All of our many blogs on torture over the past few days, and the many, many comments attached, have gotten me thinking about America's humanity as a whole. Well, the world's humanity, as a whole.
We haven't always been kind creatures, that's for damn sure. But one thing I had always felt pride in, about our country, was that we seemed to value human dignity.
This past week, we've all discovered an underbelly that leaves us breathless and angered -- heh, shocked and not so awed, even.
To argue back and forth as some of us have over what is torture is somewhat pointless. It's like Bill Clinton asking for a definition of "is". Torture IS torture.
To try to put it in a grand scale is pointless. That's what these lawyers and doctors did, when they wrote out their "rules". There is no grand scale when it comes to personal pain.
Like, take just me, for instance. I grew up without any physical abuse of any kind, other than one smack on my ass from my mother when I said something fresh around the age of 9, and a smack across the face when I brought a guy home at 3AM when I was in my teens, not knowing my mother was awake and waiting up for me. Hey, he was just coming over to use our pool, LOL, but that didn't matter. I was 17 and Mum had a good reason to be upset. The fact that these are the only two times I was ever reprimanded physically, though, is what I remember -- and am grateful for, because so many other people I know, especially in my age group, remember so much worse.
So, looking back I can honestly and easily say I didn't suffer physical abuse at the hands of my parents. My ex-boyfriend out in California, however, he was another story. Now, I had taken pride in the fact that my only other long-term boyfriend before him had never dared hit me (although, he did shoot a handgun off in our apartment, aiming somewhat in my general direction once, but carefully landed his bullet in a two by four in the wall instead). I had seen firsthand what other women in my family had gone through, and I just knew deep down that I would never, ever take any physical abuse from anyone who claimed to love me, let alone just anyone.
So when I found myself one day getting grabbed and pushed by my ex-boyfriend in California, my first instinct was to fight back. Let him know I wasn't about to take that sort of thing. I remember it clear as day, we were in our bedroom and he had pushed me up against a wall and had squeezed my face between his one very strong hand ("sheet metal-cutting hands, babe, I got STRONG sheet metal-hands, babe, and don't ever forget it") and yelled at me for some infraction or another, and then he nonchalantly let me go and turned his back and my very first instinct was to kick him in the ass and topple him to the ground. So I tried to. But he was a former kick boxer ("kick boxer, babe, I've got eyes in the back of my head and you can NEVER get the best of me") and felt me coming at him and he somehow twisted around and grabbed my leg before it could even make contact with him, and he roared as he did so, and somehow I ended up falling backwards, right into the mirrored sliding door of our closet. Good thing the mirrored sliding door took my fall because otherwise I would've landed on the shoe rack.
I was less shocked by the fact that I fell through the closet door, somehow, than by the tirade that followed. He told me that I was the woman and he was the man and if I ever let myself forget my place again and decided to fight like a man, well then I'd better be damn sure to be ready to fight like one.
Heh, and here silly I was, expecting an apology instead.
Over the next few years, you can be damn sure I never tried to fight like a man. I walked on egg shells around him, to the point where even that would bother him and get him irate enough to push me against a wall and clench my throat tightly with one strong hand ("sheet metal-cutting hands, babe, I've got STRONG sheet metal-cutting hands, babe, and don't you forget it!") and there was one time I couldn't swallow for three days straight without taking a deep breath first and bracing myself for the pain that would follow that swallow.
There was another time he got mad at me and I tried to go outside to our back patio for a cigarette, so that I could just get away from him and calm myself down, but he pulled me by the front of my sweatshirt and ripped it, and when I saw his other hand come towards my face I put my own hands up in self defense, so that what ended up happening was my own fingernail, the ring finger of my right hand, I'll never forget, because that nail, like my pinkie nails, is stronger and sharper than the other ones I either bite or break, it ended up getting knocked into my eyelid when his hand came up and met mine. So I ripped open my own eyelid, right at the lash line, but didn't even know it until he started looking worried and was asking where all the blood was coming from, and I said, "What blood?" and he had to take me to the bathroom to show me that there was blood pouring out of my eye and landing all over the front of my ripped sweatshirt, and only then did he truly seem remorseful. And so of course I blamed myself and told him it wasn't his fault, and I went to work the next day with a purple bloated eye and told everyone, "Oh, my boyfriend and I were play-wrassling and I mistakenly cut open my own eyelid with my fingernail, LOL".
And then finally there was that morning that I always think of as The Morning of the Last Choke Hold because this time after the choke hold he stuck a handgun down the waistband of his jeans before leaving for work after choking me and said, "If I get home and you're gone, I'm gonna use this gun -- either on you, or me, or a cop, or all three."
I packed up the second he closed the front door and I haven't seen him since.
Now, I'm not telling you all this to get sympathy. I'm sure many people here have either been through worse or have a loved one who has. I'm bringing all this up because, as a woman, I expect a man to treat me with more respect than that, especially if he supposedly loves me. As a person, I expect anyone to treat me with more respect than that. As the aunt of a soldier in the Army, I expect prisoners to be treated with a modicum of respect according to the principals that our country used to stand on and believe in. And as a war criminal prisoner, I would hope that any country that has me in their possession would simply keep me in their possession and not torture me. Because God forbid (not that I'm religious, I just love that phrase), God forbid that our men and women are taken prisoner by another country and treated the way our detainees were treated. God forbid that anyone be treated badly at all, let alone
that badly.
I mean, really.
Where's the dignity???
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