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This one will be tough to watch
Aug. 6th, 2019 01:47 pmI've been watching EastEnders for over twenty years. In that time, they've shown many abusive relationships of different types.
( Content warning: partner abuse )
Edit to add even more thoughts: More and more I wish they'd gone with "just" emotional abuse. They've had a ton of rape storylines over the years, and recently they deliberately did one where the rape itself wasn't shown – just the lead-up and aftermath. They carefully constructed a story where both the characters on the show and the general public would be asking themselves – was it really rape? Is the woman lying, exaggerating, or simply mistaken? And in the end, the answer was: yes, that was rape. The men who did it went to prison (a bit of fantasy fulfillment there, I'm afraid).
It would be so powerful for them to do an abuse storyline like that. Is it abuse? Maybe he's just sensitive and has a hard time calming down? Isn't it his wife's duty to drop everything, even things like eating and sleeping, to tend to his emotional needs? How often is too often for that to happen? Does she have the "right" to leave him for this?
And the eventual answer: yes, that is abuse. Or maybe, as Captain Awkward might put it: yes, she has the right to leave, even if she isn't calling it the "a" word (yet?), because everyone has the right to leave situations that make them unhappy; there's no invisible bar of "enough" that you have to meet.
( Content warning: partner abuse )
Edit to add even more thoughts: More and more I wish they'd gone with "just" emotional abuse. They've had a ton of rape storylines over the years, and recently they deliberately did one where the rape itself wasn't shown – just the lead-up and aftermath. They carefully constructed a story where both the characters on the show and the general public would be asking themselves – was it really rape? Is the woman lying, exaggerating, or simply mistaken? And in the end, the answer was: yes, that was rape. The men who did it went to prison (a bit of fantasy fulfillment there, I'm afraid).
It would be so powerful for them to do an abuse storyline like that. Is it abuse? Maybe he's just sensitive and has a hard time calming down? Isn't it his wife's duty to drop everything, even things like eating and sleeping, to tend to his emotional needs? How often is too often for that to happen? Does she have the "right" to leave him for this?
And the eventual answer: yes, that is abuse. Or maybe, as Captain Awkward might put it: yes, she has the right to leave, even if she isn't calling it the "a" word (yet?), because everyone has the right to leave situations that make them unhappy; there's no invisible bar of "enough" that you have to meet.
