Some of you may already be familiar with Blaire White. For the sake of those who aren’t, I’ll withhold mention of what originally made her remarkable; you’ll know it soon enough. Instead, I’ll plead with you to watch – listen to it, really – the video embedded below.
Domestic violence affects both sexes. Men are the victims roughly as often as they are the perpetrators...yet virtually all the attention focuses on female victims. But that’s not my current concern. Rather, it’s the tendency of women to laugh off the victimization of men.
It’s not a funny subject. It becomes even less funny when you hear stories such as this one (from the comments to the video):
a friend of mine was arguing with his gf and she starting hitting him. she hit him in the face with a glass ashtray. punched him in the face many times. his eyes were both black his face and body was covered in bruises and scratches. a neighbor called the police. he was charged with domestic assault even though he never laid one hand on her, all because they we're verbally arguing still when the police showed up. she was the abuser and because he was the man he was arrested and she went back in the house back to their home while he went to jail. [Emphasis added]
That’s far from unique.
Perhaps there was a time when all the abuse went one way: from men toward women. However, the law in these United States is so heavily biased toward the woman that a man doesn’t dare to resist by so much as grabbing her wrists. No matter how badly marked up she leaves him, for him to leave the slightest bruise on her while straining to stop her from striking him is grounds for the police to charge him. No penalty will be visited upon her.
Add that to the “no fault” divorce laws that wives use to blackmail their husbands; to the automatic awarding of child custody (and most of his income) to her; to the expectation that he’ll be breadwinner and housekeeper and child-rearer; to the readiness of innumerable wives to use sex as a negotiating tool; to women's endless denigrations of men in general; and to the caterwauling among even openly slutty women about “men’s unwillingness to commit.”
Yet women want to know “where the good men have gone.”
5 comments:
Time was, some where in the not too distant past, somebody spilled a bucket of compassion and some idiot white male (predominantly a Christian thinker) stepped in it. He never bothered cleaning himself up afterward, being a typical white male risk taking son of a Western European (probably) so contaminated most of his buddies, unbeknownst that weakness would draw the culture vultures which would then turn Genesis into a dart board at Pub Evil down the street. Does that make any sense at all? I would say that the result we see now is probably fifty percent our own damn fault.
The law, as is too often the case, is against natural law. Every person has a right to defend themselves. I will not strike a woman first (or anyone for that matter). However, if another 'draws first bloos' I will defend myself with sufficient vigor to protect myself. If I'm going to jail anyway I may as well go with my head held high.
I thank you for having pointed me to the commentary of Ms. White. If I had better facilities for producing videos here, I would probably be posting response videos to her all over the place, agreeing with her and saying, "You go, girl!"
A long time ago, I had a girlfriend who was a radical feminist, and I mean seriously radical. I think she would have pooh-poohed the notion of men as domestic violence victims as much as the people in Ms. White's class, if not more so. (She probably would also not like what I've become. I use makeup on a regular basis, for instance, whereas she detested the stuff, calling it "glop.")
I don't think Ms. White objects to "feminism" as it was originally constructed, i.e., the equal treatment of men and women before the law, and the ability for both genders to have equal opportunity. What she (and I) object to is the way "feminism" has been twisted into an ideology proclaiming the superiority of women and marginalizing men. There are certain areas in which each gender is naturally superior to the other; for instance, I've been known to say of women, "Beauty is our power and our privilege." But it all evens out in the end, or should.
Get yourself a videocamera -- a cell phone that shoots video will do, I think -- and do some, Amy. You're eloquent, mature, and persuasive. Part of the reason I stumbled on Blaire White is that you got me thinking. You're likely to have the same effect on others.
Having said that, I must also say: I still think most transgenders have emotional problems that would be properly solved in other ways. I shan't say that about you or Blaire White, though.
In 1992, as a relationship was drawing to it's bitter end, I had resorted to sleeping in the part of the warehouse I owned where I operated my business from. My gf, a heavy drinker and I parked ours cars in this portion of the warehouse too. She had taken to being absent for a day or two at a time with no explanation(and none wanted)
I was working late, had the World Series on when she came into the warehouse. Already drinking she threatened to smash my car on her way out and come back at some time when I wasn't there and destroy my work. I confronted her and endured kicks to my shins which bled and got spit in the face. I told her I wanted the keys she had. She refused and I told her I'd call the police.(big mistake)
I did, patiently explaining to them my gf was drunk, had come into my place of business and threatened to cause damage. My gf, standing there, wanted to speak to the police and I handed her the phone. She starts sobbing saying I had a gun and was going to kill her. She knew I had weapons there. I'm like WTF? She looks at me like, gotcha.
The police show up(7 police cars!), I'm immediately handcuffed. I tell them she has been drinking, came into my place of business, threatened me and my work and physically attacked me with blood as evidence running down my leg. They ask me where are my weapons. I tell them I had just moved into the space and they were still packed up under numerous boxes-obviously when they found them, I couldn't have just placed them there.
None the less, I was arrested. I was charged with 2 felonies based solely on what she told the police. Dried spit somewhere on my face and a bloody sock(I had shorts on) notwithstanding.
Long story short, $35,000 later, the DA dropped the two felonies to a simple misdemeanor. No jail and a totally pointless anger management class.
Bill Clinton came along a couple years later and retroactively made anyone guilty of DV prohibited from owning weapons.
One more little tidbit. The court appointed "victim's advocate" an obese black lesbian, who a couple weeks before my court appearance, had gotten drunk, smashed her car into her partners', pulled her partner out through the driver's side window and beat the crap out of her was in attendance at my hearing. When I had the charges dropped and plead to a single misdemeanor with no jail time, she stood up in the back of the courtroom yelling, "Dat ain't right, he's gotta hang for what he did"
My advice? Don't date drinkers and don't call the police. Go for a walk.
MM
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