Violence Archives - HandbagMafia

Sexual abuse in marriage

Sexual abuse in marriage is another form of intimate partner abuse that we don’t often talk about. When we think of domestic violence, the image is often one of physical violence. But we know now that abuse takes many forms. Physical, sexual, emotional and even financial. My guest today left an abusive marriage a year ago and shares her story of emotional and sexual abuse in her marriage.

Warning: this is a long post that details emotional abuse, threatening behaviour and sexual abuse that may be upsetting, confronting or triggering for some readers.

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Trigger warning: Talks about depression, self-harm and sexual assault.

This is a guest post written by someone who prefers to remain anonymous.

Depression is something I have struggled with for as long as I remember. I think I might have been around 9 when it first started, and when you’re a kid you just get called a sook, a cry-baby or an attention-seeker. I got the same responses into my teen years, when I did speak up and try to get some help.

I was just a kid who had nothing to be depressed about, right?

I remember being in year 6 and so skinny that my hip bones stuck out. I had to wear jeans that were too big just so they would accommodate my protruding bones. I was wearing a ladies size 8 and the kids at school called me fat because I was no longer wearing kid’s sizing. At night, once my family had all gone to bed, I would take a saucepan into the bathroom and repeatedly hit my stomach and hip bones because I believed it would make me skinnier and, therefore, more likable. I know it sounds nuts, but this is how I felt I could deal with it.

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Do you think all lives matter?

I’m going to take a hopeful stab in the dark and say yes. I would hope that most people do. So much so that it should go without saying. Every life is important. And not because they are someone else’s partner, parent or relative; people matter in their own right, not just for who they are in relation to someone else. But the #AllLivesMatter “movement” that keeps popping up is not actually about that, since it never existed before the #BlackLivesMatter movement. So is it really about “equality”, or is it more of a derailing tactic?

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I’ve been stewing on this for a few days now, since reading your recent comments. I’m wondering if you can actually define “frivolous”. And while you’re at it, I’d love you to provide evidence that women are making “frivolous domestic violence complaints”. Because, as far as I know, domestic violence saw 79 women in Australia killed in 2015. Another 32 so far in 2016. Doesn’t seem like a “frivolous” issue to me. Many people are granted protection orders these days and I find it hard to believe that the police and the courts follow through with them if the complaints are so minor or petty. Did you know that between September 2013 and September 2014, just for a snapshot of the numbers, there were more than 26,000 domestic apprehended violence orders issued in NSW alone and approximately 80% of them were issued to women? Would you like to give an estimate of how many of these orders were made by the courts because a man said he didn’t like the colour of a woman’s dress? Because that is the example you gave of a woman making a “frivolous” complaint.

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Inside An Abusive Marriage

Sexual abuse in marriage

Sexual Assault: Never the Victim’s Fault

Black Lives Matter

Do you think all lives matter?

Dear Pauline Hanson, Please Explain…