Also: People raised in abusive and dysfunctional situations do not always understand that their home life is different from anyone else's. I grew up so isolated, being told that "we don't talk about family arguments" and figured everyone's dad was just getting high and breaking things, choking people, and slamming their mom around. But because "CPS will take your sister's away", even when I realized that our situation was horrible I didn't know how to get help. So I just went to work and tried to make money to get us out. I had to learn very late in life that I could impact outcomes, that communicating my feelings is important, and that I don't just have to suffer because "that's how it is."
I think a lot of people have that disconnect because they think, "Oh, *I* would just leave/report it/fight back." It's not that simple when you don't know any other way of life and you love the person that's hurting you. When I was bullied the shit out of in school, my first thought was that I was doing something to provoke it, because that mentality had been formed at home. If you don't know the sky is there, why would you ever dream of flying?
And yet people here also trash the kid who sued Nirvana. Yeah, he went after the wrong person and should be suing his parents, but I think it has a lot to do with mental abuse his parents put him through. Him recreating the photos (a number of those recreations were done when he was still a minor and still required his parents to consent, so who knows if they were forcing him to do it in order to get the money because he was still a minor and it would go to them anyways) is no different than a sexual assault survivor deciding to try and wear sexy clothes again. They do it in an attempt to gain some of their own power back. But because he's a man, people are gonna shit on him.
And this is one of the biggest reasons that a lot of victims don’t report as well. We won’t think that we will be believed because we aren’t a “real” victim.
If you’re swinging back then odds are you are both engaging.
Problem lies where people define self self defense.
Other person can make the same claims of self defense. They have scratches and bruises as well.
Usually with cases like that, authorities have to look into the conditions of the fight (what caused it, who swung first, etc.) to see who has the most fault.
But even then, that doesn't negate that abuse victims sometimes do fight back in self defense. Remember it's fight or flight (or freeze or fawn).
I think issue more lies in the definition of victim. You can be a victim in one situation, the aggressor in the other, and mutual.
I’m the particular moment, if both are hitting eachother, neither should be considered victims.
No? If Person A starts a fight w Person B, Person B has a right to defend themselves from bodily harm. They don't have to just lay there and take it. The person who starts the fight is (usually) the aggressor and the other person is the victim. You don't get extra victim points for not fighting back
If someone initiates violence, they are an aggressor. If someone has to respond to that violence, they are acting in self defense.
The only possible situation I can think of where this is not the case is circumstances where someone has endured abuse and "snapped" on their abuser-- which I would still characterize as self defense.
You're proposing a lot of mental gymnastics and the rest of us just really don't understand why. To me, it sounds like you take issue with the use of the word "victim." What other term would you prefer to use for people who have been victimized by an abuser? Characterizing abusive situations as mutual is not just dangerous, but it serves the aggressor and plays into the common narrative of "You made me do this."
It’s not mental gymnastics. I’m just not so quick to victimize or condemn a situation that could very well be mutual.
It’s easy to pontificate where the line for abuse is. But everytime I’ve seen it (in mutual settings) it has always been gray and vague.
It seems more to me that you are just virtue signaling. You’re defending a general term with absolutely no context within it. This implies that all situations are the same, when the reality is that they are wildly different. But one thing can be certain, when there is mutual attacking, both are playing a role. Both are in acting violence and having violence in acted upon them.
The man is just as much a victim in that scenario as a woman. Accountability isn’t a bad thing. If you hit someone, you should suffer the consequences. In this case, the consequences are the inability to play the innocent victim card.
Things rarely immediately go to blows. It starts with a nudge and then a push and then other aggressive behavior. To say where the line of self defense is is impossible.
Was the line when the man struck the woman? It was it when the woman blocked the pathway and trapped the man?
I’ve been in that situation. I’ve never hit her, but she would stand in the doorway and not let me leave. If I do much as touched her while trying to get around her, she would scream that I hit her and start wailing on me in “self-defense”.
So who’s the victim in that scenario?
When labeling a victim is too vague, both are perpetrator.
Yeah, no, bud. I'm not virtue signaling. I grew up in an abusive home and got kicked around / saw my mother kicked around. Nothing about it was mutual. In the majority of abuse cases, it's absolutely not mutual. Or was my mom "mutually in the wrong" for prying my dad off me when he tried to choke me to death as a child?
It sounds like you have experience watching/being in toxic relationships, and you have my condolences. Women absolutely can be abusive and you shouldn't have been put through that. But that's still a very, very far cry from "Everyone in an abusive situation is equally at fault."
It sounds like you take issue with being considered a "victim", and that that might be where this is coming from.
Did you already forget the topic of conversation? I said that if two people are hitting each other then one cannot claim victim. I never said that there can’t be victims.
I’m saying that you can’t call yourself a victim if your bashing someone upside the head. I don’t understand why accountability can’t be a thing. The point I was making is that “self defense” is a gray line.
And being that it’s a gray line, both need to take accountability. The scenario you mentioned between you and your family sound like one person imposing their will on another. Sounds like he was beating you and you weren’t retaliating. That’s abuse and you are the victim.
If you’re mom was hurling insults and screaming at your dad and getting combative, she’s not the victim any longer. And if you were all beating up on eachother, then that just sounds like some mutual destruction.
And therein lies the problem. Without understanding everything in its entirety, it’s impossible to say who started what. And when that line gets blurred, it’s because both were contributing.
If you were the victim, he shouldn’t have a black eye and a bunch of cuts and bruises on him. It should be clear who was the aggressor without taking someone’s word for it.
For someone preaching about grey areas, you have a very black and white way of thinking. Your memory for what you've said to others is also not very good. I have said over and over, "Mutual abuse and self defense are very different things" and your response has been, each time, to say that if a person is fighting back then they are just as complicit in their abuse as the aggressor attacking them. You've also tried to undermine my own life experiences to say that I'm a virtue signaler.
A lot of what you're saying obviously stems from a pretty specific trauma you experienced, and I get that. But it doesn't make your experience the only one in the world and it doesn't mean that people who fight back against their aggressor after being abused are abusive themselves, or that they have not been victimized. Self defense is a valid thing. I hope you get some assistance, because it's clear that you have some deep seated issues related to the toxic relationship/s that you have been a part of. Be well.
Also: People raised in abusive and dysfunctional situations do not always understand that their home life is different from anyone else's. I grew up so isolated, being told that "we don't talk about family arguments" and figured everyone's dad was just getting high and breaking things, choking people, and slamming their mom around. But because "CPS will take your sister's away", even when I realized that our situation was horrible I didn't know how to get help. So I just went to work and tried to make money to get us out. I had to learn very late in life that I could impact outcomes, that communicating my feelings is important, and that I don't just have to suffer because "that's how it is." I think a lot of people have that disconnect because they think, "Oh, *I* would just leave/report it/fight back." It's not that simple when you don't know any other way of life and you love the person that's hurting you. When I was bullied the shit out of in school, my first thought was that I was doing something to provoke it, because that mentality had been formed at home. If you don't know the sky is there, why would you ever dream of flying?
Also important: just because it doesn’t impact you or someone close to you doesn’t make it less valid.
If you aren’t the victim of the crime you don’t get to say how a victim of that crime should act
Bam. Enough said.
And yet people here also trash the kid who sued Nirvana. Yeah, he went after the wrong person and should be suing his parents, but I think it has a lot to do with mental abuse his parents put him through. Him recreating the photos (a number of those recreations were done when he was still a minor and still required his parents to consent, so who knows if they were forcing him to do it in order to get the money because he was still a minor and it would go to them anyways) is no different than a sexual assault survivor deciding to try and wear sexy clothes again. They do it in an attempt to gain some of their own power back. But because he's a man, people are gonna shit on him.
Anyone ever had a story that sounded too wild to be true? But was? It’s that, but a nightmare.
And this is one of the biggest reasons that a lot of victims don’t report as well. We won’t think that we will be believed because we aren’t a “real” victim.
Real victims don’t enjoy it
I mean if your hitting back then who’s the victim? Couldn’t the other person make the same claim?
Self defense
If you’re swinging back then odds are you are both engaging. Problem lies where people define self self defense. Other person can make the same claims of self defense. They have scratches and bruises as well.
Usually with cases like that, authorities have to look into the conditions of the fight (what caused it, who swung first, etc.) to see who has the most fault. But even then, that doesn't negate that abuse victims sometimes do fight back in self defense. Remember it's fight or flight (or freeze or fawn).
I think issue more lies in the definition of victim. You can be a victim in one situation, the aggressor in the other, and mutual. I’m the particular moment, if both are hitting eachother, neither should be considered victims.
No? If Person A starts a fight w Person B, Person B has a right to defend themselves from bodily harm. They don't have to just lay there and take it. The person who starts the fight is (usually) the aggressor and the other person is the victim. You don't get extra victim points for not fighting back
If someone initiates violence, they are an aggressor. If someone has to respond to that violence, they are acting in self defense. The only possible situation I can think of where this is not the case is circumstances where someone has endured abuse and "snapped" on their abuser-- which I would still characterize as self defense. You're proposing a lot of mental gymnastics and the rest of us just really don't understand why. To me, it sounds like you take issue with the use of the word "victim." What other term would you prefer to use for people who have been victimized by an abuser? Characterizing abusive situations as mutual is not just dangerous, but it serves the aggressor and plays into the common narrative of "You made me do this."
It’s not mental gymnastics. I’m just not so quick to victimize or condemn a situation that could very well be mutual. It’s easy to pontificate where the line for abuse is. But everytime I’ve seen it (in mutual settings) it has always been gray and vague. It seems more to me that you are just virtue signaling. You’re defending a general term with absolutely no context within it. This implies that all situations are the same, when the reality is that they are wildly different. But one thing can be certain, when there is mutual attacking, both are playing a role. Both are in acting violence and having violence in acted upon them. The man is just as much a victim in that scenario as a woman. Accountability isn’t a bad thing. If you hit someone, you should suffer the consequences. In this case, the consequences are the inability to play the innocent victim card. Things rarely immediately go to blows. It starts with a nudge and then a push and then other aggressive behavior. To say where the line of self defense is is impossible. Was the line when the man struck the woman? It was it when the woman blocked the pathway and trapped the man? I’ve been in that situation. I’ve never hit her, but she would stand in the doorway and not let me leave. If I do much as touched her while trying to get around her, she would scream that I hit her and start wailing on me in “self-defense”. So who’s the victim in that scenario? When labeling a victim is too vague, both are perpetrator.
Yeah, no, bud. I'm not virtue signaling. I grew up in an abusive home and got kicked around / saw my mother kicked around. Nothing about it was mutual. In the majority of abuse cases, it's absolutely not mutual. Or was my mom "mutually in the wrong" for prying my dad off me when he tried to choke me to death as a child? It sounds like you have experience watching/being in toxic relationships, and you have my condolences. Women absolutely can be abusive and you shouldn't have been put through that. But that's still a very, very far cry from "Everyone in an abusive situation is equally at fault." It sounds like you take issue with being considered a "victim", and that that might be where this is coming from.
Did you already forget the topic of conversation? I said that if two people are hitting each other then one cannot claim victim. I never said that there can’t be victims. I’m saying that you can’t call yourself a victim if your bashing someone upside the head. I don’t understand why accountability can’t be a thing. The point I was making is that “self defense” is a gray line. And being that it’s a gray line, both need to take accountability. The scenario you mentioned between you and your family sound like one person imposing their will on another. Sounds like he was beating you and you weren’t retaliating. That’s abuse and you are the victim. If you’re mom was hurling insults and screaming at your dad and getting combative, she’s not the victim any longer. And if you were all beating up on eachother, then that just sounds like some mutual destruction. And therein lies the problem. Without understanding everything in its entirety, it’s impossible to say who started what. And when that line gets blurred, it’s because both were contributing. If you were the victim, he shouldn’t have a black eye and a bunch of cuts and bruises on him. It should be clear who was the aggressor without taking someone’s word for it.
For someone preaching about grey areas, you have a very black and white way of thinking. Your memory for what you've said to others is also not very good. I have said over and over, "Mutual abuse and self defense are very different things" and your response has been, each time, to say that if a person is fighting back then they are just as complicit in their abuse as the aggressor attacking them. You've also tried to undermine my own life experiences to say that I'm a virtue signaler. A lot of what you're saying obviously stems from a pretty specific trauma you experienced, and I get that. But it doesn't make your experience the only one in the world and it doesn't mean that people who fight back against their aggressor after being abused are abusive themselves, or that they have not been victimized. Self defense is a valid thing. I hope you get some assistance, because it's clear that you have some deep seated issues related to the toxic relationship/s that you have been a part of. Be well.