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It is almost 25 years since Gavin de Becker wrote The Gift of Fear (more specifically, 24 years). To make clear a comparison of the film and the violence literature produced in the same epoch would serve this book better. 1997 was the year of Titanic and Dante’s Peak. It is not unexpected that one of the bestselling novels about violence would come out at a time when Hollywood was grappling with the interplay between human pride, technological advancement, and nature. For those who have not yet seen it, Dante’s Peak is a movie about the catastrophic consequences of a small-town government ignoring scientists’ warnings of a volcano that is threatening to erupt. 1997 was also the year of the O.J. Simpson civil lawsuit (Simpson had already been found innocent of the murder). The Columbine High School Mass Shooting was yet to occur. Violence and rage issued from men have often been accepted as a fact of life. A man gets angry, so what? When a woman displays anger, she’s off her rocker.
Given these conjectures, De Becker’s thesis is straightforward: a woman’s instinctive fear of a man, irrespective of the context, should be respected for what it is.
A violent country in 1997, America today is beyond what I think De Becker could have imagined an America where mass shootings and police brutality dominate news cycles. If fear is a gift, we’ve certainly been gifted quite a lot to be afraid of in 2020. Male violence might have been viewed as a new nature we had to acclimatize to but now there’s nature itself to deal with: a worldwide pandemic, unprecedented wildfires that generate weather, advanced heat waves, rising oceans, droughts, and entire ecosystems on the brink of collapse. The fact that so many of us can complete our day-to-day tasks without being in a state of constant paralyzing fear is what most strongly supports De Becker’s argument: that we frequently overlook our fear signals and endanger our own safety in the process.
You cannot face your fears if you do not feel like you have control. It does not matter if that control is real or fabricated. The bottom line is, you must think you have the ability to do something. De Becker argues that a woman can keep herself safe by listening to her feelings, but that sets the bar far too low and puts all the responsibility on her. Women will be secure when men decide to stop being aggressive.
In mathematics, proof can be destroyed with just a few miscalculations. The perspective created in a painting can be shattered with a missing stroke, and for the architect, a single inaccurate figure can send him back to square one. With literature, just one sentence can spoil an entire book. It is easy to say that De Becker’s Gift of Fear is an extensively erroneous book, and in reality, such an assertion can be justified in a single sentence.
In his chapter on domestic violence, De Becker writes this: “The first time a woman is hit, she is a victim and the second time, she is a volunteer.”
This deeply flawed statement is at its heart a positive diagnosis that speaks volumes about the ideological pathologies that plague this book.
De Becker explains that he has gotten some backlash when he has previously used this quote, but he cannot entertain the thought that he could be wrong. Rather, he emphasizes this line further and claims that putting it in bold serves the purpose of showing women that they always have a choice. However, this form of claiming paternal superiority does not hold water.
De Becker writes about the childhood challenges he faced, but being a white male, he has also had certain privileges in life. He is acutely aware of what it means to walk into a room knowing that the default mode will not be immediate credibility, acceptance, or respect, unlike women and people of color. De Becker seems to find it impossible to inhabit a mind that has not, at some point during their life, been believed or respected. After all, to respect your own intuition, you must first learn how to cherish yourself.
The sentence remains frightening because it has an impact on other individuals who come into contact with victimized women. He has conducted seminars for police departments, human resource firms, schools, and even colleges and universities; all these bodies are important for training and are often the first respondents to a case of domestic violence. DeBecker’s commentary alone implies that he has no grasp whatsoever of the reality of domestic violence. In No Visible Bruises: What We Don’t Know About Domestic Violence Can Kill Us, Rachel Louise Snyder details dozens of reasons why women are unable to or do not choose to leave abusive or violent situations.
The view that women “volunteering” for a second or more assault is disgraceful because it ignores the complex dynamics behind a woman’s decision to stay in an abusive relationship. How does a woman stand to be called a volunteer when all she seeks is to protect her kids, house, or some sort of financial security? Can she really be classified as a volunteer when her partner stands ready to unleash violence and she cannot certainly call the police knowing that he would not be imprisoned for long enough to let her escape? In the book No Visible Bruises: What We Don’t Know About Domestic Violence Can Kill Us Rachel Louise Snyder describes several women who withdrew their statements to the police only to be liberated from jail after a very short stay. Those women who withdrew were not free of danger, but they were terrified of what would happen to them now that their partners were out. There were only 2 case studies where the women who withdrew statements of evidence were murdered.
Abusive relationships do not just involve physical violence, they can also pose non-physical threats such as “I’ll take the kids away if you leave,” as well as financial manipulation and much more. Regarding homelessness and the availability of affordable housing, the situation was far from critical back in 1997. Women caught up in abusive relationships often have nowhere else to go. Shelters, when accessible, require her to completely uproot her life. Snyder points out that domestic violence is likely the one crime where we anticipate the victim, rather than the offender, to adjust their life.
De Becker’s statement is myopic because it allows society to vilify women for staying in abusive relationships, without taking into consideration the reason why a woman would choose to remain. As a troubled child, De Becker had sympathetic adults in his life who believed in his agency, and this made all the difference. Picture being a woman with no one around you willing to listen to you. To use the term “volunteer” in the context of abuse cycles is not only dehumanizing but downright sickening. No women choose to be battered.
A lot of people have written regarding the existence as well as the manifestation of anger against women in society. I wish to say here that I shall put down my pencil for a moment and attempt to explain that I am extremely furious. The Gift of Fear extremely infuriates me. Carlos Lozada in his Pulitzer prize-winning critical review of ‘Why Women’s Rage is Healthy, Rational, and Necessary for America’ captures a man’s sensibilities to rage in a woman’s fury moderately well. But my anger isn’t general. Mine is specific. One of my dear friends will eternally remain in my habit frame whenever I pick up The Gift of Fear. Although we grew up together, we have been estranged for several months. For many years now, the adult life story of this ex-friend of mine contains her relationship with abusive men, who were all verbally abusive and some physically abusive. It has taken me many years to understand why she’d choose to stay, and I’ll admit that for many years I did not understand. My friend was never a volunteer. She was a woman ready to be loved, a woman who came to a world that rarely considers women seriously.
As a result, she had grown increasingly numb to the violence that the world portrayed as well as the violence caused by the men around her.
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