how do i deal with domestic abuse

Pictures or it didn't happen. This is simply not a principle that anyone with sense will agree to.

Like all of your other nonsense, you assume because you state a claim that people will agree to it without you making any effort to support factual claims with evidence and rational argument.

If just "provoking" was an acceptable defense, no one would ever be convicted of domestic abuse. Humans, by their nature are annoying and provoking. It is probably your most human feature in evidence on this board.

 

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The same argument can be used to justify people not reporting rape, robbery, even murder. While it's understandable to not want to suffer verbal abuse, it's not something we should support (IMO.)

 

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*shrug* As I said - we've done all we really can at this point by advising him to get help... whether or not he does is up to him

 

I want to know what actually happened.

 

To Borrow a Moment

Beyond that, let him talk. I get the feeling that some in this discussion believe, expect, or otherwise somehow think our neighbor is hiding something, simplifying grotesquely, or somehow otherwise misrepresenting the circumstances. I will, then, be clear:

• This is the report we have before us.​

We might pause for a moment to wonder what is important to people.

If our neighbor is cynically politicking, that will become evident in its own time.

For now, the report before us is what it is; people can either be helpful or walk the fuck away. We do not hang our fellow human beings out like that.

Meanhile, the cynics really do need to learn: If you let someone talk long enough, they will eventually tell you the truth.

Or is the truth not important to them?

What's that famous line? "Sentence first! Verdict later!"

This is the report we have before us. The detail is general; people can only give the standard advice and they have done so.

Beyond that, if we are to elevate political considerations, the truth is that accusations and judmgent not only don't work, but also reflect the greed of the accusers and judges. And, we might note, also their concomitant greedy impatience; is judgment our sole purpose?

This is the report we have before us, and in certain human issues, that really is all we're allowed to work with according to basic dignity. Anything else is a matter of our own priorities as individuals and a community.

 

Exactly. And, IMO, we should support neither the lack of reporting nor lack of respect they receive.

 

If you're not prepared to give as good as you get, then accept it, or leave.

jan.

 

anecdote:

My first wife tried to assault me(with fists, pots and pans, ashtrays and knives). I was fending off the blows and etc. quite well, then, I started to laugh. The more I laughed, the angrier she got and the angrier she got the more I laughed and the more i laughed the angrier she got..... I couldn't stop laughing (Seriously, I had to go outside and fall down on the ground laughing) and she couldn't stop getting angrier.
Many years later(a couple decades after our divorce), she told me that the cruelest thing that I ever did to her was to laugh at her when she was really angry.
Was that abuse?

 

No. Laughter in the face of obscenity makes us better.

 

Would pictures of domestic abuse really be admissible as evidence in court rpenner, particularly ones that were recorded without the consent of the abuser, other than police patrol car cams, obviously? This is a new approach, if they are. Private investigators could be hired to install surveillance in homes for that purpose.

 

In truth, sir, I doubt that was ever our neighbor's point. Rather, denial and denunciation are common responses to reports of human abuse. Of course, it makes it easier for the judgmental.

Think of it this way: Would you do that to your own child? "Your teacher's molesting you? Pictures, or it didn't happen, kiddo."

And doubting abuse victims is the point.

Aiding and abetting the abuse is the result.

And generally speaking, that's more than simply "just fine" with the people who do it; they feel some abstract reward for having done their part to harm another human being.

It's just a matter of what's important to people. Some survivors have the courage to heal. Others struggle to find it. And others still find entire communities lining up to make sure they don't.

The first rule is to not doubt the report like that. Even when the reports are confused or ineffective. The problem is that human abuse is one set of occasions when we expect the victims to be perfectly coherent, and even more logical than the rest of us. As a result, people tend to say that reports they don't comprehend are lies, and that nothing happened. Statistically speaking, something has happened. Condemning people to suffering is much easier than actually being useful, and as we see even in this thread, some people even get a thrill out of it.

Note the objection. It's personal. Hateful. Exactly the opposite of what needs to happen. Would our neighbor treat his own children that way?

Priorities. One would hope he would stand for his kids. But that still wouldn't have a damn thing to say about the hatred he showed someone who is merely his fellow human being.

Maybe one day the outlier enters one's life. And will that one false report justify the cruelty a person shows that many other people? Again, priorities. And we see our neighbor's priority.

And it is unacceptable. We do not hang our fellow human beings out like that.

 

What I was doubting in the quoted part of post #61 was the claim that the reported abuse was completely justified, a claim made by the alleged victim in an attempt to explain inaction and rejection of solicited advice. The alleged victim said "I got what I deserved" based on some theory of "provoking." That is what I doubted.

I will spare you the extensive quotes from this thread and trust you to read my original remarks in context.

 

Reviewing your "extensive" quotes and original remarks:

• #41: We are certainly outsiders, but contacting us seems like the least productive course of action given that t-c never takes our advice on any topic. And advice is all that we can do, given none of us knows t-c's particulars.

―Assessment: People who attend these issues regularly already know that sometimes talking to people who can't directly meddle, who don't have a specific immediate stake, is helpful. Toll-free crisis centers, for instance; it might seem that using a pay phone to anonymously call someone you don't know and talk about abuse is ineffective, but it has its payoff. The extensive effort of post #41 to focus on personal issues with the reporting member is suggestive.

• #61: Pictures or it didn't happen. This is simply not a principle that anyone with sense will agree to.

Like all of your other nonsense, you assume because you state a claim that people will agree to it without you making any effort to support factual claims with evidence and rational argument.

If just "provoking" was an acceptable defense, no one would ever be convicted of domestic abuse. Humans, by their nature are annoying and provoking. It is probably your most human feature in evidence on this board.

―Assessment: Demand for evidence, attacking reporting member. Statistically, you are denouncing your neighbor for what is actually fairly common behavior. Many abuse victims blame themselves. The need to attack the member personally, again, is certainly suggestive.

• #75: What I was doubting in the quoted part of post #61 was the claim that the reported abuse was completely justified, a claim made by the alleged victim in an attempt to explain inaction and rejection of solicited advice. The alleged victim said "I got what I deserved" based on some theory of "provoking." That is what I doubted.

I will spare you the extensive quotes from this thread and trust you to read my original remarks in context.

―Assessment: Your focus on attacking the member undermines your justification after the fact, which in turn undermines your arrogance.​

Furthermore, the whole of your posts at #41 and 61 comprises all of one hundred twenty-seven words, hardly a data set that can be accurately described as "extensive" in any context.

Your focus on your own opinion of the reporting member undermines the excuse you offer in #75.

Personally, I wouldn't allow you anywhere near an abuse survivor. These can be life and death issues, and your priorities are quite clear.

"Pictures, or it didn't happen." That makes exactly no sense according to your attempted justification in #75.

I doubt your excuse.

Actually, let me correct that in order to be clear: I reject your excuse as untrue.

 

Tiassa -- you need to explain what I'm being tried on before you pronounce me guilty. I don't need an "excuse" if I'm not being accused of something. My use of "extensive" was of the entire context of the thread and the history of the poster which you omit when you isolate my short posts and surround them with your peculiar interpretation, which seems prejudiced rather than an evenhanded independent evaluation.

I will try to avoid speaking about my state of mind when I wrote posts #41 and #61 as they were a month ago and I have been plagued by allergies for 6 weeks, so any reconstruction on my part is going to be hopelessly self-serving and "arrogant."

In post #41, after two pages of other people exhorting t-c to take action, I was taking issue with James R's description of t-c as "reticent to contact outsiders." We are exactly that. And while we may be powerless to intervene, we also have 2000+ posts of t-c to base factual claims that he "never takes our advice" and we don't know his RL situation. That's not "personal issues" -- that's the public history of t-c as an individual with this entire community. Just what exactly is that supposed to be "suggestive" of? That I have paid attention to t-c as an individual? That a day after (or thereabouts, I don't have detailed timestamps on these posts) I still don't see t-c taking any advice? All we can give t-c is facts, advice and attention. He denied the first and didn't accept the second and the third is a poor substitute for positive RL interactions.

I don't know if t-c ever had positive associations with any member on this forum or specifically those in the first two pages of the post, but by page #16 he's already morphed his claim from being beaten up to wanting to know the "science" behind such repeatable phenomena. If t-c is rationalizing actual abuse then this is already deep denial that he has a problem which needs to be called out if t-c is to be assisted. Then in post #55 he switches gears again and repeats James R's "one off" from post #40 indicating that he is not habitually abused. Is that true or is he merely latching on to James R's phrasing? It is absolutely true that t-c's history of posts has conditioned me to suspect him of being tenuously connected with reality, but I have always operated under the assumption that post #1 was a legitimate report. This willingness to believe post #1 leads me to doubt posts #16, #55 and #60.

Sentence one of post #61 looks troubling, but only in isolation. The only sensible way to read the first sentence of post #61 in context is that I am demanding t-c provide independent evidence for his claims in post #55 and #60 that a) he provoked his wife/female partner and b) her attack on him was justified. I specifically cited one sentence of post #60 so that I could tell him that we don't accept that there is a non-violent way to provoke someone into giving you "several lumps around [the] face" (post #1).

What you call "attacking" in reference to post #61 is merely recognition that t-c makes terrible claims in a large percentage of his 2000+ posts. No one knows enough about t-c on this forum to be his friend, to know his particulars, to engage him in conversation. Unlike the hotline numbers he was given and refused to try, we have no means of conditioning conversations on his engagement with reality and our side of the dialog. We have no sense of how drunk/impaired he was when he posts his posts, in part that he doesn't normally conform to standard conversation style in his posts nor do we know how long he spends writing each. I use harsh language about his posts in total, because I'm trying to teach him a lesson about supporting one viewpoint with evidence and reasoned argument -- a lesson I've tried to teach many times in science discussions -- and one that will ultimately be important if he tried to share his narrative over the phone. I'm not trying to cajole a drunken abuse victim in extremis, I'm trying to provoke a serial denier into engagement with his embrace of untruths. The metaphor of physical violence seems inappropriate for this thread.

I don't have any hotline training at all -- I don't think it's required to post at this forum. But I do know history and assumptions color everything we hear other people say. I will not pretend to be t-c's friend, but I don't need to be t-c's friend to believe his post #1 and exhort him to action and castigate him for inaction, denial and shoddy rationalization. What t-c thinks of my posts we do not know because he never responded as if I was on ignore and then was banned.

 

In the older days, an abused women would confide in someone, who use the grapevine to tell her brothers, who would then teach the bully a lesson. The liberal path of criminal rights, over victim rights, made the criminal too important, so this type of swift justice is no longer allowed.

Bullies will back down, when a bigger bully, or a bully gang comes to town, for justice. If the victim has to do all the leg work and the bully protected, the bully remains.

If you do the math, lawyers benefit the most by criminals rights. If the criminal is protected, they will get repeat business. If the brothers beat the bully, no money can be made by the injustice system. The victim stays abused unless they pay other lawyers.

 

It is also irrelevant to the report put before us.

It is also your choice to make those aspects relevant to your own consideration.

It is suggestive of falsehood about your excuse provided in #75 above.

Furthermore, your list of question marks omits an important one: "Behaving as many abuse survivors do?"

Understanding the psychopathology of domestic violence does at some point tread into the more physical science of neurology. At some point, human biology meets chemistry, and chemistry meets physics. When the ultimate phenomenon driving the human mind is a matter of electrochemistry, natural sciences will eventually underpin the social sciences; presently, it is a matter of observational, data recording, and assessment capacities within the fields of study. We network large numbers of computers now to help accomplish difficult scientific tasks like decoding the human genome and finding otherwise obscure objects in the cosmos. Wait until we are ready to build a similar network to study the brain.

Frankly, I don't understand how wanting to know the science behind domestic abuse is problematic.

The problem with calling someone out on this point is a matter of how we address the problem we perceive. People who want to call others out are generally missing the point.

Could be true, could be an echo. This is an example of why this issue is so difficult to deal with.

Which, in turn, brings to mind a more general consideration; for an allegedly scientific community, our discourse at Sciforums tends toward dysfunctionally simplistic outlooks on human behavior and diversity.

To wit, sure, there are red flags about the testament. But I can also see, simultaneously, other pathways by which those concerns would be irrelevant. And that's the thing: If you look closely enough, there are almost always red flags.

But here's the other thing: It doesn't matter.

This is a matter of human dignity and general, civilized decency. To the other, I can see how some in this community might reject some things until they are mathematically demonstrated. And if I want to be really cynical, I can probably come up with a quick line about the value of science for boner pills.

Thus, as I noted in #66↑: If our neighbor is cynically politicking, that will become evident in its own time.

The first half of that is such that I would simply remind that it doesn't matter. The second part, however, I sincerely doubt.

The problem with that doubt would be that it is your own priorities.

My own red flags were a combination of posts #1, 4 and 16, specifically the dearth of information combined with the question about why women do this. But that alarm derives from my own focus; I'm always suspect of that kind of potential indictment against women, since it is so commonplace in my society.

However, my own focus is my own problem. And it should be easy enough to set that aside; such reports as we have are just that important.

True, not doubting the report is an oft-unwieldy notion, but the main problem there is a quasi-manichaean dualism: If a detail is off, then the report must be entirely false. That's too easy. It's lazy. And greedy. And cruel.

The way it works, then, is to run with the idea that something happened. And if that something turns out to be, "The alleged victim made it up out of thin air," so be it. But if the victim says Yog-Sothoth attacked him in the kitchen for overcooking the mac and cheese so that the pasta was too soft, what do we do with that? Do we say, "Well, there's no such thing as Yog-Sothoth, so that means nobody ever laid a hand on him"?

That would be the easy route.

The challenge is to figure out what Yog-Sothoth represents. That is, the point is to understand what really happened.

And that's the best way we have so far to deal with these issues.

Meanwhile, having set aside my own focus in order to look at the report before me, I admit I don't see how your complaint about posts #16, 55, and 60 actually works; that is to say, our reporting neighbor's behavior does not strike me as unusual in this aspect.

Which, in turn, is irrelevant to the report before us.

Again, irrelevant to the report before us.

The first part sounds typical of abuse survivors; the second is a matter of other people's priorities. To wit: Why participate in the discussion?

And this is relevant to the report ... how?

But this isn't about you. It isn't about me. It's about this person who put this report in front of us.

And that is your own focus, which in turn is your own problem.

True enough. Indeed, you'll note that I stayed out of this thread until page four. I probably would have entered sooner, but that's the thing. Between the alarms I noted about a few posts and the fact that the most part of page one was people giving what advice they could under the circumstances, I didn't need to get involved in this one. The descent into idiotic hostility is what compelled my involvement. It is also true that I will be harsh about this because we do not treat our fellow human beings that way. And in the spirit of your note about violence, I would point out that I'm using black ink instead of green because I already know that authority simply cannot crack skulls hard enough to force people to understand.

What happened in this thread is disgusting.

In truth, I'm uncertain how your fallacy helps.

And that is your own focus. It is your own priority. It is your own problem.

It's hard to know how people expected him to respond to the spectacle that started at the end of page one.

And the thing is that for all that other stuff you mention, it's not like the staff isn't aware of him. I'm pretty sure I've seen suggestions floated for who he actually is, at least in terms of site history. And if those aspects turned out to be true, and if this turned out to be a halfassed attempt at trolling the forum for revenge, it still doesn't matter. This is the report we have before us. Everything else is a matter of our own priorities.

 

Throughout the terms "focus" and "report" are used in senses which are peculiar and which may be some form of specialized jargon. You owe it to your readers to spell those meanings out if that is the case.

Irrelevant is context-sensitive. In post #41, I am taking issue with a characterization of what James R said in post #40 ( "reticent to contact outsiders about this" ). If you are trying to narrow the discussion to just post #1 and ignoring all posts prior and after, then you are ignoring the circumstances which led James R to post #40 and consequently my post #41. The public history of the t-c account is what is at issue to tend to favor or disfavor James R's claims that we are outsiders and t-c is not inclined to contact us. In post #40, James raise the issue of the veracity of the story and the need to hear both sides. The public history of the t-c account is what is at issue to tend to favor or disfavor t-c's ability to relate factual claims about reality. In post #40, James R indicates there is unanimity of expressed opinion that t-c should seek actual help rather than just post on a forum. The public history of the t-c account is what is at issue to tend to favor or disfavor the hypothesis that t-c respects anyone's opinion and advice.

At the time, almost a month ago, those aspects seemed relevant to the general conversation. I was not in a position to know that t-c would be banned from the forum seven days in the future.

Excuse for what crime? Post #75 only exists because it was clear someone wasn't reading post #61 in context, and was unfairly trying to link the first sentence of post #61 to the claims made in post #1 and not the one sentence of post #60 which was quoted. Sentence one of post #61 is deliberately provocative for the same reason some posters use all caps and you use "excuse" and "suggestive of falsehood" -- it's a tag to get people to actually read what someone took time to write. It's not on a line by itself because that would make contextomy too easy for the lazy/malicious reader.

Context matters. From general tone you are suggesting that some aspect of t-c's behavior be excused because of his victimhood, while in the context of post #77's "what exactly is that supposed to be "suggestive" of?" adding another hypothetical interpretation would mean we were talking about my post #41, better written as "Your focus on t-c's history is suggestive that you too are an abuse survivor." The first interpretation is vague and the second brushes against aspect of my dysfunctional family which I don't think I've raised.

Context matters. t-c is only familiar to me from his denial of science and lack of basic grasp of scientific matters and epistemology. To suddenly change topics from "what do I do now?" to "give me some sociology and behavior science generalizations" on what I gather was the same night as the incident reported in post #1 and the same night when all practical advice was rejected seems exceptionally problematic. Allowing the topic change would just be feeding his denial that the incident reported in post #1 required action. No one engaged him with answers because there were no such answers both available and useful to him in that place and that time.

Which point would that be? It's a non-realtime public conversation on the Internet about alleged RL facts about a possibly isolated incident of violence where no one but the reporter is in a position to take action. If the reporter uses untrue factual claims about what will happen if he approaches the police and unreliable arguments to rationalize continued inaction, those untruths and fallacies are poisons that need to be counteracted for the purported good of the reporter and those victims of abuse that read this thread.

You are speaking perhaps of the 4chotomy of GOOD, BAD, MAD or SAD.

This only makes sense in light of your continued misreading of the first sentence of post #61. The only one discrediting/dismissing/diminishing the claims made in post #1 is t-c. Post #1 outraged the forum and there are two pages of people calling for t-c to take various forms of action far more effective than posting on the Internet.

t-c's humanity is deeper and broader than just post #1 or post #55. Because of the adoption of pseudonyms, no one is applying the mechanisms of civilization and reporting t-c's claims to the local social services department. With just this sliver of t-c's actual humanity shared, most people applied their most general conceptions of humanity and used those to fill in the gaps of the record, and they are empathizing with that image of t-c rather than the actual human t-c. If actual human t-c matters to members of this forum, the most decent thing to do is to disabuse t-c of notions that impede him from seeking actual human help.