Defining Abuse...

The appropriate response would be to walk away in both instances. (Lovebird - I am sure that there was somewhere in the class he could have gone to and say that he did not want you there.) For me it has nothing to do with a male hitting a female. I would feel the same if you were talking about a gay couple. It's domestic abuse. It doesn't forgive bad behavior on the victim's side, but it also doesn't mean that they were "asking for it." To me this is similar to saying that a girl that was dressed provocatively was asking to be r--ed. I hope that I am not being overly blunt, and I am sorry that both of you have gone through these situations.

The appropriate response is when you're thinking calm and rational. When someone is angry or even raging, they're not thinking in a rational way. When someone provokes you enough, I would say it's natural to react in a violent manner. I know I'll get get shot down for saying that, but if you provoke an animal enough you'll get bit, so same thing applies to a human. We're all animals, just a more evolved animal, but if someone provokes you enough the animal instinct of reacting kicks in.

I somewhat agree with you, but that still doesn't mean the response is not abuse. I am sure that there are some that could be provoked into murder. It doesn't mean that they shouldn't go to jail.

I don't know, I'm not sure I agree it is abuse. If someone provokes you and keeps on and on and you retaliate, I don't think that is abuse. Abuse is where someone deliberately sets out to hurt someone for control or just wants to use someone as a punchbag either physically or emotionally because of problems on their life and they take it out on a person or persons.

I would like to point out that one single instance, especially with obvious and relentless provocation, is not enough to establish a pattern of abuse. My boyfriend never struck me again, nor did he ever--not even that time--abuse me verbally. Consider too that this was some 35 years ago, and in a rural setting, which means it was a time and place where corporal punishment was routine in schools and at home, and when bullying and playground fights were thought to be just a normal part of growing up. In this context, just because he'd had all he could take and resorted to a slap to make it end, I cannot put the label of "abuser" on him.

I understand the r*pe analogy, but I don't quite agree. It's a different situation. My boyfriend was being pelted with people annoying him, and had been all day. He tried to make it stop by other means, every other means he could think of, as a matter of fact, but all of them failed.

In the case of a woman dressed provocatively, though, the r*pist is not acting with the motivation of stopping her from dressing provocatively. He hasn't been pleading with her all day long to do differently. She's not even paying attention to him, let alone getting all up in his face, aggressively taunting him. A r*pist is trying to dominate. We know it's not about sex, it's about power and control. My boyfriend was not trying to dominate, overpower, or control me. He only wanted me, and everybody else, to stop tormenting him. So I don't think it's the same thing at all.

If someone keeps provoking you, when do you not have the option of walking away? When you're on a submarine or a space station? I've been in the position where my 2 female bosses were purposely trying to make me angry, to where they were saying really foolish things, so I said, yeah that's it, we can continue this later. Then they used my walking out of the meeting against me, rather than admit they failed to get me to lose my cool. But normal people I talked to agreed that I did the right thing to walk away. I wish I had recorded that meeting. Those beeyotches. I shoulda sued their thongs off.

People, especially people in therapy, tend to see almost every action as abusive.

This is an interesting point. Why do you think this is (in some cases)? Do you think some therapists encourage it (tacitly or explicitly)? And if so, why? A misguided attempt at support/validation? Or do some people see validation for such things in therapy, where there actually isn't?

I think some therapists over label things abuse. The therapists have said my mother was abusive. I don't feel I was abused. So is abuse correct in connection with me or not? Or can I have been abused without knowing it? I don't know. Some parts of me believe that abuse needs the knowledge and opposition of the victim. Is the reason S&M or DD are non-abusive because of the consent of the parties?
I don't know.

This depends on gender. I will admit as a man I can walk away a lot easier if a woman was provoking me to another man. Another man getting in my face is a challenge. I'm sure it's that way for most men.

A woman can walk away if she's being provoked and nobody will see anything wrong with that. As a man you have to stand your ground sometimes.

ncdsv.org/publications_wheel.html

This should be a link to a buckload of abuse wheels.

I don't want to change the topic, but your post reminds me of a related--maybe--issue: apparent jealousy of a daughter by a mother, especially when the dynamic is between a mother, father, and daughter. I'm thinking of mother verbally abusing father, father sexually abusing daughter, and mother verbally abusing daughter in ways that suggest jealousy. It's an all-around sick system. But that sort of humiliating comment from a mother to a daughter had a feeling of coming from a warped jealousy in my experience.

The word "abuse" like the word "depressed" is absolutely too frequently thrown around and it's insulting. I can't stand it when people who are so desperate to be a victim for sympathy that they try to make abuse happen when it's clearly not happening. They'll say some **** like their ex-boyfriend was "emotionally abusive" when his only offense was telling her that a dress she wore looked a little small on her. No just stop. Try having your mom tell you that you're so fat that people are laughing at you behind your back because they are too polite to do it to your face or having your mom repeatedly tell you at age 6 or 7that if she divorced your dad, he would disappear from your life because he doesn't care about you and then come back and talk to me about being emotionally abused.

My favorite are the drama queenswho try to say they were "emotionally, psychologically, and mentally abused". Shut the **** up, it's the same damn thing. It's highly offensive to hear these people use the same word to describe their petty little issues as if it was as serious as actual abuse.

Perhaps I'm being hypocritical when I say this because in my heart, I feel like I was abused by my parents. However, I didn't suffer even close to the worst abuse. There are people out there who would find my issues in comparison to theirs insulting so perhaps I too shouldn't be allowed to use the word.

But if you use the word abuse, you're not claiming you suffered the worst. If someone cuts off my arm and just cuts off your finger, you're still in pain. And do you think someone with a fever shouldn't be allowed to say they're ill because other people have cancer? I don't think you're hypocritical! It's not such an absolute, black and white thing.

These are important questions. I think you can be abused without knowing it - the effects will be different or delayed or displaced. I didn't know it until I started to work out recently that my 'normal' wasnt so normal.

I think S&M and DD are non-abusive because of consent, mutual gratification, and in the case of S&M and D/s (not sure about DD) both parties actually have equal power in the relationship - one person GIVES the other power within that, they don't just take it.

There could be a lot going on here. I will say that I have done a bucketload of work in domestic violence over the years, and some of what you are describing is a prototype or a piece of the dynamics of domestic violence that sometimes exists. The first thing is that you were a child when this was going on, and your recall may not be completely accurate. I have no trouble believing that your mother may have been verbally abusive, but there also may have been non-abusive arguing, controlling actions or threats behind the scenes with your parents that you didn't see or don't remember. Kids tend to simplify situations, see them as the sum of if-she'd-just-shut-up-he-wouldn't-hit her. This is probably the attitude your father had, a justification and an entitlement, and it might have run deeper than just a response to her verbal abuse. It sounds like he might have believed that he was the only one who should be able to say what was on his mind, to have an opinion about what should happen in the family, to control what happens inside the house. Lots of times kids identify with the perpetrator of physical violence, because he's the one with the real power, because words crumble under fists and blows.

I think that one can have compassion for a man who's verbally abused. Sometimes the dynamic is about resistance on the part of the one who gets hit-- she might not be able to fight back with her hands, but she can fight back with her words. Sometimes beatings are inevitable and victims use provocation as a way of getting it out of the way, perhaps especially when he walks in the door, if she starts up-- because then at least you have the rest of the evening without fear. Whatever is going on, though, it probably is more subtle and multilayered than just what is presented in public.

I don't think that anyone deserves to be hit-- no matter whether they are the most unlikeable, biggest ***** on the planet, the worst mother. Whether they have made mistakes or deliberately engaged in actions they know piss people off (I don't think anyone deserves to be verbally abused, or abused in any other way, either). Someone can provoke you until the cows come home, know how to push your buttons, but physically using your hands or whatever to shut someone up is a choice someone makes, and not self defense.

We do a lot of victim blaming in this culture. "She provoked him" is something I've heard a lot over the years. Without distorting victims into some kind of martyrs or otherwise having some purity of soul, I do wish that people had more compassion for the so-called imperfect victim. Partly because we don't ever really know what all the dynamics and events of someone else's relationship are like; we can only know what we see in "public", not what happens behind closed doors. And oftentimes, we are not willing to listen to victims speak about what happens behind closed doors, or give them a voice to talk more broadly about their experience. My sense is that your mother probably keeps bringing it up because she hasn't felt heard. I'm not saying you have to listen to her-- I don't think it's your duty or responsibility to hear her. But maybe it would help you in some way to find some compassion for her for being trapped in a relationship with a violent man for some period of time-- because no matter how despicable her own behavior was, getting beaten is still physically painful, scary, and humiliating.

god sorry i spoke

I was speaking about violent marriages and intimate relationships, not about adults hurting children, or vice versa.

You can feel or believe whatever you want, no "SORRY" necessary if that was directed at me, but I also don't think it's fair for you to put something on me I didn't say. I don't mind people disagreeing or speaking their mind, but I do mind my words and meaning being distorted to serve someone else's message.

you know what anne whatever . think whatever you want about what i said . why the heck do you think you are so knowlgable about everything god whatever . have a great life

That was really mean, and unfair. I don't appreciate the personal attack.

sorry wiki for this post ill stay away now

This is a very emotionally charged topic and we all have different 'stakes' in the conclusions drawn due to our own lives and how we see them.

Granite, this obviously touched a nerve. I hope you're okay. I do think your reactions to Anne were excessive which suggests you're expressing feelings displaced from something else - this is all very triggering. But Anne made some good points. Lets all calm down.

*frantically dishes up cream pie*

This IS an emotional topic. I hope everyone is okay and feeling a little better.

From the perspective of someone who has been abused, though, it is really tough to hear people throwing the word around as a label for someone else just not being nice, as I said previously. It does feel that using the word in this way diminishes what happened to those of us who spent years suffering through something that we kept trying to normalize in our heads and desperately trying NOT to think of as abuse.

For me, it's a little like the PTSD diagnosis. So many people use it as an excuse for their own poor behavior, that it's tough for me to then accept that the same diagnosis applies to me. Or as someone else said, the depression thing. People who are just sad for a day talk about being depressed. Having been in a pit for freaking YEARS trying to claw my way out makes me somewhat reactive to people using that word. It took a while for me to get past to the impulse to just yell, "You have NO FREAKING CLUE what depression is."

I think a couple of people on here are kind of talking cross ways to each other and hitting buttons for the other person, and that's unfortunate and I hope they work it out. Most of the perspectives listed have valid points and hopefully everyone can calm down and see that. I also have this ambivalence of 'no one deserves to be beaten' and the absolute certainty that if I walked in on someone abusing a child, I would be hard pressed to stop beating the abuser once I started.

So. We all have our issues. I do not think those of us who are reactive to the use of certain words are trying to diminish another person's experience. I would like others to stop and think, maybe, before throwing around the word 'abuse' in reference to their boss when he or she is just insensitive, their co-workers when they are just *****y, their T's when they just don't understand or agree, etc. I would like to save the word for actions or words that are truly damaging and well, abusive.

thanks for the pie tiny . you are probably right and thanks for understanding .

I work closely with a DV program, and I have seen it all. My dad was silent, not in control at all. In fact very much out of control. My mom was the predominant abuser in my family. She was cruel and callous...still is. She knows exactly what she's doing. I am totally a non-violent person, but there are times I want to punch her...and it only comes up with her. I've never hit my children or anyone. I remember her pulling down the attic stairwell while he was sleeping (it was just outside of his bedroom door), and then screaming for him...he came running and split his head wide open on the attic door. She would place stools in doorways, shatter glass on the bathroom floor, position knifes so they were sticking out from drawers...she was evil.
Not all DV clients are victims.

that sound horrible from all angles .

I can definitely understand *wanting* to hit someone. I remember my first mother-in-law. My ex-husband was abusive, but he learned to be so from her. She had advanced MS, and her mouth was the only part of her body that still worked, so oh boy did she use it! Her language was foul. She'd call people all kinds of degrading names--not merely saying it, but screaming it--for things that weren't their fault. For example, she might be asking someone to hand her something, and at the last minute her mind would go blank, and she forgot the word for it. "Hand me that... that... oh, you damned #%&*@ idiot!!! You should know what I want!"

I have pointed out before, and will again, it was really foolish of me to marry that man after I'd actually seen him slap his own mother. Even if she were healthy it would be a horrible thing to do, but she was mobility impaired which makes it even worse. Here is how I rationalized it at the time: "Well, I understand why he's angry. That screaming shrew is very difficult to get along with. There are times I'm tempted to slap her myself." And I'd heard other people too, venting about how they'd love to smack her one. Now, here is the difference: My ex-husband actually did it, while the rest of us controlled our impulses and left it at merely being tempted. And that means he abused her, even if she did abuse him first.

PS: Yes, he slapped me too. What made me think he wouldn't, if he'd slap his mother?

It just occurred to me, I can hear some people asking the difference between my ex-husband slapping his mother after provocation, which I condemn, and my high school boyfriend slapping me after provocation, which I justified. There are several fundamental differences:

1.) My boyfriend had grown up in an environment where physical punishment was the norm, and he didn't know any other way. My ex-husband had never been physically abused.
2.) My ex-husband could easily walk away from his mother. My boyfriend, in that one instance, felt trapped. Even if he could have walked away, he didn't *know* that.
3.) My ex-husband slapped his mother hard enough to hurt her. My boyfriend was careful not to cause actual pain.
4.) My boyfriend did it only once, and never again. My ex-husband slapped his mother, and other people he was stronger than, on many occasions.
5.) My boyfriend was not yet a grown man. My ex-husband continued this behavior into his adult years.
6.) I was healthy and able-bodied. My former mother-in-law was not capable of walking by herself.

So no, I don't think it's the same thing.