Battered Women Just Wanna Have Fun!

Over at RenewAmerica, Carey (“I used to beat up Methuselah for his lunch money back in the third grade”) Roberts suspects that inside, shelters for battered women are just like Pleasure Island in Pinocchio — sure, they look fun at first, but after you’ve gambled, trashed the place, and consumed your fill of whisky, ice cream and cigars, a big lesbian from the Government turns your kids into donkeys who work the salt mines while you sit around and smoke dope and drop “Blue Fairy” acid.

Hey girls, want to get skanky? Well, sashay down to your local abuse shelter and get buzzed! No, you don’t have to be a real victim of domestic violence. All you need is a convincing story.

Carey wheezes out an anecdote about some woman who allegedly went to a shelter under false pretenses, bilked the caregivers out of money and services, then faked her own death.  Eventually she was arrested and charged with fraud, thus proving that the entire shelter system is a lie!  (I’m not exactly sure how we got from Point A to Point Q, with side trips to Point Epsilon and Point Samekh, but I was told never to contradict my elders.  Or my grandparents’ elders.)

Girls, there so many ways your interlude at the shelter can be relaxing, profitable, and fun.

First of all, realize you’re entitled to three nutritious meals a day, personal toiletries, and so forth. Transportation services may also be available, “but the only excursions offered were to the local mall where a wealth of unaffordable merchandise stared them in the face,” explains Nancy S., who spent two years shuttling among shelters in the San Francisco area.

Yes, that does sound cruel, taunting these poor women with a rackful of remaindered shifts at Dress Barn — fruits they must never taste.  On the other hand, I imagine the “excursions” are relatively infrequent, since most battered women would probably prefer a trip to, oh I don’t know,the doctor, maybe?  Or perhaps the dentist to have those three broken teeth pulled or repaired.  Or maybe a social services center where their kids could receive counseling for their night terrors.

And don’t worry if your kids are still black and blue from their latest visit to the wood shed — shelters won’t turn you in for child abuse, at least if you’re staying at Another Way in Lake City, Fla. As one former employee told me, “We always knew not to call the law unless you were prepared to be unemployed.”

Shelters serve several purposes, but they exist mainly to give women a roomy place to practice child abuse.  You can imagine how frustrating it must for a buzzed skank who needs to lash out at her offspring, but who lives in such a small, cramped apartment that there isn’t sufficient space to safely swing a fanbelt or a chair-leg; luckily she can just check into the local shelter.

And if you want to toke a little weed, that’s fine, too. After all, you’ve been battered and belittled, you deserve a little break.

And if you’ve also been bewitched, bothered and bewildered, they’ll leave a syringe full of heroin on your pillow during turn-down service.

If you’re in the Houston area, be sure to go by the Bay Area Turning Point. That facility hosts dating parties where local men drop by to schmooze and relax. That’s according to Bobbi Bacha, vice president of Blue Moon Investigations, who wonders whether such events are appropriate for abused women at such a vulnerable point in their lives.

I implicitly trust the bona fides of any private investigator who names her firm after the detective agency on Moonlighting.

If lavender is your color of choice, you don’t even need to venture outside. Everyone knows shelter staffs are replete with dykes cruising for a hook-up.

Well, everyone who collects a certain genre of pornography, yes.

Got a man-problem? Shelters can solve that, as well.

At Bethany House in Falls Church, Va., “Women with almost no marital problems are declared abused and are coached by the staff to go to court and get a protective order against their husbands with the promise of long-term shelter, legal services, [and] counseling,” reveals a former shelter volunteer.

Yes, according to an anonymous letter at the Equal Justice Foundation, which exists to promote the following “findings”…

The safest place for a child is with their biological father.

The safest place for a woman is in her home married to the biological father of her children.

Men and women are equally violent in domestic relationships.

“Any country that has tried to create a political solution to human problems has ended up with concentration camps and gulags.”

Their partner site is chartered to help men accused of domestic violence, and includes helpful articles such “The Female Narcissist,” “When It Is Not Domestic Violence,” “Justifiable Violence Against Women,” “The Emotional Terrorist,” and Rudyard Kipling’s, “The Female of the Species.”

Believe it or not, the best is yet to come!

Once you check out of the shelter, you now have the gold-plated Keys to the Kingdom. That’s because you can now lay claim to life-long status as a victim, a battered woman. You’re a certified survivor.

You’re a world celebrity, just like Paris Hilton and Barack Obama!  But you better hurry up and provoke a severe beating from your husband or boyfriend, because now that Carey’s spilled the beans, everybody’s gonna want in on action.

There’s just one little hitch. Legions of other women have figured out how to work the system, so many shelters now have a long waiting list.

It’s just like the Oklahoma Land Rush, except with more broken bones and scaldings.

Posted by scott on August 5th, 2008