Controlling women with abuse

On that same day there was a report that in Trinidad a man had chopped to death a woman and had also attacked her daughter.

My young correspondent was reacting to both the ease with which we now greet this kind of information and the fact that for some unaccountable reason women have returned to their status as the possessions and appendages of men. This, as I noted last week, appears to be one of the root causes of many murder-suicides.

Domestic abuse is not new, but familicides are and attacks on women followed by attempted suicide by the murderer point to a new phenomenon unheard of in history before the 20th century. This is that men who feel threatened do not simply contemplate suicide but also feel the need to remove their women folk from life because of a need for control.

The media often ignores the victim and focuses on the sensational events surrounding the crime. Yet in Trinidad and around the world women are being abused and live in abusive relationships in a world where increasingly the issue in relationships seems to be autonomy or independence.

The report on the murder of doubles vendor Terisha Heeralal states that relatives commented that her murderer had tried to prevent her from earning her living and “had stopped her from selling doubles and forced her to stay at home with no money to take care of her children.” The problem here seems to be a need to control the life of a woman by keeping her dependent and isolated.

The assailant apparently became enraged at the fact that Heeralal was on her mobile phone and on Facebook and threw the battery away.

Failing to maintain control in this case led to violence. These events are occurring at the same time that women are assuming leadership roles, and are increasingly more successful in schools and in academic life and are celebrated as leaders of enterprise and politics.

When I was growing up there was something called “Tobago love”. Men beat their women and women were convinced by society that this was a sign of their love.

We now know differently. Men still beat their wives and partners. But it is no longer openly sanctioned by society. But abuse of women is still rampant. And even accepted by women themselves.

There are of course many forms of abuse apart from physical assault, but all hinge on the need to control the life of another. The controller might, for example, make his victim dependent through alcohol or drugs. But there is another way of creating dependency and that is through the buying of gifts and luxuries, such as a car, as reported in the case of another murder victim, Denise Martin, also an independent business woman.

It is no coincidence that both victims of last week’s killings were apparently strong enterprising women. There is no joy in subduing a weak person. No challenge to the ego.

Abuse, let me say, has no gender, but it does have an agenda: power and control.

Abuse figures in ways that are not often visible until an explosion, such as a murder, happens.

It has no basis in class or earnings.

It is found amongst the educated and uneducated. It is also not at all true that most victims of domestic abuse saw their mothers abused or grew up in a family where there was domestic abuse.

The suggestion by a police constable that such is the case is both misleading and perhaps dangerous, since it somehow hides the fact that many middle class women and even professionals are abused in one way or another. We tend to think quite erroneously that serial domestic abuse occurs in lower income families.

Parents and siblings may sow the seeds of victimage without a hand being lifted. All that is needed is a culture of control.

One of the primary ways of abusing someone, male or female, is to whittle away their self-esteem through remarks aimed at showing how stupid, evil or insensitive or emotional and irrational they are. This is actually an accustomed technique of abuse that men who hold power over their wives practise.

But women also inflict it. No matter how intelligent an individual may be, constant belittlement and verbal abuse wear away self-esteem and a sense of purpose.

There is also the process of isolation or the attempt to ostracise a particular person within a group or within a family. This is deep abuse and creates a horrific impact on the victim, in particular if it continues over a long period of time. This form of abuse leaves that person vulnerable to control by others and seems most often enacted on women.

Abuse is not a simple problem.

In our bureaucratic and technocratic world the opportunities for destroying a person are countless.

That women are increasingly vulnerable speaks specifically to our socialisation of both boys and girls and the ways in which we bond groups and loyalties. Accepting abuse at any level opens the door.