#MeToo, page 16
She didn’t.
The thing is, the pinch was just a bit of fun, even though his eyes told her otherwise. And the gaslighting? Well, once he started pointing out her mistakes, he didn’t stop; Maureen started to doubt everything she did.
It hasn’t always been like this; behavioural changes, being so gradual and so subtle, mean she hasn’t realised how bad things have become in that house. It’s simply the way they live.
What she does know is that her son is constantly distressed and clearly frightened of the man he shares a house with.
Maureen doesn’t like what she’s seeing and feeling either. It feels wrong. But she doesn’t have a name for what’s happening.
She has no idea she’s living with domestic violence.
He doesn’t hit or bruise her. That’s what domestic violence is, right? Maureen thinks. Black eyes, women being thrown across rooms or down stairs. Being threatened with knives or pushed against a wall. Tall, angry looking men, towering above women who were cowering on the floor.
That’s what all the TV ads show.
For Maureen, the tirade of emotional abuse about ‘being a f***ing bitch’ or ‘you don’t have a brain’ is preferable to weeks of silence caused by some small misdemeanour, such as making a salad sandwich for his lunch, instead of meat and pickles, or not picking up a tractor part in town. It won’t matter whether the machinery dealership had the part or not. Abuse like this, which goes on for many years, eventually affects a person’s mind.
She almost wishes he would hit her, so she could leave.
Maureen’s son is subjected to anything from verbal abuse – ‘man up’, ‘don’t be a princess’, ‘you stupid little c***’ – to being chased with a shovel or forced to drink the last dregs of beer from a bottle because ‘it’ll make you a man’. So here ends the myth that men don’t suffer from domestic violence.
Maureen and her family aren’t real. But you can be sure that in every rural community, there are people just like them hiding in plain sight.
In rural areas, everyone’s life lacks anonymity. Everyone knows everyone. Doctors play footy and hockey alongside council workers. Accountants play netball and tennis alongside childcare workers.
So, when a man, woman or child in a rural community needs help, it can be difficult for them to access without feeling that the whole world knows their every move. Perhaps their doctor plays sport with the perpetrator, or the shire council worker is married to their partner’s best friend. Not exactly an environment conducive to them pouring out their hearts.
The sense of shame and embarrassment, let alone the lack of privacy, will be enough (in most situations) to stop them from seeking help since, at any moment, they might hear, ‘Oh, hey Maureen. Great to see you! How’s the family?’
It’s true that nobody would know what Maureen spoke about inside the counsellor’s office (if she made it that far). But people would see her coming and going from there, they would see her car parked out the front. Nothing is secret in a country town.
Perversely, the isolation of country living has its own part to play. The thing people forget is that a domestic violence situation in a town or city usually means that neighbours are nearby to call the police. On a farm, however, even your closest neighbours may be many kilometres away. Any screams will almost always go unheard.
Take, for example, one particular night at Maureen’s home. Maybe her young son is learning to cut up his food. Maureen is leaning over him, her hands on his, showing him how to do it, when two large, heavy hands shove her out of the way and latch around her son’s upper arms. In two seconds flat, he’s banished outside, the curtains drawn and door locked. All the while Maureen is told he has to ‘man up’.
It is winter. It is raining. Maureen’s son is barefoot in only his pyjamas. He bangs and thumps on the living room window. If there were a neighbourhood, he would scream it down.
If there were a neighbourhood.
Perhaps the police might have been called by caring passers-by. But because Maureen lives a long way from anywhere and a few kilometres from her neighbours, no one hears anything. Helpless, she has to wait until he has calmed down enough to let her go and find her son. Hours later.
Living on farms and in small communities has so many benefits – personally, I love nothing more than living on the land – but the isolation inevitably makes seeking help so terribly difficult.
Let’s remember, as well, that in country areas guns are a necessary part of farming life. I doubt you’ll find a farm that doesn’t have a gun cabinet somewhere, and inside that cabinet will be a weapon: their accessibility, coupled with the isolation of country life, is a scary reality. In Western Australia, whole families have recently been murdered by people who are supposed to love them.
The challenges faced by domestic violence victims in rural areas may be different to those of their city cousins, but they are not any greater. This is a national problem we’re experiencing, and no one is exempt from being a victim.
The #MeToo and #UsToo movements have highlighted how widespread sexual harassment and violence is throughout our society. And that’s great. The more awareness raised the better.
However, what is often overlooked is that it’s not just women and children who are victims. Yes, in many cases it is a female victim with bruises outside and within. But with so many men growing up in communities where emotions and vulnerability are seen as ‘un-manly’, abuse of men can go completely ignored. So, while female victims are now finally starting to get the attention and support they so desperately need, I think we still have a long way to go in supporting our brothers who face domestic abuse but feel too ashamed or embarrassed to speak up. The last thing we want to do is inadvertently victim-blame based on gender stereotypes. We need to break down the misconception that men are always the perpetrators, never the victims. If we get too set in our ideas on what domestic violence is and who the victims are we are never going to break the cycle. The same assumptions that stop someone like Maureen speaking up sooner will likely also stop male victims coming forward – the feeling that their abuse is not valid or critical, that it is in some way imagined when in fact it can be a daily beating, both physical and emotional. I want to make sure that we are working towards equality, happiness and safety for all, and not just vulnerable women.
I have known and met and talked to many families like Maureen’s. As someone who lives in the country, I’m exceptionally aware of what is needed to support people living in regional and remote areas. That is why I started my organisation BREAKING THE SILENCE in 2018, which gives people the anonymity they need to access support services, along with online counselling and advice. I was horrified to learn that a shocking one in four rural women in Australia will suffer some form of abuse within their lifetime.16 And with 54 per cent of all reported domestic violence incidents in Western Australia alone occurring outside the Perth metropolitan area17 it is clear that these rural communities need more support. I wish I had statistics on the male abuse. They’re just not available.
For years I felt I would only ever be a farmer’s wife, a mother. It was by complete luck that I reached out to a publisher and actually signed my first book deal. Their belief in me, and the feedback I got from my readers, started to help me believe in myself. I worked hard to champion rural women – the women I portrayed in my books faced great adversity, grew stronger and ultimately confident in their own ability, confident in their own skin – and while doing so, I grew in confidence myself. I had a voice that people were listening to, and it was through that voice I realised I could help other people living in rural Australia by sharing their stories – the good and the bad.
The journey ahead is tough. Fear can be a dreadful inhibitor, or a terrific motivator. Everyone has the right to happiness, no matter who you are or where you live. It’s up to all of us to talk, share, listen, reach out. Together we can tackle domestic violence head-on.
If you or someone you know is experiencing family or domestic violence in Western Australia, go to www.breakingthesilence.com.au.
Dillon, G, ‘Country women are more likely to experience intimate partner violence’, The Conversation, 3 November 2015, https://theconversation.com/country-women-are-more-likely-to-experience-intimate-partner-violence-49049 (Accessed: 31 December 2018).
Phillips, J & Vandenbroek, B, Domestic, family and sexual violence in Australia: an overview of the issues, Parliament of Australia Research Paper, 14 October 2014.
Miriam Sved is the author of the novels A Universe of Sufficient Size (Picador, 2019) and Game Day (Picador, 2014), and a contributing editor on the anthologies Mothers & Others (Pan Macmillan, 2015) and Just Between Us (Pan Macmillan, 2013). Her novella ‘All the Things I Should’ve Given’ was a winner of Griffith Review’s 2018 Novella Project, and her short fiction has been published in Best Australian Stories, Meanjin, Overland and elsewhere. She lives in Melbourne with her wife and daughter and too many pets.
Something Borrowed
I thought I was already a feminist back then, in the nineties. We all did. It was sort of an assumed thing: girl power and all that. Tank Girl was riding across the desert and Buffy was slaying and Shirley Manson growled in the background. No one had to wax their pubes yet.
Lots of boys were feminists too. Finn was a feminist. I’d never even met him properly but somehow I knew this, the way you know bits of information about popular people. He was majoring in gender studies.
‘I just really think that gender isn’t even a thing anymore,’ Finn was saying when I first saw him that night, sitting with his girlfriend Sophie. We were at a party in a sprawling terrace in Redfern. I’d been to a few of these parties, when my friend Gina dragged me. Gina was the only real friend I’d made so far at uni. I guess I was struggling, although I couldn’t have said why. I’d managed to get myself out of the Sutherland Shire, and there I was in the city, like I’d always dreamed, the city where people said things like I just really think that gender isn’t even a thing anymore, and still I didn’t know what to do with myself.
It should have been great. I was the family tomboy. My middle brother, Gavin, was always giving me shit about acting like one of the guys. My parents didn’t really mind – Mum had my older sister Katie to go shopping with, and Dad never noticed too much that was going on – but my aunts always commented on it: still a tomboy. They said it with an exaggerated indulgence that contained a note of warning. Still a tomboy as I climbed trees and rode my bike around the street with my brothers, still a tomboy when I started high school. And still, and still.
When I got to uni I found what looked, from the outside, like a scene where a tomboy might fit in. Lots of girls wore big clumpy boots and flannel shirts, and there was a certain studied lankness to everyone. Girls at home had straightened their hair with irons or curled their hair with perms and had gone heavy on the eye shadow.
But here in the city the work boots seemed to signify something different from the sweaty farm labour they were surely meant to evoke. The girls’ legs rose from them like spindly trellises, and the flannel shirts billowed against delicate frames when the wind blew, and somehow I still felt stranded on my island of Tomboy. Perversely, I had put away my well-worn Blundstones and started wearing nondescript black shoes, and left my hair to grow into a floppy bob.
When I first saw Finn and Sophie that night they were leaning casually against each other on a small sofa, Finn talking to a girl on his other side about gender not being a thing. Gina, beside me, whispered, ‘I’d like to gender his thing.’ Gina was what my mother would have called boy crazy. I raised my eyebrows to signify appreciation but I looked at Finn, unconvinced. He didn’t strike me as particularly good-looking – an almost startlingly big nose and features that seemed to jostle with each other for dominance. His hair, thick and dark, looked deliberately unwashed. He was muscly, though, his cowboy shirt tight across the chest, arms taut and veiny, and he had white-white teeth and an intensity in the way he looked at people, like he was really looking. And there was also Sophie beside him, enveloping him in an associative glamour. She had to be the most beautiful girl there.
Sophie said, ‘So if gender is not even a thing anymore, what’s with the gender pay gap?’
Beautiful and smart.
Finn smiled – the smile of a man who could afford to lose an argument – and said, ‘So maybe not everyone in the world has caught up.’ He reached over and cupped the back of her neck in his hand, and she moved her head forward to give him better access. I couldn’t see her face when she was looking down, only the parting at the top of her hair, which was curly and black and pulled into a half ponytail, an old-fashioned style.
I was watching this intimate moment with his hand on her neck when I heard myself say, ‘So if there’s no gender anymore, will men do half the housework and looking after kids?’
I’d spoken too loudly and too intensely. It wasn’t the way people debated things – you had to pretend to have one foot out of the argument and be a bit bored by the whole thing. Also I realised that Gina wasn’t with me anymore; she must have moved on to another room. I was standing alone, making a fool of myself.
But at home I had two younger brothers. My mother was always exhausted, my dad was always in his shed, and only the girls were expected to help around the house.
Finn looked up, looked at me. I thought he’d probably never noticed me before and didn’t know who I was, but he didn’t give anything away. He smiled broadly, and said, ‘Sure. Of course.’
I looked away, my face flaming. I felt it as a truth that Finn would not mess up his perfect, casually thrown-together self by changing a nappy. But I was on shaky ground and wanted to go back to being invisible, so I looked down and said nothing.
‘Sure. I can just see you changing a nappy.’
It was Sophie. I looked up and found her looking straight at me.
My face got even hotter. I couldn’t believe she’d said exactly what I’d been thinking.
‘What’s your name?’ she said.
‘Ronnie.’ My voice rose at the end, as though I still had to ask permission for this to be my name. I’d tried to make my family use it but they always reverted to Veronica or, worse, Vera.
‘Hi Ronnie, I’m Sophie,’ she said. ‘And Mr post-gender here is Finn.’
As if I didn’t know. It was like a movie star had stopped me at the shops to introduce herself. But I nodded as though the information was new.
She shuffled over on the sofa and gestured for me to sit down. I went and perched there, completely unsure how to arrange my legs when they were wedged beside Sophie’s. I was so anxious and awkward that I was only vaguely aware when she and Finn started whispering to each other. I don’t know what they said. Then Sophie stood up abruptly and reached a hand down to me. ‘Come and get some drinks with me.’
It might have seemed bossy or rude, but she was smiling. Her hair swung towards me and I found that I didn’t know where to look. But I let her help me up and I followed her out of the room.
We went through a long hallway, squeezing past clumps of people, stepping over some who were camped on the floor. She turned in the dim light as we picked our way through. Still smiling: conspiratorial.
She seemed to know where to go, and eventually we got to a kitchen. She started opening cupboards and pulling out bottles, opening the fridge and peering in.
‘Have you ever tried a Tom Collins, Ronnie? They’re amazing.’
I shrugged, as if I did so much cocktail drinking that I might or might not have tried a Tom Collins; I might have forgotten.
‘You live in one of the colleges, don’t you, Ronnie? I guess that means partying every night of the week. To be honest, Ronnie, I don’t think I could handle it. What do you reckon, Ronnie, Tom Collins or daiquiri?’
She was holding up a bottle of vodka and one of gin, and there was a lot to process here. The fact that she knew I lived at college – what did that mean? – but had such a disastrously false idea of my life there (far from partying every night, I had resisted all but the most quotidian interactions with my dorm-mates, who seemed depressingly skewed towards Engineering students and earnest rowers). The fact that I was expected to know which of the bottles correlated to which drink. But probably the most bewildering thing was the way she kept saying my name. Was I imagining that she said it more than was necessary, like a bass note reverberating through her speech? I wanted to hear her keep saying it, but I also sensed something condescending about it. Like she was a grown-up talking to a precocious child or a dog.
Luckily she didn’t seem to need much input from me: I nodded vaguely, hoping to signify both my rampaging college lifestyle and a preference for one of the bottles. She looked at the bottle in her right hand, nodded resolutely and said, ‘Daiquiri. Fair choice.’
She came towards me then and stopped directly in front, our faces just inches apart. Her eyes were steady on mine. A dull pulsing in my head as the blood rushed in and out. Then she reached up behind me. Glasses, I was standing in front of the glasses. But she kept holding my eyes the whole time, and with an effort of will I didn’t look away. She placed three glasses down onto the counter beside me, our eyes still locked. Then she smiled – a small, knowing, shy smile. Something loosened in my chest. A warm, burnished joy settling there. She was still close enough for me to reach out and touch her hair. I didn’t, but the knowledge that I could came to me as a revelation. That she would want me to do that.
She mixed the drinks then, silently and skilfully – I remember wondering if she did bar work and finding even this common idea exotic and exciting in relation to her. We didn’t speak any more, but she moved around me with a new kind of familiarity. The space between us felt small and very busy, teeming with possibilities. I thought of my brother Gavin, still at home down at the Shire. He had girly magazines stashed in a secret place I knew about, but would turn bright red if any girl at school so much as spoke to him. I had always found the smell of his room revolting, but it came to me now that Gavin’s room smelled of sadness and desperation and I felt a pure, crisp superiority. I could touch this girl, this beautiful girl: right here in a kitchen in Redfern. She would let me do that.
