To raise awareness about domestic violence, an Australian nonprofit has encouraged women to use the hashtag #IGotFlowersToday on Valentine’s Day in reference to a poem about a battered woman.
The poem, written by Paulette Kelly, “chronicles the life of an abused woman with the gift of flowers used as an apology for a torturous life, rather than a symbol of love and affection,” explained Karen Willis, executive director of the Full Stop Foundation, the group behind the campaign.
But the Full Stop Foundation’s campaign was met with backlash as a Daily Telegraph columnist denounced it as “savage, relentless anti-men messaging.”
“It’s not enough that some poor guy has schlepped to the florist or sweated over which flowers to pick online and poured over poignant words for the card,” wrote Corrine Barraclough. “ These infuriating feminist fools now want his motives to be questioned too. So, in addition to your colleagues’ ‘Nice flowers,’ comments, if you get a dozen long-stemmed you can now presumably look forward to comments such as, ‘Is everything OK?’ and ‘What did he do?’”
Barraclough also writes that the campaign focuses only on abuse perpetrated by men against women, though she says “domestic violence is not—and has never been—a gendered issue.”
Willis disagreed, saying in an email that most men behave ethically in their relationships. But at the same time, she added, the majority of domestic violence is perpetrated by men against women and children, adding that even in cases where men are victims, the abuser is usually another man.
“While most people want to be part of stopping the violence, some are challenged by the conversation and by the behaviors of the minority of men who use these behaviors,” Willis said.
The poem “I Got Flowers Today,” written in 1992, has risen to prominence in recent years. In 2014, the UN Women’s executive director read it at the Commission on the Status of Women.
— Jillian Kay Melchior writes for Heat Street and is a fellow for the Steamboat Institute and the Independent Women’s Forum.