Domestic abuse and victim blaming on MN?

[BeBlueSeal]

After I feel like hijacking many vulnerable women’s threads, thought it’d be interesting to start a conversation about this in its own right.

I love Mumsnet. I’ve used it and read it since I became a Mum 20 years ago. I love how it’s a female focused environment with smart clever women. Three babies in it’s still very much my go-to, googling any baby related issue. I’ll put “Mumsnet” on the end of my search because I value the input of “mumsnetters”!

I am genuinely disturbed by how many domestic violence related threads I see on here with victim blaming language constantly thrown around.

Why don’t you tell him to fuck Off?
i wouldn’t stand for this
i I would have done X, I would have done Y.
staying for the children ha ha ha ha are you serious?
you need to be stronger.
Are you a doormat?
Why did you have children with this man? Why did you have another child with this man?
How can you put your kids through this? I wouldn’t stand for this.
You’re not five years old.

Is there a fundamental misunderstanding here as to what domestic abuse actually is among swathes of women who have never experienced it?

why are so many people on this site unable to grasp that they do not understand or know what it’s like to be in this position ?

when I was in refuge with my babies, I met so many wonderful women. Intelligent, vibrant, wonderful women. Why does the cliche still exist on this site that DV victims need to “wake up”, tell their abusers to “fuck off” and “stop having kids”?

I don’t like it either but honestly a lot of people are a lot more no-nonsense and assertive online than in RL. I was reading a thread recently about a child left alone in a pool and was struck by how many stories of neglectful parenting MNetters witnessed and dealt with firmly and forthrightly, leaving the neglectful parent(s) chastened and shamed. I am not sure how many were completely true. I shall put it that way!

I'm shocked by the number of threads written by women being abused and watching their children being abused who are open about intending to stay with their abuser but wanting advice on how to deal with the abuse.

How do you think we should respond to these kinds of posts?

There are many, many of us on here who have suffered abuse at the hands of their partner or other family member.

Occasionally, one has to tell a poster quite firmly that although she is desperately trying to make it work or is terrified of leaving, she is putting her children at risk of harm by staying. Sometimes it is the only way that you can tell someone that she has to put the safety of her kids first. Sometimes that means being forthright. Sometimes that means telling her that if she stays with her abuser, she is allowing her dc to be abused. That is very often the shock people need to hear, in order to actually realise they have to escape, no matter what.

A lot of those things you mention are just that. They are intended to shock someone into action. A kick up the arse, if you will.

You can't see daylight when your head is buried in the sand.

I agree OP.

So many people with little or no experience of the horrors of life including domestic violence make egregiously stupid pronouncements.

What drives the desire to kick someone who is already on the floor?

Presumably to make their nasty little selves feel better about their own inadequacies.

I think it’s absolutely fine to tell people the reality of the situation they’re in. I had a social worker in my house weekly telling me this - but you can do it in a gentle, kind, understanding way. Ultimately this is more empowering.
kindness might have got through to me - it did in the end.

I agree with you OP that somd of the comments are tone deaf.
I think ones that upset me most are the ones which tell the OP to just stand up to their H or partner or b/f when the man in question is known to be violent or potentially violent and the OP would be putting themselves in very real and imminent danger. It beggars belief that so many pisters have so little understanding of what it's like to live with a violent man.

I don’t see how posts like “staying for the kids” with an eyeroll emoji are achieving this though. For example.

Definitely. It disturbs me that so many posters seem to think it’s as simple as tell him
to fuck off.

as I said on last nights sad thread, had I done that my husband would have smashed up our house in front of our two babies. I know, because he had done it before.

I agree, there was an upsetting thread this week about a financially abusive H who took all his wife's birthday presents and people were saying "oh just leave" "tell him to fuck off" after it was clear she was physically scared.

They’re intending to stay with their abuser out of fear. They’ve been trained to think they cannot live any other way. More constructive to say look, ring women’s aid, help is there.

I agree - and actually I always think to myself if they were on the other side, they absolutely wouldn’t do what they say on here.

Also, I do think that some people on here are just extreme in general. Like a petty argument with DH and someone instantly jumps to LTB, this is abuse when it’s just one of those every day things 100000 people go through every day.

Yes I was reading that thread and saw your comment.
The OP was so vulnerable.

I just wish more people were able to say, I haven’t been in your shoes. I don’t know what it’s like. I’m not going to be so arrogant as to tell you what you should do.

just be kind, listen, and help.

That said, male to female abuse is way WAY more common and has a physical dimension that doesn't work the other way round, so this is not "what about the menz", but....

I also see a lot of posts here that I think are women being coercively controlling and really not recognising it. Recently I have seen threads about a male partner bullied about not taking a woman out when he was ill, multiple e.g.s of female partners reading private letters or messages - and there is a worrying lack of self awareness often.

But yeah it is mostly male on female abuse and I think a lot of people just don't have a clue.

I don’t dispute that - but simply saying “why have you had 3 kids with this man” for example isn’t kind or helpful is it? And that’s the kind of post I’m repeatedly seeing.

Mumsnet is not a safe site for women being abused by partners. It just isn't.

Last time I looked netmums had someone from women's aid who commented on any similar threads there. It is a much safer site.

@Cotopaxi that rarely works online. The person being abused just feels bullied by a stranger on the internet and feels even more trapped.

The only thing that would have helped me is someone saying to me look, people will help you. Social services will provide suitcases. Refuge will send you the train ticket to your phone. When you get here, we will have all you need. We will HELP.

I’m not sure I agree.

I haven’t seen all the threads you mention of course; however broadly when there is a situation of DV, I believe there is support and practical advice in significant measure.

There are stupid comments like you mention, eg why did you have 3 kids with him but they are much more likely to be on threads where the H is lazy, a crap father, poor with money. These can be elements of abuse but are not necessarily.

I was in a very abusive marriage. I didn’t recognise it as such. There was some physical abuse but the emotional and financial abuse was much much worse. It was only after it was finally over that I found MN, and learnt about coercive control, gaslighting and emotional abuse. I wish I’d found it sooner.

But also, while MN has its issues, it is also full of women who are really clear about their worth, what they expect, what’s reasonable for a partner / father to do, and they are clear and unequivocal about saying it. I don’t mean regarding DA threads but generally, and that has also had a huge impact on me, realising that it’s ok to be assertive & clear-cut and not to compromise.

With regard to dangerous situations and cases of physical abuse, both MN and posters are quick to recognise OP’s vulnerability and to give advice to talk to someone in real life.

Opening up to a solicitor I consulted for advice, not in any way expecting to separate / divorce, when he was nearly leaving me penniless, was how I finally faced up to my situation and that the marriage had to end.

You are evidently unaware that should the woman leave, the children will be entirely at the mercy of the abusive man when they go to stay with him alone - which the law will ensure they do. There they can be terrorised and abused as much as he the abuser wants. If on the other hand she stays, she can be some sort of buffer or solace to them.

So many people who say LTB seem to not realise this.

The law changed in 2014: “Children need a relationship with both their parents” etc

As for a court case to try to say it will harm the children to be made to stay with the abuser, that would cost at least £30,000, with no good outcome guaranteed at all. It can even be turned against the mother who may be said to have been alienating the children to make them not want to see him. Some terrorised chikdren were even taken from their mother to get a dose of Stockholm syndrome with their dreadful dad.

Abusers/coercive controllers are slick operators who may well have money too.

I hate to see it and I think most of us know those people would not have the presence of mind they think they would or would not be so bold in the moment but there’s some missing emotional intelligence that prevents them from seeing it. There seem to be some who just think their way is the right way and others who come here to feel superior, perhaps because of something going on in their own lives. It’s annoying but worse than that, I hate to think of the impact it has on the OP, who might already be isolated.

@BeBlueSeal
I think that many posters don’t have the language skills to be able to change their communication style according to the circumstance.
This inability means that what is often a genuine question or thought is received as a judgement due to the way it is worded.

Obviously there are also many who just don’t have the mental capacity to imagine how they would act in a certain situation were they someone else. The y often just think about how they themselves would act, so all the talk of “ I’d just do such and such”. It’s a common misconception about putting yourself in another person’s shoes. In reality you need to be a different person in those shoes, not simply yourself in them.

The kind of comments the OP means are not ‘no nonsense and assertive’, they are ignorant of how abuse works, and victim blaming.

E.g after a woman finally seeks help for multiple levels of abuse in the face of a crisis and someone comments “I struggle to understand why you had children with this man “

In no way can that be framed as advice and support.

It tells the OP that it is her fault for ‘choosing’ such a man and then havjng children with him. And the worst of it is that the usual result of abuse is that the man has gaslighted her into believing that everything IS her fault.

Abusers start off nice. They know exactly how to use love bombing and turn on being ‘nice’ .

Why would anyone wish to post something so unhelpful to a woman in distress?

There is a genuine lack of awareness as to how abuse creeps up, takes hold and becomes a trap.

And there is smug nastiness that presumably serves to help someone feel better about their own perfect life.

agree with @weavingrugs and on top of that, some people just don't understand what it's like to live in fear. They think they'd react a certain way, but have no understanding that if they went through it, they might react very differently.

The other thing is that many people don't actually like being confronted with situations that have no easy answer and call for patience, kindness, appropriate straight speaking, practical help and even more patience. They like to give easy answers because it makes them feel better.

Sometimes I take exception to posters who ignore the abused OPs pain and suffering and dig straight into how she is failing her children and must think of them and put them first.

It's as if once a woman is a mother, any domestic abuse towards her is somehow seen through a prism of 'mother' where she isn't really a person anymore, more a container to be blamed and only the children are important.

I think it's good to mention the effect on the children, but only after recognising the abused woman as a person in her own right.