No Visible Bruises: What We Don’t Know About Domestic Violence Can Kill Us

by Rachel Louise Snyder

Jimmy told me once about how he knows women want to “fix him.” That he recognizes a certain fetish women have with a survivor story, a formerly violent man who’s been reborn as a man who doesn’t fear his own vulnerabilities and feelings. Nothing sexier than a man in touch with his emotions, right? When I look at his Facebook page, I can see that he’s not lying. With every post, women are dripping with platitudes, inspired by his story of survival. He said one woman once flew across the country to meet him. And it makes me a little uncomfortable. It might even piss me off a little. Men like Jimmy are not remarkable. They’re not noteworthy. They’re doing what they’re supposed to be doing—which is not beating up women. If there’s any triumph at all, it is in their very averageness. David Adams is skeptical, too, of this potential fetishization our culture has with a good survival story. It’s the potential narcissism, again, the charisma they all naturally seem to have in the first place. “They can become charismatic loose cannons,” he told me once, “who never really took responsibility for their own abuse.”