The Language of Battered Women: A Rhetorical Analysis of Personal Theologies

Chapter Three. “Sometimes I Just Want to Give Up”: WOMEN’S ANGUISH, WOMEN’S PAIN

THREE “Sometimes I Just Want to Give Up” WOMEN’S ANGUISH, WOMEN’S PAIN My name is nothing. Sometimes I just want to give up. —Amelia I am wiped out, crushed, nothing. —Karyl I add up to nothing, useless, worthless and ugly. —Marissa INTRODUCTION “Pain passes much of its time in utter inhuman silence,” writes David B. Morris.1 Yet, in the shelter, the bodies of women are often the living testimonies of inflicted pain. Many women have black eyes, bruises, and broken limbs. They have knife and gun shot wounds. Their bodies carry the brutal marks of having been pushed out of moving cars, off balconies, down stairs. Sometimes the marks of pain and suffering are not visible. I met women who were chained to beds or forced to stand in corners or on chairs for long periods of time. They have been raped with bottles, sticks, and kitchen 53 33011_SP_WIN_CH03_053-078 10/10/03, 11:42 AM 53 54 THE LANGUAGE OF BATTERED WOMEN implements. Sometimes their testimony to pain is revealed through absence. A miscarriage hides the history of their swollen pregnant bellies having been punched or kicked. The bodies of shelter women bear the marks of only some of their troubles. Women often come to the shelter from the emergency room of the local hospital after their physical injuries have been treated. Their emotional or psychological problems typically have not received any attention. Many cases, however, involve overwhelming psychological violence. It is much more common than physical violence and it reportedly has the most lasting effects.2 Many shelter women have been told by partners that they are bad wives, negligent housekeepers, and unsound mothers. They have been told they are crazy, sinful, and evil. They are stupid, ugly, and worthless. Mostly women endure both physical and psychological violence. The beatings are accompanied with a steady stream of verbal and nonverbal abuse. Sexual assault commonly accompanies physical assault.3 With untold terror, women watch as their children are physically, sexually, or verbally assaulted and their children watch as they are physically, sexually, or verbally assaulted. Michael P. Johnson calls this “patriarchal terrorism.”4 Of course, battered women die. For every woman in the shelter, there are at least five women who do not come to the shelter for various reasons: fear, shame, doubt. And most women who use the services of a shelter do not actually move into the shelter.5 Many women, sheltered or not, live in a world of pain and suffering. In this chapter, I want to prepare for a theological discussion of the suffering of battered women by distinguishing pain and suffering. I offer the voices of battered women as they reflect on their bodily experience or situations . I will emphasize the experience and consequences of pain. Suffering extends from both physical and psychological pain; thus, at times, the distinction will be artificial. However, I persevere because I want to explore reasons why the actual pain of women is disregarded by both victims and society, including its lived experience and the nonavailability of language to describe it. As Judith Lewis Herman notes: “Traumatic memory is . . . wordless and static.”6 THE LANGUAGE OF PAIN AND SUFFERING: VANISHING THE FEMALE BODY “Pain leads its existence mostly in secret, in silence, without leaving written records or eloquent testimony,” writes David B. Morris.7 Curiously enough, Morris’s observation can be applied to the general literature on battered women. The literature does not deeply consider the survivor’s experience of pain from actual blows or beatings. 33011_SP_WIN_CH03_053-078 10/10/03, 11:42 AM 54 55 WOMEN’S ANGUISH, WOMEN’S PAIN Yet this experience is the identifying or essential experience of a “battered ” woman. Indeed, in the nomenclature of domestic violence, the use of the descriptor “battered” (that is, in the terminology “battered women”) suggests that aggressive, injurious physical contact has been made by the abuser, presumably an assault that leaves its dire marks. In the general literature on domestic violence, however, this basic existential fact is largely neglected or left unexplored. The current trend toward using the nomenclature “survivor of domestic violence” further hides the brutal physical facts.8 In the general literature, lists, charts, or wheels are used to depict the activities of the abuser: hitting, slapping, shaking, shoving, pushing, choking, punching, burning, stabbing, or shooting. In these assaults, the abuser’s body is used as a weapon...