Abuse Normalization Quotes

It was my father who could do no wrong. So I didn't think of it as, oh, look, my father's a violent man.

This attitude of how society views women as chattel - that's the biggest thing to overcome. When I first started a stake in the issue of relationship abuse, I got really beat up by the Christian right because I was interfering in what was a personal family affair. It's a "family matter." That's why I wish we'd drop the phrase "domestic violence." It sounds like a domesticated cat. It is the most vicious of all crimes - to be abused by someone you had a relationship with! Because then you blame yourself.

I think sometimes certain behaviour of men is seen as normal or usual - but it's never normal or usual to the victim, ever. It's horrific.

My mom had a soft heart after all! Instead of being chained by both wrists, we were only chained by one ankle! I mean, if I’d been looking for proof that she really did love me, this was it, right?

What is harm for some women isn’t harm for another. Some women accept beatings and insults as a joke, while others do not.

For every R. Kelly or Bill Cosby or Harvey Weinstein, there's, you know, the owner of the grocery store, the coach, the teacher, the neighbor, who are doing the same things. But we don't pay attention until it's a big name. And we don't pay attention 'til it's a big celebrity.

Torture doesn’t bother me – it’s people who are upset by torture that do

I've heard that people stand in bad situations because a relationship like that gets turned up by degrees. It is said that a frog will jump out of a pot of boiling water. Place him in a pot and turn it up a little at a time, and he will stay until he is boiled to death. Us frogs understand this.

Finally, the scariest thing about abuse of any shape or form, is, in my opinion, not the abuse itself, but that if it continues it can begin to feel commonplace and eventually acceptable.

When it comes to my interpersonal relationships with men, of course, a lifetime of abuse vastly affected everything I did. I always came from a place of abuse, actually wanting, welcoming, and accepting it because that was my language. It never seemed strange to me.

In the '60s and '70s and early '80s, the trainers would grind you, and eventually they would break something - they would break an ankle in ways that it would heal. It was just the way of the business, to ensure that you learned respect for wrestling.