What do you think about the following posters? What message do they try to communicate in your opinion and how do you feel about it?
I found the posters here. (Attention: it’s a blog in Russian, even though the posters are not.)
Please share your thoughts.
Clarissa's Blog 
no like at all, too violently gendered. looks like an awareness campaign for types of (domestic) violence – hate that term violence is violence thank you very much whether it takes place between two siblings, married people, parent child, in a home outside the home whatever
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The message it gives to me is that verbal abuse is still abuse. If you abuse someone verbally, you are no better than someone who abuses someone physically.
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I agree with Steve. It looks as if it symbolizes the effects of verbal abuse.
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Yup, looks like they’re about emotional abuse. Seriously disturbing and triggering, and really obviously gendered. It would be better to see 1 of the 3 posters have the genders reversed or (oh heavens, the scandal!) an LGB couple…but could be worse. At least they’re not sexualizing it, which is my #1 pet peeve when it comes to rape/abuse “awareness” campaigns.
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I should add, it’s also a good thing that they included victims of color. Usually only white people get included in these sorts of campaigns.
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That’s what it’s like to have a conversation with my father!
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God, how horrible. I’m sorry to hear that.
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These things look like stills from a Lars von Trier film.
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Looks like an attempt to say that verbal/emotional abuse do damage just like physical abuse can. But as others have said as usual the awareness is limited to male against female violence. But at least it wasn’t a white woman getting attacked in all of them, its a start I guess.
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I see a picture that conceives of men as swarthy violent brutes, and women as battered, helpless victims.
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I can see that the general consensus here is that the representation of verbal abuse is heavily skewed towards presenting men as perennial abusers and women as perennial victims. This, of course, makes no sense.
I’m also bothered by the fact that verbal abuse is presented as equal to physical abuse. Using even the nastiest words against somebody is really not the same as punching them in the face with huge force.
Seriously, is there anybody here who would prefer to be hit this way rather than to hear any swear word in the history of humanity?
Sadly, posters that aim to promote feminism often end up achieving the opposite. The only good one I have encountered so far is this one: https://clarissasblog.com/2011/07/22/a-poster-on-gender-privilege/
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This must be cultural, Clarissa. I don’t quite get verbal abuse=physical abuse myself, but then just sitting and taking verbal abuse and feeling traumatised by it is also very alien to me, and largely to my culture. If someone calls us names or yells at us, we reciprocate with interest, *unless* there is clear expectation of physical violence at reciprocation, in which case we are don’t reciprocate out of caution or of fear of the matter escalating. If the threat of physical violence is present but not particularly damaging, people go ahead and shout back anyway.
I remember your reader Isabel posting a series of fuming comments on your blog about how horrible she felt when she had to listen in silence to immigrants saying how much they disliked parts of American culture. I was utterly amazed. Why on earth did she feel the need to keep quiet and smile and take it if she felt these accusations were rude or unjust? Clearly she harbours a lot of bitterness about immigrants because of it. So what purpose does keeping furiously quiet serve? I don’t think I’ll ever understand it.
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Lars von Trier, yes.
I’ve looked into studies on abuse quite a lot. it appears that psychological effects of verbal abuse are the same as of physical abuse. The smarter the abuser, the less they have to resort to the physical, and the ultimate objective is to get people to mistreat *themselves.*
Here are some stats on domestic violence that cite sources: http://www.ncvc.org/ncvc/main.aspx?dbName=DocumentViewer&DocumentID=32347
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To be honest, I’m not really sure what this is supposed to mean because it’s really painful for me to look at and I kind of wish I hadn’t seen it.
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