Yesterday, I was sucked into an essay by author Jim Goad about the love affair that landed him in jail for hitting his girlfriend. Or, hitting his girlfriend back. Hard.
While his wife Debbie was sick with cancer, Goad started up an affair with a fan girl nearly a decade his junior who had pursued him through letters and zines. His relationship with Debbie was dying as she did. The new girl, Anne, had a reputation in Portland as being an uncontrollable, violent maniac who fucked through the scene like blitzkrieg. Goad and Anne had an affair in secret and slowly became attached to one another.
The first time Goad punched Anne was at her request. She wasn’t satisfied with her General Assistance allowance and needed more cash. Anne wanted to get a Social Security Income check and thought she could play up her diagnosed mental disorder to swindle it (Goad says that Anne planned to write a book about “milking the system” in various ways). She was convinced that if she went into her interview disheveled and fucked up, she could get the state’s $700 per month and live large. She asked Goad to give her a black eye. He complies, but his punch only makes a small knot and not the grandiose shiner Anne desired. Even though she shows up to her interview in piss-soaked clothes she’d been wearing for two days and answers questions at an autistic level, her SSI cheque is denied.
The upheaval in their union does not stop before the 47-pages are up. It’s a turbulent psychosis that makes the reader want to hit both of them for being so codependent. When he first tries to break-up with her, the threats start: she’ll kill herself or him. He files a restraining order against her, but violates it. He continues to break and go back to her. Even after she leaves daily death threats on his voicemail (which he records). Even after she cuts off all her hair in a rage and chews up a piece of dog shit on the floor to spit in his face. Even after she attacks him on a public bus, biting chunks out of his chest and arms. In fact, after the honeymoon period, they physically fight almost every time they are together. It’s wild to read. He contains himself and she gnarls into him, ripping his skin like it’s a turkey leg.
Then, one day it all comes to a head and he just snaps. Obviously, her injuries are more severe than his. (Even though he only had two inches on her and about 30 pounds.) He went to jail for a few years. She went back to her mom’s.
Battered wives who finally go nuts and murder their husbands usually end up on death row or the mental hospital. The protocol is she’s either intentionally malicious or insanely mental. However, every time I watch some 48 Hours depicting this type of scenario my vagina sides with the woman and that’s bias. (My cunt can be so emotional sometimes!) According to reports from FBI in 1993 to 2002, 73 per cent of family violence victims and 58 per cent of family murder victims were female. Of those murdered women, family members were responsible for 43 per cent of the deaths.
When we imagine domestic violence we see men as the aggressors and women and children as the victims (it’s the same way we see sexual predators, which I researched recently for Broadly). It’s like this for a reason: this is what generally happens.
“You never, EVER hit a woman.”
But what if that woman is threatening your life? What if, like Canadian Elizabeth Rudavsky, the person you thought was your husband (and actually turns out to be a woman using a prosthetic penis) beats you daily, so you stab back in self-defense? What if this is not a “normal” situation at all? Why do the rules of self defense change with gender? With sexual orientation? With physical size? With repeat offences?
Women commit violence too. To pretend we don’t is to dehumanize us. Everyone has the potential to be horrible.
I do not feel sorry for Goad at all. He went back time and time again to this person he knew was crazy and physically abusive. He did it because the sex was intense, he was probably addicted to her obsessiveness, and furthermore, it was better than being alone. He was terrified of loneliness.
However, if I flip the gender roles in that previous sentence, do I suddenly disagree with my own statement? Would I extend more empathy to a woman who kept going back to a man who abused her?
The bigger question is how courts will develop to include LGBT relationships. Let’s say Goad and Anne were both women? When two people fight, there has to be a winner and a loser determined by the amount of blood and bruises. Female violence is only taken seriously when it proves fatal.
While Goad was in jail, one of his super fan’s started a website for him “Free Jim Goad”. He promptly disputed the site, saying that he was not innocent in his crimes.
Anne later ended up serving her own time in jail. A cyclist was riding too close to her car, so she purposely ran him over screaming, “I hate cyclists.”
The fear of loneliness is one powerful drug.
