Is any woman impossible to abuse?

I'm loving all the assumptions that abused women come from certain walks of life, have no money or education,no self esteem, no loving family and grew up knowing no better. Seriously have a word with yourselves.

I grew up in a close knit, upper middle class family, privately educated, never wanted for anything and I think I was only smacked as a child twice (and I deserved them). I was working full-time, financially independent and stable. I had confidence and self esteem until it was slowly eroded by a narcissist. Who I will say grew up in a single parent family on a council estate, has no qualifications, saw his father a handful of times. His own mother would physically reprimand him by hitting him and would scream at him. The worst thing is his father used to hit his own mother and was a violent alcoholic (according to him).


It can happen to anyone regardless of whether you have money or education or a close family.

I think the framing of this post as some women being 'immune' has been quite unhelpful. I don't think that anyone would really deny that some people are more vulnerable than others, but also that individual cases won't always follow those patterns. It's counterproductive to pretend that abuse is like lightning - always a pure product of unforeseeable chance - or that all abusers are so clever that there is no way any woman could spot one. Doing that hinders prevention, identification of victims and education. But it's equally unhelpful, and veers into victim-blaming, to say that you can somehow make yourself entirely immune.

Strength is overrated as a virtue for women because it mostly is interpreted by other women as “a woman who intimidates me”. Nothing to do with the actual factors that are statistically proven to protect you against abuse.

There are factors that statistically reduce your chances perhaps, but not totally protect you.

My reference to "strong" was a short summary of what I'm reading other posters as saying. Call it what you want, my point is that there are abusers out there who are quite up for the challenge of breaking down any type of woman and for some of them, they also like the challenge.

Someone thinking she's immune to abuse because, for instance, she's financially self sufficient, has good boundaries that she's comfortable asserting and has no strong desire for having a partner/fear of being without one does not make her immune. It may simply make her less attractive to a certain type of abuser. But she needn't feel left out, because there are others who will be totally up for it.

There is nowhere near enough research done on this topic and all its subtleties to statistically prove effective against all types of abuse. In part because not all types of abuse or abuser are even properly recognised!

Divorcing "Someone thinking she's immune to abuse because, for instance, she's financially self sufficient, has good boundaries that she's comfortable asserting and has no strong desire for having a partner/fear of being without one does not make her immune"

immune in what way? I agree it doesn't make me immune to someone trying it. I think semantics are important here.

@DivorcingEU I agree. The only type of abuse you really see portrayed on the media is the one where they have physical injuries. One where there is a helpless vulnerable women who has bruises. Then it’s always captioned that we need more support for vulnerable women like that. I hate that tag line, we aren’t vulnerable, we are just women. We need more help for women.

I can't imagine that many women who have ended up in abusive relationships would have answered this question saying "oh I'm definitely the type to be abused", surely most people think that they are not going to fall for it?
That's why it's so hard to get out, as you might believe you are a strong capable woman and therefore this just can't be happening.
I am lucky enough to not have been in a abusive relationship and definitely things like financial independence and not having small children/being pregnant do help, but I can see that different choices and a different direction and that could have been me.
Change the abusers and leave women alone to be who they want to be.

This thread is very interesting. Unfortunately it's a very tricky subject that does need talking about. It's hard to get a middle ground. But very quickly it descends into someone claims it's victim blaming. Most posters are intelligent enough to recognise that the abuser is at fault. Mainly, firstly. I didn't read on the thread anyone saying otherwise. But after that we should be able to move on from that and talk about other aspects, the next steps. But it seems we are unable to.

I wonder what % of mn posters are in abusive relationships currently, and also what % ever have been. Also what % are in loving / non abusive relationships, and what % have never been in an abusive relationship. I would like to think the % is small. Googling says it's 1 in 3. Sadly high.

@Oblomov23 By believing that fault of abuse lies within the perfectly natural vulnerabilities of people that cannot be avoided automatically puts the blame on the person being blamed. By believing some how that being different better in anyway makes you immune puts the onus on the person being abused. By thinking that the instinctual (as in your primal self takes over which you have no control over) survival behaviours from victims make them somehow complicit. I think that is what is being said by people.
People are having options on things with absolutely no factual/experience/idea about what they are talking about. It’s incredibly dangerous and it puts a stop on any progress. Instead of helping people in these terrible situations people read these threads, live their lives with these same people with these terrible opinions, they feel shame, they stay in relationships which damage them and their innocent children.

If there’s not enough data, how are you so sure that there’s some mysterious men out there who want a strong woman to break?

Even DV charities use the shark cage model which accepts that some women are vulnerable and some are not. The whole point of a shark cage is that if you are in one, you can safely swim with sharks.

Also, the data on revictimisation is shocking. A small number of women face repeated abuse through their entire lives and I think a lot of them post on Mumsnet.

And class plays a role as well. Sorry, but let’s get real. A lot of upper class people that I met are deeply traumatised due to boarding school, seem completely emotionally numb and cut off from their own feelings, are alcohol dependent, have suffered from endless eating disorders, are still friends with their boarding school bullies, and yet would describe themselves as having “perfect childhoods”.

Lots of people pretending they had great childhoods because they didn’t grow up in a council estate. Yet we’re supposed to be shocked that they end up being abused.

Nothing shocking about it.

I don't believe anyone is immune but

The thing about the shark cage @MarieRoseMarie is that I think women need to learn about it unless they have a parent who teaches it to them. The boundaries for women are constantly being eroded by cultural expectations. Gavin de Becker explains this very well in gift of fear. Women are conditioned and possibly biologically preprogrammed towards agreeableness and conscientiousness. We are physically weaker so it makes sense that we need to use other strategies to get our needs met. Being vulnerable in any way opens you up to being a victim for a predator. That is why actually learning about these issues is so crucial for learning how to give domineering and controlling abusive personalities a swerve.

Sorry, premature posting there! I do think sites likes MN's real value lies in the knowledge of how abuse works, how it can creep up on women. So often posters don't even know they're in an abusive relationship until others here tell them so, they're unhappy but don't know why.
There's a petition now gone to Goverment asking for signs of abuse to be taught in schools, it would be a great thing if more young women could spot the signs earlier and get out before they are tied to an abuser

There is no one model to represent all the types of abuse unfortunately. Those of us who have been abused will all have different experiences and different abusers and different methods. The shark cage is really useful when looked at in hindsight through victims eyes. It gives victims a sense of grounding when all around them has been eroded. It gives them something to “fix” in order to create safety in the brain again so as not to let other sharks in. Once you have been abused everything and everyone is unsafe. Most people do not know they have any damage to the shark cage until a shark gets in and hindsight occurs, we all have an ego. You can teach the shark cage to children, but bad things will still happen, sharks will still be present, some of them are extremely clever, sick. They are so clever/sick they get you to willingly open the front of the cage without force.

Daleksatemyshed

agree
i didn’t know it was abusive before
I just thought we had a turbulent and often angry relationship

MN sped things up for me and probably saved my life ,mental health actually

but freedom programme nailed it

No I don’t think any person is immune from abuse- it being a man or a woman is sort of besides the point- men and women are abused in different ways because of the social expectations that are applied differently, but it all comes from the same basic lever:

humans are social animals. We cannot survive by ourselves and so we form social attachements to both survive and also to satisfy the very basic desire and need we have for interaction with other humans.

the idea that abusers are “grooming” their victims ignores the fact that we ALL groom others all the time. Mostly we don’t groom others with nefarious purposes- I groom my children so that they learn that their desires and wants are not the centre of the world, but to try and reassure them where possible I will meet whatever need of theirs I can. It’s all grooming- it’s also called building expectations in people, or teaching children to comply with authority, or variously teaching them NOT to comply with authority- all these things are “grooming”- we are social animals, we groom.

So no- there is NO woman that is immune to abuse because no woman is not human and is therefore groomed and grooms and operates in the very complex and sticky web that is human relationships. We do all of this entirely instinctively. It’s how we operate and work together. It’s why conditions such as ASD and the inability to natively interpret expectations and social norms makes life so difficult because that basic social lubricant is essentially missing, or in short supply.

there are features that make some easier or more difficult to groom- things like financial independence, being happy in yourself, etc etc. resilience, in other words, makes us less reliant on others and more able to see them for who they are. But no one is immune to being abused because no one is immune from the frailties and necessities that make us human. And no matter how canny or quick we are, there’s always someone more subtle, more alluring and more manipulative than we are perceptive.

I think it’s very similar to the saying: the price of love is grief. Well the price of human society is grooming. The reason it’s effective is the same reason it’s wide open to being abused.

Very good post @Hiddenmnetter

“The women were loud and mouthy but brittle and hugely insecure. Think Kerry Katona or Faye from Love Island. They would scream and swear and threaten to slap men but actually had poor boundaries and were “soft” on men they liked. They weren’t strong at all, emotionally. Just loud. These men were awful from the getgo.”

Anybody with half a brain would see that Kerry Katona and Faye are troubled women and whilst fierce, are not very well balanced. Like violent men - they’re not ‘strong’ - they’re fucked up, emotionally volatile children at heart.

Strong women, like strong men, are emotionally secure and slip through life quite easily and quietly because they have strong boundaries, self control and nothing to prove.

I am one of the women that most would say would be 'impossible to abuse' because I 'take no shit' generally. Yet I was in an EA marriage for 10 years. It was a long time ago and I didn't recognise it as abuse until I was out of it (hindsight and all that). So to answer your question...no!

Hiddenmnetter, good post.

I think there is some conflation in some posts between "I have all these strengths and resources and so it would be never happen to me" versus "If it did happen, I'd be able to get out quickly." It's not quite the same thing. I have financial independence, willingness to be alone etc etc and could manage the latter but not the former. If you haven't experienced it, I don't think you always know how insidious it can be and how subtly it can start.

You say that but they would describe themselves as strong and we are mostly working off self descriptions.

People who “take no shit” probably spend more time around shit than the rest of us.

yes@MarieRoseMarie. We all like to think we are strong, we all like to think we have the means and would walk away and not take shit but that’s just self perception. In the actual instance nobody knows because if they did they’d have a time machine. Threads like this I think can be extremely misleading and damaging to a person in an abusive relationship. It’s victim blaming and shaming. Abuse has been portrayed so incorrectly on the media if people think there are tangible incidents in the abuse cycle in all abuse cases. In some cases it’s years and years down the line before its really tangible. Some people put up with not so good behaviours, some excuse them or weigh them up or think they have their partners behaviour under control enough to keep up the pretence, some have too much invested, illness, job loss, children, grief, PND etc etc.

Some people have low self esteem and adverse child experiences which may make then susceptible to fall for a guy to be their savour and put up with more then they deserve, some people are absolutely emotionally sound and get caught.

The only way to make sure is to be single for the rest of your life and miss out on possibly something incredible. Reduce your chances by not needing saving and healing any childhood trauma (if you have any idea you have it, most won’t) but you can never be immune.

The only way to make sure is to be single for the rest of your life and miss out on possibly something incredible

Codswallop. This is a definition of an unhealthy boundary. You might as well say that the only way not to get abused is to live in a castle and have 100 bodyguards and never go outside the castle walls. It's perfectly possible to have healthy boundaries within a relationship, and to walk away the second those boundaries are crossed. It is perfectly possible to create a relationship that you are able to leave if you need to. If you stay single, you could be abused by a friend or family member. Singledom isn't a magic solution to anything. Respecting your own boundaries, without fail, is how to avoid abuse.

What happens if that boundary gets
blurred or manipulated or eroded after years or only gets passed after having kids. Or you become unwell, loose your financial independence. You loose someone and grief effects your mental health.

If we are not capable of maintaining our own boundaries, then yes, lock ourselves away until we have learned how.

But we can learn how, via good parenting, or experience. We don't need to lock ourselves away forever.