WOMYN'S
LIB AND BATTERY IN HUNGARY
By László GÁBRIS
Womyn's
Lib is such a momentous issue that one tends to feel awed when faced with the
task of writing anything about it. Especially so in Hungary.
The
Americans have it easy! Besides having invented Womyn's Lib in the first place,
they have amassed, compiled, edited, indexed and cross-referenced a terrific
amount of written information on the subject. One can delve into this
scribblative cornucopia and come back with items like:
Women speak because they
wish to speak, whereas a man speaks only when driven to speech by something
outside himself--like, for instance, he can't find any clean socks.
Excellent,
excellent! But rather off the point... Let's see another one!
The female woman is one
of the greatest institooshuns of which this land can boste.
A
lulu, a pearl! Only... it was written in the last century, when Womyn's Lib had
not been invented yet. I'd have to come up with something which is more to the
point and is more recent!
So I
turned to Nők Lapja, which is a women's weekly in Hungary and the most
authoritative source of the local vox populi, the people's voice, in
matters feminine. Leafing through its 1979 issues a very catchy headline caught
my eye in issue #14: "Do You Beat Your Woman?" That's part of a
Hungarian proverb (Pénz számolva, asszony verve jó), the American equivalent of
which goes like this:
A woman, an asse and a
walnut tree, bring the more fruit the more beaten they be.
What
followed was a letter by a battered wife and I reproduce it here in full,
together with the editorial note appended:
Do
You Beat Your Woman?
Dear Editor,
In my horrible situation I have nobody but you
to help me. All I expect is a sympathetic ear! Although I'm 27 and have two
children, my crucifixion began just recently.
Ten years ago, when I met my husband, I was an
inexperienced young thing. It all started out as a volcano of passion. We fell
in each other's arms blind with a love we thought would never end. Has it
ended? I still don't know...
As I'm writing these lines, my tears are
running down my face onto the paper and I'm not ashamed of crying.
After our wedding my husband continued with his
university studies and I found an office job. During the next 8 years my
husband made good, he was favored by his bosses who showered distinctions and
rewards on him. Then suddenly his boss, who'd backed and coached him, died. His
new boss dropped him, buried him alive. Now it's others who get the fat
assignments, who travel abroad and get the distinctions and bonuses. At first my
husband blamed and cursed him, but then he saw the finality of his plight and
turned against me. He's been beating me regularly ever since, 4 or 5 times a
week. He slaps me, beats me with umbrellas and wet towels, kicks me around and
throws things at me. He batters me in front of the children who cringe under
the table or scurry into the bathroom, wide-eyed with horror and shaking with
terror. Although they haven't been seriously hurt yet, sometimes they are too
slow to get out of harm's way.
Do you think he accuses me of anything? Never!
He wouldn't have anything on me anyway. The thing is, I'm the scapegoat at hand
for his bottomless frustration. While I'm a skinny woman of low build, he's a 6
foot 5 giant, weighing 210 pounds.
And yet, our love life goes on, despite the
hate... It's only... [that] the joy and tenderness has turned into torture and
rape. Even his words of endearment have given way to foul language, yes, in
bed, too. Not that he's jealous, I've never given him any reason for that! He has
this hate in him, and since he can not blow the whole world apart, he uses me
as his punching bag.
My friends tell me to get medical reports and
sue him. Now, I could produce any number of medical reports, as black eyes and
bruises are something I'm not short of. But what good would they be? He might
even kill me in his rage! "You're a bird-brain," says one of my best
friends. "How can you love a beast like him?" And what's most
frightening, there's an older woman who tells me that some men beat their women
to show their love for them. "Count your money and beat your woman!"
is her favorite proverb. And she believes that!
I'm at a loss to decide what to do. There was a
time when I thought that only those women are treated this way who are
unfaithful or who have drunkards or churls for husbands. But my husband can't
drink--his professional frustrations have given him gastric ulcer--and he's
never been jealous. Moreover, he's an educated man, he published several papers
in scientific journals in the "good old days," and has mastered two
foreign languages.
I'm closing this letter because I expect him to
come home any minute now; the children are trembling already. I hope you will
print my letter and some women will care to answer it. They migh show me a way
out of my terrible predicament.
Yours truly,
I.B.
Budapest XI.
(full address)
* * *
We read this letter in
utter disbelief. Is it true, or is somebody trying to put us on? Can it happen
that men, three decades after the codification of women's rights [in Hungary],
still abuse their greater physical strength? Is it a rare exception or a more
common phenomenon? Please contribute your thoughts and/or experiences on this
matter, and mark your reply "BATTERY."
As expected,
this horror story drew a spate of responses which were published in issue #20.
Limited space allows me to select just two of them:
IF YOU PUT UP WITH THAT
FIRST SLAP ON YOUR FACE...
Dear I.B.,
You sure sound like a woman
of mean understanding when you call that brute and coward an educated and
intelligent man. Yet, the rest of your letter gives me the impression that
you're an educated person yourself. How, then, can you put up with such a life?
You're not 72, only 27! You don't have to raise 20 children, only 2! You're not
living in the second century, but in the twentieth! Why are you so
chicken-hearted then? In today's world can't you make a stand against a
screwball of a husband? Why do you put up with assault, battery, and rape?
Nobody can do it to you unless you want him to. Do you want him to? Then why do
you complain? Believe this from an old woman: you get from life what you
deserve. Especially in family matters. If you put up with that first slap on
your face, pretty soon you'll have kicks in other parts to put up with.
A woman who had the guts to divorce her husband 50
years ago
WOMEN DO HAVE EQUAL RIGHTS!
Although there's much talk
of the lofty idea of equal rights for women, all this talk comes to nothing but
lip service, mostly. Why do marriages crumble? Because wives are still looked
upon as chattel or even slaves by husbands who, for the most part, take it for
granted that it's their wife who should do all the chores around the house,
raise the children, and care for the old folks, in addition to having a job.
But our marriage is different! I help out in everything and my wife considers
herself so emancipated that she always strikes back. If, for example, I sock
her because the soup is cold, she doesn't hesitate to conk me with the
broomstick and I don't get pissed off even if she breaks it over my head,
because reverence for a woman's rights is in my blood. As it happens, once she
failed to press my pants in time, so I clobbered her. Being a liberated woman,
she didn't sob or anything, just took the kitchen knife and stabbed me clean
and hard, giving me 6 weeks in the hospital. Our marriage is good because we
both respect each other's equal rights and--I'm not boasting!--we are a perfect
match, blow for blow.
A man who knows how to hand
it to women.
* * *
These
three letters are typical of the attitudes taken by those caring to respond.
There were more horror stories, a lot of admonishments, and some good examples.
The letters in the latter two categories attest to the well-developed sense of
emancipation of the respondents. However, those horror stories indicate that
not all is well.
When
this discussion took place it was 1979. Now, in 1987, we can look back on a
eight years of progress, take stock of the innumerable milestones we've passed,
and say with confidence and pride: we've come a long, long way! That's what we
can say! Can't we?
* * * * *