I asked my mom what she thought of the Gabby Petito case after she watched the Netflix documentary, and she said that it was a sad/unfortunate case and that she wishes that Gabby had listened to her mother and broke up with Brian earlier since clearly they weren’t compatible. She said that Gabby drove Brian nuts with her social media influencing and online blogging, always having a camera in his face. She mentioned how they got into multiple physical altercations before (insinuating Gabby was at least partially or equally to blame for the abusive episodes before her murder). She didn’t say Gabby deserved to be murdered and thought it was wrong but the fact she was even thinking about Gabby’s role in aggravating and annoying him, as if she’s to blame on any remote level, just makes me so sad.
It reminds me of all the times growing up my older brother would hit me or leave me with bruises and when I told her, instead of punishing him she would always say “well, what did you do to aggravate/annoy him?” She also let my older cousin (I was 5 and he was 25) live in our house and regularly babysit me for a year. He did things like dangle me over a 3-story balcony by my ankles, put my head in the toilet bowl inches away from the water (again holding me by my ankles), tickle-torturing me while I begged him to stop, and hitting/punching me in the face (leaving marks). My dad also bent me over, pulled my pants down, and spanked me in the closet if I acted sassy or didn’t do chores on time. I told my mom these things and she either didn’t believe me or she said I deserved it for being annoying/misbehaving (I was generally a very obedient kid and rarely misbehaved).
My mom grew up with an alcoholic abusive father who regularly screamed at his wife (my grandma) and strangled her a few times. My mom thought he would kill her mom several times and hid her little sister to keep her safe, while begging her dad to stop. My mom kept the abusive side a secret from most of our family for a long time, saying he was a good man who had alcohol problems struggled with inner demons and that he and my grandma were “incompatible” with one another and just didn’t get along (again, partially blaming my grandma for the domestic violence she endured). She always defended his memory and only talked about his “positive” qualities, like how he was very creative and apparently only violent with her mom but not with the kids.
Comments
Trauma is *weird*. I’m not saying I get your mother for her feelings on this, but it’s a very old fashioned thought process she probably just hasn’t had the deprogramming to understand why it might be problematic. It’s really easy for people to say that we need to change how we think, but when that very message has been encoded into our soul it takes will and practice and a lot of questioning ourselves to change it.
Wow. Siding with a murderer/abuser is crazy.
If a partner is driving you nuts, you don’t go and murder them. You just break up. Your mom needs serious therapy.
The sayings “boys will be boys” and “he probably just likes you” when a guy hurts or verbally abuses you, is what leads to this kind of internalized misogynistic mindset.
Society needs to do better. Seriously.
I was watching a tv show with my mom and the main character murders his wife the first episode. She straight up maintained that the wife deserved it for being “such a bitch.”
She felt sorry for him even when it was clear that you weren’t supposed to anymore. Even when he got his sweet, loving second wife killed.
I felt like I was going crazy because I have argued with her before over news stories of women killing their abusive husbands. “They should have just let the law handle it if they were really abused.”
Internalized misogyny is such a big thing.
Woof. So much solidarity. Your post reminds me why I’ve never talked about Gabby with my mom, even though I got immensely triggered by watching her play out in real time because it has a lot of parallels to an abusive relationship I experienced.
My mom married an abuser when I was a child but always blamed me for the abuse I suffered, accusing me of “provoking him” on purpose and saying things like “if you’d just act better he wouldn’t have to hit you”. She always took his side, told me I should just act better or not have such an attitude, refused to leave him until I was an adult despite having the resources to do so, and accused me of trying to ruin her marriage. Now that I’m an adult and despite her leaving him and him being dead, she’ll admit she should have left sooner and that he was abusive, but still say things like “you know you weren’t perfect either” and “he resented that you didn’t accept him as a father figure”. After all this time, leaving him, and him dying, she is still taking his side.
I was SA’d in my teens and have never told her even though I’m almost 40 now, because I blamed myself and was terrified she’d blame me too. I ended up in an abusive relationship with a “Brian” in my early 20s that I was the last to recognize was abusive (because I had it internalized at a young age that it’s my fault if a man mistreats me) and barely got away with my life. She supported me leaving that relationship, but I can’t help but think she’d think Gabby “provoked him” or had it coming.
Is your mom a boomer, by chance? Internalized misogyny among that generation in particular is a hell of a drug.