July Essay: The Patriarchal Urge to Control Women
"Domestic violence is a pattern of power and control that by design limits survivors' choices." - Shannon Perez-Darby
There’s a reason why the first question asked after a woman is sexually assaulted is “What were you wearing?” We are primed to normalize the control and policing of women’s bodies; from anti-abortion laws to school “decency” dress codes, and controlling demands masked as “love”. Feminism 101 teaches us that the personal is political — what happens within the home, family unit, and intimate relationships is directly connected to the larger sociopolitical structures that shape our society. The pursuit of turning women into men’s property is evidence of that.
The founding principle of patriarchy is that men are more valuable than women; men’s needs, comfort, opinions, authority, time, and entitlement is at the top of the gender hierarchy. Women and girls belong to their fathers until they are married to men. Within that reign, women lose complete agency over their own lives, choices, and bodies.
In case you missed it, Keke Palmer’s and Jonah Hill’s relationships took over the internet this past week. Now, I do not know anything personal about Keke or Jonah obviously but these recent events are great examples of how subtle control can be and how normalized it is to police women’s bodies under the guise of “respect” for your relationship, signaling men’s authority over women. A quick recap:
Keke Palmer’s boyfriend and father of her baby, Darius Jackson, publicly shamed and criticized her for her outfit and dancing with THE Usher at his concert. He said because she is a mother, she should not dress or behave this way. After a tsunami of backlash, he defended himself, “We live in a generation where a man of the family doesn’t want the wife & mother to his kids to showcase booty cheeks to please others & he gets told how much of a hater he is. This is my family and my representation. I have standards and morals to what I believe.” Notice he says nothing about Keke’s perspective, standards, or morals.
Jonah Hill’s ex, Sarah Brady (surfer and model), shared many texts showcasing Jonah’s attempt to control her behavior, friendships, lifestyle, and career. Buzzfeed has every detail here but I want to bring attention to his list of demands from the screenshot below:
To clarify: I’m not saying Keke was/is in an emotionally abusive relationship because she hasn’t said that but Sarah did say she was. Unfortunately, a lot of people online appear to be agreeing with Jonah, and to those people I would ask if they’d feel the same way if a regular guy with a regular girlfriend demanded that she stop working with men, change her line of work, stop hanging out with friends he deems “unrespectable”, and only dress/post pictures of herself in ways he thinks are appropriate. Would they think that crosses the line into abusive control?
The common thread I see between Darius and Jonah is that their behavior indicates they think they are entitled to control their partner’s bodies which requires the women to lose their agency. By Darius claiming Keke is dressing to please others (men) and Jonah demanding Sarah change her lifestyle because of men, Darius and Jonah are reducing the women’s bodies to objects, only interested in how other men respond and perceive them. The woman - the person - is erased.
It’s important to discuss these events because in general, patterns of control are a form of emotional abuse. The National Domestic Violence Hotline defines emotional abuse as “non-physical behaviors that are meant to control, isolate, or frighten you. This may present in romantic relationships as threats, insults, constant monitoring, excessive jealousy, manipulation, humiliation, intimidation, dismissiveness, among others.” Emotionally abusive patterns and behaviors can be really difficult to identify and define because emotional abuse is a spectrum. It isn’t black and white, survivors aren’t always perfect, and abusers aren’t always evil. Sometimes, the surviving and abusing are mutually exchanged. Once we understand the nuances of emotional abuse, we can start to challenge it. That’s the doorway to change.
For many years, the culture believed abuse and control were just physical matters and disregarded emotional abuse altogether. And now, with the internet, a whole new dimension of violence has blown wide open. Digital violence weaves into the old forms of abuse as well as stands up on its own (sharing nude photos without consent, restricting social media use, cyberstalking into physical stalking, doxing, harassment, sexually explicit photos, hate speech). Although we are in this new space, the same fundamental violence pops up and centers around men’s entitlement over women - which brings me to Counterman v. Colorado.
At the end of June, the Supreme Court ruled on a terrifying stalker case, Counterman v. Colorado. Billy Counterman sent thousands of threatening messages, stalking and harassing Coles Whalen, a musician. The messages ranged from tracking her movements, knowing who she was with, following her car to “I’ve had tapped phone lines before, what do you fear?” and “You’re not being good for human relationships. Die. Don’t need you.” The threats were constant and Whalen stopped performing her music live, putting the breaks on the upswing of her career. Eventually, Whalen went to the police, Counterman was arrested, and then a jury “found beyond a reasonable doubt that Counterman had knowingly communicated with Coles in a manner that would cause a reasonable person to suffer serious emotional distress, and the court sentenced him to four and a half years in prison”. It’s pertinent to note that Counterman had already been in jail for threatening other women, his ex-wife, her sisters, and his niece. A pattern.
People much smarter than me have riffed on this case and how it pertains to free speech. My understanding is that the case hinged on “true threats” - “The Supreme Court has defined ‘true threats’ – those that are unprotected by the First Amendment – as statements by which the speaker means to communicate a serious expression of an intent to commit an act of unlawful violence. The speaker need not carry out the act.” (CNN) The case was used as free speech protection and aimed to draw that line between “true threats of violence punishable as crimes and free speech protected by the First Amendment”. You can read more on that here, but the ACLU, who backed Counterman’s appeal, explains,
A great deal of speech—including political speech, satire, and artistic speech—contains overt or implicit references to violence that could be interpreted as genuinely threatening, or as figurative or rhetorical, depending on who is charged with interpreting the words. A purely objective standard, like the one applied by the Colorado Court of Appeals, creates a significant risk that people will be convicted of serious felonies because they failed to adequately anticipate how their words would be perceived. This risk is especially significant with respect to online speech, which is often broadcast to unexpected audiences, without the benefit of significant context to prevent misunderstandings. The brief argues that, to ensure adequate breathing room for robust public debate, the Supreme Court should hold that the First Amendment requires the government to demonstrate that the speaker subjectively intended to communicate a threat and that the speaker’s words were objectively threatening.
To counter this point by situating it within stalking (a form of psychological, emotional, and sometimes physical abuse) context, Mary Anne Franks writes for Slate,
The court ignores the reality that many stalkers fervently believe that their actions are or should be welcomed by their victims; indeed, the court’s holding means that the more delusional the stalker, the more the stalking is protected. In addition to preemptively insulating stalkers from criminal conviction as well as civil restraining orders, the holding elevates stalkers into free speech heroes. In doing so, the court has assured stalkers that they will not only be able to terrorize with impunity, but with acclaim. To be clear, the “freedom of speech” protected by the Counterman majority and valorized by civil libertarian organizations is the freedom to engage in objectively terrifying conduct that leads victims to withdraw from their professions, censor their communications, and restrict their movements. Given that the majority of stalkers are male and the majority of stalking victims are female, the thrust of the opinion can be put more bluntly: The First Amendment does not protect “speech,” but men’s speech at the expense of women’s speech; men’s delusions at the expense of women’s lives.
Again, the woman loses her agency in service of man’s entitlement.
I can understand the Supreme Court ruling considering the larger implications on who is interpreting the words but I want to suggest we, as individuals who make up a society, interpret harm based on impact rather than solely intent. These three situations shine a light on how emotional abuse lives in a fluid, subjective, gray spectrum, but at the core lies one person controlling another.
Words may not “break our bones”, but they do leave scars. What happens when words cross into threats? Where is the line and more importantly, who draws it? I’ll leave you with a poem by Ruby Redfort that encapsulates this reality,
“Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can also hurt me.
Stones and sticks break only skin, while words are ghosts that haunt me.
Slant and curved the word-swords fall, it pierces and sticks inside me.
Bats and bricks may ache through bones, but words can mortify me.
Pain from words has left its' scar, on mind and hear that's tender.
Cuts and bruises have not healed, it's words that I remember.”
*an important note: emotional and physical abuse are not gender-specific. Men, trans, and non-binary people experience these abuses as well but research shows proportionally, cisgender men are largely enacting abusive behaviors. This fact doesn’t erase the reality that abuse is experienced across the gender spectrum.
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Adriana <333
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