As puzzling as I found Penelope Trunk’s recent (and ongoing?) blog conversation about her (real? made up?) abusive domestic situation, she did make a point that I agree with. In a post entitled, “Zero tolerance for domestic violence is wrong,” she gets sniffy about her commenters telling her what they think about the abuse that she had just told them about. You can go read that post for yourself and marvel at its weirdness.
But when we say zero tolerance, we just mean I won’t put up with this. We don’t mean that no one in the world will ever put up with this, unless we are sheltered. But as she points out, there are situations in which a very bad situation is arguably better than the alternatives. You might rather stay with your father who hits you than go live with your mother whose boyfriend wants to rape you — or, frankly, you might choose to take your chances with the boyfriend. These are the choices made by people who don’t have resources, people who will help them, adequate information. (And if you aren’t willing to step in and provide some help, you can’t judge that kind of choice.)
Penelope is not one of those people. Penelope is a good example (to the extent that she’s telling the truth) of how people in these bad situations see things differently than those of us who are not. The story about her parents and the paint, thought, is transparent bullshit of the this happened when I was a kid so it was always going to happen and couldn’t have happened any other way variety.
