What watching a man slap his wife and daughters says about us women

I've recently discovered that watching a woman get slapped by her husband is a humiliatingly personal experience for me. Not that I don't flare up with anger at the action, but I am even more sensitive to the after-effect: The averted, brimming eyes, the rash of shame that colours her cheeks, the way her whole frame shrinks, as though a tinier target will deflect the next blow.

We were at Joggers Park, my parents and I, watching an average sunset over the horizon when the action that took place, two degrees to the left of it, drew our attention. A man had rejoined his seated wife and three daughters and slapped them in no particular order. My father was furious and confronted him for being a brute. My mother tried reasoning with him. And I? I just felt a companionable embarrassment when I looked into the woman's eyes.

You see, it was all very domestic, this little nugget of violence. The man was openly astonished that we were pulling him up for being a careful protector and caregiver of his female flock. He had explained to them why they must return before it got dark. Why had his wife not called the kids to her sooner? Why were they not seated earlier, and visible to him as he took his evening walk? Even the police are helpless, he said, it takes just one minute for everything to fall apart.

In the minute since the violence everything had fallen apart right behind his back. His girls ranging from about eight to two years of age had withdrawn into their shells with dead eyes. His wife looked at me and then looked away with a decided earnestness. I tried making sympathetic contact with the kids but their scowls marked me out to be a voyeur. The message seemed pretty clear: That they were a unit and we were embarrassing them by making a scene.

So, I bought into the game. I commended this man, who had publicly slapped his wife and children, for his concern. I agreed with him that times were bad. I told him I was sure he would examine his conduct and find a better way to communicate with them. I told him I had faith that he would struggle with his temper in the future and restrain himself because he loved them and their well being meant so much to him. The truth as I saw it, however, was that this man had discovered a sweet and easy release of his frustrations, fears, and helplessness; he was a power addict who needed a lot more than a friendly neighbourhood park intervention to truly change.

Did I let on? Oh no. Instead, I falsely flattered, was conciliatory, manipulative, and cajoled an abusive man hoping to spare his family the aftermath of another bad mood when they got home. I am not proud of any of it and I certainly don't want to think about what that says about me. Sure, I was being compassionate, but I am also so invested into the system of patriarchy, that I cannot imagine another future for those victims. I have had an equal upbringing to my brother, a decent education and career, raised a family; no man has lifted a hand on me. Yet, it took one casual, almost familial act of violence to transform me into the picture-perfect counterpart to the abusive man: An appeasing, spineless woman.

Women role models like me are everywhere, so quick to support what is broken than break what is insupportable. "Are you sure it is hurting you that badly that you want a divorce?" asked a mollifying policewoman of my childhood friend as she reported her verbally-abusive husband to the local police station. "Ah, Hindu-Muslim, so it was a love marriage?" She murmured, with a little smile, as she took down the details. We take in the details all right, but as women what message do we give our sisters? Where's our intolerance towards a basic human right abuse? Men hit and women dissemble and that's just how it goes.