Sarah T. Schwab
Observer Columnist

I was called a “stupid little girl” who needed to “check her attitude” last Thursday evening on Main Street in downtown Fredonia. Instead of letting a forty-something year old inebriated man make a degrading comment about me, I stopped him and said something. When I did, the man laughed and told my friend, “If you don’t shut her up, I will.” My friend pulled me aside and said, “Don’t worry about him. He’s just drunk.”

We continued back to my apartment. But the more we walked, the more outraged I became. Recent headlines about the former NBA star Dennis Rodman popped into my head.

“He’s been really heartbroken about it and it hasn’t been a great time for him,” Rodman’s manager Steve Simon commented in a New York Times article about Rodman’s arrest last week for abusing his girlfriend after “drinking too much.” He added that Rodman had been struggling to mentally recuperate after a recent divorce.

I thought back earlier to 2003 when Rodman was again arrested for hitting his then-fiancée on her lip at their home in South California. After the incident, his ex-wife Michelle Moyer claimed she divorced him because of his history of domestic violence.

A chill went through me. I could not tell if it was the cool spring air, or reflections of other headlines about the R&B artist R. Kelly and his upcoming child-pornography trial. Reports explain that Kelly was involved in a sexual encounter with an “allegedly” underage girl shown in videotape.

I thought back to when Kelly was charged with the 21 counts of child pornography in 2002 (seven of which were dropped) for videotaping himself having intercourse with girl prostitutes who were then 14.

With every step I felt my anger swell. I considered last Monday when a New York native and Vietnam veteran was arrested for bringing traffic to a standstill on Interstate 190. James Gilchriese, 66, of Hernando Florida, held a gun to his head in front of several police and SWAT cars after eye witness Tom Snyder saw “fists flying” when he drove past Gilchriese’s car on the Thruway. Snyder said in interviews that it appeared that Gilchriese was “punching the passenger” and therefore called the police.

That passenger was Patricia S. Meckley, 50, also of Florida. Luckily, she was able to escape when police pulled over the vehicle.

“Everybody here seems to like him, he’s very active in veterans affairs here, he’s the head of the honor guard at the American Legion and he’s a member of the VFW,” Gilchriese’s friend, Ray Thompson, said in a wivb.com interview. Thompson indicated that Gilchriese may have had a drink or two that day and that “when people drink they’re not their normal selves.”

The Rodman, Kelly and Gilchriese episodes are bigger than some woman being abused by a man. The charges against these men put the spotlight on a cultural sickness that has been, and continues to be, ignored.

I kept questioning why headlines did not read something like: “5.3 million women in America are abused each year” or “1,232 American women are killed each year by an intimate partner” according to the American Institute on Domestic Violence Web site.

While considering these recent events as I fought back my own rage-filled tears, I realized that each case was labeled a “domestic incident.” This term is often designated to abuses done onto women, suggesting that they are performed in the home or the “private sphere.”

The language of “separate spheres” became a metaphor from the nineteenth century, which historians argue was used to describe the marginalization between genders — men were often associated with work outside the home while women remained within a family and domestic context.

These traits made women “inherently” incapable of functioning within the public realm.

Labeling abuse of women as “domestic” is confining them and the invisibly immeasurable abuses performed on them in the private sphere. It is only when an abuse is done by someone illustrious or in a public arena that interrupts the natural flow of society that these abuses are even acknowledged.

As shown by these three recent cases, even when acts of violence are in headlines, the woman is rarely the victim – the man either “drank too much,” was “having a bad day” or was sexually/verbally antagonized by the woman.

When I arrived to my apartment after my close encounter with a “domestic incident” that occurred on a crowded sidewalk, I realized that my friend was embarrassed that I had provoked the forty-something year old inebriated man.

I sat on my wooden porch looking up at blurry constellations, letting chills from the cool air wash through me. I thought, “I will never ‘shut up.’” It is sad that I am comfortable being at blame.

• Originally published Tuesday, May 20, 2008