What Do Fleet, Massengill, and the Name of a Rush Album Have in Common?; or, My Apologies to Lee, Lifeson, and Peart

Something in me, dark and sticky

All the time it's getting strong

No way of dealing with this feeling

Can't go on like this too long

I'm digging in the dirt

Stay with me I need support

I'm digging in the dirt

To find the places I got hurt

To open up the places I got hurt

----excerpted lyrics from "Digging in the Dirt" by Peter Gabriel.

Tonight my county is beginning the observation of Domestic Violence Awareness Month a day early. The community event is called A Show of Hands.

For myself, the irony of naming the event after the easiest, and therefore, one of the most common weapons of choice in domestic violence situations is somewhat uncomfortable.I don't much care for the term domestic violence. It sanitizes it: pretties it up somehow.

For instance, in spoken language and in what is written on the package, an enema is just that: an enema; even the graphics on the box are generic, straightforward.

Yet a douche? It's feminine cleanser. The graphics on the box are most often limpid, flowery. Most importantly, those things aren't really of any use: a woman can actually do more harm to her body than good in using such a product.

Just tell it like it is: get rid of the crap; then leave well enough alone.

But I'm uncertain as to what to call it, this very specialized form of violence: a product of any silence that has ever met any violence against those perceived as weak---be it stranger-to-stranger; familiar-to-familiar. Putting words to things has never been my strongest suit.

But A Show of Hands?

Maybe my visual way of thinking is too informed by images of experience. I'll take good intentions wherever they may be found, dear reader; and really, we all help each other that way, don't we?

A Show of Hands

Hospital photo circa 1992

Nurses holding back hospital gown to show bruising---some of it taking the shape of the hand of the abuser.