder to protect victims of domestic violence today.”

The law sends a signal that Russia doesn’t take domestic violence seriously.
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But, there is one positive consequence of the law: It has sparked greater conversation about women’s rights in Russia. “More and more women are discussing domestic violence and telling their stories on social media. This is huge. Before, women were too afraid to speak,” confirmed Sadikova. Many women are using the hashtag #небоюсьсказать (#NotAfraidToSay) to share their experiences—and while it is not nearly as widely used as #MeToo is in the West, many activists see reason for hope.

Indeed, polls confirm that social awareness of the problem is rising. In a survey from September conducted by the state-funded VCIOM agency, 77% of respondents said that they are sure that many cases of domestic violence go unrecorded, and almost half doubted that victims receive adequate official assistance or support.

As for Tunikova, she currently lives in Moscow with her daughter, who recently qualified as a lawyer and is now working to defend women who’ve suffered from Russia’s scourge of domestic violence — despite the path to justice being steeper than ever.

More than half of all female homicide victims in the United States are killed by their intimate partner. On June 8, 2013, my mother became a part of this statistic.

In one defining moment, my father, with full consciousness, shot multiple bullets into my mother’s chest. Even as she lay there dead, he kept shooting. As is the case for so many, the murder followed years of abuse.

As someone working in the domestic violence advocacy field, I want to be able to share my experience, to educate people and push for crucial change. But as the daughter of Libyan Muslim immigrants to the United States, I have often felt the need to show caution.

I want to prevent, to as great of an extent as possible, perpetuating damning stereotypes about Muslim men and women.

As a Muslim woman, I am often faced with overt Islamophobic aggressions — and these often come from my fellow domestic violence advocates. In my first month working at a shelter in the Bay Area, an advocate remarked that a young Egyptian Muslim mother’s suicidal tendencies reminded her of ISIS suicide bombers. Another time, when the shelter hosted a faith conference on domestic violence, I inquired whether any Muslim faith leaders would be a part of the conversation — and one of the facilitators of the event stated that she had not thought to invite any. She then asked me whether Muslim women are even allowed to talk.

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Lila Abu-Lughod, an Arab-American anthropologist who has written extensively on Orientalism as it pertains to Muslim women, expresses how the West has been obsessed with Muslim women and their perceived oppression since 9/11. In her exploration of the Western image of Muslim women and Islam, Abu-Lughod cites a “moral crusade” that has successfully positioned Muslim women as submissive and in need of saving, and Muslim men as spectacularly violent and patriarchal. I remained silent about my father’s actions out of a fear of lending legitimacy to these racist tropes.

In the wake of my mother’s death, I became enraged — at my community, at my father, and at myself. My experiences with racism and Islamophobia as a North African Muslim girl growing up in post-9/11 America, amplified by my mother’s visibly Muslim identity, reinforced in me the need to protect my community.

For a considerable part of my life, Islamophobia informed my mother’s silence, and mine.

About those stereotypes.

It’s true that Muslim women experience abuse at the hands of their intimate partners — however, the same holds true for women in the West. Nordic countries, for instance — despite being some of the most gender-equal countries in the world — still suffer disproportionately high rates of intimate partner violence. In the European Union, the average rate of the lifetime prevalence of intimate partner violence is 22%. In Sweden, the rate is 28%; in Finland, 30%; and in Denmark, 32%. In the United States, one in four women will suffer severe violence at the hands of their intimate partners in their lifetime. (These numbers closely mirror a survey of Muslims in the U.S. that found that 31% reported having experienced intimate partner abuse.)

I remained silent about my father’s actions out of a fear of lending legitimacy to racist tropes.
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What is unique is the presence of distinct cultural norms that make it especially difficult for Muslim women in the U.S. to report abuse or seek help. Ruksana Ayyub, a researcher on domestic violence, conducted a survey within the South Asian Muslim community and found that at least one in four women were dealing with domestic violence. Ayyub notes, however, that the numbers are probably much higher.

What the American populace is most often impervious to is the ways in which Islamophobia — through surveillance programs, incessant negative portrayals of Arabs and Muslims in mainstream media, and excessive news coverage of crimes committed by Muslims — has acted to reinforce and proliferate the abuse that is suffered by Muslim women at the hands of their intimate partners. Because of Islamophobia, Muslim women are encouraged to be silent about their abuse so as to not contribute to the further demonization of their faith and communities.

My community’s subsequent response to my mother’s death, or lack thereof, revealed how this can manifest. My mother Nadia, like most other Muslim immigrants to the United States, had her strongest roots at the mosque. She was beloved in our community, known for her exceptional cooking and shrewdness. But though her funeral brought together people that I had not seen in over a decade, celebrating her and her life, not once did anyone blame my father for what he did. Everyone wrote off his choice to kill my mother as a psychological illness, as a whisper from the devil, ignoring a reality that had been building up for years prior. Denial made the reality a bit easier to bear on each side — as a community, and as a targeted group in the United States.

Similarly, my mother, strong as she was, harbored reservations about disclosing her abuse to those within the Muslim community and outside it. I have inherited these same reservations from her, as there is a very real fear that my mother’s murder will be blamed on our culture and faith rather than on a culture of patriarchy and violence — a culture which America is hardly exempt from.

There is a very real fear that my mother’s murder will be blamed on our culture and faith rather than on a culture of patriarchy and violence .
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This silence is further compounded by the fact that Muslim women who are victims of abuse in America lack options when it comes to seeking help. As our places of worship continue to be surveilled, and racial profiling remains widespread in airports, law enforcement is deeply mistrusted. In New York, for example, the Police Department’s Intelligence Division has overseen a surveillance program since at least 2002 that involves mapping predominantly Muslim communities throughout New York City, providing photo and video surveillance of mosques, and keeping an intelligence database on thousands of innocent New York Muslims.

Even domestic violence centers specifically designed to help those in need often fail to adequately serve Muslim women, thanks to a lack of cultural education and training among advocates. In a study published in Journal of Social Work Research and Evaluation, an overwhelming 46.7% of Arab women who were victims of intimate partner violence agreed or strongly agreed that there were not any domestic violence programs or services that were established to cater to the particular needs of Arab immigrant women.

Asra Milani, a Canadian researcher on Muslim women domestic violence victims, expressed how Muslim clients seeking help from shelters may harbor feelings of suspicion or uncertainty in the presence of domestic violence advocates. Furthermore, Milani states that Muslims who are in need of mental health services “may be reluctant not only to seek services, but to express fears and problems in their lives created by Islamophobia.”

If Muslim women facing intimate partner violence cannot be comfortable in places established explicitly to assist abused women, then there is little faith that there is any place else for them.

Muslim women are constantly othered and dehumanized, their narratives fabricated in ways that intend to rob them of sympathy and needed actions to create change.

Perhaps what has infuriated me most since my mother was killed is the fact that no one calls what claimed her life by its name. No one says that it was patriarchy that killed her. No one talks about domestic violence as a public health epidemic. No one cares to break the silence around domestic violence in the Muslim community, even in the face of such a personal loss. No one seeks to draw connections between patriarchal indoctrination and my mother being brutally murdered by her husband.

No one talks about domestic violence as a public health epidemic.
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Though it is true that all Muslims in the U.S. are deeply affected by Islamophobia, Muslim women continue to suffer the greatest loss: loss of agency, loss of power, and loss of life. There is also a grave cost to Muslim communities when voicing issues is discouraged. If Muslim women are to be vocal about their abuse, the inimical culture of Islamophobia cannot exist. Islamophobia informs the silence of abused Muslim women; that silence, in turn, is killing us.

There is a price to pay if we speak out. There is a price to pay if we do not. But if there is any prospect of saving our lives, we must know that our silence will not save us. Central to our livelihoods is that the culture of Islamophobia be dismantled. Without this, Muslim women lose access to the services that exist for abused women. Without this, Muslim women will, unjustly, continue to choose between protecting their faith and communities, or protecting themselves.

Nour Naas is at the beginning of a project which seeks to lend a platform to marginalized women, with a particular focus on Muslim women, who have experienced intimate partner violence. If you are interested in learning more about it or becoming a participant, you can contact Nour directly at dvpinquiries@gmail.com.

Adapted from Wikimedia Commons + flickr/BrickinNick

Survivors of family and intimate partner violence adopt many strategies for self-preservation, both with and without conscious intent. Two strategies I adopted in the past were numbing myself with alcohol and drugs, which was not very effective, and volunteering with battered women’s service organizations, which both educated and healed me.

In the 1970s, following my escape from violence at the hands of my adoptive parents and, later, my high school boyfriend, I also worked to prevent future abuse by closely monitoring cues, like the heaviness of a footfall or the tone of a voice.

Back then, I didn’t know I was suffering from PTSD, a diagnosis that didn’t enter the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders until 1980, and wasn’t applied to survivors of child abuse and intimate partner violence (IPV) until the 1990s. Today, I recognize my response as “hypervigilance,” a common symptom of PTSD that’s described as the “experience of being constantly tense and ‘on guard,’” acting “on high alert in order to be certain danger is not near.”

The Many Faces Of Trauma

Hypervigilance wasn’t the only trauma symptom I experienced — I also endured recurring nightmares, intense anger, and startle responses to movements near my head — but it’s one I’ve been thinking about a lot lately, in the context of our current political climate.

It’s not a stretch to say Trump behaves similarly to abusers. Many characteristics of batterers — grandiosity, alignment with traditional gender roles, using sex as an act of aggression, blaming others for their actions, denying or minimizing their own bad behavior, losing their tempers explosively, insisting on control — aptly apply to the leader of the free world.

In turn, I’ve seen many respond to Trump — and, for that matter, to other politicians acting in abusive ways — with the same kind of alertness I adopted while experiencing PTSD as a survivor of abuse. Only now, instead of taking place IRL, this hypervigilance plays out on social media.

Soon after the 2016 Republican victory, psychologists began talking about “Post-Election Stress Disorder”(PESD) — a way to describe the anxiety and depression that affected many after Trump ascended to the White House, accompanied by symptoms like headaches, lost sleep, and stomache pain.

My own anxiety began during the brutal election process, and has not abated since. And in my state of despair, I’ve often turned to social media.

As the election drew near, I checked multiple feeds for news each morning, and then each night. Every new misogynist revelation, every new racist pronouncement, left me enraged or numb. I felt fearful. I joined secret Facebook groups for survivors of domestic violence, where I read other women’s posts about being triggered by political rhetoric and disclosures of abusive behavior. My morning writing practice fizzled out in favor of huddling under the quilts with my phone, tapping at apps that kept me informed. My obsessive social-media-and-news-outlet-checking persisted post-election. After the inauguration, I kept checking with renewed diligence, even flushing spare minutes at my day job down the Twitter wormhole.

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By March of 2017, knowing my behavior was unhealthy, I resolved to keep at least my time outdoors screen-free. Walking my dogs in the woods, I’d tripped over a tree root while checking the New York Times on my phone.

My compulsive checking had reached a level that felt familiar; I was behaving the same way I did as a child in an abusive home, and as a teenager in an abusive intimate relationship. Walking on eggshells. Staying alert to mood changes in the abusers. Exercising hypervigilance. Back then, I hung on to the fantasy that if I could predict violence, I could prevent the next black eye, broken nose, split lip. Now, I was on alert for all the ways the government planned to abuse me and other women and marginalized people.

I published a short blog post, and later a poem, about the parallels between intimate, personal violence and the politically-induced terror in my [non] writing life. More women than I would have thought responded to the two pieces, saying something along the lines of “Yes, me too.”

One woman, a survivor of extreme violence, “understood instantly that having an openly avowed abuser elected to the presidency would give license to the closeted abusers everywhere.” Afraid to leave her house after the election, she relied on social media for support from women who were expressing similar fears, and as a safe place where she could monitor political developments. Today, she uses social media to stay connected with allies, and to keep tabs on political bullies and their agendas. “I would not say that the terror has abated,” she wrote to me in May 2017, “but that I have come to live with it, as I did in childhood.” Her hypervigilance continues.

Abusers and batterers can snap at any moment, which is perhaps the cause of hypervigilance among survivors. Karen Sheets, a social worker who teaches life skills in a Displaced Homemaker Program in Florida, calls it “crisis mode.” Her program frequently serves women escaping violence, and collaborates closely with the local domestic violence agency. Sheets, herself an IPV survivor, says that women can become addicted to crisis and continue to act in crisis mode long after the abusive situation is behind them.

Can post-election anxiety end for anyone when the president keeps the hits coming as fast as he has?

Being on such high alert as a PTSD sufferer can be exhausting, and in many ways detrimental to mental and emotional health — but it can also function as an adaptive strategy, helping one to make snap decisions under stress and avoid future harm. Studies of vigilant and hypervigilant decision-making often privilege the vigilant method, which relies on fact-gathering and consideration of multiple options. But many researchers have concluded that being hypervigilant is more effective in high-stress situations when the stakes are high. One study even found that abuse survivors in a state of hypervigilance walked in a way that reduced their perceived vulnerability, and concluded that this, in theory, would reduce the potential for harm.

There are, it seems, particular benefits to hypervigilance in the context of our current political climate. While IPV is often unpredictably explosive, institutionalized violence against American women, like institutionalized violence against African-Americans, is the result of policies and ideas that evolve over years. We need to monitor any development, alteration, or affirmation of those policies and ideas by the government so we can make decisions under stress and avoid abuse. With social media — the 24/7 panopticon — we can monitor threats, but at a safe distance, and we can do it obsessively.

How My Abusive Father Helped Me Understand Trump Supporters

At its best, this heightened social media altertness can also manifest as tangible action. This summer, for instance, the hypervigilance of millions of Americans on Twitter and Facebook played a key role in thwarting GOP efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act. It’s too soon to quantify social media’s role in keeping citizens informed and in giving citizens platforms to exert pressure on officials — but the proliferation and popularity of voter-action sites like 5 Calls and Indivisible since the 2016 election demonstrate the existence of a demand for ways to use social media to both monitor danger and take action in response.

The Pew Research Center, in a study released in October 2016, found that nearly one-third of politically engaged users believe social media platforms allow them to get involved with issues that matter to them. Meanwhile, the anecdotal evidence is on your feeds and mine. Social media allowed me to track the status of proposed anti-ACA legislation, it gave me access to inspiration through posts from ADAPT members, and it offered me more ways to contact elected officials and make my voice heard. It gave that to me, and millions of others.

We’re not social media obsessives — we’re hyper-vigilantes who aim to enforce the principles of democracy.

In my nightmares, and in my obsessive following of both progressive and conservative social media feeds, I’m re-living the terror and anxiety of my teenage years on a macro level. America has long been awash in racist and misogynist violence. The recent election has validated and further normalized that violence. Our government seeks to put the health and safety of the majority of Americans at risk: women, immigrants, gay, lesbian, and trans people, people with disabilities, people living in poverty, and anyone who doesn’t look white. It’s much too much like the not-so-old days, when men were legally entitled to rape and beat their wives, when parents could abuse their children with impunity, when communities and governments sanctioned such behavior and excused it as “private family business.”

Abuse Survivors Speak Out About Being Triggered By Trump

In the face of all this, I have mixed feelings about whether to stop my relentless checking of Facebook, The Washington Post, The New York Times, or Charles M. Blow’s Twitter feed. Walking on eggshells doesn’t guarantee that the sleeping monster won’t wake up. Checking the news 20 times a day won’t, by itself, prevent the next police shooting of an unarmed Black teenager, or violence against immigrants, or the abrogation of women’s control over their own bodies. But don’t all those stories need to be told and re-told, and read and heard and analyzed? After all, if I hadn’t been checking, I might have missed Paul Ryan’s response to Kevin McCarthy’s assertion that Putin pays Trump. “No leaks, all right? This is how we know we’re a real family here,” he said. “What’s said in the family stays in the family.”

That sounds a lot like the 20th century rhetoric of abuse that enabled and excused paternalistic violence against women and children. The victim in me wants to say those days are over. But the watcher in me says pay attention. To everything. Every single word.

The following letter was delivered in court in the case against Karah’s former abuser. She says it was inspired by the bravery of the Stanford rape victim. Content warning: domestic violence.

In Judith Herman’s now foundational text on trauma, she outlines the process of psychological domination. The final stage in this process is known as total surrender, where the victim becomes utterly complicit in their own abuse. Herman explains the abuser’s mindset, with an Orwellian quote:

“We are not content with negative obedience, nor even with the most abject submission. When finally you surrender to us, it must be of your own free will. We do not destroy the heretic because he resists us; so long as he resists us we never destroy him. We convert him, we capture his inner mind, we reshape him. We burn all evil and all illusion out of him; we bring him over to our side, not in appearance, but genuinely, heart and soul.”

It is necessary for the abuser to feel justified for the continuation of the abuse cycle.

During the abuse, I thought of nothing but trying to calm you down and save you from the inevitable consequences of your actions. Calling the police was about the farthest thing from my mind except that you kept repeatedly mocking me, highlighting your knowledge of our shared convictions against the justice system and the prison industrial complex. Instead, I tried begging you to stop, being sweet and soothing, yelling or acting angry, trying to pretend to be asleep, and even playing dead at certain points in the hope, not that I wouldn’t die, but that you would not get into trouble. Back then, my devotion to you was so complete, I would have gladly died if it would lessen your distress. The many times that night that you strangled me to the point of unconsciousness, what kept me alive was knowing how much more trouble you would be in if I died. In the end, instinct and the will to protect you allowed me to fight for my life.

During the abuse, I thought of nothing but trying to calm you down and save you from the inevitable consequences of your actions.
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When the police arrived, you politely let them in and surrendered yourself. Reports described you as calm and collected. My memory of those initial moments is fuzzy, but, I clearly remember screaming and crying hysterically, terrified out of my wits of any physical contact with the officers, hiding in a corner of my bed pulling out chunks of my hair that you had ripped out and trying repeatedly to pull my ripped tank top up to avoid being exposed. Decidedly uncollected and not a bit calm. Police snapped photo after photo of my injuries — my face, neck, back and even the inside of my mouth because you had shoved your fingers so far down my throat trying to muffle my screams that it was bleeding. After about 25 minutes, I was finally allowed to put on pants and find my eyeglasses, which, as you know, I am nearly legally blind without, making the experience all the more terrifying as I could not gauge the officers reactions or facial expressions toward me. Through this process, I repeatedly defended you to the officers.

How My Abusive Father Helped Me Understand Trump Supporters

From the moment the police arrived, despite being in a state of shock, and through the days and months that followed, I went around being the rabid, loyal defender I had to become after years of lying for you, hiding and justifying your abuse to myself and others. I truly felt like my life depended on your safety and protection from the consequences of your actions. As a fellow indigenous person, I also believed, like many native women I know, it was my job to protect you from state violence.

Entirely enmeshed, entirely dependent on you for what morsels of emotional validation you allowed me, I did what anyone that far gone would do. The prosecutor can tell you that I aggressively defended you, minimized and omitted many of your actions that night and the many nights that preceded it. I investigated effective defenses, poured out enormous amounts of emotional support and labor on your behalf and even hired someone to be a support person for you since I could not be in the same ways due to the no contact order. I researched and vetted your DV treatment facility and made sure you would be allowed to continue to see your counselor because I believed him to be culturally responsive.

As a fellow indigenous person, I also believed, like many native women I know, it was my job to protect you from state violence.
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All I could feel was the unnaturally strong attachment which occurs through a process known as “trauma bonding,” which often occurs when a victim is brought to the brink of death through strangulation or other means repeatedly and then at the last moment their abuser allows them to live. The abuser simultaneously becomes assailant, and benevolent savior. Despite seeing a chiropractor 2 to 3 times a week for several months to correct the injuries to my neck and back I sustained when you thrashed me around the bed and dragged me around the apartment by my hair, trauma bonding ensured I could think of only one thing; how to get back to you.

It is difficult to describe the physical pain that a victim, that I, went through when a trauma bond is broken. Physical sensations of unmitigated impending doom, as if I had just slipped off a cliff and was falling to my certain death dominated my days and nights for months. This was, I discovered, only the beginning of my suffering.

After about 5 months, I heard vicariously that you had come back to the top of your abuse cycle, as you had time and time again. You began to blame me for your abusive behavior, paint me as the primary aggressor, exaggerate your injuries, obsess over or completely invent whatever petty offenses you believe I visited on you during the course of our relationship, become self-obsessed, lack empathy and cognitively distort events until they were unrecognizable from the original occurrence — what you had previously so vehemently apologized for had suddenly never occurred, or was my fault anyway. It was the naming and realization of this that allowed the wrongness and severity of what you did to me to sink into my body little by little. That, and the fact that after years, I was finally safe.

For two months now, the full weight of what my body and brain endured that night has hit me full force. I can still feel what you did to me that night; not like it’s emotionally “distressful” but like right now, standing here in my body I can feel the acute sensations of being strangled, drowned and a sharp pain in my neck that never goes away. I never told the police that as you strangled me on the living room floor while you simultaneously poured soda water onto my face; that was the single most terrifying moment for me because, as I discovered, while being strangled slowly to unconsciousness actually isn’t that painful, drowning is incredibly painful.

I am unsure if the police got pictures of the living room that night, but if they had, they would have seen a squished up 42 ounce bottle of Crystal Geyser Berry flavored water at the entrance to the living room — that was why that was there. When I have flashbacks, which are frequent, that is the moment I most often return to. I am not sure how you water board someone in self-defense.

Because my job provides no paid time off or sick leave, I find myself feeling like I am drowning or cannot breathe in the middle of running groups, also going to the gym, seeing friends, or literally whatever I am doing. What you did to me is never not with me. Your hands around my throat are never not with me. The pain from being punched in the vulva and vagina repeatedly while you screamed “this is mine” is never. Not. With me.

Each day I endure the full gambit of trauma symptoms. Hypervigilance, anxiety, agitation, sensations of dread and impending doom, sleep disturbances, lack of a baseline of calm and comfort, tension, neck pain, headaches, flashbacks, nightmares, gastrointestinal disturbances, trust difficulties, fear of betrayal, relational issues, irrational fears and intolerance for change among other things. All of this suffering because in your words to the officers that night, “you needed to prove a point.”

What you did to me is never not with me.
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I know this phase won’t last forever, though I am told it can last for many years. But I will never be the same. You have caused me irreparable harm. We are here together today because each of us knows the truth about who you are and what you’ve done, no matter what you claim to the judge. There is another woman, who could not be here today, your ex-wife, who was able to detail her own horrendous story of the physical and emotional abuse she AND your pre-school aged son endured at your hands. You are a serial abuser of women and children. Women are sacred. You have violated and betrayed me, your tribe, and the beliefs of the people. Take responsibility and end your suffering. Find peace in honesty.

All I ever wanted was your healing and happiness. I listened to you, protected you. I thought if I could give you the pure love and kindness you lacked growing up, if I could be good to you long enough, you would stop hurting me and realize that I wasn’t worthless, as you insisted time and time again.

But I am free now. After years of prioritizing your every emotional, spiritual, and physical need, I refuse to give you any more of me. I won’t protect you anymore. I will leave you with some of the words you used to terrorize me the night of your arrest:

“No one is coming to save you, this time.”

This letter originally appeared on Wear Your Voice

Men, You Can Survive Without Us — Please Try

Unsplash/Alan Labisch

By Ijeoma Oluo

Men — straight, cisgender men. We need to talk. I’ve been concerned about you for quite some time. You’ve been acting out. The yelling, the name-calling, the violent outbursts — I’ve been watching with keen interest and I’ve finally understood the pain and fear at the root of it. And I need you to understand something: You can survive without us.

Not only can you survive without us women, you can thrive. You can be successful, happy, fulfilled — all without us. Nobody likes rejection — it sure does sting. But you are so much more than your relationship to us.

I know that you’ve been told that your identity is tied to being able to have sex with us, to provide for us, to keep us in close proximity to you at all times. And you’re scared, because all that you’ve been told that you need for your manhood is at risk right now. We are refusing to have your babies, we are having babies without you. We are saying no to sex when we don’t want it. We are earning our own money. We are running for president.

Some men are even beginning to adapt their definition of manhood to fit this new reality — cheering on these women who are withholding the gender-based purpose that you’ve built your life around. I know that must feel like a betrayal. I understand why you call them “cucks” — if they redefine manhood without the ultimate goal of tying a woman to them, what would that say about your life’s work?

But I’m here to tell you that you are so much more than that. You are so much more than your desire to catch and keep us. Your manhood will still stand if we refuse to sleep with you. Your days will still have purpose if you spend your evenings with friends instead of a wife. Your job will still be as fulfilling if the women in your life do not require your income to survive. Your buildings will not crumble if we are not stuck in your kitchens. You do not need our love if you love yourself.

Bearing the sort of crushing fear and anxiety you’re currently experiencing is no way to live. It causes depression, it fuels hate-filled MRA blogs, terrifying YouTube videos, thousands of Twitter troll accounts. This sort of fear causes grown men to spend their days anonymously telling us that we are cunts whom they hope are raped to death.

Is this really what you wanted to grow up to be?

I want you to understand that you don’t need us, and that you should get used to living a life not defined by how closely you can bind us to you. Because your fear of living without us is literally killing us. When you shoot us for not giving you our phone numbers, when you stab us for breaking up with you. When you force us to have your children, when you force your bodies on us, when you demand that we make a low enough salary to make us financially dependent on you, and then you beat us to ensure that we know that all we are is yours. When you shoot into crowds of us because we rejected you in college, when you kill us and our children when we try to escape you.

All of this fear that you cannot survive without us is leaving so many of us dead.

What bound us to you was circumstance — circumstance that you created. But what bound you to us was fear. And as we break our bonds of circumstance, you face an even harder task: breaking free of the prison of your own minds that says that you stand on nothing if you do not stand on our necks. That without us underfoot, you will fall into the abyss.

But I’m the mother of two boys, and I see in them the freedom that boys have before the expectations of manhood set in. I see how their confidence rises on their own achievements, and not on their superiority over the female gender. I see how they can enjoy friends and family and feel loved without feeling the need to bind the love of a woman to them. I see the joy of a life before they are told that their success can only be measured by power over another. To them, love is not yet a harem. And I want to protect that for them, and for you. I know that you too were once nothing more than humanity and possibility, and that it was enough.

It still is enough, if you’ll let it be.

Looking For A Comments Section? We Don’t Have One.

]]> https://theestablishment.co/trump-warren-and-the-dehumanization-of-native-women-1772cbca48c1/ Mon, 08 Aug 2016 22:01:37 +0000 https://theestablishment.co/?p=7740 Read more]]> The onslaught of racist and colonizing imagery has been endless.

Since taking center ring of the 2016 Republican presidential circus, Donald Trump has accosted many of his detractors — from women and People Of Color, to Muslims and Disabled people. There has been much criticism from both sides of the aisle about the GOP nominee’s offensive behavior — but virtual silence regarding his repeated racist and misogynistic attacks on Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren’s claims to the Cherokee and Delaware Nations.

And, per usual, it’s Native women who are paying the ultimate price.

Warren’s claims to Native ancestry first debuted in the public consciousness during her 2012 bid for the Massachusetts U.S. Senate seat, when they were unearthed by her opponent, the incumbent Senator Scott Brown. Apparently, throughout the course of her law career, Warren had claimed that she was Cherokee and Delaware. Those claims, however, were revealed to be little more than family lore and the racist stereotype of “high cheekbones.”

At no point in her life has Warren participated in tribal government, cultural activities, or advocated on behalf of Native peoples while serving as the Chair of the Congressional Oversight Panel for the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) or in the Senate.

Per usual, it’s Native women who are paying the ultimate price.
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Warren is not a citizen of any of the Cherokee or Delaware Nations. Rebecca Nagle, Cherokee and Founder and Co-Director of FORCE: Upsetting Rape Culture, told me during an interview:

“For me, my Native identity is my tribal citizenship; I’m a citizen of the Cherokee Nation. It’s who my family is. It’s who my grandma is. It’s who my community is, which is one of the reasons I’m critical of Elizabeth Warren. I think it’s a very interesting way to be Native, to just be Native alone without connection to Native community.”

Never missing an opportunity to bully someone, Trump has taken up Brown’s campaign to expose Warren’s false claims to Native heritage. He has repeatedly referred to Warren as “Pocahontas” and “the Indian” (not to mention “goofy” and “ineffective”).

Despite having Nicole Robertson, a Cree woman, tell him point blank, “That’s very offensive,” he has persisted with this abusive name-calling, going as far as to say that he calls her Pocahontas because “she’s the least productive Senator.”

Howie Carr, conservative radio talk show host and Trump supporter, referred to Warren as “Wonder Squaw” in the Boston Herald before opening with a mimicked Native war cry at a Maine rally for Trump this past June. (There have been numerous derogatory memes of Warren made by Trump supporters.)

In short? The onslaught of racist and colonizing imagery has been endless. Even one of Warren’s supporters obtained the domain rights to Pocahontas.com, which redirects to her campaign page.

Despite all of this, Warren has not addressed the racism and sexism behind Trump’s attacks on Native women via her. Nor has Warren acknowledged the concerns of Native people, in particular the Cherokee or Delaware, when we have expressed our pain and anger over her false claims to us.

The fact that Warren, a white woman, believes she has the right to claim Native nations when it suits her is, in turn, a form of colonization of Native women. As a result, she has been an active agent in our harm at the hands of non-Native men, such as Trump — and that harm is severe.

For one, Trump has completely erased the plights we face as a people due to colonization and racism. Natives’ rates of higher education are the lowest in the nation — only 18.5% have a Bachelor’s degree. Rates of unemployment are also staggeringly high, with the Bureau of Indian Affairs defined Navajo Region faring the worst at 35.2–37%.

The fact that Warren, a white woman, believes she has the right to claim Native nations when it suits her is, in turn, a form of colonization of Native women.
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And with his continued use of racist and fetishized imagery, Trump has further dehumanized a people who have suffered — and continue to suffer — a literal and cultural genocide. Most pointedly, his dehumanization is continuing an epidemic of abuse. Put bluntly: One of the greatest dangers to a Native woman’s life is a non-Native man. Such a brutal reality makes Trump’s comments all the more despicable.

Native women suffer the highest rates of violence of any racial group in the U.S. According to the National Institute of Justice 2010 Findings From the National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey, more than one in three (39.8%) American Indian and Alaskan Native women have experienced violence in the last year and more than four in five (84.3%) have experienced violence in their lifetime. More than one in two (56.1%) Native women have experienced sexual assault in their lifetime.

Pointedly, the vast majority of this violence is interracial, which is an anomaly in the U.S. Ninety-six percent of Native women reported that their sexual assaults were interracial, whereas 91% of non-Hispanic white women reported their assaults were of the same race. The numbers for interracial attacks are similar for every type of violence that Indigenous women in the U.S. face: domestic violence, sexual trafficking, stalking, and murder. On some reservations, Native women are murdered at 10 times the national average.

(It’s important to note that these statistics only reflect American Indian and Alaskan Native women, which does not include Native Hawaiians, who have their own unique struggles as a result of colonialism.)

With his continued use of racist and fetishized imagery, Trump has further dehumanized a people who have suffered — and continue to suffer — a literal and cultural genocide.
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Trump’s behavior has only added fuel to the fire of the colonialist and misogynistic non-Native men who violate and kill Native women, while also furthering the American public’s racist stereotypes of the “squaw.” When asked why he calls Warren “Pocahontas,” he replied: “It’s because she’s a nasty person, a terrible Senator, and it drives her crazy.”

By this logic, the public is left to assume that being called a Native woman is an insult because being a Native woman is disgusting and deserving of punishment. It is this very mindset and messaging that intensifies the dehumanization and violence we face.

A History Of Violence

Madonna Thunder Hawk, a member of the Oohenumpa band of the Cheyenne River Sioux Nation, Co-Founder of WARN (Women of All Red Nations), and current Tribal Liaison for the Lakota People’s Law Project, explained during our interview:

“Violence against Native women is a historical thing that goes way back to the invasion that first started on the east coast. It’s part of who money people are, especially the men. They’re brought up in that culture, the culture of money and greed. They could say and do whatever they feel like saying and doing. It started then.”

Indeed, a series of oppressive policies have contributed to the bloodshed that Native women have historically experienced and still currently face. Most notably, perhaps, was the 1978 Supreme Court case Oliphant v. Suquamish Tribe.

Oliphant stripped the sovereign rights of tribal governments to prosecute non-Natives who commit crimes on our lands. Mark Oliphant, a white man, assaulted a tribal officer on tribal land. He felt that he shouldn’t be tried for his crime by the local tribal government, however, since he wasn’t Native. The Supreme Court ruled against the Suquamish Nation and sovereignty, and in turn essentially legalized non-Native-perpetrated violence against Natives. The U.S. government, once again, declared open hunting season on Native women, children, and men.

A series of complex federal policies have also stripped tribes of their sovereignty, such that the reporting of sexual assaults varies based on the location of the tribe within the U.S. The FBI or local law enforcement agencies have jurisdiction over sexual assault, murder, disappearance, trafficking, and child abuse (and a range of other crimes) by non-Natives, but they very rarely arrest or prosecute in these cases.

Under the federal 1968 Indian Civil Rights Act, tribal courts have the right to prosecute Natives for crimes committed on our lands, but not for more than a fine of $3,000 and one year in jail. Not only does this further strip tribes of our sovereign rights to govern ourselves and our land, but given that 96% of sexual assaults are perpetrated by non-Native men, it does very little to end violence against Native women.

The U.S. criminal justice system is also entirely different from the traditional ways in which women sought justice within tribes; on a cultural level, sending an abuser to prison may not feel like justice to an Indigenous woman.

In 2013, the federal government reauthorized the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA). Through this policy, the government continued its legacy of giving with one hand and taking with the other. VAWA 2013 allowed federally recognized tribes in the continental U.S. and the Metlakatla Indian Community of the Annette Island Reserve in Alaska to prosecute non-Native domestic abusers and those that broke protection orders.

Yet prosecution for sexual assault, murder, trafficking, and child abuse were still off the table. The government also dictated how the jurisdictional process must be conducted and gave non-Native abusers protections that Natives don’t often receive in U.S. courts.

Defendants were given the right to petition the federal courts to challenge tribal convictions, to stay detention, and to a trial by a jury that does not “systematically” exclude non-Natives. It wasn’t until President Obama signed into law the repeal of section 910 on December 18, 2014 that all Alaskan tribes had the 2013 VAWA protections afforded to them.

When A Violent History And The Presidential Election Collide

In his 1993 testimony before the Congressional Subcommittee on Native American Affairs, Trump made multiple inflammatory and disparaging remarks regarding the Connecticut-based Mashantucket Pequots, including a claim that the Pequots “don’t look like Indians to me.” If that wasn’t derogatory enough, he doubled down on his racism, insisting that “organized crime is rampant on reservations,” an accusation that is completely unfounded.

He then went on to say that “there’s no way an Indian Chief is going to tell ‘Joey Killer’ to please get off his reservation.” On this he is correct; because of Oliphant, a litany of existing policy, and the continuing onslaught of new legislation that we are drowning in, we can’t tell the white, raping “Joey Killer” to get off our land.

Nagle, an anti-rape activist, commented that “when I talk to my Native elders about rape, you know what they say, this isn’t our way — this came from Europe.” She believes rape is part and parcel of a culture of domination. “Trump represents that,” she says. “It’s ‘take what I can,’ ‘I’m not going to apologize,’ ‘I can say whatever I want,’ ‘I’m going to do whatever I want.’”

Over the years Trump has had multiple allegations of sexual harassment and assault made against him by underage girls and women — including his ex-wife Ivana Trump — which epitomizes his disdain for half the population. As of June 20, 2016 an anonymous woman known only as “Jane Doe” filed a lawsuit against Trump and Jeffrey Epstein, Trump’s longtime friend and level 3 sex offender, for raping her in 1994 when she was only 13. A “Tiffany Doe” has been listed as a witness to another suit filed in April by another woman accusing Trump of raping her at the age of 13.

There are also the multiple incestuous comments Trump has made about his daughter, Ivanka Trump. In a 2003 interview on the Howard Stern Show he claimed that, “My daughter, Ivanka. She’s six feet tall, she’s got the best body.” On the March 6, 2006 episode of The View, he said that Ivanka has a “very nice figure” and that if “she weren’t my daughter, I’d be dating her.”

One would think that once Trump threw his hat into the presidential ring he would have ceased this blatantly misogynistic behavior, but he’s only marched on. In the September 9, 2015 interview with Rolling Stone he stated “She’s really something, and what a beauty, what a beauty that one. If I weren’t married, and, ya know, her father . . . ”

The irony that Trump uses Pocahontas as a primary insult is not lost on Native women. “Pocahontas as she’s talked about today isn’t a real person . . . When we talk about the white construct of Native identities, Pocahontas is part of that. Even though she was a real person, she’s become this white myth,” Nagle tells me.

Pocahontas, whose real name was Matoaka, met John Smith at the age of 10 or 11 years old. She was taken captive at the age of 17 and held prisoner by the white colonialists until she was married off to John Rolfe as a condition of her release. Matoaka was baptized Christian, renamed Rebecca, and taken to England, where she was paraded around white society as the “noble savage.” She soon died at the young age of 21. Pocahontas’s abuse continues to this day, with Trump throwing her around like a rag doll for his insidious political machinations.

Trump’s running mate is no beacon of hope in regards to racism and sexism, either. Indiana Governor Mike Pence, (R-IN), too, has a long record of using the government to exploit and oppress women and of using Natives for his political gain. The H.R. 3 No Tax Payer Funding for Abortion bill, which Pence sponsored, would have legally redefined rape to only “forcible rape.”

Pocahontas’s abuse continues to this day, with Trump throwing her around like a rag doll for his insidious political machinations.
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This would have excluded rapes that occurred while unconscious or under threat. In 2014, the state of Indiana cut $1.18 billion to domestic violence programs. This left 601 people — primarily women and children — escaping abusive living situations, without shelter. Pence even used the 1993 federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which furthered the rights of Natives to practice our religions without impunity, to push his anti-LGBTQ Two Spirit and woman agenda. To him, Natives are at best political pawns and not at all a community of people to be represented or advocated for.

As Nagle puts it:

“It’s not a coincidence that the same lawmakers, or potential lawmakers, and top candidates that are making these derogatory comments about Native people and Native women are making laws based on those stereotypes that are really harmful to our people . . . You have people like Trump and Warren making a game out of our identity, making a political game out of what it means to be a Native woman in the U.S. in 2016.”

She adds that “the people who are literally in the seat of power can tweet things like ‘Pocahontas,’ without a lot of consequence, and it’s not a coincidence that the laws that they make create a situation of really high violence against Native women.”

Whether it’s Warren or Trump or non-Native men who come onto tribal land to commit atrocious acts of violence against us, the colonization and abuse of Native women continues every day. Despite what many think, Trump is not one isolated, white supremacist on the fringe; he represents the U.S. government and many non-Native men’s views of Native women.

We have endured 526 years of colonialism and genocide in the “Americas.” Genocide never ended. We are experiencing it to this day through the non-Native men who beat, rape, traffic, and kill us. We are experiencing it through a government that refuses to acknowledge our tribal nations’ sovereign right to govern ourselves, our land, water, and destiny. We are experiencing this through white people, such as Senator Warren, who like to play “Indian.” And more dangerously still, we are experiencing this through people like Trump, who literally use us as an insult to bolster themselves in the polls.

Native people have had some gains in the Obama administration, but we are far from where we deserve to be in regards to our rights on this land, our land. There are many ways that we as Indigenous people must address this, one of which is by actively participating in the U.S. government. Madonna Thunder Hawk told me that, “Our ancestors learned to adapt and survive, and that’s why we’re still here . . . They fought. They hung on. They adapted. They survived. And that’s what we gotta do.”

Trump is not one isolated, white supremacist on the fringe; he represents the U.S. government and many non-Native men’s views of Native women.
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Natives will continue with the business of survival, and the way that this is going to happen is through a reverse adaptation. After centuries of flexibility and re-sculpting ourselves into people who are making it now, we need to take these skills and use them to our advantages.

The transition into politics and government needs to reach beyond our tribal governments. All Natives, urban and reservation based, women and men, must branch beyond tribal/local/state bodies of leadership and extend our reach to the federal government. This is the ultimate adaptation for survival, especially for our women. And it is the only way to make the fakers and takers like Warren and Trump stop spilling the blood of Native women.

I know now what it’s like to stay with someone who takes and takes and takes.

Adapted from flickr/Alyssa L. Miller

By Monica Busch

M y mother will go to great lengths in order to avoid talking to most people. Given the choice to talk or do, she will almost always choose do. But while my mother favors action, she doesn’t always necessarily finish what she starts.

She once took a writing class, for example. I don’t know a lot of the details, but one afternoon when I was about 7 years old, I found her sitting on her bed with her nose in a binder, rifling through materials for what she told me was a fiction writing course. My mother didn’t go to college, but she was an avid reader, and I was excited for her. I asked her what she had to do.

“Mind your own business,” she said.

Taken aback and insulted, I sulked out of her room and never saw the coursework again. I know now that she must have quit the class, but she never spoke about it, her incompletion disguised as being too busy with work and motherhood — which she probably was.

My mom wasn’t a single parent, but she might as well have been; growing up, my dad was rarely around. He preferred partying to parenting.

Even when he was home, he didn’t do much, and since my mother worked long hours, I swiftly became the de facto second parent after my twin brothers were born. As a 6-year-old, I was already changing diapers and giving baths. My dad’s primary occupation, meanwhile, seemed to be fighting with my mom.

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Screaming, crashing, and curse words regularly thundered through our small apartment. The twins didn’t understand what my parents were yelling about, but I taught them that certain volumes meant we should take cover in our bedroom, which we shared when they were very small. They continued playing most of the time, while I sat rapt by the door.

Invariably, I rooted for my mother. She was the one who took care of me and remembered my birthday. My dad, on the other hand, didn’t know my doctor’s name and always screamed the loudest. As an 8-year-old, I saw my mother as good and right, and my father as bad and wrong.

This climaxed one day when my brothers and I were hiding out in our bedroom and something in my dad’s voice turned. I sensed danger. Barreling into the kitchen with the twins close behind, I found my dad pinning my mom against the wall by her jaw. He pinched her face so tightly that her cheeks puffed out around his fingers.

My dad didn’t know my doctor’s name and always screamed the loudest.

I like to think that I screamed at him to let her go, but the truth is that I don’t remember. I just know that the blood-curdling yell that came out of my mouth was enough to set off the twins, who also started wailing.

His hands still around her face, my dad turned to us, eyes wild, and told us to go back to our bedroom. I hesitated for a second before the three of us booked it down the hallway.

Sobbing in our bedroom, I was helpless and, worse, so was my mom. Awash in failure, I vowed to myself that if I ever saw him like that again, I wouldn’t run back to my room, but to theirs, where the house phone was. I would call 911 and the police would come and make him stop.

Not long after that day, during a trip to the library, my mom took out a pile of divorce-related books. I didn’t generally pay attention to my mother’s book selections, but I knew how to read well above my age level, and I knew what the D-word meant.

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When she parked the car in front of our apartment building, I inundated her with questions.

She was less than thrilled. Like the time I found her writing-class materials, she told me to mind my own business. And as had happened with the coursework, the divorce books were never to be spoken of again. After their due dates, they left the house, and so did my mother’s visible drive to leave my dad.

At that young age, I couldn’t understand why she wouldn’t just leave him. If I were her, I thought, I wouldn’t stick around. Sometimes, I wished they would fight in front of other people, like my grandparents or my aunts and uncles, because I thought that if they saw what was going on, they would talk sense into my mother. But my parents were on their best behavior when we were outside of the house, and if anyone ever noticed something was awry, no one ever said anything.

So, for almost another decade, I watched them fight the same way they always had. My dad would grow angry, seemingly out of nowhere, and berate my mother for everything and anything. He would tell her she was unattractive and stupid, and when that wasn’t enough, he would go after her family. During one afternoon weekend blowout, he told her that he could see why her father “drank himself to death,” simultaneously blaming my mother for his drinking, and my grandmother for her late husband’s. This accusation was particularly scathing because my grandfather died when my mother was 16, and it is well-known in the family that my mom nearly flunked out of high school afterward because of the grief.

But, despite my avowal to call the police if my dad ever put his hands on my mother again, I never saw him physically assault her after that day in the kitchen. Instead, she got pregnant and had my third brother.

My mother made another attempt to leave my dad during my sophomore year of high school. By this point, I was on my way out, my sights set on college. So when they told my brothers and I that they were planning to separate, I was relieved that I could leave for school without worrying about my family’s safety.

My Mother Taught Me That Life Is Not Fair, But We Must Carry The Weight

My hope was not long lived. The proverbial wrench threw itself into the plan: My mom got pregnant, again. Complete with all the symbology of metaphorical and literal new life, and maybe partially due to them both being staunchly anti-abortion, my parents decided to give it another go. Needless to say, my sister was born and things did not improve. They still fought, my dad still neglected responsibility for his family of now five children, and my mom wore down before my eyes. The bags under her eyes became permanent installations, and the heart-to-heart chats I grew up with disappeared. She was going through all the motions of work and childrearing, but it was if her personality had disappeared. I couldn’t take it.

So, I checked out, snuck out, and moved out, determined to make a better life for myself.

I graduated high school and started college, becoming less and less involved in my family’s affairs. By all accounts, life was going pretty well save for the one thing that was affording me a lot of my independence — my boyfriend, whose family I’d moved in with not long after I turned 18.

Very early on, I noticed the red flags: He was controlling, jealous, and had an unpredictable temper with a capacity to snap. I wasn’t unaware of the irony; between the moodiness and the selfishness, I was dating someone who, in so many ways, was a younger version of my dad.

Yet despite this realization — and despite how bad he made me feel — our cycle of misery became comfortable in its familiarity. I was unhappy, he was unhappy, but neither of us wanted to be lonely.

I was dating someone who, in so many ways, was a younger version of my dad.

Our relationship became a roller coaster of incremental highs and crashing lows; one minute we were planning our lives together, and the next we were screaming ourselves hoarse in his car. As our relationship progressed, I lost most of my friends. I resented him for pigeonholing me, and he resented me for wanting a life outside of the two of us.

Years removed, I can now call it what it was: abusive. He was codependent, violent, and hellbent on being the center of my life.

For the first two years of college, I commuted an hour each way because I couldn’t afford the cost of dorms. But when I got a better job, I decided I wanted to move closer and live in my own space. I told my boyfriend he had to get his life together or let me go. Reluctantly, he started saving money and joined me on the apartment hunt.

Eventually, we found a place. There were fruit trees outside, the apartment was quaint, and all for an unspeakably low price. We moved in at the start of my junior year. Almost immediately, the bubble popped.

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He became suspicious of all my college friends — people I spent more time with now that we lived closer to them. He also became increasingly needy and lazy. We were splitting rent but I was food shopping, cooking, doing our laundry, and cleaning up after both of us.

Three and a half years into our relationship, our discord peaked when I bought plane tickets to go see my grandparents for Christmas. He wasn’t sure he wanted to go when I was making the decision, and I had to buy tickets before prices skyrocketed.

“You abandoned me for Christmas. You left me alone on Christmas,” he said over and over again, before and after the holiday. Never mind that he could have just gone with me, or that it was reasonable for a 21-year-old to choose her family over her boyfriend. He did everything he could to make me to feel bad about it, using this offence as a secret weapon during every disagreement we had moving forward. He would bring it up if I made plans with friends that didn’t include him, if I complained that he wasn’t helping out enough around the apartment, and even if I didn’t feel like being intimate on a given night. In turn, I tried to compensate for his hurt feelings by being extra affectionate. I left notes around the apartment and threw him a surprise birthday party. But he was fixated and nothing worked. Eventually, it became one big fight that never ended.

Unable to take it, I kicked him out. I told him I didn’t love him anymore, that both of us were unhappy, that I didn’t want to be stuck for the rest of my life. He didn’t go without a fight, of course. When his begging didn’t work, he threatened to hurt my friends. And when that still didn’t work, he would call me, tell me he knew where I was, and threaten to kill me. As this was happening, I thought of my mom. At that age, she was raising me — a 2-year-old — alone. I imagined what her life would have been like if she had separated herself from her lazy and unstable partner. The idea of ending up like her made me feel physically ill. Reflecting on her life lit a fire under me to stick with the split, even though it was scary and despite all logic, I sometimes found myself missing him.

The idea of ending up like my mom made me feel physically ill.

Throughout the nightmarish breakup that ensued, I recounted all the times I nearly left. The first time was six months in, when things just felt “off.” But then, overcome with the luster of a high school romance, I stayed. Later, as a sophomore in college, I was again so seriously considering leaving that I tried to calculate a way to afford the dorms. But then I became so distracted with my school clubs, so inundated with work, so distracted by the holidays, that leaving felt impossible. So again, I stayed. The third most obvious manifestation of my near departure was when I made the decision to get an apartment. But then I left the door open just enough that he came with me. We moved, but I stayed.

It wasn’t until I faced the fact that I was turning into my mother that I had the strength to endure the storm of ending my toxic relationship. I am now more proud of myself for taking that leap than almost anything else I’ve done in life. Against the odds, I broke the cycle.

My mother, though? She’s still with my dad, and she doesn’t really speak to anyone outside her household, except for people at work. I can’t shake the suspicion that our lack of communication is at least partially due to my dad’s control over her. During my own abusive relationship, I learned that something controlling men work to eradicate from their partner’s lives is other women who are independent. My ex hated anyone in my life who broke up with their boyfriend, cheated on their husband, or otherwise learned to survive the emotional landscape of heteronormative relationships — the landscape in which men by and large prioritize their emotional well-being over anyone else’s.

Against the odds, I broke the cycle.

When I was younger, I spent a lot of time being resentful toward my mom for staying with my dad, for letting him make her so unhappy, for letting herself be so reliant on him despite her being the main breadwinner. When I was older, I shifted to being angry at her for choosing him over me. Couldn’t she see the mistake she was making?

But when I’m being fair, I remember that I know what it’s like to stay with someone who takes and takes and takes. I know what it’s like to grow comfortable in a cycle of fighting and mothering the person you’re in a relationship with. And even though everyone else can see it, and even though you can see it, you still find yourself going back, seeing the person you fell in love with behind the frenzied eyes and lack of concern for your emotional health. It’s the path of least resistance, and I know it because I followed it for a few very regrettable years. My familiarity with this course takes my pride down a notch. And while I hate feeling helpless now as much as I did as a child hiding in my bedroom, I know first-hand that telling her over and over again what she already knows isn’t going to do much. Eventually she’ll get where she’s going, I think, because she’s a woman of action, even if that means a lot of false starts.

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]]> https://theestablishment.co/chris-brown-doesnt-deserve-your-money-or-your-forgiveness-bfbbc967539a/ Thu, 21 Apr 2016 15:32:12 +0000 https://theestablishment.co/?p=8582 Read more]]>

By Monica Busch

If you haven’t heard, R&B singer Chris Brown is planning to release a documentary chronicling his life, rise to fame, and subsequent infamy following his 2009 assault on then-girlfriend and Grammy award-winning singer Rihanna. The documentary, dubbed Welcome to My Life, does not have a release date, but Brown Tweeted the trailer earlier this week.

In the trailer, Brown’s rapid rise to fame is recounted, along with his early days dating Rihanna, which is described as “magical.” He is also lauded by artists like Usher, Jennifer Lopez, and Jamie Foxx as essentially being a gift to the modern entertainment industry. But before very long, suspenseful music builds and Brown remarks that he “went from being kind of like America’s sweetheart to Public Enemy №1” following his assault on his ex-girlfriend — the altercation that left the pop star’s face peppered with bruises, as seen in the now jarringly familiar photo of her face following the attack.

“I felt like a fucking monster,” Brown says. “I was thinking about suicide and everything else. I wasn’t sleeping, I barely ate. I was just getting high.”

The trailer ends with Brown promising that, despite doubts that some may harbor, his career is far from over.

If this sounds like a gross way of capitalizing on his indiscretions and a sneaky attempt to not quite take ownership of his actions, it’s because a bird that waddles and quacks is often a duck. While both Chris Brown and Rihanna have been largely quiet about the 2009 altercation aside from heavily coded lyricism, Chris Brown’s narrative has varied wildly from remorse to forgetfulness. One minute he says the night of the assault was a blur, the next he says it wasn’t. What is certain, however, is that choosing to address this one event in the first trailer for a documentary that one expects will cover his entire life is an intentional way to draw viewers in by making his violence the focal point.

Despite attempts by his mother, Joyce Hawkins, to downplay her son’s violent and aggressive reputation — one that far exceeds the infamous battering — Brown’s name is rarely uttered in the media without Rihanna’s close behind. While Rihanna’s victimization should not be — and is not — her identity, Chris Brown’s flagrant disregard for a woman’s physical and emotional well-being certainly should follow him. Rightfully, it does. Wrongly, he’s attempting to monetize his record in a way that requests sympathy from viewers.

Any trauma a perpetrator of domestic violence experiences from public shaming cannot reasonably exceed the trauma experienced by the target. But what else can be inferred from a trailer that, by highlighting Chris Brown’s depleted social standing and resulting stress, necessarily implies a juxtaposition of his sinking fame with the ever-growing success of his ex-girlfriend? Emphasizing how bad the aftermath was for Chris Brown is only marginally removed from victim blaming since, after all, Rihanna is the physical being around which his trauma resulted. In the clips, he makes the tragedy of being beaten up entirely about him. It’s like Brown is silently asking, “Couldn’t we/she/everyone have gone a little bit easier on me?” It’s like he’s saying that intentionally causing harm to another human being was just a simple lapse of judgement and self control that he doesn’t deserve to suffer for anymore.

Of course, the response should be that he is an able-bodied male who knew what he was doing when he put his girlfriend in a headlock and proceeded to beat her, but unfortunately we live in a society that continuously pardons and pities offenders of — specifically — violence against women. This, of course, is not new.

Take, for example, the Steubenville rape case trials in 2013, when CNN came under fire for lamenting the ruined futures of two teens convicted of raping an underage girl. Or the litany of sports figures and media outlets that said former Ravens running back Ray Rice should have been allowed to re-join the NFL, even after video surfaced of the player attacking his then-fiancee in an elevator. Or, take the 48 Hours special on Lauren Astley, a Massachusetts teenager who was murdered by her ex-boyfriend: While the coverage is arguably mostly narrative, the title — Loved to Death — is quite an introduction to a story about breakup violence.

Some may argue that Chris Brown served out his punishment via probation and community service, but the question is not whether he deserves to continue working or making music — that’s an argument for a different time. The question is whether he should be able to profit off marketing his life story as a tell-all about a high-profile domestic assault case that has the potential to not only re-victimize his ex-girlfriend, but also could be told through a medium that will not result in his monetary benefit.

Chris Brown is capitalizing off of his own violent acts — commodifying the actual, literal pain he inflicted on a person he was in a romantic relationship with. Usher remarks in the trailer, “If you truly love Chris Brown, then you felt everything that has gone on with him.” But combatting domestic violence is about prevention and trauma care, not spinning one’s life in some attempt to spring back into public favor by pandering to voyeuristic consumerism. It’s not about feeling what Chris Brown has felt, it’s about not excusing what Rihanna felt.

***

Lead image: YouTube

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