I feel we talk about signs of abuse from the victims standpoint but not from the abusers standpoint. In order to stop emotional abuse and recognize when we engage in unhealthy behaviors I made this list.
Do you react to important people in your life by ignoring them completely and not acknowledging their presence? Especially if they do something you don’t like?
Do you feel that your partner/friends/family members are the cause of your bad moods or frustration?
Does your partner/etc “do things the wrong way”?
Do criticize your partner/etc for being unreliable or a bad person?
Do you feel you have to constantly overlook your partners flaws in order to be around them?
Are you frequently accused of being “moody” or “hard to please”?
Do your partners complain that “nothing they do is good enough?
Do your partners appear to avoid you when you are angry or upset rather then comfort you?
Do you negatively comment on their intelligence or appearence? Either in private or in front of others.
Do you blame them when someone goes wrong?
Do you ever use phrases like “I could just hit you right now” or “I”m so mad I could punch something”?
Do you ever punch walls/throw things in front of your partner/etc?
Do you leave during fights and not inform of where you are going and when you will be back?
Do you behave the same alone with your partner that you do if you were in front of your friends or in public?
Have you frequently accused your partner of being too sensitive?
How often is your partner praised and complimented by yourself?
Do you think your partner spends too much time with friends and family?
Do you feel your partners friends and family are trying to drive you apart?
Do you actively comfort your partner when they are upset or angry even if you don’t really understand why they feel the way they do?
If your partner brings up a behavior that bothers them do you respond by discussing how to change it or do you respond defensively?
Do you have difficulty apologizing?
All of these things are abuse tactics. Obviously even the healthiest of us will do these sometimes but if any one becomes a regular habit that’s when the problem starts.
this is super important, i feel like this website makes it easy to put yourself in the role of the victim but never the abuser. It’s also important to note that being a victim does not preclude you from being an abuser.
I find this esp. important. I’ve exhibited some of these behaviors. I know abuse perpetuates abuse and that victims of abuse learn abusive behavior. I also know that having mental illness can make reacting and dealing with feelings even more difficult. That being said: being mentally ill does not mean you cannot be held accountable for your actions. Nor does being a survivor of abuse. I gotta take care of myself & heal and recognize how trauma and mental illness plays a role in how I treat others. Being a victim doesn’t mean you cannot be an abuser too.
One of the reasons I always recommend Lundy Bancroft book ‘why does he do that? Inside the minds of angry and controlling men’ to everyone is because it is an invaluable tool for highlighting the toxic aspects in our own personalities.
All men have been socialised with some of the traits/behaviours he speaks of, and the behaviours encourage attitudes and then the attitudes entrench behaviours. Breaking this cycle takes determination, honesty and self care, but it’s in invaluable journey.
I will also reiterate that abuse/abusive mentalities are not always consistent between relationships with the same person. What negatively affects one partner will slide right off the shoulders of or be immediately curtailed by another. What one partner needs another partner dislikes or doesn’t want. What will cause one relationship type to crash and burn horribly will support or confirm another relationship type. This is why abusers often have functional friendships and disastrous romantic relationships. This is why some poly abusers can have very functional relationships with one partner and disastrously harmful ones with another. Or, have great nonprimary relationships and terrifying primary ones, or whatever. Sometimes we believe it is acceptable to mistreat or behave badly only in specific types of relationship, so watch for that both in yourself and in others.
See that state in the red there? The one in Mexico? That is Puebla. The state where a great victory was won on May 5, 1862. You see, the French thought they had it made, that a swift takeover was imminent based on their army of 6000 soldiers. They were wrong. An army of INDIGENOUS folks gathered to fight back. On May 5, (yes that means Cinco de Mayo) the French sent troops in to attack the city of Puebla de Los Angeles, but were met from the North by the indigenos who would not be intimidated or taken down. When the fight was over and the French retreated, they had lost over 500 men. Puebla lost less than 100.
Cinco de Mayo isn’t a day to get wasted and dress up as a racist stereotype. This day is a celebration to remember the Indigenous Resistance that took place, and the victory that seemed impossible. Indigenous resistance continues to this day, from the top of turtle island to the tip of South America. We fight imperialism and colonialism with pride. Please do not trivialize the important celebration of La Batalla De Puebla by reinforcing racist tropes. And don’t you dare tell Mexicans “Happy Mexican Independence Day!” you’ll look like an ignorant jackass. #cincodecultura
It’s back! Please read this non- Mexicans, and apologists.
I admittedly had no idea what Cinco de Mayo was even for. Now I do.
Basically, you don’t need a doctor’s prescription to get self-administered birth control (pills, patches, injections and vaginal rings) in California anymore. You go down to the pharmacy, fill out a questionnaire and get your blood pressure taken. There’s no age limit, either. Methods that require doctor-performed insertion, like the implant or IUDs, do still require a prescription.
This is pretty great for people who can’t afford the doctor’s appointment to get a prescription or have other reasons not to go to a doctor, making birth control more accessible than before.
REBLOOB TO SAVE A LIFE!!!
Finally an end to coercive, rape-y exam rules.
needs to be in more places than just Cali, reblog will have to do for now.
No, I’m serious, if women all got together and went into electrical engineering or automotive repair en masse, then ten years later people would be talking about how it was a “soft field” and it would pay proportionately less than other fields.
Likewise, if men moved en masse to bedeck themselves in sparkles and make-up, then suddenly you’d get a bunch of editorials talking about how classy they look.
None of these things are inherently masculine or feminine; none of these things inherently elevate you or drag you down. But whatever women are seen to do is automatically seen as being inherently more frivolous than anything men do. And shaming women for not pigeonholing themselves into a narrow range of acceptable “masculine” behaviours is just going to result in the goalposts getting moved once again.
This is literally what happened to basically every field women have entered. The opposite happens when men enter. Computers used to be a “woman thing” until the guys who did it got really mad about how badly their job was viewed and realized they could fix it by forcing out women.
Also happened/ is happening with the fields of biology and psychology….
I honestly wonder how much of the backlash against public education in the last generation has been due to teaching becoming a woman-dominated profession.
Fashion used to be a men’s thing. Then women got involved in the late 17/1800’s, so men went the other way because it came to be seen as “frivolous” and “anti-intellectual” to care about how you looked. Add in the homophobia that arose around that time, bam, staid bland dress. Ditto leggings/tights, that are now called attention-whoring when on men they were required to show you cared about your figure and had the money to pay for such a fitted item.
People want to say misogyny doesn’t exist, that male privilege doesn’t exist. Look beyond “living memory” and you’ll find that’s what drives the “inexplicable reversals” society seems to make on many things. Hell, just look beyond your own society, and you’ll find out that what’s considered “for men” elsewhere is held in high esteem while here it’s scoffed at purely because it’s “for women”:
Skinny jeans are the height of masculinity in several east Asian societies, rather than being seen as “gay” in the USA because of their association with femininity.
Medical fields in Russia are valued like kindergarten teachers are here, because it’s women who are the doctors instead of men.
Love and romance are highly valued in eastern countries, because men are interested in it too—of course they would be, surely you want to share your life with someone? Here, it’s strictly a women’s subject.
The field of anthropology as a whole illustrates this.
Significantly higher proportions of females compared to males are currently entering the fields of archaeology and biological anthropology, and as this occurs, the prestige, funding, acceptance as valid kinds of science, etc, are fading quickly.
This has already occurred with linguistic anthropology and cultural anthropology. Cultural anthropology in particular went VERY quickly from being seen as a manly, scientific discipline (e.g., Franz Boas, Bronisław Malinowski) to being seen as a touchy-feely female thing.
Let’s examine a traditionally male-dominated role that is very well-respected, and well-paid, in many parts of the world — that of a doctor. In the UK, it is listed as one of the top ten lucrative careers, and the average annual income of a family doctor in the US is well into six figures. It also confers on you significant social status, and a common stereotype in Asian communities is of parents encouraging their children to become doctors.
One of my lecturers at university once presented us with this thought exercise: why are doctors so highly paid, and so well-respected? Our answers were predictable. Because they save lives, their skills are extremely important, and it takes years and years of education to become one. All sound, logical reasons. But these traits that doctors possess are universal. So why is it, she asked, that doctors in Russia are so lowly paid? Making less than £7,500 a year, it is one of the lowest paid professions in Russia, and poorly respected at that. Why is this?
The answer is crushingly, breathtakingly simple. In Russia, the majority of doctors are women. Here’s a quote from Carol Schmidt, a geriatric nurse practitioner who toured medical facilities in Moscow: “Their status and pay are more like our blue-collar workers, even though they require about the same amount of training as the American doctor… medical practice is stereotyped as a caring vocation ‘naturally suited‘ to women, [which puts it at] a second-class level in the Soviet psyche.”
What this illustrates perfectly is this — women are not devalued in the job market because women’s work is seen to have little value. It is the other way round. Women’s work is devalued in the job market because women are seen to have little value. This means that anything a woman does, be it childcare, teaching, or doctoring, or rocket science, will be seen to be of less value simply because it is done mainly by women. It isn’t that women choose jobs that are in lower-paid industries, it is that any industry that women dominate automatically becomes less respected and less well-paid.
