Reason-Bullies
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- Category: Essays
- Published on Friday, 30 December 2011 01:30
- Written by Damien Moody
- Hits: 118
One of the biggest challenges for men who have survived domestic violence are the "reason-bullies". These are people - both men and women - who keep, on the surface, a calm demeanor and insist that since they do not believe that whatever happened to the survivor is not the norm, he should stop being a "victim" and move on. This usually works in conjunction with the fallacy of modern society to go along with sound bytes and mass media reporting that conveniently packages things into very small - and therefore inaccurate - views of reality as a whole.
Psychologically, I'd be interested in learning why people who deny the scope of DV to such an extent behave in this way. Are they themselves survivors of domestic violence and have internally denied it to such an extent that they prefer to eradicate the very thought of DV from their minds? Or perhaps they are simply the product of a mass-production fed media and believe that if the major media outlets do not say it is important, then it must not be.
You also have those who question survivors by doubting their powers of recall for any number of reasons (too long ago, you were under stress and therefore you're seeing it all wrong, and so on). I'm reasonably certain that people who have been raped weren't simply being asked on a date, freaked out, and reported it as rape.
It's of further interest that despite not being themselves DV survivors (unless they're hiding it deep within their psyches), these people are simply unable to allow others to pursue healing paths and continue to insist that their version of reality in which DV of the specified type does not happen is the correct reality.
However it works out for these people, it is a challenge that we will have before us for the foreseeable future.
