Twilight = domestic violence? Not So Fast

This LJ post has apparently “gone viral,” with everyone from Galleycat on down reposting it as somehow proving definitively that the Twilight Saga “enables” or encourages abusive relationships or domestic violence. Of course, this accusation has been leveled at the series for a couple of years now, so I’m not sure why so many people have suddenly gotten all revelatory over it. Maybe it’s the close juxtaposition of this post with the release of the movie, New Moon.

But this is exactly the kind of thing that irritates the shit out of me, because this post is written by a complete ignoramus. He or she doesn’t know shit about either domestic violence or the Twilight Saga. S/he admits that s/he is not a fan of Twilight and really, knows nothing more about the stories than is in the movie version of New Moon. Meanwhile, his/her total knowledge of domestic violence comes from looking up a “checklist” on ONE domestic violence website.

Much as I hate to pull rank…I’m a certified domestic violence counselor (that means I got training) with an M.Div degree from Harvard focused on pastoral counseling, and I worked in a battered women’s shelter for ten years, from 1996 to 2006. I have also read all four of the Twilight books and seen the first movie (I won’t see the second until it’s released on DVD, for reasons outside the purview of this discussion). And I do not agree with the argument that the Twilight Saga “enables,” encourages or “teaches teenagers that it’s okay to be in” abusive relationships.

It’s bullshit. Period.

Maybe that’s just my opinion, but it’s an opinion formulated from an indepth and complete knowledge of both Twilight and domestic violence. From my observation, all the Twilight complainers have only superficial knowledge of one or both of those areas. It’s similar to the way that the spike in vampire fandom has led to scores of idiots jumping on the bandwagon and writing essays about how annoying vampire fandom is, while very obviously knowing absolutely nothing about the topic.

One of my all-time favorite quotes comes from the novel, Up the Down Staircase, a student grumbling about his substitute teacher: “She don’t know nothin’ and she’s tryin’ to teach it.”

There’s a heck of a lot of that going around these days, and the favorite teaching topics du jour are Twilight and vampires. I’m really getting sick of it.

The really salient question that should be asked about Twilight fandom is this: why does this relationship paradigm appeal to so many girls and women so powerfully? The answer to that–and yes, there is one–isn’t getting talked about, probably because it’s not very P.C. But demonizing and blaming Stephenie Meyer and the series for somehow corrupting innocent young minds and making them want an abusive boyfriend when they would never have done so before–that’s just plain ridiculous (and denial, to boot). The Twilight books and movies tap a deep wish-fulfullment fantasy that already exists in millions of females, one that, frankly, is problematical, but it isn’t created or caused by the fictional media it responds to. Why isn’t anyone (besides me) looking at that?