Abusive Relationships: The Myth of Neutrality (women, family, calling, friends)

[PassTheChocolate]

I came across this recently. I thought it was worth a share. It applies to abusive women as well.

THE MYTH OF NEUTRALITY

It is not possible to be truly balanced in one’s views of an abuser and an abused woman. As Dr. Judith Herman explains eloquently in her masterwork Trauma and Recovery, “neutrality” actually serves the interests of the perpetrator much more than those of the victim and so is not neutral. Although an abuser prefers to have you wholeheartedly on his side, he will settle contentedly for your decision to take a middle stance. To him, that means you see the couple’s problems as partly her fault and partly his fault, which means it isn’t abuse.

I was speaking with a person one day who was describing the abusive relationship of a man and woman, both of whom were friends of hers. “They each want me to side with them,” she explained to me, “but I refuse to take sides. They have to work out their own dynamics. I have let both of them know that I’m there for them. If I openly supported her, he would just dig his heels in harder.” She added, “People need to avoid the temptation to choose up teams” in a tone that indicated that she considered herself to be of superior maturity because of her neutrality.

In reality, to remain neutral is to collude with the abusive man, whether or not that is your goal. If you are aware of chronic or severe mistreatment and do not speak out against it, your silence communicates implicitly that you see nothing unacceptable taking place. Abusers interpret silence as approval, or at least as forgiveness. To abused women, meanwhile, the silence means that no one will help— just what her partner wants her to believe. Anyone who chooses to quietly look the other way therefore unwittingly becomes the abuser’s ally.

Breaking the silence does not necessarily mean criticizing or confronting the abuser regarding his behavior. It certainly doesn’t mean going to him with anything you have learned from her, because the abuser will retaliate against her for talking about his behavior to other people. It does mean telling the abused woman privately that you don’t like the way he is treating her and that she doesn’t deserve it, no matter what she has done. And if you see or hear violence or threats, it means calling the police.

Bancroft, Lundy - Why Does He Do That?: Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men

[nald]

Originally Posted by PassTheChocolate

I came across this recently. I thought it was worth a share. It applies to abusive women as well.

THE MYTH OF NEUTRALITY

It is not possible to be truly balanced in one’s views of an abuser and an abused woman. As Dr. Judith Herman explains eloquently in her masterwork Trauma and Recovery, “neutrality” actually serves the interests of the perpetrator much more than those of the victim and so is not neutral. Although an abuser prefers to have you wholeheartedly on his side, he will settle contentedly for your decision to take a middle stance. To him, that means you see the couple’s problems as partly her fault and partly his fault, which means it isn’t abuse.

I was speaking with a person one day who was describing the abusive relationship of a man and woman, both of whom were friends of hers. “They each want me to side with them,” she explained to me, “but I refuse to take sides. They have to work out their own dynamics. I have let both of them know that I’m there for them. If I openly supported her, he would just dig his heels in harder.” She added, “People need to avoid the temptation to choose up teams” in a tone that indicated that she considered herself to be of superior maturity because of her neutrality.

In reality, to remain neutral is to collude with the abusive man, whether or not that is your goal. If you are aware of chronic or severe mistreatment and do not speak out against it, your silence communicates implicitly that you see nothing unacceptable taking place. Abusers interpret silence as approval, or at least as forgiveness. To abused women, meanwhile, the silence means that no one will help— just what her partner wants her to believe. Anyone who chooses to quietly look the other way therefore unwittingly becomes the abuser’s ally.

Breaking the silence does not necessarily mean criticizing or confronting the abuser regarding his behavior. It certainly doesn’t mean going to him with anything you have learned from her, because the abuser will retaliate against her for talking about his behavior to other people. It does mean telling the abused woman privately that you don’t like the way he is treating her and that she doesn’t deserve it, no matter what she has done. And if you see or hear violence or threats, it means calling the police.

Bancroft, Lundy - Why Does He Do That?: Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men

Talk about this forum where people will always claim that it takes two for anything - be it physical or emotional violence or anything else.
I don't buy in the dichotomy of abuser and abused as male and female as the author does and if you read this forum carefully - women are more prone to use the logic that it's your fault for the wrongdoings of the partner. Especially if the woman is deemed "the bad side".
I deem the pseudo-neutrality and especially being spokesperson of the "other side" as a total lack of empathy, which is especially the case due to fact that people usually seek support and support generally involves being put in their shoes. If you ever browsed the relationship forum you'd see that a huge number of people aren't capable of doing that - instead, they are acting like worst a-holes and use subtle ways to enact their agression towards the poster either because he is of wrong gender (most impacting factor generally being this sub-forum), wrong ethnicity, cultural or linguistic group (other sub-forums on city-data forum board). People simply desire to "put the person back in their place" because one of the obscure clauses in that person's text might imply something that the reader(s) identify as themselves, which is enough to induce their inherent aggression that they sugar coat. Once you press them a bit, all the foulness gets exposed as they start writing without sugar-coating and their dung gets visible even for the readers who generally don't bother to read between the lines.

This pseudo-neutrality definitely isn't limited to family/social relations on small level, it's also common on national levels where people tend to justify wars by stories that both sides must be wrong and especially "equally wrong" when they can't or don't want to give explicit support to the side that is addressed as a perpetrator who seeks ways to escalate violence on full-scale. General notion is that one side usually abuses their position to impose war on other because they are convinced that they'll have upper hand in it. Very rarely do you see both sides convinced that conflict is going to be in their favor and a common notion is that when both sides see any potential conflict as not being in their favor they tend to avoid it. But in the eyes of pseudo-neutrality folks, this logic doesn't exist and they focus on justifying the villain because they show empathy to the villain - they often recognize themselves in the position of perpetrator and they ultimately justify themselves, while they never show even a simple empathy towards the victim, and when they do - they do it only to relativize the whole deal and "justify themselves" once again.
It seems like a remote story but the causality is generally the same on micro and macro levels.

[PassTheChocolate]

So funny, I did a search for The Myth of Neutrality and saw a link to this thread. Oh, how it applies to what I'm seeing politically, even from seemingly well meaning people who loathe this administration.