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J MacDav
?@JMacDav
I FREAKING LOVE PATRICK STEWART. If only all people could truly make this statement! @SirPatStew #fem2 #VAW pic.twitter.com/2FhURNbH9x
http://theobamadiary.com/
Patrick Stewart, what an amazing man.
Brigid
(17,621 posts)seabeyond
(110,159 posts)out his gender.
sheshe2
(84,005 posts)I just would love to shake his hand and say thank you.
seabeyond
(110,159 posts)Last edited Sun Nov 17, 2013, 11:08 PM - Edit history (1)
so much appreciation from women. that says a hell of a lot. there are a lot of very public men that could easily do the same. this one man truly stands alone, well..... with women and children surrounding him.
why wouldnt that be so admirable and an example for other men.
sheshe2
(84,005 posts)seabeyond
(110,159 posts)sheshe, thank you for pointing me to this. and the other day, you pointed me to the excellent thread on ruby. it was such a powerful post. i am sorry i did not tell you then how much i appreciated it.
sheshe2
(84,005 posts)no matter that you had not said it earlier, the ruby post was such a beautiful and touching story. It was an amazing story about one so small, she had so much grace and dignity that it made me cry. She grew to be a strong and fabulous woman. We are always going to be strong no matter what they toss our way.
Patrick Stewart is a wonderful compassionate man. His past, our past, will always stay with us in some way. It can make us stronger or it can make us weak. I grew up with spousal abuse, my dad was a damaged man that suffered abuse in his own family. I later married an abusive man, history repeats itself. I left after 4 years and never looked back.
seabeyond
(110,159 posts)and i am glad it took only four years (too many). often it takes so much longer.
i love your posts.
BlancheSplanchnik
(20,219 posts)I appreciate him so much myself.....
Love that guy.
tavalon
(27,985 posts)I think they can and I think he's a great one. May we one day move on to humanists.
I was physically abused as a child and I always swore that would never happen to me as an adult. 99.9% of the time it hasn't, but I'll tell you, I would kick any MF guy who thought he could hit me, in a place he wouldn't like and I would do it simultaneously with packing, I'm that good.
Patrick Stewart is awesome.
seabeyond
(110,159 posts)i think where so many women have issue with men feminists, is when they tell us what we should think, feel, say, how to behave is when we challenge can a man be a feminist. he does none of that. he talks to men.
tavalon
(27,985 posts)And by doing so he supports our voices. It can go both ways and I hope one day, this will be another ism that can be archived. Not likely in either of our lifetimes but someday.
It is very sad to think of him as a child having to see his mother hurt like that.
BlancheSplanchnik
(20,219 posts)Again. Heh. Heh. Yeeeesh.
Peeling the onion...
.........
Humanists. Yes. Definitely it's human connections, how we treat other people.
Golden rule, folks. Good goal to aim for day-to-day, actually. (she sez to herself)
sheshe2
(84,005 posts)The abuse witnessed or experienced at such a young age can define who we are. We can grow or we can continue an unhealthy pattern of abuse.
Cha
(297,935 posts)provoked or not.. there's never an excuse to hit a woman or a child for that matter.
Violence is not an Option.
thanks she
sheshe2
(84,005 posts)His words are healing, Cha.
Patrick Stewart: the legacy of domestic violence
As a child, the actor regularly saw his father hit his mother. Here he describes how the horrors of his childhood remained with him in his adult life
My father was, in many ways, a man of discipline, organisation and charisma - a regimental sergeant major no less. One of the very last men to be evacuated from Dunkirk, his third stripe was chalked on to his uniform by an officer when no more senior NCOs were left alive. Parachuted into Crete and Italy, both times under fire, he fought at Monte Casino and was twice mentioned in dispatches. A fellow soldier once told me, "When your father marches on to the parade ground, the birds in the trees stop singing."
In civilian life it was a different story. He was an angry, unhappy and frustrated man who was not able to control his emotions or his hands. As a child I witnessed his repeated violence against my mother, and the terror and misery he caused was such that, if I felt I could have succeeded, I would have killed him. If my mother had attempted it, I would have held him down. For those who struggle to comprehend these feelings in a child, imagine living in an environment of emotional unpredictability, danger and humiliation week after week, year after year, from the age of seven. My childish instinct was to protect my mother, but the man hurting her was my father, whom I respected, admired and feared.
From Monday morning to Friday tea time he worked as a semi-skilled labourer, and was diligent and sober. Often funny and charming, he was always rich in the personal stories of warfare and adventure that thrilled me. But come Friday night, after the pubs closed, we awaited his return with trepidation. I would be in bed but not asleep. I could never sleep until he did; while he was awake we were all at risk. Instead, I would listen for his voice, singing, as he walked home. Certain songs were reassuring: I'll Take You Home Again, Kathleen; I'll Walk Beside You . . . But army songs were not a good sign. And worst of all was silence. When I could only hear footsteps it was the signal to be super-alert.
Our house was small, and when you grow up with domestic violence in a confined space you learn to gauge, very precisely, the temperature of situations. I knew exactly when the shouting was done and a hand was about to be raised I also knew exactly when to insert a small body between the fist and her face, a skill no child should ever have to learn. Curiously, I never felt fear for myself and he never struck me, an odd moral imposition that would not allow him to strike a child. The situation was barely tolerable: I witnessed terrible things, which I knew were wrong, but there was nowhere to go for help. Worse, there were those who condoned the abuse. I heard police or ambulancemen, standing in our house, say, "She must have provoked him," or, "Mrs Stewart, it takes two to make a fight." They had no idea. The truth is my mother did nothing to deserve the violence she endured. She did not provoke my father, and even if she had, violence is an unacceptable way of dealing with conflict. Violence is a choice a man makes and he alone is responsible for it.
More
http://www.theguardian.com/society/2009/nov/27/patrick-stewart-domestic-violence
Tears, Cha. The memories as a child will always in some way remain. For better or for worse they remain.
Cha
(297,935 posts)I was there. Only when we tried to protect our Mom we got it, too. Terrible way to grow up.
Glad it's being brought out into the open and so many people are determined to put an end to it, she Bless his heart for speaking out so eloquently on his experiences that are helpful others.
seabeyond
(110,159 posts)understand my mom a little more. she didnt talk about it, at all. we just knew. she and her older brother would get it along with the mom. the youngest was never touched. it messed them all up. the youngest was so messed up cause for whatever reason, she never got it. guilt.
horrible horrible to put children in this.
it effect my moms entire life, on and off.
Cha
(297,935 posts)sheshe2
(84,005 posts)We were lucky, we never "got it" for standing up for mom. So sad the abuse and the scares that it carried for all of us into adulthood.
I remember the recurring nightmare I use to have as a child. I was sitting on top of the small roof to the basement. Our kitchen door was only a few feet away. There was a storm and I had to make it to the door before the lightening flashed again or I would die. I never once made it in time.
and
Cha
(297,935 posts)Dreams are facinating.. good to have woken up from that dream!
devils chaplain
(602 posts)Things at my home weren't quite as bad as his, but reading his story induced a lot of flashback-y cringing. Like his father, mine was a bitter and grumpy man when sober but a terrifying and rageful monster when drunk. As I became an adult, I realized pretty quickly that I also had the addict/alcoholic gene. I haven't had a drink in over 10 years... because I've seen where that path can lead. Hitting a woman or child is inexcusable under any circumstances, but I also know that behind almost every hand that swings is a broken person himself -- likely through both abuse he himself suffered and addiction and/or mental illness. Good on Mr. Stewart for working to get through to those people and break the cycle of violence.
sheshe2
(84,005 posts)I thank you for sharing.
BlancheSplanchnik
(20,219 posts)RVN VET
(492 posts)way back in the 60's. He was working on the George Washington Bridge. A regular Joe, a broken hearted Dodger fan and Yankee hater, and tough lookin'. We were talking about Sandy Koufax when a woman entered the bar and berated all of us, not just me in this guy, for not coming to the aid of a woman whose drunken turd of a husband had just punched her in the face outside.
We told her to calm down, a couple of guys went outside to see if they were still there -- they weren't -- and the woman left, still angry and frustrated.
We all felt a little guilty -- not that we had not acted to help the woman who was being beaten, though. We hadn't seen it. it took place actually around the corner from the bar. Truth to tell, if we had seen it, the drunken bum would have been taken down. But we felt guilty because the woman left feeling that we were, somehow, enablers of the beating, consenting to the violence by our inaction. We wanted a chance, I think, to tell her that we cared, that we would have intervened if only we knew what was happening.
Anyway, the conversation turned away from Sandy Koufax. The bridge painter sipped his beer and said, emphatically, that a man never hits a woman. Ever. Period. I suggested that it might be understandable if a guy came home and find his wife in bed with someone else. I was a teenager, ignorant because not experienced. He said -- talking now like an older brother passing on important information to his ignorant but educable younger sibling -- if it happened to him he would just say nothing, go to the closet, get out his suitcase, pack his things and leave.
Simple moral of this story, as the bridge-builder laid it out to me: A man does not smack a woman around. And anyone who does is not a man. Simple as that.
And most of the male humans I know would agree -- including, as far as I could tell, every guy in that bar. If I could go back in time and take that quote from Patrick Stewart with me to that bar, we'd all raise a glass to a true gentleman -- also a fine Shakespearean actor!
tavalon
(27,985 posts)Pack up and leave. She doesn't deserve you, but she doesn't deserve to be hit, either.
seabeyond
(110,159 posts)if i walked in on my husband, i would simply walk back out. i agree with your friend at the bar.
BlancheSplanchnik
(20,219 posts)That really is THE strongest thing. It's really hard to do, but it's the healthiest thing too.
RVN VET
(492 posts)But I'm just an old regenerate hippy, and so are most of them!
BlancheSplanchnik
(20,219 posts)BlancheSplanchnik
(20,219 posts)seabeyond
(110,159 posts)i am stealing.
BlancheSplanchnik
(20,219 posts)Have as much as ya want!
sheshe2
(84,005 posts)People are beginning to listen.
It was less than a year ago that we were fighting for our lives over VAWA! I was so new here, yet post after post, mine and others seemed to sink to oblivion at DU. I was so terribly frustrated about that.
Are we listening now? I sure hope so. I plan to fight tooth and nail to get every woman running for office elected in 2014. We need their passion.
BlancheSplanchnik
(20,219 posts)I think that's a generalized strength that many women have. An ability to look at situations with empathy. Making decisions from there is really better for everyone.
A man ain't a man if he strikes a woman or a child. Or even a man, unless it's in self defense. Actually, in my eyes, that kind of man is a wimp, a coward.
IrishAyes
(6,151 posts)No more. Not at all. He has more than redeemed himself in my eyes and heart, too. It's one thing to be so enlightened if you had the good fortune to be raised that way. He's really a self-made man.
sheshe2
(84,005 posts)Did you see this~
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10024049212#post14
He is a wonderful self made man.
IrishAyes
(6,151 posts)ethics are handed to you on a silver platter and therefore less genuine and/or deeply held. But I do have a special place in my heart for those who overcame the worst of circumstances and managed to emerge smelling like a rose. I literally love Patrick. I imagine a lot of women do! Much like Leonard Cohen - even at his age he has more adoring ladies than many younger stars, and a lot of it is because we can so easily see that he really DOES LOVE US. I don't know anything about his childhood. But it's the end result that matters.
Dreamer Tatum
(10,926 posts)freshwest
(53,661 posts)sheshe2
(84,005 posts)Not always, however it can be a haven.
peace~
lastlib
(23,356 posts)sarge43
(28,946 posts)Stewart researching his father's background and the probable cause of his abusive habits.
htt://
sheshe2
(84,005 posts)bookmarking for later.
sarge43
(28,946 posts)11 Bravo
(23,928 posts)about those Star Trek dudes?