This is very relatable, though my situation was a bit different since I was an outcast who moved out of my parents' home at 17, cut off from any further support, once I refused to conform to or tolerate their rigid Evangelical religion and the abuse that came along with it. Normalized abuse was the only family model I had to follow, so I married my first boyfriend the day after my 20th birthday soley for survival reasons, including because getting married was the only way I could access financial aid for college since the state assumed my parents should help pay for my education.
Also raised in an Evangelical household, my spouse was already abusive before we married, but it was within the normalized range of abuse I'd grown up with, and since financially I didn't really have any other good options apart from "get hitched," I said "I do."
We were together for 16 isolated, hellish years. I had no family to turn to and very few friends. I lacked any capacity for discussing the reality of my home life with anyone. I finally got out while my two kids were little. Something in me knew I didn't want them growing up in the kind of household I'd grown up in. Also, as a queer person, I was suffocating in a toxic patriarchal cishet relationship.
And that has me thinking about the added complexity of being queer in an individualistic society that prizes privacy, because on the one hand, both privacy and self-determination have been critical to whatever level of queer liberation we've managed to obtain, but we still often suffer isolation from supportive community and have discomfort with honestly discussing our relationships when they aren't healthy (often worsened because of the stigma of being queer). Lots to ponder here, but these are my preliminary thoughts.
Fascinating, illuminating. Makes a lot more sense than the predominant explanations of family violence at the moment. Where I live the current explanation is that it's all due to inequality between the sexes, to sexist attitudes.
But I'd love to know what about when it's all reported, everyone knows, the police get involved as per in the example above... and the woman STILL goes back????
This is very relatable, though my situation was a bit different since I was an outcast who moved out of my parents' home at 17, cut off from any further support, once I refused to conform to or tolerate their rigid Evangelical religion and the abuse that came along with it. Normalized abuse was the only family model I had to follow, so I married my first boyfriend the day after my 20th birthday soley for survival reasons, including because getting married was the only way I could access financial aid for college since the state assumed my parents should help pay for my education.
Also raised in an Evangelical household, my spouse was already abusive before we married, but it was within the normalized range of abuse I'd grown up with, and since financially I didn't really have any other good options apart from "get hitched," I said "I do."
We were together for 16 isolated, hellish years. I had no family to turn to and very few friends. I lacked any capacity for discussing the reality of my home life with anyone. I finally got out while my two kids were little. Something in me knew I didn't want them growing up in the kind of household I'd grown up in. Also, as a queer person, I was suffocating in a toxic patriarchal cishet relationship.
And that has me thinking about the added complexity of being queer in an individualistic society that prizes privacy, because on the one hand, both privacy and self-determination have been critical to whatever level of queer liberation we've managed to obtain, but we still often suffer isolation from supportive community and have discomfort with honestly discussing our relationships when they aren't healthy (often worsened because of the stigma of being queer). Lots to ponder here, but these are my preliminary thoughts.
Thanks for reading and sharing…
Fascinating, illuminating. Makes a lot more sense than the predominant explanations of family violence at the moment. Where I live the current explanation is that it's all due to inequality between the sexes, to sexist attitudes.
But I'd love to know what about when it's all reported, everyone knows, the police get involved as per in the example above... and the woman STILL goes back????