Batterers

Last summer, when the Phillies were in the thick of the NL Wild Card hunt, their ace pitcher, Brett Myers, had to miss several starts for court appearances after he allegedly beat up his wife.

The Onion's take on this story was horribly close to how it actually played out: "Brett Myers Atones for Punching Wife With Solid Seven-Inning Outing."

This summer, Jeff Passan of Yahoo! Sports reports, that headline could read "Elijah Dukes Atones for Threatening to Kill Ex-Wife by Leading All Rookies With 9 Home Runs."

Passan notes that this has happened before and it's still dismayingly common.

I'm not suggesting that baseball players are more likely to beat up their wives and girlfriends (although clearly too many of them do since one is too many). But the way the players union reflexively files grievances protecting players accused of domestic violence is disgraceful.

I've nothing more to add here other than to tell you to go read Joss Whedon's rant and check out the site he recommends.

Comments

[Jesurgislac]

From Whedon's rant: "The theory I developed in college (shared by many I’m sure) is one I have yet to beat: Womb Envy. "

Oh yeah. That makes so much sense. Not.

Best deconstruction of "womb envy": link

Your political situation, your social situation, is the result of your interactions with other people.

Insisting on the power of "biology" to justify political power is a mystification. That means it's a lie. A big lie that you're supposed to believe, part of a whole set of beliefs that make the unfair organisation of society seem reasonable. It's a pretext. It's a magic trick. Emphasis on the "trick".

Turning the wombs into objects that can somehow function independently of the people they're in is a a mystification. It doesn't work physically. It only works as a trick that lets you control people who have wombs.

Womb envy is not the basis of a political system. (Ideas do not come from nothing.)

It's an excuse for the subjugation of those who have wombs.

It's a justification for the exploitation of women by men.

(Hm: this links neatly into what we're discussing in "Giving the moon the finger", doesn't it...)

[the opoponax]

I'm gonna go with "all men are more likely to beat up their wives and girlfriends", Alex, for 800.

The baseball players are just more famous, thus reporting their domestic disputes in the press seems like a worthwhile thing to do. All men who get brought up on domestic assault charges should have their faces plastered all over the local news. It would be a start, at least.

I love Joss Whedon's work for TV, but I find his "feminist" ideas to be the prose equivalent of that thing your hand does when you wake up to pee at 3AM and fumble around for the light switch. Except he NEVER finds the switch.

[Zingo Stertch]

I love that it's a theory he developed.

[Zingo Stertch]

Damn, just meant to italicize 'he'.

[Jesurgislac]

Italics begone!

[Zingo Stertch]

Thank you. I'd thought I'd broken the internet.

[cjmr's husband]

Compare this with the football player that died in the jet ski accident this weekend.

(insert arbitrary number here) people die in jet ski accidents every (insert length of time here) and it doesn't get reported in the news.

But a football player goes missing? Call CNN!

[twig]

I love that it's a theory he developed.

Joss Whedon is so awesome I don't care if he runs around naked covered in saran wrap screaming "help help I'm a squid."

[Jesurgislac]

twig: I don't care if he runs around naked covered in saran wrap screaming "help help I'm a squid."

Nor would I.

the opoponax: I love Joss Whedon's work for TV, but I find his "feminist" ideas to be the prose equivalent of that thing your hand does when you wake up to pee at 3AM and fumble around for the light switch. Except he NEVER finds the switch.

Yes. Exactly.

And also: I'm gonna go with "all men are more likely to beat up their wives and girlfriends", Alex, for 800.

Yes. Exactly.

[Francis]

And I'm going to go with "Far too many people are likely to use violence when they shouldn't". Last time I looked at the stats, 40% of victims of domestic violence were men - but the proportions of victims of repeated domestic violence is far, far lower (IIRC, 10% - but I'm a lot less certain of that figure). I attribute that partly to physical issues (there's a size difference in many cases, meaning one of physical power and hence opportunity) and partly cultural (men find it easier both to hit back and to walk out - although men find it far harder to report domestic violence, and despite the known incidence of domestic violence against men there are no men's refuges).

But I definitely agree with you about Wheedon being crazy re: womb envy.

[Francis]

To be fair about those figures, much of it may be accounted for by fighting back.

[Zingo Stertch]

Joss Whedon is so awesome I don't care if he runs around naked covered in saran wrap screaming "help help I'm a squid."

If he were covered in saran wrap wouldn't he technically be clothed?

[Mouse]

I'm not the only one who can't stop thinking about The Screwfly Solution am I?

http://www.scifi.com/scifiction/classics/classics_archive/sheldon/

[grenadine]

has the whole world gone italic?

[grenadine]

oh, well. on to Joss et al. It's one thing that too many (where any more than one is too many) people are comfortable belittling a full half of the world's population for "spiritual" reasons. the thing that was particluarly upsetting me this weekend is the women who go along with it. Monica Goodling is the example in my head. Did anyone else see her testimony? With her long blonde hair and little-girl voice, she did everything but offer girl scout cookies to the judiciary committee in order to convince them that she was just a woman, after all. how could she possibly have anything to do with those firings? it wasn't as if a mere woman in the justice department could have such authority! and they bought it...

Decades of women fighting for the right to get such an enviable position in government, where glass ceilings still abound, and here's Monica, undoing all of it to save her own arse.

[Jesurgislac]

Francis: And I'm going to go with "Far too many people are likely to use violence when they shouldn't". Last time I looked at the stats, 40% of victims of domestic violence were men

- Nearly one-third of American women (31 percent) report being physically or sexually abused by a husband or boyfriend at some point in their lives (The Commonwealth Fund, Health Concerns Across a Woman’s Lifespan: 1998 Survey of Women’s Health, May 1999 )

- In the year 2001, more than half a million American women (588,490 women) were victims of nonfatal violence committed by an intimate partner. (Bureau of Justice Statistics Crime Data Brief, Intimate Partner Violence, 1993-2001, February 2003 )

- Intimate partner violence is primarily a crime against women. In 2001, women accounted for 85 percent of the victims of intimate partner violence (588,490 total) and men accounted for approximately 15 percent of the victims (103,220 total) (Bureau of Justice Statistics Crime Data Brief, Intimate Partner Violence, 1993-2001, February 2003 )

- In 2001, intimate partner violence made up 20 percent of violent crime against women. The same year, intimate partners committed three percent of all violent crime against men. (Bureau of Justice Statistics Crime Data Brief, Intimate Partner Violence, 1993-2001, February 2003 )

- Male violence against women does much more damage than female violence against men; women are much more likely to be injured than men. (Murray A. Straus and Richard J. Gelles, Physical Violence in American Families, 1990)

-Women are much more likely than men to be killed by an intimate partner. In 2000, intimate partner homicides accounted for 33.5 percent of the murders of women and less than four percent of the murders of men. (Bureau of Justice Statistics Crime Data Brief, Intimate Partner Violence, 1993-2001, February 2003 )

Men are fond of quoting statistics that show that women beat up men nearly as often as men beat up women, but those statistics tend to have to ignore both common sense, widespread knowledge, and detailed crime statistics, in order to equate more serious attacks - major physical injury, rape, and murder - with less serious attacks causing no major physical injury.

[Steve]

Duke Men's Lacrosse Team Atones for Drunken Orgy and Alleged Rape by Reaching National Championship Game

[Jesurgislac]

Francis:

Because men don't want to set up men's refuges, Francis.

There are women's refuges for women victims of domestic violence because women victims of domestic violence (and some male allies) put a fearful amount of effort to set them up and run them, initially on no public offending, and even now always on a shoestring.

No men victims of domestic violence have ever put forth a similar effort. If you feel there should be men's refuges, Francis, what have you done to set one up where you live?

[Steve]

Haven't seen a lot of Whedon's shows, though many of my friends are fans. But yesterday I was watching Toy Story with my kids, which is a kid's movie I really enjoy, and noticed that he was one of the screenwriters. Cool.

[Jesurgislac]

on no public offending

Typos begone! I mean public funding.

[Raka]

All men who get brought up on domestic assault charges should have their faces plastered all over the local news.

Er, what? Don't we have that "innocent until proven guilty" thing in the US, or is that just old-fashioned?

Yes, domestic violence is a huge problem, and one that is overwhelmingly male (Francis may be right about that 40% [or not], but that ignores the number of serious injuries, death, or the often overlooked difference between violence as theatrics and violence as coercion). Yes, it is given too much of a pass by our legal system, and even more so by our culture. Yes, we need to take serious steps to fix this, and I'm totally open to radical measures. I'm not, however, willing to toss due process out the window.

Which leads me to the even more uncomfortable position of defending the player's union* in the Dukes case. With no conviction or even any charges filed, what justification is there for suspension? Is a public accusation sufficient to impose career-affecting sanctions, and if so, for which crimes and from which witnesses are these sanctions sufficient?

Again, I make no defense of Dukes himself and give him no special presumption of innocence. I hate the fact that our judicial and cultural systems would put NiShea Gilbert's history and value as a person on trial if she had the audacity to press charges-- charges she would likely lose, given the difficulty in obtaining prosecution in general and the legal defense Dukes can afford in particular. I hate that she may very well have good reason to fear for her safety if she pressed such charges. Nonetheless, the answer is not in turning society itself into a kangaroo court that automatically convicts any accused individual.

What do we know about this case other than one egregious but out-of-context voicemail? Do we even know that for certain, or is it an alleged voicemail? (these questions do indicate my lack of research, not my claims that this information is unavailable-- but if the people who are presuming guilt don't have that information either, than the questions are pertinent) If we (as liberals) are willing to extend the protections of due process to accused terrorists, why not to accused domestic abusers?

*This defense is conditional upon the union being consistent in defending players who are accused but not charged/convicted of any crime or misbehavior, which may or may not be the case-- I have no idea. If, for instance, they allow preemptive suspensions in drug cases but file grievances in domestic abuse cases, then I retract my defense and join the string-em-up side.

[Raka]

Me: for which crimes and from which witnesses are these sanctions sufficient?

Shoulda been "are these public accusations sufficient?".

[the opoponax]

Francis: my guess is that 40% figure comes from the fact that, in the US at least, unless it's glaringly obvious that the man is beating the shit out of a poor defenseless woman (i.e. she's elderly or pregnant or in a wheelchair or something), both participants in a domestic disturbance are arrested on assault charges.

Raka: allow me to revise.

all men who are actually convicted of domestic assault should have their faces plastered all over the TV.

however, until such time as rape victims can expect NOT to have same done to them, all accused men get equivalent treatment. THE MOMENT that a woman alleging rape or abuse is named and/or pictured in the press, the alleged rapist/abuser goes up too. double points for pornographically detailed description of the rape in the media.

boo fricking hoo. you don't want to get publicly accused of raping a stripper? don't hire a stripper, then. especially if you're a college athlete.

[the opoponax]

whoops -- just realized i'd skimmed where you said "player's union in the Dukes case", and read "players in the Duke case" instead. sorry 'bout that. though i do stand by my theory that, hey, if you don't want to be accused of raping a stripper, maybe you shouldn't go around hiring them and having them come to your house.

[the opoponax]

Also, with MLB's famous standards of pearl clutching and panty wadding hysteria about the "morals" of their players and baseball being "a gentleman's game" and all that, i think the union should be throwing the book at any player who is so much as accused of domestic violence. leave the public and the media out of it if you want, sure, but yeah, not only do i think there should be suspensions, i think there should be forfeitures of contracts and firings. it's silly that in a sport where the players aren't allowed to chew tobacco in public, they can totally still beat their wives/girlfriends.

even if it's a mere allegation. we're talking about a sport that is apparently so concerned about keeping its image squeaky clean that it won't liscense its team logos to police procedurals on the off chance that the murder is wearing a Red Sox cap and somebody out there in teevee land associates baseball with murderers. i mean, we can't have that, can we? but apparently it's A-OK for people to associate baseball with domestic violence.

[Ian Gray]

I can't agree that the union should be "throwing the book" at Dukes. That's not their job. Their job is to defend their members, and it's not for them to pick and choose which members they're going to defend.

I realize this leads to situations like this one, where they wind up fighting for the rights of a bad actor to play baseball. And I wouldn't mind if baseball tried to enforce suspensions against players like Dukes and Myers. But I don't blame the players' union for acting like a union.

[Raka]

opoponax: all men who are actually convicted of domestic assault should have their faces plastered all over the TV.

Fair enough. Basically add them to the national sex offender registry, then. I have my qualms about that system as well, but it's better than a lot of the alternatives, including the status quo pre-registry.

until such time as rape victims can expect NOT to have same done to them, all accused men get equivalent treatment

Er, can't we set the bar a bit higher than "equal mistreatment"? If nothing else, I think it would be easier to legally prohibit publicly revealing info about either party in a rape case (or any other type of case we choose to protect) than it would be to legally mandate equal air time. There are plenty of other objections, but that one should suffice.

boo fricking hoo. you don't want to get publicly accused of raping a stripper? don't hire a stripper, then.

Um. While there are cogent arguments against stripping and other potentially objectifying sex industry jobs, I don't think "Hire a stripper and you deserve to be publicly accused of rape" is one of them.

[Raka]

i do stand by my theory that, hey, if you don't want to be accused of raping a stripper, maybe you shouldn't go around hiring them and having them come to your house.

You're serious? I mean yeah, it's a bonehead move for all sorts of reasons. Hiring a stripper and having them come to your house creates an opportunity for all sorts of bad things to happen. But the way you phrase that comes across (to me, anyway) as damn close to "if you don't want to carry a child to term, don't have sex" or "if you don't want to be assaulted, don't walk through the park alone at night".

I accept that I might be reading too much into this, but it is a classic formulation for implying that all the responsibility lies with the sufferer of a consequence, generally employed by people who disapprove of the action that makes the consequence possible/more likely. Is that how you meant it?

[patter]

Lest we forget, pro baseball is not the only offender. Major league teams protect their investments.

[Raka]

with MLB's famous standards of pearl clutching and panty wadding hysteria about the "morals" of their players and baseball being "a gentleman's game"

Points worth noting:

1. MLB's standards are not determined by the union, which is the body filing grievances.
2. I don't know whether an accusation of trivial behavior (eg chewing tobacco) is sufficient to earn punishment. If it is, then yes, enforcement is indefensibly inconsistent and should be corrected. Otherwise, we're back to proof being required.
3. Re: licensing logos for police procedurals. That's a bit nutty, but it doesn't have a direct impact on any one individual's life, finances, or career. So I'm not sure it's comparable.

In an attempt to establish some common ground that I don't think has been covered yet:

When Devil Rays owner Stuart Sternberg first heard the allegations, he said he wanted to immediately release Dukes. And then he wondered what might happen if he did. Whether Dukes would follow through on his alleged threats, and whether NiShea Gilbert and her two children with Dukes would end up dead, and whether Sternberg never could assuage his guilt.

I infamously tend to give people the benefit of the doubt to an almost pathological degree, but Mr. Sternberg is giving a very strong impression of being a lying sack of crap here. "I really wanted to take strong action on this horrible incident, but decided to do absolutely nothing at all out of concern for the victims. Coincidentally, what a fine performer, heh?"

[Steve]

I infamously tend to give people the benefit of the doubt to an almost pathological degree, but Mr. Sternberg is giving a very strong impression of being a lying sack of crap here. "I really wanted to take strong action on this horrible incident, but decided to do absolutely nothing at all out of concern for the victims. Coincidentally, what a fine performer, heh?"

Maybe. But I dunno. In his case, you've got an employee that has threatened his wife. She revealed this to the public. If you fire him over this, who is he going to blame...his wife, right? That may just push him over the edge. I'm not trying to defend Sternberg because I have no idea regarding his thoughts or motives...but if I were in his place I'd probably be wrestling with how to deal with the situation in a way that doesn't push Dukes over the edge (out of concern for his wife and kids), rather than quickly firing him and letting the chips fall where they may.

[Andrew Hickey]

I'm gonna go with "all men are more likely to beat up their wives and girlfriends", Alex, for 800.

Any statement which talks about 'all' anything is suspect. If 31% of women are assaulted by their partners, that shows something fundamentally wrong with our society and people's assumptions about what is acceptable, but it still means that 69% of women have *not* been assaulted, which means that about 69% of men are innocent.

I am a member of the set 'all men'.
The likelihood of me beating up my wife is (short of a psychotic incident on my part) zero.
Therefore your statement is false. Perhaps you should try rephrasing it in some way that isn't implicitly condemnatory of 50% of the population?

[Steve]

Of course, I probably wouldn't be talking to the press about the situation either.

[Geds]

So, uh, wait a second. How did the Duke Men's Lacrosse team get in to this whole thing without that one niggling little detail: Last I checked, they were exonerated.

Why is it that they should be blamed for being accused falsely of raping a stripper? Where's the moral outcry that the false accusations make it harder the next time, when a woman accuses an athlete of an actual crime and the Duke case is somehow used as a way of saying, "Ha! She's probably just an attention whore! Look what happened last time."

You can't have it both ways. If we want fair treatment of anyone, regardless of race, creed or gender, we have to be fair in our treatment of all cases, from the scum who gets away with it on a technicality to those who were falsely accused.

And to say, "If you don't want to get accused of rape, don't hire a stripper," is the exact same argument that some give that reads, "If she didn't want to get raped, she shouldn't have worn that skirt."

It's not fair to blame a rape on the victim, but it's also not fair to blame a false accusation on the falsely accused.

[cjmr]

I interpreted this:

I'm gonna go with "all men are more likely to beat up their wives and girlfriends", Alex, for 800.

as: "Men are more likely to beat up their wives and girlfriends than women are to beat up their wives and girlfriends" not as a condemnation of all men. Especially considering whose comment it was. I'll let her chime in on which interpretation of it she intended.

[Raka]

I am a member of the set 'all men'.
The likelihood of me beating up my wife is (short of a psychotic incident on my part) zero.
Therefore your statement is false. Perhaps you should try rephrasing it in some way that isn't implicitly condemnatory of 50% of the population?

It's not implicitly condemnatory unless you don't understand statistics. Your individual likelihood of beating someone is irrelevant, and she was neither saying nor implying that the statistics say anything about you personally. Both the original article and Fred noted that we hear about abuse by baseball players rather frequently; opo was explaining this by noting that the prevalence of abuse was statistically appropriate for the class all MLB players belong to (ie, men); what is unusual is that they are high profile and the abuse gets public attention.

If I say "All days in the Amazon are more likely to experience precipitation", showing me one particular day that is very unlikely (even absolutely unlikely) to experience precipitation in no way proves me wrong, and my statement in no way denied the possibility of such a day or implied that each day contains some amount of raininess for which it must atone.

[Indiana Joe]

"...which means that about 69% of men are innocent."

At least 69% of all men have never committed an abusive act. An abusive man will probably abuse more than one woman.

[Raka]

Geds: Where's the moral outcry that the false accusations make it harder the next time

"You aren't sufficiently outraged about X, which devalues your opinion about Y." That just don't fly.

I'm also of two minds on the "false accusation" bit. (caveat: I followed the Duke case as little as possible, so I don't know what I'm talking about even more than usual) There's a difference between "a screwed up story indicating rape probably didn't happen" and a deliberate, maliciously false accusation. If it was ever officially established that the latter happened in this case, I never heard it.

[ako]

No men victims of domestic violence have ever put forth a similar effort. If you feel there should be men's refuges, Francis, what have you done to set one up where you live?

Seriously, I would love to see an honest effort to address the needs of male victims of domestic violence. If a group of men get together, start talking to men who were abused by their spouses, and start organzing to address their needs (a shelter, a hotline, a list of resources, the name of a good lawyer, whatever's needed), I'd gladly put my name on the donation list (of a proper, registered organization to help male victims of domestic violence, not some smart guy ing the comment thread claiming he's going to start one, or something set up to protect male batterers from women's self-defense). That would be a great thing to do.

But asking women and feminists to organize and create it isn't a good approach. In practical terms, you're dealing with a bunch of men, having specifically male problems (battered men have some distinctly different concerns from battered women), and emotional issues that relate heavily to cultural expectations for men. Expecting feminists to fix it is like going to the gynecologist for a prostate check (okay, probably better than nothings, but not the top choice). To get really effective results, you need to heavily involve men, and to develop approaches suited for battered men (for instance, I heard that shelters are actually fairly low on the list of needs for battered men).

[Geds]

"You aren't sufficiently outraged about X, which devalues your opinion about Y." That just don't fly.

Thanks for taking my comment out of context.

Every time one of these stories comes up somebody comes on with the outrage about how every man is a rapist/murderer/worthless drunk/etc. However, when the stories come up like the Duke Lacrosse case where the accused is exonerated there is rarely equal outrage about the false accusation and, in fact, we run in to situations like the one on this comment thread where people still try to use it to advance the idea that men are all rapists.

Or, barring that, it's somehow the fault of the men for hiring a stripper in the first place.

You're right, lack of outrage for X doesn't devalue Y when it comes to personal feelings. Lack of outrage for X does devalue Y on a societal level, however.

"All men are rapists"/"All men are abusive scum" as an argument sure as hell devalues me. A society that takes that as face value is then free to accuse any and all men of being rapists or spouse abusers and since the court of public opinion has already decided guilt before the accusation takes place it drags our society down a few notches on the whole civility scale.

Yes, some men are scum. Then again, some women are, too. One of the general societal problems, as clumsily pointed out in the Whedon article, was that for a long time we devalued 50% of our society for bizarre reasons.

I kind of doubt that devaluing the other 50% of our society is actually going to balance the scales. We tried it that way once, perhaps it's time to try something different, like some sort of mutual respect that admits that both men and women are capable of doing horrible things to each other (and, yes, women can do horrible things to men, they just usually don't leave physical marks), but the goal should be to rise above that.

And admitting that it's not the falsely accused individual's fault, no matter how they were mistreated for a year is right up there with getting rid of the antiquated notion that some poor girl deserved to get raped because "she was asking for it."

[Robert Brown]

Very few cases of domestic violence fit the profile presented by the media, the shelter industry and treatment programs (for men).

Statistics Canada first collected data on intimate partner abuse of both men and women through its 1999 General Social Survey (GSS).

Respondents were asked 10 questions concerning abuse by their current and/or previous spouses and common-law partners during the 12-month and 5-year periods preceding the telephone interview. According to their responses, almost equal proportions of men and women (7% and 8% respectively) had been the victims of intimate partner physical and psychological abuse (18% and 19% respectively). These findings were consistent with several earlier studies which reported equal rates of abuse by women and men in intimate relationship.

The men indicated that their disclosures of abuse were often met with reactions of disbelief, surprise and skepticism from the staff of domestic abuse shelters, legal-based institutions and hospitals, as well as friends and neighbors. These reactions may cause male victims to feel even more abused.

Men felt emasculated and marginalized, and tended not to express their fears, ask for help, or even discuss details of their violent experiences. During the interviews, the abused men repeatedly expressed shame and embarrassment.

The occurrence of abuse by women against men, and its consequences, warrant attention. It is important for the victims of abuse, whether they be men or women, to know that they are not alone – that is, that such experience is not unique to their personal situation. It is also important for the perpetrators of intimate partner abuse – men or women – to recognize that violence in any form is both morally and legally wrong.

The way to change this is for those in the shelter industry to become honest about the violence inflicted by women on men and children and demand that they be treated just like violent men.
-- Complete report from the Government of Canada can be found in pdf form at:
http://www.phac-aspc.gc.ca/ncfv-cnivf/familyviolence/pdfs/Intimate_Partner.pdf

[LL]

The problem with sports teams (both college and pro) is that they want it both ways. When players are behaving well and pursuing wholesome interests like Sunday school and visiting orphanages and hospitals, the team would have us believe that that player is representative of the team/sport as a whole, ie, participation in sports teaches/encourages teamwork, maturity, work ethic, etc. But when players do bad things, like shoot at people or slap their wives around, we're to believe that the team has nothing to do with that, it's a private matter between the player and his wife and/or probation officer and until the player has been convicted/sentenced, the team management can do nothing. The whole "innocent until proven guilty" thing does seem to give them some plausible deniability here. As much as I hate to give the pro sports world any leeway, it seems to me it's up to the public to decide what's enough as far as how athletes behave. If a sports team was to see a significant drop-off in attendance/TV ratings in response to incidents like the above, the powers that be in the sports world might take outrage seriously. But apparently, they don't (see a drop-off). It is a sad commentary on men (sorry if this appears sexist, but men do seem to be the primary audience for all the major sports) that they don't have a problem with a guy slapping his wife around as long as he can still play. Of course, this is not unlike the worldwide attitude about slapping women around - it ain't no big thing. It's just women, it's OK to mistreat them, because they're worth less than men. I got that message pretty clearly a long time ago (not from personal experience, just observation). Maybe it's not as bad here as in countries where you can stone a woman to death for getting raped, but it's certainly not where it should be in an affluent, highly educated country in the 21st century. Sad. But not surprising to me.

[Raka]

we run in to situations like the one on this comment thread where people still try to use it to advance the idea that men are all rapists

Er, where exactly did that happen on this thread?

Look through the thread and you'll see that I also oppose the "oppress the comforted" method of achieving equality. I share your objection to opopo's "if you don't want X, don't do Y" statement.

But you kept going and started generalizing an aggressive defense against attacks no one here was making. Opo never denigrated all men. If you were trying to broaden the conversation away from a direct response to her comments and into a larger context of society's response to the Duke case, I'm afraid I didn't follow that in your comment.

As far as that larger societal argument: false accusation of rape is a terrible thing, and one of the prime reasons I object to the vigilante outrage that forms when an accusation is made public. But false accusations ain't nothing compared to rape itself, so it's quite spurious to say that society's hounds should bay after the false accusers just as much as they did after the accused.

Also: being ruled innocent != being exonerated != being falsely accused. Again, the woman in the Duke case may have deliberately made malicious and false accusations-- but if so, I don't know about it. Some cases will fall into a gray area: both man and woman intoxicated, for instance. Some cases will be genuine rape that the victim just wasn't able to prove, and the rapist will be let go. Do we really want even more societal pressure threatening women who may fall into these categories?

You and I both argue against punishing men unfairly to create equality with unfair treatment of women. Doesn't encouraging public pre-judgement of "false accusers" punish women unfairly to create equality with the unfair public pre-judgement of the accused?

[--susan]

Ramification alerts:

all men who are actually convicted of domestic assault should have their faces plastered all over the TV.

If the dude doesn't fear arrest and conviction, why would publicity deter him? Not to mention that our not-so-great track record on color-blind justice would provide easy "proof" of some ugly racial stereotypes via this exercise.

however, until such time as rape victims can expect NOT to have same done to them, all accused men get equivalent treatment. THE MOMENT that a woman alleging rape or abuse is named and/or pictured in the press, the alleged rapist/abuser goes up too. double points for pornographically detailed description of the rape in the media.

The detailed description of the alleged rape, right? Which, in pornographic detail, is really just...pornography. And further sexual objectification of the woman (whose reputations are more harmed than those of men by sexual objectification.)

How is making the media MORE of a screeching voyeuristic vulture, rather than a forum for the communication of news, a step in the right direction for justice?

[LL]

As a chick, I will acknowledge that I have found women in general to be just as reprehensible as men, ie, their general behavior, but that is as far as I'm willing to go on that. I doubt that false accusations of abuse are as common as actual abuse. I'm not sure if it's possible to quantify either one, although it is probably easier to quantify false accusations, ie, those that end with an exoneration of the accused male, than actual abuse that doesn't get reported.

And I'm also willing to stipulate that women can be physically abusive, to both men and children. Are they abusive as often as men are? They seem to be so towards children (from the statistics I've read), but towards men? I kinda doubt it. I have no doubt that confrontations between men and women become physical on both sides, and I don't even have a problem believing that women often start the physical aggression (pushing, slapping, etc.). But it seems impossible that men feel a physical threat from women anywhere near as often as women do from men. Are some men reluctant to "fight back" because they suspect they'll end up in jail for something the woman has already done, simply because men are punished far often for it than women are? Undoubtedly. But I'm not sure what we're supposed to do with this information, other than tell the man the same thing we'd tell a woman in that situation: Leave.

Can we all agree that attacking other people without provocation (a physical provocation, as in self-defense) is not acceptable no matter who does it, that it is the act of a person who should not be walking around with the rest of us? We teach people to be like this, to think that if everything doesn't go their way, they're entitled to hit somebody. We imply that to talk something over rationally is womanish, pussy-assed, ineffectual, that if you want something to happen, you kick someone's ass or punch them or something dramatic like that. Then we wonder why there's so much crime and family dysfunction and substance abuse. I'm surprised there's not more, in a country of 300 million people.

[Bugmaster]

Out of curiosity, what is the Matriarchy's stance on strippers ? Legal issues aside, is it morally reprehensible (and, perhaps, punishable by immediate public shaming) for a man to hire a stripper ? How about the stripper herself -- is it morally reprehensible for her to pursue this career ? Does any of the above change id the stripper is male ? I've never hired a stripper, of any gender, so I have no personal experience in this area.

[LL]

RE Whedon's theory: Eh... I don't think there's any womb envy. I think men abuse and murder women because they can, because they (the ones who do it, not all men) are cowardly and would gleefully attack anybody smaller than they are. I don't think any kind of envy has anything to do with it. I think it persists in all cultures because people are scummy the world over and always have been. I really don't think there's any more to it than that. Obviously, there are cultures that value females much less than ours does, but ours wasn't that different not too long ago. The Tracy Thurman thing (Google it) happened in the 1980s. It's pretty bad when police officers have to be told NOT to let your husband kick you in the head when you're laying on the ground bleeding from stab wounds.

RE stripping: can't speak for all of those with a womb, but my position on strippers is that they're grownups and if they are OK with someone paying them to be naked, who am I to tell them they can't do it? I can't say it makes me happy that they're perpetuating the idea that women are only worthy of notice if they're naked or nearly naked, but I also can't blame them too much for wanting to make more money than they could get working the counter at McDonald's. If we lived in a world that valued actual physical work (or boring but necessary work) as highly as shaking yer boobs or playing a sport, we'd probably all be better off, but I don't get to make the rules.

[ako]

Complicated question about the strippers. Short answer, with a lot of distinctions between professional stripping in the abstract, and professional stripping in specific circumstances, in a specific society with specific social expectations and specific pressures on women. There's a fair percentage of matriarchs who aren't opposed to a grown woman, freely consenting, not subjected to economic coercion, not demeaned or pressured into devaluing her other capabilities, choosing, from a broad selection of opportunities, to engage in a sexualized display of her body for money in front of an audience who seeks sexual arousal, but doesn't degrade or devalue her as a human being, in a forum that doesn't convey the impression that she's bought, purchased, owned, degraded, less than a person, or made to be used. And then everyone argues about whether that ever does happen, or is even possible.

Some feminists, I think, are fundamentally opposed to stripping, some to stripping for money, and a lot to hiring a poor young woman who had been encouraged to think that not many people will hire her for her brains (and where she lives, she's basically right), spraying beer all over her when you know she has to smile and take it, seeng how much you can make her do for a dollar, finding out how much you can grope her before she complains (especially since her job may depend on grinning and being "cute" about how she handles it), and the various petty bullying and humiliations that often come from her needing the job, you holding the money, and her being naked and required to act sexy for anything short of a major disaster.

There's relatively little feminist complaints against strippers, because to the extent that the stripper freely chooses the job, and isn't trapped or pressured into it, the circumstances tend to be such that relatively few feminists object. Although, I think some consider stripping to be fundamentally sexist. And there's always a few who will paint any woman's decision that doesn't conform with their dogma as a sign of being a victim of the patriarchy.

[bulbul]

Raka,
Er, what? Don't we have that "innocent until proven guilty" thing in the US, or is that just old-fashioned?
Pet peeve alert: yes, you do. So does Canada and most of the free world, including the Godless Disunited States of Eurabia.
BUT.
You're listening to me? I said BUT.
BUT "innocent until proven guilty" is a LEGAL PRINCIPLE. It only applies to court proceedings. I totally hate it when the first response to any accusation is "Hey, don't I have the right to be presumed innocent?". Yes you do, douchebag, IN COURT. Out here in public or in front of the media, anybody can accuse of anything, if they can get away with it (i.e. avoid being sued for lible, defamation or whatever).
Invoking the presumption of innocence like you did just now amounts to saying to someone who has just reported to you something they have heard from someone else "Hey, you can't say that, that's hearsay!"

[Bugmaster]

Spelling issues aside, what Bulbul seems to be saying is that presumption of innocence is strictly a legal concept; it has no general meaning, and, in fact, it does not have a place in society outside of the courtroom. When someone accuses you of something outside of the courtroom, the burden is on you to prove that you're innocent. Until you do, everyone is perfectly justified in treating you as guilty. Right ?