I’ve been a WWE fan my entire life. When I’m feeling low, it was and is one of the things I turn to to escape for a while. In fact, I credit one of the wrestlers for inspiring me to stay away from drugs when they were all too easy to come by. But every October, for the past four years, my heart breaks a little. WWE has an amazing partnership with Susan G Komen, but October is also Domestic Violence Awareness month (Isn’t it grand that the issues that predominately affect women are crammed together in one month?)
In August of 2012 I lost a friend to domestic violence, and her murder has affected me in ways that I couldn’t have imagined before. Her murder moved me to briefly volunteer for my local domestic violence shelter (unfortunately lack of personal funds kept me from continuing.) Maybe I’m overly sensitive to it, but almost daily I hear a news story about a domestic violence incident, 7 out of 10 times it is because someone died from it. I share their stories, in hopes to reach someone living in that terror, a silent plea to get out and not end up like my friend.
Every October for the past four years, WWE puts up pink ropes and pink ribbons on their lapels, ring gear, and have wonderful video montages, and I wonder, would it be so bad to have pink and purple (purple is the color for Domestic Violence Awareness) ropes? Would it be so bad to have pink and purple ribbons on lapels and ring gear? Would it cost an exorbitant amount of money to have one video montage to the “other” issue that is to bring awareness this month?
It’s not just the WWE that does this, but as an avid fan, it is the one that affects me the most. I get it, cancer is easy to cast as a villain and rightfully so, when you’re talking about human beings hurting their intimate partners/loved ones, it gets complicated, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try.
This isn’t to say that the WWE hasn’t done anything. They have a zero tolerance policy toward their staff committing domestic violence, which is all too rare of a thing in any business. I just wish they would do more. My friend was a wrestling fan, when she had the money she would take her kids to see it. I miss her, four years on and there still isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t think about her. I miss her laugh, her kindness, she was finally getting to where she wanted to be and just like that, she was gone.
Every October I hope to see pink and purple ropes, pink and purple awareness ribbons on WWE programming. 1 in 4 women and 1 in 7 men are victims of domestic violence, (source: National Coalition Against Domestic Violence,) as far as I know, there aren’t stats for people in transition/nonbinary, (if there are, please correct me) and I wish the entertainment that has been such a force of good in my life would be a force of good in theirs. Maybe next year, WWE?
