For the Wife Beater's Wife
With blue irises her face is blossomed. Blue
Circling to yellow, circling to brown on her cheeks.
The long bone of her jaw untracked
She hides in our kitchen.
He sleeps it off next door.
Her chicken legs tucked under her
She's frantic with lies, animated
Before the swirling smoke.
On her cigarette she leaves red prints, red
Like a cut on the white cup.
Like a skin she pulls her sweater around her.
She's cold,
She brings the cold in with her.
In our kitchen she hides.
He sleeps it off next door, his great
Belly heaving with booze.
Again and again she tells the story
As if the details ever changed,
As if blows to the face were somehow
Different beating to beating.
We reach for her but can't help.
She retreats into her cold love of him
And looks across the table at us
As if across a sea.
Next door he claws out of sleep.
She says she thinks she'll do something
After all, with her hair tonight.
Stichwörter: poetry violence abuse domestic-abuse domestic domestic-violence
When a stranger on the street makes a sexual comment, he is making a private assessment of me public. And though I’ve never been seriously worried that I would be attacked, it does make me feel unguarded, unprotected.
Regardless of his motive, the stranger on the street makes an assumption based on my physique: He presumes I might be receptive to his unpoetic, unsolicited comments. (Would he allow a friend to say “Nice tits” to his mother? His sister? His daughter?) And although I should know better, I, too, equate my body with my soul and the result, at least sometimes, is a deep shame of both.
Rape is a thousand times worse: The ultimate theft of self-control, it often leads to a breakdown in the victim’s sense of self-worth. Girls who are molested, for instance, often go on to engage in risky behavior—having intercourse at an early age, not using contraception, smoking, drinking, and doing drugs. This behavior, it seems to me, is at least in part because their self-perception as autonomous, worthy human beings in control of their environment has been taken from them.
Stichwörter: sexuality society violence rape culture entitlement sexual-abuse abuse rape-culture sexual-violence harassment sexual-harassment hypersexualization
I can kill a bad guy, but I can't save anyone. I'm not a hero. All I am is a killer. A dead killer who shit his pants.
Samuel EngelenStichwörter: philosophy violence guns
When the battle is over, the winners find it very hard not to pursue their violence. If you are strong enough to hold violence, you are strong enough to hold true to your pact. Then you have more moral fiber than most adults. Free will is one of the pillars of being human.
Alan McCluskeyStichwörter: free-will violence humanity-and-society
I sometimes try to imagine what would have happened if we’d known the bonobo first and the chimpanzee only later—or not at all. The discussion about human evolution might not revolve as much around violence, warfare and male dominance, but rather around sexuality, empathy, caring and cooperation. What a different intellectual landscape we would occupy!
Frans de WaalStichwörter: empathy cooperation warfare evolution violence caring patriarchy male-dominance frans-de-waal matriarchy
Guy Boy Man," says Baby Doll15. "Violence is not the answer."
I look down the hallway, steely eyed. "Then I don't like the question." Sweetie and I high five.
Stichwörter: violence
Power operates only destructively, bent always on forcing every manifestation of life into the straitjacket of its laws. Its intellectual form of expression is dead dogma, its physical form brute force.
Rudolf RockerStichwörter: power dogma violence destruction force laws straightjackets
...so much attention is paid to the aggressive sins, such as violence and cruelty, and greed with all their tragic effects, that too little attention is paid to the passive sins, such as apathy and laziness, which in the long run can have a more devastating and destructive effect upon society than the others.
Eleanor RooseveltStichwörter: apathy laziness violence greed cruelty
But people like the doll guy who sells women and the dog guy who buys women, and other guys who, say, rape women, or maybe don’t go as far as violent rape but treat women like objects instead of people—sure, there’s a difference in the level of crime, but it’s all the same thing, where women become a canvas for throwing emotional baggage, Jackson Pollock style.
Taylor StevensStichwörter: violence rape crime violence-against-women
Don’t you understand that freedom depends upon the continuing possibility of rebel violence. When violence becomes unthinkable, freedom dies…
Samuel B. SouthwellStichwörter: freedom violence rebel pg-151
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