There is a connection to these celebs’ (Shia, Brian, Armie) partner abuse and what’s happening in America more broadly. Men think the women closest to them should withstand whatever is needed in service of their careers.

The famous men can abuse their partners with little fear because of their stature. The average American man whose wife is dropping out of the workforce, the subjects of countless articles in the last weeks, is “giving her her life.”

One group takes advantage of the women closest to him, physically and emotionally because he knows the social cost to her career/reputation for speaking out. It’s honestly a marvel that these men are being held at all accountable in the public sphere, thank @TaranaBurke for that.

The more common American cis het marriage is set up for women to bear the burden, most especially in times of economic hardship. The choices are: a male partner who doesn’t help or get divorced and do everything you were doing with a FT job and totally alone.

Either way: men in this country are not taught to be equal partners. Women are there to serve. That spills into the workplace where they are undervalued and underpaid, creating the cycle of dependence/vulnerability. Oh, then women are (still) not believed when they speak up.

If they do speak up, even if they are believed, men face little to no consequences in the workplace, at home, college campuses...

And so we go.

Women are dying from domestic partner violence and continue to at an alarming rate, and add to that the silent cost of the more subtle burdens will turn into cancer, heart attacks, adrenal failure...

I don’t know what the wake up call will be.