1. my first boyfriend's father abused his wife and children 2. my second boyfriend's father beat his children when he got too drunk 3. childhood best friend's father 4. high school bud's father 5. my grandfather regularly locked my grandmother in the attic for not mopping the floor well enough. 6. a man taking me home from a stint babysitting refused to do so and molested me in a car at 50mph. cops finally stopped him b/c he was drunk. they didn't do anything about it and i was scared to say a thing. b/c they didn't seem to care that we were far frm my home, that he was drunk, i was scared to say anything and almost let them go without peeping. but fortunately i finally got in the cruiser. they dropped me off but didn't think it important to talk to my folks. big whoop that the guy was pawing me. a couple of years later he asked my mother for a dance at a disco, she agreed and then kicked him in the balls. yeah mom!! 8. a boy during high school tried to molest me when i was passed out drunk at my 16th birthday party. fortunately, his my buds intervened and let him know what they thought of him. [thank j.n. and j.m wherever you are] 9. the leader of a band that i used to hire for the local holiday inn beat up his wife--who i'd become friends with--in the parking lot about 4 weeks after she delivered their third child. 10. i was sexually harassed as a frosh. prof would invite me to his office telling me how smart i was blah blah blah. one day he just kissed me. i quickly left. rec'd a c in a course where i clearly deserved an A. i worked in his dept part time, the dept sec'y told me she was very relieved that i hadn't put out for him. everyone knew about his antics, he chose a girl each semester. he's no longer teaching because a few women filed a sex h. suit against him.
it wasn't til i encountered a marxist feminist years later that i realized it wasn't my fault and that he was wrong. for years i thought it was my fault, largely because the entire dept. didn't seem to care.
11. 3 men in a neighborhood [13 homes on the street] where i lived from 1984-1994 sexually molested their daughters. one shot himself after getting his daughter pregnant. she had the baby. the other family split up after it came out. the other family is intact, all of them are in therapy. 12. a college chum was abducted in a parking garage, thrown in the drunk. the man raped and beat her several times. he finally let her go and dropped her off, bloodies and beaten, in one of the poorer sections of chicago. she was scared to approach the first people she came upon but finally figured that she had to. fortunately they were off duty cops. her husband told her not to wear such sexy workout clothes when she went to the gym. 13. my former husband beat me up as we were going through separation.
by this point i was in grad school, i finally started becoming a feminist
14. the former husband of a good friend in grad school was beaten by her husband. 15 another grad school friend was sexually molested by a church deacon. 16. the most recent ex-beau became abusive after abusing drugs. he was molested by his great uncle [father's side] --police officer and a member of a once very wealthy family of the robber baron sort. his grandfather on his mother's side regularly beat his wife. 17. in the last town i lived in, three neighbors were abused by their former husbands, one current boyfriend, though i hear she dumped him finally.
and guess what i still like men! i still don't think men are inherently violent. it's clearly something that is learned and connected to power dynamics that take place in the family, at work, in academe. no i'm not a cultural determinist...did i say all men were violent? that men raised in violent families inevitably became violent themselves, etc?
“touch yourself and you will know that i exist.” ~luce irigaray