www.reelyredd.net: Predators and Scavengers

	If you watch any National Geographic special on African wildlife, there always seems to be at least one scene of hyenas and jackals showing up for their share of the kill, while the sanctimonious voice-over drones on about 'the great cycle of life and death' and not judging the scavengers who do such an important job. And I always think, yes well - that's all very well if you're an antelope, but survivors of domestic abuse are not carrion, and nobody ever uses this to suggest that antelope are 'attracted' to carnivorous types.
It's all relevant. Let it be known that you've survived one round with abuse, and what always happens? Your doorstep fills up with opportunistic 'nice guys', braying at every opportunity that they're not predators, and checking you sideways every three seconds to see if you've got the message just yet. And like jackals and hyenas, if they don't end up getting the piece of you that they think they're entitled to for being such princes, they start snapping and snarling at you instead. It makes you think really carefully. Are survivors really actively attracted to abusive, user-ish types, or is it just that there's a sub-class of abuse scavengers who are attracted to victims because of an expectation that next to the last guy this woman dated, their warts won't show at all? I hear too many stories of men moving in on a survivor expecting to do her a 'favour' and then copping an attitude if they're turned down, and conveniently blaming their rejection on the target's supposed 'issues' and 'problems with men'. It's kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy, in many ways.
I call these men 'slipstream abusers'. They give themselves far too much moral credit for not being active abusers themselves. They still ride in the slipstream of violence against women, taking advantage of what the man before them has done. Like the idea that a woman will give up so much for safety, there's an idea that all a man has to do to claim his free partner is show up, talk nice, and not hit anyone. A survivor is a prime opportunity for a man who fears he's a loser to play to an audience that he thinks will be ill-equipped to criticize him. And if she does, he can always blame it on her. It takes more to be a nice guy than to just default from being an **hole. I honestly believe there's a whole group of men out there who wouldn't commit overt abuse, but who are very willing and sometimes eager to capitalize on what they perceive to be a survivor's gratitude to them for not* being jerks. They display their shoddy wares that no-one will buy in the open market, and expect the gratitude as a right, because they've been told and told that abuse victims have no standards, self-esteem or boundaries. They're selling to a market that someone has told them is not in a position to turn them down and isn't equipped to detect their flaws. The hypocrisy of it is the way in which survivors are actively discouraged from seeing through this type of man. If they fail to respond as required to the unwanted and self-serving chivalry, they're told that they're so messed up they don't know a good man when they see one, which dovetails nicely with the parallel claim that what victims like is a man who'll beat them up. And if they do take the prince act for real (following the directive to 'trust' and not be 'bitter'), the prince relaxes as soon as the sale is made and turns back into the frog he was all along - whereupon it appears once again that it's the victims who repeat patterns compulsively. Predators and scavengers. There are actually two types of abusers out there. And if anyone's talking about symbiosis and interdependence, you have to wonder whether the real people who need and like abusers aren't the ones who profit so much from their acts. by Lily DeVilliers © March 2001 All rights reserved No part of this article may be redistributed, rewritten or republished without written permission of the author Lily is currently working on a book for abuse survivors.

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