The Truth About Domestic Violence
Here is a good article about the money being showered to domestic violence victims (only women, of course) via DesertLight Journal. Here in Knoxville where I live, there was a grant given for domestic violence to one of the leaders of the community and I saw him speaking about it with a family court judge on tv one day. They kept running stats about how only women were the recipients of domestic violence which I found quite frustrating, having dealt with many abused men in my career and personal life (no, I was not the abuser, these were male friends and acquaintances who had problems with other women). I faxed the tv network information about domestic violence statistics on how many men were abused and/or killed by women but got no response. I guess the million dollar grant they received meant more to them than telling the truth.
posted by Helen at 9:04 AM
20 Comments:
The prevailing attitude is - when a man is abused, it must because he's a wimp. A while back I remember listening to a local sports show in the Chicago market. The big story (if I recall correctly) was about a football player (NFL - I don't remember the team or the player) who had to call 911 because his wife was angry with him and was kicking him with her high heels... while they were driving down the highway!
The snickering by the sports commentators about this incident really ticked me off. The unspoken yet very well implied idea... can't he even take care of himself? can't he control her? he must be a real pansy...
Yet - if he HAD defended himself. If he had put up ANY sort of defense physically - HE would be the one arrested for abuse. The police wouldn't have thought twice!
Moral of the story - it doesn't matter what you do - if you're a guy in that situation - you are totally screwed.
It's a very mixed message if you emphasize that women are often the perpetrators of domestic violence, but you also highlight examples of women who kill to defend themselves. Because, according to FBI reports, fully 30% of the time that a woman commits murder, the victim is her husband or another intimate. These cases far outnumber those in which a woman kills anyone in legitimate self-defense. Although it is not as widely reported, the deceased is again the husband or another intimate in a large fraction of justifiable homicides too. On the other hand, if a woman does murder her husband, then she can readily argue that feared for her safety, especially if she treated him badly all along.
A more logical message would be that both men and women in domestic disputes should put down weapons rather than pick them up.
There was a recent NBC Dateline edition where they staged a semi-abusive (limited to yelling and grabbing roughly) situation between a man and a woman in a park to see who, if anyone, would be willing to get involved. A few passersby chose to get involved to defend the woman and get her out of the situation.
Later in the show they brought in several of the people who had chosen to get involved for a group interview. After discussing at length their reasons and tactics for getting involved the reporter quickly showed them video of the reverse situation: the woman semi-abusing the man. The reporter mentioned that while only a few (one in ten, I think) got involved on behalf of the woman being abused, no one intervened when the man was being abused.
They asked the participants if they'd get involed in that situation, and most of them admitted that they wouldn't. When asked why the majority confessed that they figured the man deserved it, that he'd done something bad to the woman and was getting his just desserts.
Interesting enough, the show left it at that and moved on to something else. I believe the only reason they even included the alternate scenario was to affirm the impartiality of their "experiment."
The show essentially walked away from the obvious implication that men not only don't need help in abuse situations, but that they obviously brought it on themselves.
I remember the situation Teresa described about the NFL player. I remember thinking that the poor guy was damned either way. He would get jeered by a lot of men for not standing up for himself, but being an NFL player he'd get slapped in jail if he so much as touched her.
He did the smart thing, ultimately, and I'm a little surprised that men weren't more supportive. It doesn't take much imagination to realize the predicament he was in.
It's funny to think that in spite of our supposed "enlightenment" on issues of male/female equality people--including the most outspoken advocates of gender equity--still fall back on the same old stereotypes in situations like this: the man deserved it and/or the women couldn't possibly be tough enough to actually hurt a man.
Sorry, I pasted in the wrong URL. You highlight women who killed to defend themselves here.
Oh darn, I still screwed it up. It's actually here. My sincere apologies for messing up this blog, which I actually respect despite not always agreeing. Please feel free to fix and erase.
To Greg:
Thanks for your comment--I do not defend any woman who kills a man for any other reason than self-defense. In the post that you referred to--I was discussing "Snapped"--a reality show on Oxygen where I appeared in two of the seasons talking about why women kill--The first two seasons, I thought were quite progressive because they showed direct aggression by women and did not include situations of self-defense.
No one in the shows seemed too sympathetic to these woman--least of all, me. I recall one of the shows had me talking about Clara Harris, a woman who ran down her husband in cold blood. I talked about how other women felt that it was justified because of the husband's maleness and that this was indeed, wrong. However, the feminists raised hell over the show as they did not want women portrayed as autonomous angry individuals rather than victims. Apparently, in the end, the feminists won as Oxygen has changed some of the shows to include women who kill due to self-defense. I put that post up because if feminists truly believed in real self-defense, they would not be for gun control, which most of them are. This is illogical to me.
Anyway, I am not one who thinks all women kill in self defense, as you point out, many do not and should be held as responsible for their actions, just as men are. Some women do, however, kill in self-defense as do some men.
Domestic violence is and has been a one sided issue. Ohio and Kentucky have released women convicted of murdering their intimate others. In some cases this may have been justifiable, but in Kentucky one woman had hired a killer to kill her policeman husband and never claimed abuse until after she had been convicted. In anothter Kentucky case, a woman shot her ex-husband in the back through the front door of her house when no verifiable abuse had occured.
Females hitting males appears to be quite acceptable. My 9 year old daughter thinks nothing of hitting one of her older brothers, and occasionally me, on the arm or shoulder. When I scold her for this she will often reply, "It's OK for girls to hit boys but not for boys to hit girls." I remember this from being a kid myself. Girls felt free to kick or hit a boy because she didn't like what he said. I would love someone to do an observational study in a school setting or such of how often girls hit boys and vice versa.
Erin Pizzey also has an excellent book on emotional terrorism which explores emotional abuse, mostly perpetrated by women. You can easily find excerpts on the web.
There is a triangle of ideas here: self-defense, justice, and presumption of innocence. It seems very difficult to satisfy all three in the context of domestic violence. If a woman shoots her husband, then she often has a plausible argument of self-defense, because the household has usually had a long history of violence. Surely if the issue is domestic violence, then self-defense is the weak leg of the triangle. You can't really use a gun to deter people if you live with them day after day. On the other hand, it's very easy to use a gun to radically escalate a domestic confrontation.
I don't think that it is enough to just point out contradictions in what "feminists" believe. First, the dictionary definition of feminism is no more than "belief in the social, political, and economic equality of the sexes." Who can argue with that? Second, if you think that particular feminists have an unfair and extreme view of the need for women to defend themselves from men, then the corollary of doing it with guns is just as wrong as the premise.
To Greg,
If feminism lived up to the dictionary version, I wouldn't be having this discussion.
One question is whether there is still any kind of equality that American women deserve but don't have; or whether men treat them fairly, or even more than fairly, as a group.
Helen - you've pointed out the prime reason why I refuse to waste my time with Oxygen and other "networks" and shows for women. It becomes so onesided in favor of women, it's literally sickening.
When the Clara Harris story first came to light - my husband and I both figured she'd walk. That she actually received jail time simply floored me - I wanted to give the jury a small award for that one.
But even with the jail time - Harris got off with what I would consider a slap... if her husband had done the same thing to her... he'd be on death row - there wouldn't even be a discussion.
And - am I remembering correctly? - his parents stood by her in court!!! I found that to be the most sickening thing of all.
Hi Teresa,
I don't blame you for not watching the women's networks. Their portrayal of women is not just untrue for the most part, but downright dangerous at times. There are many people in this country who are being emotionally abused by women and no one will listen to a word. Women are not seen as autonomous beings with power and a range of feelings (including aggression) but rather, as angels. Anyway, it is common for parents of a deceased man or even the victim (if he lives) to stand up for the a female perpretrator of violence--it is so ingrained into the psyche that a woman who is violent certainly had a good reason--a man is just guilty.
"Yet - if he HAD defended himself. If he had put up ANY sort of defense physically - HE would be the one arrested for abuse. The police wouldn't have thought twice!>>
Unless he was OJ Simpson.
Unless he was O. J. Simpson, or Robert Blake, or Klaus von Bulow. But not if he's Scott Peterson. There is no question that legal counsel is for those who can afford it — a public defender may be no better than a guilty plea. Or, sometimes, outright worse than good plea bargaining.
Interestingly, reading another blog after posting earlier, I came across this link:
http://www.thepittsburghchannel.com/news/5235856/detail.html
It worries me that if the genders of the subjects were reversed, there might be more interest and outcry (although I'm not sure the victim would appreciate it).
Amazing, Helen..........you and I were writing the same or similar thoughts at the same time.
To upkedupke:
Amazing!
A little late to the conversation, yet still relevant:
Rebekah Wade, 37, the pouting, flame-haired editor of The Sun, known for her public campaign against domestic violence, was arrested in the wee hours of last Thursday on suspicion of duffing up her soap star husband and giving him a thick lip.
Summoned to the matrimonial home at approximately 0400 hours by two 999 calls, the police felt obliged to take Wade into custody to a local police station, where she spent the morning behind bars. By lunchtime she was released without charge, but not soon enough to make a Women of the Year lunch.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,24391-1859391,00.html
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/4405752.stm
希望大家都會非常非常幸福~
「朵朵小語‧優美的眷戀在這個世界上，最重要的一件事，就是好好愛自己。好好愛自己，你的眼睛才能看見天空的美麗，耳朵才能聽見山水的清音。好好愛自己，你才能體會所有美好的東西，所有的文字與音符才能像清泉一樣注入你的心靈。好好愛自己，你才有愛人的能力，也才有讓別人愛上你的魅力。而愛自己的第一步，就是切斷讓自己覺得黏膩的過去，以無沾無滯的輕快心情，大步走向前去。愛自己的第二步，則是隨時保持孩子般的好奇，願意接受未知的指引；也隨時可以拋卻不再需要的行囊，一路雲淡風輕。親愛的，你是天地之間獨一無二的旅人，在陽光與月光的交替之中瀟灑獨行.................
影片轉檔程式情色影片foxy下載色情小說女影片免費下載a片aa免費看情色文學成人小說aa 片免費看影片 aa訊豆豆出租名模情人視訊aaa影片下載城男同志影片免費影片線上直播日本美女寫真集免費av18禁影片18成人卡通成人a片同志影片5278影片卡通影片做愛影片視訊交友網熟女人影片松島楓免費影片日本美女影像圖庫寫真女郎影片貼影片0800a片區gogo258男同志影音視訊Live秀線上成人影片成人論壇姐姐g罩杯影片小弟弟影片777美女dvd影片視訊交友90739潮吹影片aa影片下載城一葉晴貼影片區 av127浪漫月光論壇色情a片
Post a Comment
<< Home