Relationships, Emotions, Lack of Control

At least old-fashioned crimes of passion are taken seriously these days.

Ha. My test for "uncontrollable" emotions, when people tell me about them in therapy, as excuses for hurting someone, is:

"Would you still have done it if a police officer with a loaded gun pointed at you told you to stop?"

If the answer is "no" - then the emotion was controllable.

Nobody has said "yes" yet.

Very good! I like that, deb. Mind if I use it?

Emotions of everyone can flame into rage, as we know. I've had that happen myself, and interestingly it happened most in a period of a few years (note use of period, heh) when I was having hormonal changes. Not that I entirely blame hormones, certainly not, but they may play a part. And so does culture. A fair sized part of the world's population has been invested in a system of honor re family and manhood, and women are invested in that too to some degree.

I don't think that is just cultural, exactly, so much as that I think the culture taps into a natural tendency for some folks to equate challenge to their persona with various daily type situations.

The combo of the honor question plus hormones seems to me to be part of enflamed behavior.

Reason can change some of this. I will go so far as to say that sometimes therapy or, get ready, religious faith, or some kind of spirituality, or physical practice like deep breathing or yoga or (whatever) can help one modify one's own behavior to batten down rage. Perhaps certain drugs work, drugs of one sort or another. That may have something to do with the enjoyment many of my generation have with marijuana.

But, increased steroid use for body building and certain aggressive cultural modes don't help.

Rage can be an intoxicating emotion.

I don't think it is love.. more of trying to have control over this girl. These are what we usually call psychos..

Wow, Debra, I was thinking of starting a thread on this very topic. I've been thinking about this since I went to a 3-day class last week about domestic violence. This class was given by the Florida Coalition Against Domestic Violence (FCADV), and is required for any person working or volunteering in Florida with survivors of domestic violence.

Well, this class was a real eye-opener for me, and since then I've been wondering whether I've been complacent or just plain ignorant about domestic violence all these years.

They say domestic violence of men against women is caused by, as Osso pointed out, our society (or culture, if you will) raising males to believe they are, and must remain, in the position of POWER and CONTROL over females.

They say if we could get rid of this idea that men are "superior" to women, domestic violence would disappear. (Note, by "our society" I'm speaking of the US only, which is all I know.)

They say our culture instills ideas in boys about females being inferior with ideas like, "don't be a girl... girls are sissies... girls are weak and need to be told what to do...". They say girls are instilled with ideas that it's their job to hold relationships together, to submit to the will of males, and to pretend to be dumber than they are to allow males to feel superior.

This "job" of females to control the home and the relationships within it allows males to blame females for anything that goes wrong inside the home. And every single abusing male I've heard of personally (at least 20 now) has shifted the blame for the abuse from himself to the female involved, because she failed to follow the "rules" of society about her (inferior) place in it.

FCADV is very clear that domestic violence is a political problem which becomes personal within the household.

FCADV is also very clear about the fact that these males are in complete control of themselves, and that alcohol or drug abuse is NO excuse for their behavior. They say these males know perfectly well what they are doing when they harm women (as dlowan pointed out).... they want to make the female "remember her place" and to re-establish their power and control over the female. FCADV says hatred and emotion come later, after the political/social ideas which cause males to blame females for their own problems.

Well, perhaps I've had my head in the sand for the past 20 years or so, telling myself that this society strives for equality between males & females. I actually thought these ideas about males being the "master of the castle" had started to disappear in the 1960's and '70's and were hardly an issue now, in 2005. Silly me!

In fact I feel as if I'm the only person I know who actually believes that humans are human first and males/females second, who believes we are all equally fallible and equally strong. I think males & females are so similar in their ways of thinking (OK, before society gets a hold of them) that it's silly to argue about the differences.... after all, how many times have we at A2K been unable to tell whether a poster is male or female? All we know for sure is that they're human (OK, or a very dextrous cat).

I hesistate to even mention this last bit, but I also have seen, in our shelter and at the class, extreme stereotypical ideas expressed by females about males. These females are prejudiced against males just as much as males are prejudiced against females. And I thought we were now able, in this modern world, to judge people as individuals.

In summary, it seems the "War of the Sexes" is alive and well in 2005. FCADV says if we can stop this stereotyping based on pre-conceived gender roles, domestic violence will vanish.

FCADV says the only solution is to teach children that people are... people, regardless of gender. What does everyone else think?

(Sorry about my rant, I didn't think I'd go on for so long....)

Some men are more "traditional" than others.

One of our neighbors, a ne'er do well in his 40's, has never been able to hold a job except working for his father. This guy is unreliable and completely illiterate. His wife supported their family of four.

He never really hit his wife--just slapped her a bit when she got out of line.

I think, when boys believe that they are automatically, naturally, superior to girls, that their little egos are set up to take the fall when, inevitably, they are worse than a girl at something. Someone who never grew out of this mentality might feel the need to assert his power physically because it is the only thing he has to fall back on.

Women rage from time to time too. People can grow up with one or the other parent, or I suppose both, going into rages.
That's an immediate cultural influence...

Very few people start a physical battle with someone who can fight back on equal or superior terms.

FCADV says in Florida, 4% of domestic violence reports are from males who were abused.

Of course, we can guess that even fewer males than females report domestic violence against them... so the actual number of cases of domestic violence against males is likely to be a lot higher.


Anyway, do you all think domestic violence will really just disappear if these stereotypes of males and females are destroyed? If so, how can we work to change these ideas?

Ordinarily I'm oblivious to the Indy 500, but since a woman was in the running this year I paid some attention.

The reaction of the male drivers was very interesting: "She's cheating. She has a weight advantage. It isn't fair.l"

I heard an awful lot of comments repeated from the NY Times & other sources calling her a "Brunette Bombshell" and how she would "rev your engines." I don't hear any comments, of course, on the sexual attractiveness of the males in these races.

I'm not sure whether I approve or disapprove of her posing in sexually suggestive ways (baring much skin) in order to gain publicity.

Bookmark.

I've definitely heard those comments about the men in the Molson Indy when it comes to town. Those lads work on their image all right.



<and I admit, I bought Indy skivvies >

I don't think those comments have as much to do with the discussion as many might think.

In Indy car racing everything is controlled in attemnpt to make the race about the quality and skills of the drivers and not the cars. The cars are pretty much identical, they use the exact same fuel, the exact same tires, the engine horse power is strictly controlled and monitored, the car's weight is controlled, etc.. For all intents and purposes every driver out there has an identical car.

Basic laws of physics say that if the power, friction, etc are all equeal then the lightest vehicle will be the fastest and with the only weight variable being the physical weight of the driver she does indeed have a 60 to 100 lb. advantage on her competitors and there isn't anything the other drivers can do to make up for that difference.

That's only a few 100ths of a second advantage on each lap around the track but these are races that are decided by that sort of margin fairly often. I think that is more the complaint than the fact that she's a woman. If all the drivers had to add additional weight to make each car equeal in weight when the driver is in the car the complaint wouldn't have been heard.

I used to be a sports reading freak, as opposed to an athlete, you should understand...

and I see that this woman worked tactics, and (me speaking from near ignorance) those tactics were very problematic, though bravura.

If articles negate her on uselessness of bravura, so be it.

Still, was a pretty good run. I am guessing she has some respect, if only by strength of opposition.

From my own pov, her dime was thrown where it couldn't win; is that bravado or did she believe it?
Not that I personally care. I am just interested in the interplay of how participants think about what happens.