The defaming of women and the way they handle the verbal abuse they suffer at the hands of men has remained unchanged for millennia. Yet women have always made excuses for men. Even in the most horrendous circumstances, some women who has been beaten and/or raped, emotionally abused or suffered coersive control by a partner or husband will often attempt to exonerate him by uttering these chilling words: ‘He didn’t mean it. I’m sure he loves me.’

Did little girls learn that using words to attempt to placate an angry brother, father or uncle was better than being sexually abused, receiving a punch or a kick or a mouthful of abusive language, only to discover that the rule was to keep silent. Girls are more willing to physically protect themselves in such a scenario today, but women have always preferred to use words as a weapon and for this they have suffered immeasurable contempt and even been burnt at the stake. Once, a nagging wife was a lawful licence to be beaten by him. Provocation was seen in the law as a legitimate cause for a man to abuse his wife as recently as the late 1960’s.

You always have too much to say for yourself is a phrase women have heard when they have tried, using only words, to stand up to a violent man. Abusive men look for ways to belittle and emotionally abuse women who say too much. They turn them into an object of ridicule. You can see this every day on  the internet. The media is also peppered with the denigration of women by men using humour. We have become so used to it; we barely notice how much women are the butt of abusive humour.

What do we do to boy babies, born innocent of any knowledge of abuse in its many and varied forms? Many would have you believe it is the fault of bad mothering; rarely do fathers take the blame. And so women carry the burden of guilt. 

‘It takes a village to raise a child.’  What that means is that each new baby develops a personality through experience, through meetings with all sorts of different people, in many places and situations. Yet, boy children are still conditioned, even today, to want toys built for what manufacturers consider are appropriately masculine: video games, guns, cars, tractors etc. What mother of a girl child hasn’t inadvertently or deliberately made some comment about ‘nice’ dolls, lovely bead games, pretty things specially made for little girls?

This puts girls at a disadvantage from the start of their lives. They are subtly taught to be soft, gentle princesses, despite the role models; women who have done incredible things in the fields of art, science and technology. A recent female Prime Minister in the UK who lasted a shorter time in her job than a lettuce – the media’s description, not mine – initiated serious disasters on the country and received ongoing verbal abuse from all quarters from the media for months.  

Women, whatever their status, have been conditioned to appease the boys and make excuses for abuse perpetrated by men. Politics is abusive by nature. It’s not helpful to see a woman vanquished, demoted, desecrated by a load of braying men in government. Isn’t she getting what she deserves? After all, she did have quite a lot to say for herself, didn’t she?

My film, THE LOST CHILD looks at the abuse of two women: a wife and daughter. The man in their life is suffering from a mental illness, which is not his fault. But in the film, we see the story through the eyes of a girl child, from babyhood to the age of sixteen. Her last words are: ‘I don’t think I’ve ever been a child…’

The chaos she experiences because his illness was not treated quickly enough impacts on her development and down the generations. That’s what happens when abuse happens. The excuse may be a devastating illness or something less obvious, but women and society will be affected by what happens behind closed doors and the fallout unwittingly escapes into the world.