2001-04-24 - 8:16 p.m.

Well, I did it. I never knew it could be this exciting. I thought the filing cabinet was good, but this is superlative.

I am now the master of my bibliography: I bought Endnote. Do not underestimate the thrill you can get from managing your references.

Last day of classes today. My SLA professor bought us pizza. Now that's cool.

I had decided to apologize to T&L about not calling to cancel, but M got to them first and spun some story. So now they want us to go out with them Friday. Again, with the inconvenient invitations I don't want to accept: Friday, when we'll be too broke to buy a Taco Bell taco, Friday, when I should be deep into my paper. It's all about convenience, but not mine, apparently. What part of "After I'm done with my schoolwork" is so hard to understand? Even for M., to whom I have explained approximately eighty times that I'm working on a thirty page paper that's due next week, and I'll be busy till then. Is that vague?

Oh. Yeah. I was talking with N and B today, about N's sister who, along with her two sons, has been abused physically by her husband for years now. Bizarre. Neither of them saw it the way I did. The scenario is typical: she works her ass off doing everything around the house as well as working a job (high school science teacher. Great, huh?). He orders her around like a dog, his mood swings, he beats the hell out of her, won't let her own mother come visit. She takes it, because she doesn't believe in divorce (at least that's the reason N gave; I don't know the woman personally).

My opinion is this: she should be given all support her family can give. She should be shown a way out, over and over again until she finds the courage to do it. As part of this, she should be constantly reminded of the damage she is allowing her children to sustain. Her immediate family should attempt to gain custody of the children, or report them to the state for child abuse (or at least threaten to, if they believe state care is worse, as some argue it is). At any rate, the children should be protected, at any cost. If she wants to stay, she is a grown woman and can make that decision. Her children, however, were not given a choice. Failure to act on their behalf makes all who know about it and do nothing complicit participants in the abuse.

When I express this opinion to N, as I have several times in the past, she looks at me blankly ("What, ME do something? But that would be PRYING. And it sounds like work."). Today, what blew my mind was B, who declared that women like that are 'special' because they 'do what they have to do to protect their children', by which she meant taking orders from the man in order to stave off his anger.

See, this is where my relativism breaks down. That is the biggest load of crap I have ever heard. I said as much (but nicer, I'm still trying to be nice). And then, they both declared as if revealing some ancient wisdom,

"You never know until you're in that situation."

Yeah, that's true. But what in the name of all that is holy does that have to do with anything? How does that resolve the situation? Does carefully not passing judgement on the woman absolve you of any responsibility to help in any way you can? They said it like it was a mantra, one after the other. I objected, I asked them what exactly the hell that meant, why that statement could close the topic to further discussion, as if that solved the problem. A bit more about how she must still love him or some crap like that, and then, the repetition:

"You never know what you'd do until you're in that situation"

Somebody, tell me what that means, or more specifically, why it's relevant. It's a truism, designed to...what? Excuse people from having to form an opinion? To claim insufficient understanding to act? Are they afraid that criticizing someone else implies that they think they are perfect? Does that mean that no one can say anything is wrong unless they personally have been in that situation? If that's true, how can any of us be sure the Holocaust was wrong? Or Rwanda? Croatia? After all, you never know until you're in that situation.

Lame assed, over-most-halfwittedest excuse for avoiding a stand I have ever heard in my entire fucking life.

The End.

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