With news and social media frenzied by the defamation case between Johnny Depp and his ex-wife Amber Heard, we can take this opportunity to examine how our culture interprets domestic violence. Click on the link above for a good summary of their timeline of the Depp/Heard events.
Last week I was in a women’s restroom at a rural restaurant and saw the poster below. It encourages women who are being hurt or manipulated by their partners to call a number on the tear-off tabs below. I was really struck by how many tabs were missing–more than half. Now, I don’t know how long the poster had been there. But I felt uneasy.
Then I thought about how many times I’ve seen those posters in other restrooms and hospitals and few of the tear-offs had been taken. The fact that those posters are even needed should give us pause, but I confess that I was really taken aback by the poster above because of how many phone numbers had been taken.
Which begs the question:
How much is too much before we become sensitized enough to recognize that domestic violence is a big issue in the USA?
We glorify violence in this country– through video games and TV shows. We allow mass shootings and mass killings to go on and on because our feckless Congress will not enact sensible gun possession laws. We are complicit in all of this.
Violence even at the Oscars this year
Tiffany Haddish openly defended Will Smith who slapped Christ Rock at the Oscars, saying,
When I saw a Black man stand up for his wife. That meant so much to me. As a woman, who has been unprotected, for someone to say like, ‘Keep my wife’s name out your mouth, leave my wife alone,’ that’s what your husband is supposed to do, right? Protect you. And that meant the world to me.
This caused a stir, too. I understand as a white woman that there are racial and cultural aspects to Haddish’s statement that I have not personally experienced. But I do feel that violence is violence no matter who is doing
what to whom. We create a slippery slope when we support situational violence. If we don’t hold a zero tolerance for violence, where is the line of demarcation to tell us when there is too much violence?
We need new patterns of behavior
We clearly have failed to set that boundary as a society. Instead we need to develop the skills necessary to settle conflict without violence, starting with little school kids. We need to rewrite our cultural standards of behavior.
I’m not sure what was going through Will Smith’s head. He won the Best Actor for his portrayal in King Richard, but I think this incident will sully that rare achievement.
What happened to a quiet word to resolve a conflict? Why does everything we do in life have to be on TV or social media? If he wanted to issue a public retort to Rock’s decidedly tasteless joke about Jada Pinkett Smith, Will Smith could have held a press conference. The media would have flocked to that.
A secret “handshake” to help us navigate away from violence
But instead we wear blinders where violence is concerned. We’ve gone so far as to need a secret hand signal to use so our abuser cannot see us use it.
At least this gesture helped a captive teenager out of harms way. The hand signal became popular on TikTok, and is believed to have been started by the Canadian Women’s Foundation last year. It has been adopted by women around the world who need to discreetly ask for help, or show they are in distress.
By holding up our hand, palm away from us, we can communicate that we are in danger by folding the thumb into the palm and bringing our fingers down to form a fist.
Get help for yourself or another!
In the US, the domestic violence hotline is 1-800-799-SAFE (7233). In the UK, call the national domestic abuse helpline on 0808 2000 247, or visit Women’s Aid. In Australia, the national family violence counseling service is on 1800 737 732. Other international helplines may be found via www.befrienders.org.
