"Please don't beat me, I'm having my period": How abuse works.

I’ve not posted for quite a while for a variety of reasons . . . I’ve lost my job, decided to go to law school, and generally been immersed in being very busy. What fun!

Now, part of what this means is that I missed the big WoC appropriation blow up completely. This is probably good, since I just don’t feel like I have anything useful to say that hasn’t been said better already by someone else. In the midst of all that, though, I was forwarded several wonderful blog posts written by African women, and I’ve finally got the time to write about them.

The first, and the topic of this post, is How to Beat Girls And Women by Mama Wangari of A Life Less Perfect. Everyone should read it in its entirety, of course, but it’s an autobiographical post about being beaten by her father when she was 16, how she avoided it, and the larger expectations and culture surrounding beatings.

“Please don’t beat me. I’m having my period,” and he turned abruptly away from me, dropping the belt to his side, and marched away to the end of the path to stand staring at the fence for a few dangerous moments. Then he turned and marched back to me and handed me the belt. My heart leapt.

“What you just mentioned to me,” his voice had gone low. “Never mention it to me again. Never. That’s between you and your mother. Go!”

It’s a great story, but the part that really makes it shine is her mother’s reaction, later:

A few days later I was walking home with my mum, down a steep rutted path, when out of a silence she suddenly asked, “Why did you ask Daddy not to beat you because of your period?”

“Pardon?”

“The other day, when you asked Daddy not to beat you because of your period. Did you think it would make you bleed more heavily or something? Why did you – ? What did you think would happen?”

I was puzzled. I decided to stick with pure fact.

“I wasn’t having my period,” I said.

“What? You weren’t?”

“No. I wasn’t,” I waited for her to burst out laughing and congratulate me.

“You mean you lied?” she was shocked.

“Of course!” so was I.

“But why?” she asked.

That really sort of sums it all up, doesn’t it? It’s not just that women and girls are expected to take their beatings, it’s that they’re expected to take them, and not object. The concept that she would object to being beaten is shocking and incomprehensible to her mother, because violence against women is a part of the natural order of things, like the weather. It’s just how things are.

Lying to avoid a beating is like lying to avoid a thunderstorm. It’s just not done. There’s no point. Why bother?

This, then, in a lot of ways, is one of the victories of feminism . . . the concept that, beyond women having the right not to be beaten, they, as human beings, have the right to object at all, to say, “this is wrong,” and, “no, I won’t just take it.” Abuse, institutionalized abuse, the culture of abuse, relies on maintaining the expectation that women will not say no and maintaining the expectation that objection to your own abuse is taboo.

It’s really an amazing post, and I encourage everyone to go read it.