I received a text at 1:30AM in the morning, but I didn't see it until later that morning at 10:00AM. The text read something to the fact that her fiance had choked her and threw her around. A close friend of mine who was dating a guy I was already skeptical about had just attacked her during an argument and violently choked her and violently threw her around. This was only a week ago. She is rare as she is one of the few who got away and is currently safe and away from him. Someone who had been verbally abusive and now took it to a level of physical abuse.
The picture above shows a screen capture of the recent release by TMZ of the elevator camera showing Ray Rice punching his then fiance twice and her falling and hitting her head on the rail and was knocked out cold. The whole ferver of what he did, his fiances defense of her abuser (while seeming to blame herself), the criticism of the NFL, and the commissioner seems to be overlooking a lot of the calls I seem to hear in sports radio and talk radio of guys defending Ray Rice. It sickens me. Ray Rices' fiance's defense of her abuser, later marriage of her abuser, and hiding the evidence of the abuse sickens me as well (but I know it is common place).
This made me think that it is possible and without knowing it the culture is both rebuking domestic violence and promoting films like Fifty Shades of Grey which promote sexual violence in a relationship as something that is ok and acceptable. Outside of the American pop cultural hypocrisy, there seems to be an underlying current that domestic violence is a lifestyle choice and what happens behind close doors of two consenting adults is none of our business. Even if it is abuse. Some women take on a slave to master relationship which on some level seems to have restrictions on physical harm or being directed to do anything criminal, but even then the lines seem blurred in these shades of grey.
The linked article points to a Journal of Women's Health study, points out that women who read 50 Shades of Grey are more likely to have abusive partners who are abusive beyond what the book describes.
While Christianity's recent past and English Common law has a history of allowing and even institutionalizing abuse against women as twisting the marriage relationship and scripture to allow a man to be "Lord" of his house and marriage. While there is much more to be written on that subject, it is clear to understand that the role of the man to be like Christ and the woman to be like the church is not an abusive love but a love of self-sacrifice. Again much can also be written on this subject and the Theology of Marriage but that isn't my main focus in this blog post. What my concern is that there is at some level an acceptance and a popularization of abuse in relationships that seems innocent and "exciting" on a sexual level, but leaves huge blurred lines allowing abuse to be dismissed, hidden, popular, excused, deemed a "lifestyle," and given cultural relevance as an accepted form of a healthy relationship. It seems that the psychosis in abused women to excuse, love their abuser to the end, and defend him was bad enough, but to now give moral and legal/lifestyle/cultural relevance seems to harken to a time when twisted scripture and courts gave the same moral and legal/cultural relevance of abuse then.
I happened to run by this video today and I thought it was ironic in terms of all that seems to have happened in my life recently and with the national conversation on domestic abuse.
