.....(Really got me on a ramble here.......hope it makes sense!)......
We are used to seeing women in those poses.. Used to taking those poses ourselves.
However, it crossed my mind that what we don't see are images of what abusers look like while abusing. We're not used to seeing men portrayed in that pose of ultimate pathetic brutal loserhood. (I'm having a hard time describing it, but men who vent their rage on women, control them, harm them, are expressing the lowest, weakest behavior.)
So, our consciousness is saturated with the image of a victimized woman. It's normalized, so it's easy to shrug off. But these images aiming to raise awareness and generate disapproval for common male behavior should link imagery of desperate, out of control, raging, heartless and infantile MEN to the phenomenon.
After all, they are the other half, the active half, of the equation. Yet they exist behind a cloak of social blindness.
I learned this lesson of visibility the first time i went to a Womyn's Music Fest, a million years ago. I was kind of stunned because i was seeing soooo many different looking women. And i realized that I was brainwashed by media to EXPECT that women look fairly typical, homogeneous, interchangeable. To see such women-- hundreds of women not fitting what was continually presented to me as the norm, or more precisely, the singularity of the female existence--was eye-opening. Stunning because it was such an extreme contradiction of the world as it's portrayed.
Oh, and yes, the book excerpt especially was triggering. I could really recall that desperation as a child---Somebody ask, please somebody, notice something's wrong and ask me...step in...make her stop, believe me, not her...ask me without her standing next to me. (My mother taught me how to be a victim). Now that i see that, I realize that's exactly how I felt. I'd just never seen it put into words before!
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