My new word is perp. A perp is a person who tries to victimize others. I read an article in Bitch magazine(loved it, loved it- articles on the "Cucumber Incident", on Carnie Wilson and Fat Acceptance, an interview w/ the Persopolis author who asks 'why does everyone always ask me why I chose to do a comic? and much more) about domestic abuse victims and pop psych.

I agree with the author that's there's too much stress on how awful the victim is and not enough on how awful the perp is. If you spend all your time ladling guilt on the victim, saying that they are co dependent,etc, all you have is a woman chasing her tail.

But if you punish the perps, the abuse stops, and it stops forever. If we spent half the amount of time we spent trying to hurt the already broken, and more time on standing up to perps, there wouldn't be so many perps.

So if you sit around defending perps, saying "Oh boys will be boys" or "That's just human nature". Think of what stake you have in the status quo. What do you have to gain by having all forms of abuse go on forever?

I think you know what the answer is.