The part of the course that provoked the most immediate emotional response was the readings?which both the tutor and student interviewed in Tynes? article noted could be unsettling. One of the course texts, Fleeing the House of Horrors: Women Who Have Left Abusive Partners, by Aysan Se?ver, contains particularly graphic and disturbing descriptions of women’s horrifying experiences (to get an idea of the level of Horrors, check out the beginning of Se?ver’s introduction on Google Books).

The stories included in this collection are heartbreaking and more than sufficient to reduce any compassionate human being to tears. At the same time, though, these stories made me feel lucky that things in my life weren’t worse than they were. When I took WMST 422, you see, I was living in an abusive marriage. But as angry and controlling as Brent was, the physical abuse was not as frequent or severe as many of the women whose stories Se?ver collected. I never suffered any permanent injuries, and the majority of his violence was directed against property.

Brent was particularly hard on phones – I don’t know how many phones we went through in the first year of our marriage, but they were often the first thing he’d grab when angry. Cordless handsets and cell phones were frequently thrown at walls or the ground, and I remember one wall-mounted phone that Brent ripped out and stomped on, not only destroying the phone, but tearing out the drywall sinkers and phone jack.

Brent had agreed to allow me work on completing my university degree because he was unhappy with our financial situation. I had few qualifications, so his job paid much more than mine did, and he felt it was unfair that I should be contributing less to the household than he was. So he gave me permission to return to school, though he never had any interest in what my courses were, or how I was doing, only that they were completed as fast as possible, and that they didn’t cost him anything.

Every month, my paycheck covered the rent and groceries, and I applied for bursaries wherever possible to cover the cost of my courses. Even though Brent worked full-time, he insisted that all of his earnings were going to pay down his credit card debts. He stayed out late most nights and blew up whenever I asked any questions about money, especially if they were related to how much he made or why we were always so short. He retained, as did the men in the House of Horrors, complete financial control over our household.

And as many of the women in Fleeing the House of Horrors noted, I also had little control over the nature or timing of sexual activity, or over methods of birth control. Brent believed that “natural timing” would effectively prevent pregnancy, and was morally opposed to both barrier and hormonal contraceptives. He pitched fits whenever I mentioned the possibility of pills, and threatened to kill me when I asked about his beliefs on tubal ligation. In spite of his belief in the power of “natural timing,” he frequently ignored the dates scribbled on the calendar.

When I became pregnant, Brent began staying out even later than before. When he came home each night, sometime between two and five in the morning, he would begin shouting at me ? asking why I was asleep, why I didn’t wait for him to have my supper, why I was too lazy to do the dishes. The questions were not rhetorical. He expected an answer, and he expected me to immediately get out of bed and fix his problems. He also decided that he wouldn’t eat food that had been cooled and re-heated, so he further expected that I would cook him a fresh new supper and stay up to eat it with him.

One of those times, when I got him some food and then tried to go back to bed to sleep, he was so furious at my refusal to eat with him (at three o?clock in the morning) that he hurled his dishes down the hall after me from the kitchen towards the bedroom doorway, complete with the supper still on them. The al dente spaghetti held some of the Corel shards onto the hallway walls, while the remainder of the noodles and broken plate chunks, coated in sauce, splattered the parquet floor. After weeks like this, eventually, I miscarried.

Later, after another miscarriage, Brent announced to my doctor that I would not be consenting to any more check-ups or a D&C (a procedure commonly required to clear tissues from the uterus after miscarriage). On our way out of the clinic, I briefly spoke to the receptionist to cancel my previously-booked pregnancy checkups, and Brent excused himself to use the washroom. My doctor immediately pulled me aside and told me that my pregnancy had been healthy, and should have been carried to term, but that he believed my living environment had placed my body under such significant stress that it would be unable to sustain pregnancy.

I felt broken by Brent’s anger, and I felt broken by the loss of two pregnancies. But at the same time, I felt relieved that I was not bringing an innocent baby into the chaos of my life. And then I felt broken for feeling relieved.

That night, I tried to bury myself in schoolwork, at which I’d always excelled, to forget all my brokenness for a while. So I sat down at my desk and resumed my WMST 422 readings. And while the women’s stories collected in Aysan Se?ver?s Fleeing the House of Horrors were certainly enough to cause great emotional upheaval, the details of these personal anecdotes did not make a lasting impression on me. Perhaps surprisingly, what has stayed with me ever since were some of the statistics that I came across in my readings and research?statistics that helped change my life.

Check next week’s issue of The Voice for Living my Learning ? Part 2.

This two-part article, published in August and September, was mentioned by literally every single person who made suggestions for this Best Of issue. So without further ado, the second part:

But when I took WMST 422 (the precursor to WGST 422, subject of a recent Course Exam article in The Voice), the most important thing I learned wasn’t the global prevalence of violence against women. It wasn’t the responses of global community and UN to violence against women. And it wasn’t the systemic and institutional power structures that allow violence against women to continue. It was the simple, straightforward statistics about violence against women in Canada.

These statistics weren’t just about the overall occurrence of violence, but also about when and where certain women experienced abuse?including rates of abuse by age, income, and geographic location. For example, did you know that, according to Statistics Canada, those aged 15-24 are most likely to be victimized, followed by those 25-34, and the risk continues to decrease with age? The same groups are also more likely to be victims of spousal homicide. And consistently, about 70% of those in abusive situations say they have told someone within the last year.

Statistics helped me make sense of my experiences. They explained that abuse often increases with life changes, like beginning a new job or schooling (as I did) or becoming pregnant (as I did). They predicted that abusers often try to isolate women from their families and friends, frequently by moving long distances (as we did), or controlling access to transportation and communication devices (remember how I mentioned Brent’s problem with phones?).

Eventually, I reached a point where I knew that there was nothing I could ever do that would make things good enough for Brent to be happy. I knew that no amount of housekeeping or healthy cooking or changing my behaviour to fit into Brent’s mold would ever fix his anger management problems. Sadly, it took years to get to that point, and multiple failed escape attempts before I was successful. In the end, I knew that actually getting out for good would require money, a careful plan, and both personal and physical strength.

And then statistics helped me to stay safe and prepare myself for possibilities that I had once never imagined. Things like the potential that even once I got away from Brent, he could still be dangerous.

The Canadian Women’s Foundation, in their Facts About Violence Against Women, notes that “about half (49%) of all female murder victims in Canada are killed by a former or current intimate partner.” And violence often escalates after separation: Statistics Canada reports that “in 2009, 17% of Canadians who had contact with an ex-spouse or partner? had been physically or sexually assaulted,” and further, that “female victims of spousal homicide were more likely than male victims to be killed by a partner from whom they were separated.” In Fleeing the House of Horrors, Aysan Se?ver notes that married women are nine times more likely to be killed by their partner than by a stranger, and after separation, even though husbands have less access to their estranged wives, this risk increases six times.

Because I had learned about these statistics, I took several precautions when and after I left. And I was lucky: though there were some threats and indications of stalking, and one incident where Brent became physical, eventually these petered out.

Part of what continues to disturb me, though, is that in all the years that we were together, there were many times when people had had the opportunity to intervene?to help me escape the hell?and didn’t. Along the way, there were times when people could have stepped in and offered to assist, and it always hurt to wonder why some people had passed up these chances.

Once, for example, Brent answered the door to find a police officer who asked to speak to me. When I came into the living room, the male officer announced, in front of Brent, that my friend Kari was worried about my safety and thought that I was in danger. I had no idea how to respond. The officer looked back and forth from me to Brent, and then said “you don’t look like You’re in any immediate danger. Is there a chance that your friend might have exaggerated things a little?” And then he rolled his eyes, turned, walked out, and left. Guess how well that went over with Brent?

And many months later, there was one day when I was terrified of what Brent would do, and for the first time, I called the police myself. It took them more than half an hour to arrive, and when they did, the female officer advised me that I had the right to press charges about Brent, but that based on the fact that she couldn’t see “any real injuries,” and couldn’t be sure “what had really happened,” it was highly unlikely that any judge would believe there had been abuse. When I asked her about an emergency protection order, she told me that I would have go to court and talk to a judge about it. After that, I never bothered to call the police. What good would it do?

But it wasn’t only the police who turned a blind eye to our situation. Throughout our time together, there were times we lived in apartments with paper-thin walls, and neighbours could easily have stopped by when Brent was out to ask if I was okay or ask how it was going. There were many times when we were out in public that Brent would scream and throw things at me, and strangers would walk by, trying not to look at us. And there were people in his family who were there when he would give me strict orders and physically push me around.

I know that jumping into the middle of a potentially violent situation might not be the best way to help, but neither is turning a blind eye and trying to walk by as if nothing is going on. Family violence, violence against women?it isn’t a private or personal matter. It’s bad for women, It’s bad for their friends and families, and It’s bad for our society as a whole (in fact, if you think in monetary terms, spousal violence in Canada comes with an estimated price tag of 7.4 billion dollars per year).

There are hundreds of reasons why some women choose to stay, and the Ray Rice / Janay Palmer incident that happened about a year ago saw many abuse survivors taking to Twitter to share their stories with the hashtag #whyIstayed. Based on my experience, the most important thing that women in abusive situations need to hear is that people will believe their stories and be willing to help. Just believe them, be there to help if needed, and be patient with them (even when you can’t understand why they’re staying) until they’re at a point they’re ready and able to leave.

Years later, I can say that I feel safe and happy. But the many years I spent living in hell I will never get back, and they continue to create challenging repercussions. On the whole, though, I’m incredibly lucky: I have a wonderful life in the world after violence against women.

If learning more about violence against women just isn’t a top personal priority for you, That’s okay. We don’t all have the same interests or inclinations. But I’d also suggest that this is perhaps the best reason why you should consider taking WGST 422. It might not be directly applicable to your future education or employment plans, but if you have the ability to take it, I can think of no other course I would more highly recommend.

According to the Canadian Women’s Foundation, a full half of women in this country have experienced physical or sexual violence at least once. Half. Every second woman in Canada. Maybe your learning, your knowledge, your belief, or your support could be what helps one of your friends or family members to escape.

We call it the “Best of the Voice” issue for a reason. Now you know why.

While I’m glad that Canadian politicians, and particularly the Liberal and New Democratic parties, are focused on moving benefits from the wealthiest people in Canada to people of more moderate means, I find this heavy focus on the middle class to be a challenge when it comes to casting my ballot.

Because I am not one of those who struggles with middle class issues. I am Canada’s hidden poverty problem. I am the working poor.

In my entire adult life, I have never seen the right side of the LICO ? the Low Income Cut Off, which Statistics Canada defines as the threshold “below which a family will likely devote a larger share of its income on the necessities of food, shelter and clothing than the average family.” That’s a complicated way of saying that those of us below the LICO spend the vast majority, if not all, of our money on things that are necessary, and have little, if any, left for things that are extra.

Over the past ten years, I’ve worked incredibly hard as full-time parent, first while trapped in an abusive relationship, and subsequently, while on my own. I have worked hard to be able to finish my post-secondary credentials. I’ve worked hard at my full-time employment, which I’ve been lucky has been fairly flexible around my children’s schedules. And I’ve worked hard as a volunteer for social services organizations that aim to make my corner of the world a better place.

But despite all of my hard work, I am no further ahead now than I was ten years ago, except in terms of education and experience. My financial situation is worse, because the small raises I’ve achieved at work do not come near balancing out the tens of thousands of dollars of student loan debt I’ve incurred. Believing that hard work and a good education will secure your future is, in my experience, about as reasonable as believing that eating an apple a day will prevent you from necessitating the services of a physician in perpetuity.

So as I go to the ballot-box this coming Monday, I’m faced with a number of candidates who all say they want to make life more fair for Canadians. At the same time, however, the parties these candidates belong to are all focusing on solving the problems of people whose income level I can only hope to one day attain.

I believe that to build a better Canada, our government needs to be committed to the best interests of all Canadians. Whichever party forms government after October 19th needs to remember that it is not only the middle class that they serve ? but also those of us whose hope and hard work has not yet enabled us to cross the poverty line.

But when I took WMST 422 (the precursor to WGST 422, subject of a recent Course Exam article in The Voice), the most important thing I learned wasn’t the global prevalence of violence against women. It wasn’t the responses of global community and UN to violence against women. And it wasn’t the systemic and institutional power structures that allow violence against women to continue. It was the simple, straightforward statistics about violence against women in Canada.

These statistics weren’t just about the overall occurrence of violence, but also about when and where certain women experienced abuse?including rates of abuse by age, income, and geographic location. For example, did you know that, according to Statistics Canada, those aged 15-24 are most likely to be victimized, followed by those 25-34, and the risk continues to decrease with age? The same groups are also more likely to be victims of spousal homicide. And consistently, about 70% of those in abusive situations say they have told someone within the last year.

Statistics helped me make sense of my experiences. They explained that abuse often increases with life changes, like beginning a new job or schooling (as I did) or becoming pregnant (as I did). They predicted that abusers often try to isolate women from their families and friends, frequently by moving long distances (as we did), or controlling access to transportation and communication devices (remember how I mentioned Brent’s problem with phones?).

Eventually, I reached a point where I knew that there was nothing I could ever do that would make things good enough for Brent to be happy. I knew that no amount of housekeeping or healthy cooking or changing my behaviour to fit into Brent’s mold would ever fix his anger management problems. Sadly, it took years to get to that point, and multiple failed escape attempts before I was successful. In the end, I knew that actually getting out for good would require money, a careful plan, and both personal and physical strength.

And then statistics helped me to stay safe and prepare myself for possibilities that I had once never imagined. Things like the potential that even once I got away from Brent, he could still be dangerous.

The Canadian Women’s Foundation, in their Facts About Violence Against Women, notes that “about half (49%) of all female murder victims in Canada are killed by a former or current intimate partner.” And violence often escalates after separation: Statistics Canada reports that “in 2009, 17% of Canadians who had contact with an ex-spouse or partner? had been physically or sexually assaulted,” and further, that “female victims of spousal homicide were more likely than male victims to be killed by a partner from whom they were separated.” In Fleeing the House of Horrors, Aysan Se?ver notes that married women are nine times more likely to be killed by their partner than by a stranger, and after separation, even though husbands have less access to their estranged wives, this risk increases six times.

Because I had learned about these statistics, I took several precautions when and after I left. And I was lucky: though there were some threats and indications of stalking, and one incident where Brent became physical, eventually these petered out.

Part of what continues to disturb me, though, is that in all the years that we were together, there were many times when people had had the opportunity to intervene?to help me escape the hell?and didn’t. Along the way, there were times when people could have stepped in and offered to assist, and it always hurt to wonder why some people had passed up these chances.

Once, for example, Brent answered the door to find a police officer who asked to speak to me. When I came into the living room, the male officer announced, in front of Brent, that my friend Kari was worried about my safety and thought that I was in danger. I had no idea how to respond. The officer looked back and forth from me to Brent, and then said “you don’t look like You’re in any immediate danger. Is there a chance that your friend might have exaggerated things a little?” And then he rolled his eyes, turned, walked out, and left. Guess how well that went over with Brent?

And many months later, there was one day when I was terrified of what Brent would do, and for the first time, I called the police myself. It took them more than half an hour to arrive, and when they did, the female officer advised me that I had the right to press charges about Brent, but that based on the fact that she couldn’t see “any real injuries,” and couldn’t be sure “what had really happened,” it was highly unlikely that any judge would believe there had been abuse. When I asked her about an emergency protection order, she told me that I would have go to court and talk to a judge about it. After that, I never bothered to call the police. What good would it do?

But it wasn’t only the police who turned a blind eye to our situation. Throughout our time together, there were times we lived in apartments with paper-thin walls, and neighbours could easily have stopped by when Brent was out to ask if I was okay or ask how it was going. There were many times when we were out in public that Brent would scream and throw things at me, and strangers would walk by, trying not to look at us. And there were people in his family who were there when he would give me strict orders and physically push me around.

I know that jumping into the middle of a potentially violent situation might not be the best way to help, but neither is turning a blind eye and trying to walk by as if nothing is going on. Family violence, violence against women?it isn’t a private or personal matter. It’s bad for women, It’s bad for their friends and families, and It’s bad for our society as a whole (in fact, if you think in monetary terms, spousal violence in Canada comes with an estimated price tag of 7.4 billion dollars per year).

There are hundreds of reasons why some women choose to stay, and the Ray Rice / Janay Palmer incident that happened about a year ago saw many abuse survivors taking to Twitter to share their stories with the hashtag #whyIstayed. Based on my experience, the most important thing that women in abusive situations need to hear is that people will believe their stories and be willing to help. Just believe them, be there to help if needed, and be patient with them (even when you can’t understand why they’re staying) until they’re at a point they’re ready and able to leave.

Years later, I can say that I feel safe and happy. But the many years I spent living in hell I will never get back, and they continue to create challenging repercussions. On the whole, though, I’m incredibly lucky: I have a wonderful life in the world after violence against women.

If learning more about violence against women just isn’t a top personal priority for you, That’s okay. We don’t all have the same interests or inclinations. But I’d also suggest that this is perhaps the best reason why you should consider taking WGST 422. It might not be directly applicable to your future education or employment plans, but if you have the ability to take it, I can think of no other course I would more highly recommend.

According to the Canadian Women’s Foundation, a full half of women in this country have experienced physical or sexual violence at least once. Half. Every second woman in Canada. Maybe your learning, your knowledge, your belief, or your support could be what helps one of your friends or family members to escape.

The part of the course that provoked the most immediate emotional response was the readings?which both the tutor and student interviewed in Tynes? article noted could be unsettling. One of the course texts, Fleeing the House of Horrors: Women Who Have Left Abusive Partners, by Aysan Se?ver, contains particularly graphic and disturbing descriptions of women’s horrifying experiences (to get an idea of the level of Horrors, check out the beginning of Se?ver’s introduction on Google Books).

The stories included in this collection are heartbreaking and more than sufficient to reduce any compassionate human being to tears. At the same time, though, these stories made me feel lucky that things in my life weren’t worse than they were. When I took WMST 422, you see, I was living in an abusive marriage. But as angry and controlling as Brent was, the physical abuse was not as frequent or severe as many of the women whose stories Se?ver collected. I never suffered any permanent injuries, and the majority of his violence was directed against property.

Brent was particularly hard on phones – I don’t know how many phones we went through in the first year of our marriage, but they were often the first thing he’d grab when angry. Cordless handsets and cell phones were frequently thrown at walls or the ground, and I remember one wall-mounted phone that Brent ripped out and stomped on, not only destroying the phone, but tearing out the drywall sinkers and phone jack.

Brent had agreed to allow me work on completing my university degree because he was unhappy with our financial situation. I had few qualifications, so his job paid much more than mine did, and he felt it was unfair that I should be contributing less to the household than he was. So he gave me permission to return to school, though he never had any interest in what my courses were, or how I was doing, only that they were completed as fast as possible, and that they didn’t cost him anything.

Every month, my paycheck covered the rent and groceries, and I applied for bursaries wherever possible to cover the cost of my courses. Even though Brent worked full-time, he insisted that all of his earnings were going to pay down his credit card debts. He stayed out late most nights and blew up whenever I asked any questions about money, especially if they were related to how much he made or why we were always so short. He retained, as did the men in the House of Horrors, complete financial control over our household.

And as many of the women in Fleeing the House of Horrors noted, I also had little control over the nature or timing of sexual activity, or over methods of birth control. Brent believed that “natural timing” would effectively prevent pregnancy, and was morally opposed to both barrier and hormonal contraceptives. He pitched fits whenever I mentioned the possibility of pills, and threatened to kill me when I asked about his beliefs on tubal ligation. In spite of his belief in the power of “natural timing,” he frequently ignored the dates scribbled on the calendar.

When I became pregnant, Brent began staying out even later than before. When he came home each night, sometime between two and five in the morning, he would begin shouting at me ? asking why I was asleep, why I didn’t wait for him to have my supper, why I was too lazy to do the dishes. The questions were not rhetorical. He expected an answer, and he expected me to immediately get out of bed and fix his problems. He also decided that he wouldn’t eat food that had been cooled and re-heated, so he further expected that I would cook him a fresh new supper and stay up to eat it with him.

One of those times, when I got him some food and then tried to go back to bed to sleep, he was so furious at my refusal to eat with him (at three o?clock in the morning) that he hurled his dishes down the hall after me from the kitchen towards the bedroom doorway, complete with the supper still on them. The al dente spaghetti held some of the Corel shards onto the hallway walls, while the remainder of the noodles and broken plate chunks, coated in sauce, splattered the parquet floor. After weeks like this, eventually, I miscarried.

Later, after another miscarriage, Brent announced to my doctor that I would not be consenting to any more check-ups or a D&C (a procedure commonly required to clear tissues from the uterus after miscarriage). On our way out of the clinic, I briefly spoke to the receptionist to cancel my previously-booked pregnancy checkups, and Brent excused himself to use the washroom. My doctor immediately pulled me aside and told me that my pregnancy had been healthy, and should have been carried to term, but that he believed my living environment had placed my body under such significant stress that it would be unable to sustain pregnancy.

I felt broken by Brent’s anger, and I felt broken by the loss of two pregnancies. But at the same time, I felt relieved that I was not bringing an innocent baby into the chaos of my life. And then I felt broken for feeling relieved.

That night, I tried to bury myself in schoolwork, at which I’d always excelled, to forget all my brokenness for a while. So I sat down at my desk and resumed my WMST 422 readings. And while the women’s stories collected in Aysan Se?ver?s Fleeing the House of Horrors were certainly enough to cause great emotional upheaval, the details of these personal anecdotes did not make a lasting impression on me. Perhaps surprisingly, what has stayed with me ever since were some of the statistics that I came across in my readings and research?statistics that helped change my life.

Check next week’s issue of The Voice for Living my Learning ? Part 2.