O.J. Simpson died this week. In light of this news, here’s radical feminist author Andrea Dworkin’s brilliant essay about Nicole Brown Simpson, the abuse she suffered at the hands of O.J., and how the help she needed never came. Dworkin, herself a survivor of domestic violence, originally published pieces of this essay in the Los Angeles Times; she then compiled and revised that writing for her 1997 book, Life and Death. The essay has since been republished by Evergreen Review:
You won’t ever know the worst that happened to Nicole Brown Simpson in her marriage, because she is dead and cannot tell you. And if she were alive, remember, you wouldn’t believe her.
You heard Lorena Bobbitt, after John Wayne Bobbitt had been acquitted of marital rape. At her own trial for malicious wounding, she described beatings, anal rape, humiliation. She had been persistently injured, hit, choked by a husband who liked hurting her. John Wayne Bobbitt, after a brief tour as a misogynist-media star, beat up a new woman friend.
It is always the same. It happens to women as different as Nicole Simpson, Lorena Bobbitt—and me. The perpetrators are men as different as O.J. Simpson, John Wayne Bobbitt, and the former flower-child I am still too afraid to name.
There is terror, yes, and physical pain. There is desperation and despair. One blames oneself, forgives him. One judges oneself harshly for not loving him enough. “It’s your fault,” he shouts as he is battering in the door, or slamming your head against the floor. And before you pass out, you say yes. You run, but no one will hide you or stand up for you—which means standing up to him. You will hide behind bushes if there are bushes; or behind trash cans; or in alleys; away from the decent people who aren’t helping you. It is, after all, your fault.
He hurts you more: more than last time and more than you ever thought possible; certainly more than any reasonable person would ever believe—should you be foolish enough to tell. And, eventually, you surrender to him, apologize, beg him to forgive you for hurting him or provoking him or insulting him or being careless with something of his—his laundry, his car, his meal. You ask him not to hurt you as he does what he wants to you.
The shame of this physical capitulation, often sexual, and the betrayal of your self-respect will never leave you. You will blame yourself and hate yourself forever. In your mind, you will remember yourself—begging, abject. At some point, you will stand up to him verbally, or by not complying, and he will hit you and kick you; he may rape you; he may lock you up or tie you up. The violence becomes contextual, the element in which you try to survive. You will try to run away, plan an escape. If he finds out, or if he finds you, he will hurt you more. You will be so frightened you think dying might be okay.
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