The View from a Drawbridge

Tag: abuse

  • EVERY American Deserves a Political Apology

    No, I’m not talking about who won or didn’t win this election (believe it or not). As a matter of fact, I wrote the first draft of this entry well before election day. No matter where you fall on the political spectrum, I think we can all agree that this whole campaign experience has been…

  • Mansplaining

    I once attended a meeting in which a man said to me, “Did I say you could talk? I’ll tell you when you can talk.” Oh, where to begin. First of all, this is a guy who has been laterally passed from department to department like a flaming bag of dog poo. No one wants…

  • On Being Let Down

    I’ve been cranky lately. Grumpy. Impatient. Out of sorts. It all started when it finally dawned on me, at the age of 51, that my sexually abusive stepfather had started grooming me for his pedophilia at the age of 7. The hard core abuse didn’t start until I was 11. Not that that’s an excuse.…

  • The Marijuana Miracle Myth

    First of all, let me say for the record that I genuinely believe that marijuana should be legalized. I live in a state where it happens to be legal, and lo and behold, the earth continues to revolve around the sun, and society as we know it has not come to a screeching halt. I…

  • Tent Life

    Every day here in Seattle I drive past little homeless encampments. They seem to be everywhere. They gather under the overpasses, in the little clumps of forest, and even on the sidewalks. Their tents are ragged and dirty, and usually they sit amongst a field of garbage. It’s heartbreaking to witness, especially during a pervasive…

  • One Slap at a Time

    I am convinced that the reason so many violent and/or abusive people in this world get away with their bad behavior is that we have a tendency to break things down into separate incidents. If you look at a wife beater’s conduct one slap at a time, for example, it should still be considered unacceptable,…

  • Tickling

    I don’t like to be tickled. That should be all I have to say on the subject. But unfortunately there’s this weird tickling dynamic out there. Some people actually think that there’s some get out of jail free card for tickling. It’s as if this form of space invasion is somehow more acceptable than any…

  • Score One for the Good Guys

    Hi, I’m Devo, Barb’s dog. I asked to write this one because I wanted to tell you about an exciting new development. Besides, she needs a break now and then. So here goes… Animal abusers, we are watching you. 70 percent of violent criminals started off by hurting animals. Finally, the feds are taking this…

  • Bullies

    There’s nothing I hate more on this earth than a bully. And I happen to interact with one regularly. Her aggression really intimidated me at first. But over time when she realized I wasn’t going to budge about certain things, she then had to get increasingly nit-picky until now the things that she blows up…

  • Mourning the Imperfect

    We’re told it’s impolite to speak ill of the dead, but that makes mourning most people extremely difficult. Nobody’s perfect, and this habit we have of trying to sanctify people simply because they’ve done the one thing that we will all do eventually, which is shuffle off this mortal coil, means that there are whole…