Is Potential and Actual Violence a Lifestyle Choice?

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.

 

Ana, Mia, & North Korea (revisited)

A friend of mine wanted to read this blog post I posted many moons ago.  So here it is:

This is what I get for surfing through xanga.  I was just looking at some of my blogrings Books, Books,&More Books and I checked out one of the blogs that seemed interesting called "Tear in ur eyes".  I was looking through her blogrings and I saw an interesting blogring called "Korean Anas."  Ok, I'm not a complete idiot, but I seriously didn't know what this blogring was about for like the first 5 minutes.  Then a word kept coming up in names and descriptions: "skinny."  Then it dawned on me and I was a little sickened.  I was sad just as I am always sad when I come upon a woman/girls blog specifically accounting their desire to be skinny and readily affirming their Anorexiaand/or Bulimia.  I was aware of the nick name Ana, but Mia was a new one to me.  What cute ways of describing such a sick act to afflict upon ones self.  As I looked through a few of the blogs and commented on one of them I started to think about this issue.

My ex g/f is Korean-American.  She was a very skinny girl at one time, but through college she did take on some weight.  I remember she would tell me how her Korean mother would say such rude remarks concerning her weight that would hurt her feelings deeply.  She struggled with her weight and body image issues, but it was never something that concerned me and my attraction to her.  She was not fat, but she was not skinny.  I would do my best to help her in that area and encourage her.  My primary concern was that she was "healthy" and the weight issue is secondary.  They are not necessarily the same thing.  A person can eat very well,  not go to the gym, and be "healthy."  Health is something that when you lose it, it is very difficult or impossible to gain back.  Weight can come and go. 

It also made me think of this western culture.  We create some of the worse food to eat that causes so much weight and then we worship thin.  It is a self-deprecation and self-worship to the point of uber-narcissim.  We love our "bad eating habits" and we "love being thin."  The sad part is we are exporting not only our bad eating habits, but our western narcissism to the East. 

The picture on the right above is from this article:

http://www.com.cuhk.edu.hk/varsity/9603/eat.htm Hong Kong

Also these articles:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/2978216.stm Inidia

Anorexia Growing in Asia

For me, my main concern has been about the plight of North Koreans and specifically those starving in North Korea.  The picture on the left and especially the one picture in the middle shows a starving North Korean woman and her emaciated body.  This is in stark contrast to the picture on the right where we in the West can "chose" to emaciate ourselves for body image reasons (no matter the health problems later or then).  I don't have to point out the irony. 

The brain is a powerful thing.  I should know as someone who once struggled with anxiety attacks.  If you tell yourself something and believe it to a certian extent it is a huge struggle to confront those "natural thoughts" with logic that contradicts your way of thinking.  There are people who have a fear of many things that are irrational, but it is rational in their mind.  It is a process of unhinging that.  But on top of confronting your irrational thoughts, you need rational thoughts to replace them.  Faith (although some will say another irrational thought) in Christ helped me overcome my anxiety attacks by seeing a true prespective of who I am in Christ and what I can confront in Him.  I pray for these girls that put themselves through such horrible things, but really how far are any of us from them?

Originally posted January 29, 2008