How do people determine who victims are in society?
I recently broke my nose. I was drinking, wearing shoes with no grip, and not looking as I was walking down carpeted stairs in a dark bar. I missed a step and took a swan dive down to the floor, leaving me with a very bloody broken nose and cuts all over my face.
I honestly didn't think anything of it when I went to the hospital the next day. My face was unrecognizable, my eyes were swollen, black and blue, my lip was bruised and three times its normal size, I was laughing at how horrible I must look as I sat in the ER with my roommate, waiting to get everything checked out.
In the waiting room, I was met with stares. I brushed it off as people just nervously reacting to a disturbing looking injury. At the triage, I told my story, complete with laughter. The nurse shot me a look but wrote what I said on paper and I was taken to a room.
It was there that a nurse and a doctor, both men, asked me if I was physically threatened by anyone in my life. Knowing this was probably protocol, I answered no. They stared at me and the doctor turned to the nurse and said, "You can ask her more questions," and then left. The nurse turned to me and told me that I could tell them what happened and there will be no judgments. I simply answered, "I'm admitting to falling down the stairs. I don't expect you to judge me."
The next day I went to work, on the bus I was stared at, people were whispering behind their hands, shooting me sympathetic looks. I wrote everything off as paranoia until a cashier at the pharmacy next to my work commented while ringing up my Neosporin and Advil, "It looks like he loves you, honey."
I was so completely appalled.
It was at that point I started to recognize prejudices I had against
women who are victims of physical abuse . I immediately began thinking
about how I'm not one of THOSE women, that I would NEVER be with a guy
who hit me. I started "othering," hoping to reassure myself that
violence against women happened to other people, not women like me. I'm
ashamed of it, but it was there, I can't deny it.
Going home
after work, I vowed to not go outside of my house until my face started
healing. I didn't want to face the accusations, the pity, the judgment.
I began to wonder what a women who has been abused must go through on a
day to day basis. Not once did I have someone pull me aside and ask me
privately what had happened, or asked if they could offer me help. Had
I been a victim of abuse, I would have felt ashamed, judged, alone
while walking the streets past the whisperers and the stares.
And not that it needs to be said, but you can bet none of my male
friends are met with that same reaction whenever they are injured.
In my last relationship, my boyfriend and I would fight. A lot.
Sometimes in public. I remember multiple times while he and I were
shouting at each other in a parking lot or bar hallway having men come
up to me during these fights asking me if I was ok. At the time it
seemed funny and usually made my boyfriend and I realize how
inconsequential whatever we were fighting about was, but now I look
back and wonder what the deeper meaning was behind those quick
interventions.
I do not think of myself as a victim at all. I
do not think of myself as a woman who needs a helping hand. Yet for my
entire adult life, I have come across that way to strangers, and I am
wondering if it is me, or if women in general are treated this way.
Would any woman walking the streets with a black eye and bloody lip be
met with the reaction I received?
0 TrackBacks
Listed below are links to blogs that reference this entry: Being labelled a "Victim".
TrackBack URL for this entry: http://www.feministing.com/cgi-bin/movabletype/mt-tb.fcgi/16055
Well that is a stereotype. Women are victims, men are perpetrators.
The other side of the coin is the abused man with black and blue eyes that has a problem to be believed.
Time to take that stereotype down right?
So, despite the fact that domestic violence is the number 1 reason for ER visits by young women, and that those patients frequently lie to protect their abuses, the doctors and nurses should ignore their lived experience just because some individual woman with a non DV related injury might be embarrassed?
There is a difference between number one cause of injury (total/unintentional/violence related/self harm/legal intervention/unknown), and number one cause of VIOLENT injury seen in emergency departments.
Nancy K.D. Lemon, a lecturer in domestic-violence law at the University of California at Berkeley's School of Law states via
http://chronicle.com/article/Domestic-Violence-a/47940/
[begin quote]
. . . the Centers for Disease Control Web site, which stated, when I checked it on July 15, 2009: "IPV," or intimate-partner violence, "is a major cause of violence-related injuries. Intimate partners were identified as the perpetrators in 36 percent of all emergency department visits by women who suffered from one or more violent injuries."
Similarly, the Bureau of Justice Statistics at the U.S. Department of Justice has reported that 37 percent of all women who sought care in hospital emergency rooms for violence-related injuries were injured by a current or former spouse, boyfriend, or girlfriend (Michael R. Rand, "Violence-Related Injuries Treated in Hospital Emergency Departments," 1997).
[end quote]
Please note: reported "violent injuries," not total injuries.
The CDC reports via
http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5017a4.htm
"during July 1--September 30, 2000, which indicate that approximately 31,000,000 persons were treated for nonfatal injuries in EDs in 2000. Although most of the injuries were unintentional, an estimated 1,973,000 were violence-related."
Table 2 reports 647,396 of 13,203,419 non-fatal injuries to women treated by emergency departments were violence related, or 4.9%.
Also see such as "1.4 MILLION PEOPLE TREATED IN HOSPITAL EMERGENCY
ROOMS FOR VIOLENCE-RELATED INJURIES" from the DoJ, or "Violence-Related Injuries Treated in Hospital Emergency Departments" from the BoJ/DoJ, which reports
"During 1994 U.S. hospital emergency department (ED) personnel treated an estimated 1.4 million people for injuries from confirmed or suspected interpersonal violence. These patients represented about 1.5% of all visits to hospital ED's and 3.6% of the injury-related ED visits in 1994."
and the breakdown by sex and relationship to offender.
There is no doubt in my mind that intimates or former intimates are the cause of a large proportion of violent injury to women. One should immediately question why 28% of all women going to ERs vs. 19% of men report their injury is due to "fall" (unintentional), as many of those and much of the difference between male and female are undoubtedly due to unreported violence against women. 14.9% of women and 20.5% of men also report their injury being due to striking or being struck by something (unintentional).
More important than the use of the word violent is the fact that the stats refer to all intimate partners irrespective of gender.
The post didn't seem to be a complaint about the ER protocol, it seemed to be about the OP's discomfort with the idea of being a victim.
I'm the OP, I'm not sure why my screen name shows up differently as a commenter.
Anyway, I certainly was not complaining about protocol in the ER, just, as someone mentioned, I feel I should have been believed. It was disconcerting to me to feel I had to prove I wasn't abused. I understand the nurse and doctor asking me those questions, and I would expect them to. I was not expecting to get judged or shamed.
"Victim" has taken on a negative connotation over the years, because it seems to often imply "oh, poor me" over "I'm a person genuinely wronged by an unfair system".
It's become such a polarized term these days that its original power has been lost. Whether fairly or unfairly, any social movement has to know how to pick its battles, else it risks been seen in terms of the boy who cried wolf. The belief among many is that victim is a kind of get out of jail free card that can be deployed to avoid public condemnation. But again, this is part of a society in which we've become so distrustful of each other that we assume others are automatically out to use unfair advantage against us.
I prefer the term survivor for this very reason. It doesn't have the negative connotations which are associated with the word victim, and its empowering to be able to know that you survived your ordeal. Plus it lets people know that you are healing and getting over whatever it was that happened
Earlier this summer, I had a seizure and fell down a flight of stairs. I had bruises the size of melons up and down one arm and all over the backs of my thighs, complete with scrapes and cuts. Until those injuries healed, I couldn't go out in public without someone staring, sympathetic looks, and those same whispers you mentions.
It climaxed when I went to eat with a male friend of mine, and the waitress took our orders, gave me a pitying glance, and threw the dirtiest look in his direction as she walked away. When she was gone, my friend turned to me and said, "she thinks I beat you." I laughed at the time, but later I realized that all those stares I was getting, was because people thought I was a DVV. And yet, no one asked if I needed help, if I was okay, or anything like that. Of course, people asked what happened, and I told them that I fell down the stairs. Needless to say, no one believed me, who didn't know me already.
In high school and college I was a goalie on my lacrosse team, and I was always covered with bruises on my arms (the only part of me without pads). I remember it was pretty routine for strangers to tell me I needed to break up with my boyfriend or go to a shelter. Generally, the comments were said with a tone of disgust, like I was a loser for letting someone beat me up. Just like Brittany-Anne, male friends got nasty looks, and once someone called a guy I was with a jack-ass while they pointed to my arms.
The thing is, it never felt benevolent, just condescending. If I had been a real DV victim, I would have just been shamed by it all.
The doctors and nurses were just trying to help you.
I'm sure it has been their experience that most women who come into an emergency room with a broken nose and facial lacerations have been beaten by a male domestic partner.
And I'm sure they have the statistics to back that opinion up - since the leading cause of injury to young women in America is beatings administered by male domestic partners.
Many women lie about these injuries - to preserve the relationship with that man, to protect him from arrest, because they are ashamed ect ect ect.
So, when they see a young female patient with a broken nose, they assume that her boyfriend or husband broke her nose and that she's going to cover for him.
That's why they questioned you alone - that wasn't just an idea they came up with for themselves, in my state [New York] that's the law because the legislature realized that the only way to get many women to admit being on the receiving end of male domestic violence is to get them away from the man so she can tell the doctors and nurses the truth.
And that policy works - the only reason State Senator Hiram Monseratte [D - Queens] is currently on trial for trying to gouge his girlfriend's eye out with a broken shot glass is because the doctors and nurses at Long Island Jewish-Hillside emergency room separated her from him and questioned her alone about her injury
When Monseratte was in the room, she said it was "an accident" - questioned alone, she told the truth - which she immediately recanted once Monseratte came back (but by that point, the doctors and nurses alerted the cops, who arrested Monseratte on the spot)
Actually, the staff of that ER should be commended for being so proactive of investigating what they suspected was an incident of domestic violence.
Your personal embarrassment was a minor accidental byproduct of the hospital staff's justifiable vigilance.
"Your personal embarrassment was a minor accidental byproduct of the hospital staff's justifiable vigilance."
Gregory Butler: I am afraid I can't agree on this statement. Simply because I have been through similar experiences with doctor's and nurses. I used to dance regularly and got many bruises and sometimes I was not believed on saying where I got the bruises. The staff made me feel humiliated because they believed I was lying...and they felt sorry for me unduly. I just thought I was going to get a few injuries fixed up. I left feeling ashamed.
Absolutely medical staff should be vigilant about Domestic Violence but it is also their duty to make women feel comfortable enough to be believed...whatever their circumstances. Otherwise Domestic Violence are much less likely to talk about what happened to them if they are facing mistrust from the outset.
And being treated like a victim promotes the attitude that all women are powerless and need assistance - and not all of us do.
When I was fifteen, I tripped over a long skirt that I was wearing (I'd just gotten home from a choir concert) while I was walking up a flight of stairs. I wasn't hurt too badly, but I did end up with a couple of bruises on the bottom of my forearms as a result of trying to cushion my fall. The next Monday, when the bruises were most visible, one of my classmates confronted me about them—he thought they were the result of an attack from an abusive date. I told him I'd just tripped and fallen on the stairs. He was unconvinced, and reminded me that I didn't have to put up with guys hitting me.
A few years later, I saw in the newspaper that the same guy had been arrested for beating up his girlfriend. I've sometimes wondered since then if that incident where he saw my bruises and didn't believe my explanation might have helped to convince him that he could get away with it.
I played soccer in high school and college and often had bruises on my legs. My face doesn't bruise easily (more swelling than bruising), so even if I did injure my face, no one stared.
I had a teammate in college who WAS abused by a boyfriend when in college. She often tried to play off her bruises (often finger marks on her arms) as happening during soccer. People were dubious of her story, but were RIGHT.
Its one of those fine line situations. Medical personnel need to err on the side of being too cautious about domestic abuse. I don't think it's right for strangers to stare or make comments about anything about a person's appearance, but people who know you should be asking what happened. In my opinion, too often the people who should be asking questions aren't and abuse goes on without confrontation.
The one bright spot in situations such as the OP's is the people placed in these awkward situations have people around them who are concerned for their safety and won't simply silently accept suspected violence against women.
But we should question further - these concerned loved ones and strangers, or medical personnel cannot be certain that these injuries are indeed NOT DV/IPV related. They did not witness you e.g., fall down the stairs by yourself. Yet law enforcement is not mentioned.
I am glad that uninvolved male friends or boyfriends in comments are not being unjustly interrogated or apprehended by police. However, this is indicative of how people including professionals can be suspicious in actual cases of DV/IPV, yet not take action to assist or protect the victims.
I believe it relevant to add: I am a nurse in long term care. A male nurse, with 85% female resident/clients, expected to work largely independently, particularly because I work nights when we are understaffed. Probably less than 20% of them are cognizant or coherent enough to communicate effectively. Such a situation is ripe for abuse, and also misunderstanding. I am aware of the extent of reports of abuse within care homes.
If there is a new scratch, bruise, opening in skin, bandage, dressing, skin irritation, redness, or other change in physical or mental state of our client/residents, it better be reported and explained to a supervisor and the next shift, preferably in writing, because it is relevant to our care, but also to cover our asses. Only regular personal experience with some of these people are sufficient explanation that someone indeed has "fragile skin," and may bruise with hand pressure while being moved between bed and transport chair, or that certain people might consider routine care (witnessed) as a physical or sexual assault against them.
The most poignant part of this to me is the OP's realization of her prejudice against victims of domestic violence. This is something I've been realizing and struggling with myself in the past year or so. I started to realize that in many ways I'd been in (mostly emotionally) abusive relationships, but always sort of played it off as "not really abuse" for one reason or another (mainly because "I did the same thing," which I now realize only meant they were mutually abusive). I know now I did this because it would have been shameful for me to admit-- even to myself-- I was abused (and somehow less to admit I was abusive). I think a lot of the prejudice comes from our oversimplification of what an abusive relationship is, and who abusers and victims are-- sort of the "Lifetime movie" mold. The female is almost always shown as an innocent victim to an evil man's unprovoked violence, and therefore her inability to recognize it and leave the relationship makes her seem weak. And even if that is the case, everyone has weakness, especially in the face of both love and fear.