Name-Calling and a Rant About Name-Calling

In my search, I have run across a ton of great terms having to do with abuse. There is a ton of vitriol flying back and forth, and here are some of my faves:

• "Psychopath" - Found on a British web forum, a term applied to any abuser. Anyone who starts out nice, and ends up CRAZY!
• "Psychobitch" - An abusive woman
• "Vaginocracy" - female-dominated culture
• "Baker-Act" - A state law requiring a criminal to submit to psychological testing. Can be used as a verb, as in "They Baker-Acted me for no good reason."
• "Envelopment" - the opposite of penetration. The proper word to be used in cases of male sexual assault.   

My search has taken me all over the world. I have landed in Second Life, in abuse support groups, in anti-feminist, "masculist" think-tanks, all over chat groups and facebook groups and extreme fringe chat sites where people really speak their mind.

What strikes me is when people are politicizing abuse, we get into trouble. A man gets abused, and many people say he must have deserved it. Just like in previous generations, if a woman was hit, people would have said she did something to deserve it. We are still caught in the same cycle of blame.

The big case recently was this guy who was tied to his bed, and his wife cut off his penis with a 10-inch knife, and threw it down the garbage disposal. Symbolically, this means that there is a kind of abstract justice for the wives of cheating husbands. But in the literal world, a man has had his penis thrown down a garbage disposal. A cheating husband deserves to be divorced, yes. He deserves that. But no one deserves to be mutilated. That's where the argument ends.

There is the "you go girl" response. That is a bit dangerous. There is the non-response. No matter what kind of response you have to the event, you are bound to get into a debate. The symbolism of the event does not reconcile itself with the actual event.

The words I put down above have been collected over time, and there are others. There are buzzwords and keywords that get bandied about.

Ask the victim what happened. They aren't usually the ones getting political about it. Some victims are mistreated by the system, and don't get the justice they might deserve. That's when they rail against the system. Some of them still love the person who hurt them. And it hurts them to have to go to court in the first place.

Put a name to your experience. Verbal abuse. Physical abuse. If you can classify and pinpoint what has happened to you, then you can be viewed clearly. The moment that the politics get involved, it gets really murky.