Ed Murder is fine ... if you're a woman

[jiggeryqua]

I don't see anything in this thread that supports the idea that murder is acceptable if you're a woman. OP, can you clarify that concept a bit for me?

I see plenty of people arguing that attitudes to domestic violence should be determined on a case by case basis depending on the gender of those taking action.

I see posters supporting lethal force as an acceptable solution to physical conflict. I haven't taken the time to establish whether the same people who support the use of lethal force by women (who are, of course, always victims, because they are less than men) are the the same people who condemn the apparant, claimed (but disputed) gender imbalance of domestic lethality. I'm all for equality, but there are two ways to reach it. Women could kill more, but men killing less is better.

[Let's ignore lesbian and gay DV, since it muddies the gender waters, and this is one of the front lines of the gender war]

I see people linking to women's aid. The group who responded to the scottish government funding research into F>M DV by saying it never happened, and the money could have been spent on women. It happens. It's commonplace, it's cultural. I know...

I probably deserved it . I didn't kill her, but I did leave, because she might easily have killed me. Leaving isn't easy - but we expect men to do it, and acknowledge (?) that women won't (because they're muddle-headed fillies who can't manage for themselves?).

Domestic violence is not a gender issue. If you want to throw up another disputed, contentious, possibly fraudulent study to support sexism (but good sexism), can we also see statistics broken down for race, or star sign, or hair colour?

 

[A Laughing Baby]

I see plenty of people arguing that attitudes to domestic violence should be determined on a case by case basis depending on the gender of those taking action.

I see posters supporting lethal force as an acceptable solution to physical conflict. I haven't taken the time to establish whether the same people who support the use of lethal force by women (who are, of course, always victims, because they are less than men) are the the same people who condemn the apparant, claimed (but disputed) gender imbalance of domestic lethality. I'm all for equality, but there are two ways to reach it. Women could kill more, but men killing less is better.

[Let's ignore lesbian and gay DV, since it muddies the gender waters, and this is one of the front lines of the gender war]

I see people linking to women's aid. The group who responded to the scottish government funding research into F>M DV by saying it never happened, and the money could have been spent on women. It happens. It's commonplace, it's cultural. I know...

I probably deserved it . I didn't kill her, but I did leave, because she might easily have killed me. Leaving isn't easy - but we expect men to do it, and acknowledge (?) that women won't (because they're muddle-headed fillies who can't manage for themselves?).

Domestic violence is not a gender issue. If you want to throw up another disputed, contentious, possibly fraudulent study to support sexism (but good sexism), can we also see statistics broken down for race, or star sign, or hair colour?

None of this supports the idea that murder is acceptable for females to commit, nor does it have anything to do with what I said!

 

[Travis]

Well I know that as a white male 18-45 I live in perpetual fear of those terrible brutal women who might break my fragile bones and force me to live in a world where I make less money for the same work.

 

[SanityGap]

Actually, it's not just me who says it.

flow.http://www.huffingtonpost.com/glenn-sacks/researcher-says-womens-in_b_222746.html

There are more scholarly articles but I'm in a hurry and I don't wish to wade through all the stupid "Men's movement" rubbish that seems to cloud this debate..

Point taken.

Bottom line, though women initiate DV as frequently as men, they are about 2/3rds more likely to suffer injury. Men simply strike back harder. The best predictor of whether a woman will be injured by her partner is how frequently she uses violence.



Your friends (and mine) had a more intimate knowledge of your relationship than a jury would. How about if you were dead and unable to defend yourself in court while she sat in the stand and went on about 10 years of emotional and physical abuse?.

Dead=not bothered. Again point taken. I would imagine this happens but that any data could be skewed due to the difficulties of assessing the dead partners version of events.

I both feel your pain and know your joy. My ex decided to become a lesbian. Our breakup was the greatest thing that could have ever happened for me, and I imagine you had much the same sense of relief while your ex was jumping ship.



Actually the article simply begs the question. Other than her assertion, there appears to be no evidence (at least not in that article) of 20 years of mistreatment. The total lack of skepticism of that claim is, as I've said before, indicative of the general public's willingness to believe without any supporting evidence a woman's claims of victimization. Had a man been on trial for murder, after 20 years of the same abuse alleged by this woman, would the jury have been so lenient? Would the press have simply repeated his assertion without mountains of evidence to support it?

This is not just about the court case. The very nature of the article and it's total lack of skepticism in re the killers suffering exposes the horribly slanted public perception of domestic violence in the west.

The article is a short journalists piece on what I assume was a long trial with much evidence. The article not taking a skeptical view is par for the course for most journalists.
Press bias around cases such as this is again par for the course.

Domestic violence is a serious problem. Because it has been hijacked by groups steeped in identity politics it has been turned into a "women's issue". That's BS. I had a woman working for me a few years back. I'll not mince words, she was a very butch lesbian. Her very fem GF regularly abused her. She came to work with a huge bruise on her throat one day (Kicked in the throat by her partner). I asked her if she called the cops. Yes, she had, but nothing came of it because the police are stuck in the mindset that men are perpetrators of violence. Sucks when your a victim of one, though.

Violence is violence. Totally agree, it should not be tolerated from either sex.

 

[jiggeryqua]

None of this supports the idea that murder is acceptable for females to commit, nor does it have anything to do with what I said!

Actually, the first paragraph directly addressed it, but I concede I then ran with the ball.

 

[A Laughing Baby]

Actually, the first paragraph directly addressed it, but I concede I then ran with the ball.

Domestic violence is tangential at best to the concept that is implied in the OP's title, i.e. that all murder is acceptable purely on the basis of being a woman. That he then proceeds to qualify it in the thread with the circumstance of domestic violence in one specific case lends little to no credibility toward his initial premise put forth in the title, which is what I'm taking issue with. It's misleading and hyperbolic.

 

[jiggeryqua]

Violence is violence. Totally agree, it should not be tolerated from either sex.

I can't now remember who was behind the posters and ads saying "End Domestic Violence Against Women", about the time I was working out how to walk away without losing everything (and, I confess, imagining killing her, not as a logical, rational response but as an emotional, needful, simplistic answer).

They could easily have read "End Domestic Violence Against Women", but that wasn't apparantly what those responsible wanted...

 

[joesixpack]

Well I know that as a white male 18-45 I live in perpetual fear of those terrible brutal women who might break my fragile bones and force me to live in a world where I make less money for the same work.

Actually, you should be in fear of a partner who has the upper hand in court. The mere allegations of DV against a man have immediate and very severe repercussions, regardless of your innocence.

What you should fear is being stripped of your property, future earnings, and access to your child by a woman with the full support of the public opinion and law enforcement.

 

[jiggeryqua]

Domestic violence is tangential at best to the concept that is implied in the OP's title, i.e. that all murder is acceptable purely on the basis of being a woman. That he then proceeds to qualify it in the thread with the circumstance of domestic violence in one specific case lends little to no credibility toward his initial premise put forth in the title, which is what I'm taking issue with. It's misleading and hyperbolic.

No, DV is the topic. You serve yourself (and why not, eh ) by pretending that your interpretation of the thread title defines the discussion that follows.

I'm reminded of a stall I ran across at a green fayre in the NE of england, manned eek: womanned) by the supporters of an organisation advocating equality for female murderers of their male spouses. Apparantly, men 'snap' and are excused by patriarchal judges, whereas women fester and then stab the guy while he sleeps, which the law doesn't recognise as self-defence. They wanted equality = women get away with it too, rather than equality = men don't either. Their message was the thread title.

But let's take your self-serving wider interpretation for a moment. 'Patriarchy' sees women as fragrant victims and men as brutes, who need gentlemen to show them the error of their ways. Judges are patriarchal (or we've achieved equality and gender isn't an issue now. I'm prepared to accept any unsupported claim to that effect). Patriarchal judges will excuse women and condemn men, broadly speaking (though that does undermine the concept of 'patriarchy'...)

 

[joesixpack]

None of this supports the idea that murder is acceptable for females to commit, nor does it have anything to do with what I said!

He didn't say Murder was acceptable, he said MUREDER was acceptable.

You just got OWNED!

 

[sadhatter]

Do you really think a man would have a murder charge reduced to manslaughter with a suspended sentence if the genders were reversed? Call me skeptical on that one.



I'm still unclear where is was clearly demonstrated that victim was the initiator of the violence. Was there a part of the article that I missed?


Certainly the police will respond and arrest the man (unless he's a cop, but that's another discussion). Here in the US at least, if a woman calls the police because she is beaten by her husband he will go to jail. Not certain clear that this ever happened in the 20 year marriage, at least not by that story.




Again, you apply zero skepticism to the claim that he was an abuser. And even if there was a history of violence in that home, I fail to see how homicide was the only reasonable recourse.

Again, ask yourself if you honestly think a man could pull off this defense successfully in a murder trial, or if the press would glibly repeat his assertions of abuse without a mountain of evidence to prove it to the readers.

To answer your points in order.

Yes, i do, if a pattern of abuse could be shown, and the guy was willing to admit this, i believe he would be treated fairly in court, but possibly damned in the court of public opinion. If you can show evidence to the contrary , feel free to do so.

This issue goes beyond the specific case. It is known that abuse occurs, it is known women get put into trickbags where they cannot leave, this case is not the first, nor only case of spousal abuse. This case, in and of itself may be complete bunk, but it does not change the fact that there are many women in the situation people are describing.

Yeah, he will get put in jail for a couple of days, make bail, and then be a threat to the woman again. Abusers get by , by knowing the system and how to manipulate it. It is why abuse is generally limited to things that would not get the person an aggravated assault charge. They are not the knuckle draggers we like to think, they have a level of sketchy guile that lets them keep people under their thumb. What do you think happens in these situations? The guy is arrested, kept until trial, with no ability for bail, and a guaranteed conviction for a long enough period of time for the wife to re locate? Sorry brother, but they get the same rights as anyone else charged with a crime, and unfortunately a side effect of this is that they can be on the street quick enough to catch up with the wife and give her what's for, for calling the cops. Maybe he will get arrested again, and maybe they will raise the bail enough that he can't scrape up the coin, but those are a lot of maybes to risk your life for.

This case is not the only case of spousal abuse ever. This can and does happen, trying to make a point that maybe, in this case, it didn't , has no bearing on the premise as a whole.

Depends on the guy, your thinking of some giant muscle bound gent, and a 90 pound wife. Reverse the situation, a guy my size (120-130, 5'7) and a larger woman ( and tell me you don't see this combination a lot in places where spousal abuse is more common, i dare ya.) , not only would this get the same coverage, but more, as it is a Man Bites Dog story.

But the fact is guys don't like to report this type of stuff. I am guilty of this just as much as the next guy, i have been threatened with weapons, hell even let a girl strike me at the bar, for the simple reason that my ego wouldn't let me report stuff like this. Maybe the cops would have responded, maybe they wouldn't, but with the way guys think, we arn't giving them a chance.

 

[bookitty]

I understand mitigating circumstance and would agree that it should be valid as part of the defense but these women are walking free with no real punishment. To me this just seems to encourage this kind of thing. Also, what happens when there was no real abuse but it's used as an excuse to get away with murder?

From the OP:

has become the third battered wife in seven years to avoid jail for manslaughter.

The third in seven years. Go look at the statistics for battered partners. In the last seven years there have been thousands, hundreds of thousands of incidents. Three of those have lead to manslaughter and the perpetrators avoided jail. We do not know the circumstances of the other two. We also do not know how many times abuse has been presented as a defense but did not result in lack of jail time.

The study of and response to spousal/partner abuse should be removed from gender - not only for men but also for the LGBT community. It would be better to do this with factual information instead of a single, nearly unique anecdote.

 

[jiggeryqua]

It would be better to do this with factual information instead of a single, nearly unique anecdote.

But we're talking about law. Single, nearly unique anecdotes facts become precedent.

 

[A Laughing Baby]

No, DV is the topic. You serve yourself (and why not, eh ) by pretending that your interpretation of the thread title defines the discussion that follows.

I'm reminded of a stall I ran across at a green fayre in the NE of england, manned eek: womanned) by the supporters of an organisation advocating equality for female murderers of their male spouses. Apparantly, men 'snap' and are excused by patriarchal judges, whereas women fester and then stab the guy while he sleeps, which the law doesn't recognise as self-defence. They wanted equality = women get away with it too, rather than equality = men don't either. Their message was the thread title.

But let's take your self-serving wider interpretation for a moment. 'Patriarchy' sees women as fragrant victims and men as brutes, who need gentlemen to show them the error of their ways. Judges are patriarchal (or we've achieved equality and gender isn't an issue now. I'm prepared to accept any unsupported claim to that effect). Patriarchal judges will excuse women and condemn men, broadly speaking (though that does undermine the concept of 'patriarchy'...)

I'm sorry, but with all due respect, you're literally making an argument for me and then responding to it, when I haven't put one forward with regard to domestic violence.

Here's what I'm saying. If you view the title of this thread in a decontextualized fashion--as you would if you were looking at the forum--it would appear to make the argument that murder is acceptable if you are a woman. This is unconditional, and quite frankly, it's a blatant falsehood.

Thankfully, once one clicks on the thread, it is made clear that the OP is referring to domestic violence...Just kidding. Here is the entirety of the OP's personal comments:

It would seem murders fine if your a woman. I guess men's lives mean nothing in our modern societies.

What follows is a one-sentence snippet from a news article which discusses an alleged victim of domestic violence. This does little if anything to separate the discussion (ostensibly, response to domestic violence as a mitigating factor in violent crimes) from the feasible argument presented in the OP/thread title (murder is unconditionally acceptable if a woman is a murderer/if a woman kills a man).

Please note that I make no argument regarding feminism, patriarchy, or domestic violence whatsoever, despite your repeated attempts to read my thoughts as such. I have made no claims regarding any of the above and continue to do so. I am merely speaking against the incredibly misleading premise this thread begins from. I assure you that I am not speaking in one side of this debate or the other, though from your post it would seem that I have.

It would seem to me (and I mean this in as impersonal a fashion I can muster) that you have been deeply offended or irritated by someone arguing for feminism or against the patriarchy or some such, and are now projecting that past or present argument onto my posts. Again, I am making no such arguments and am merely stating an objection to the framing of the discussion at hand.

 

[bookitty]

But we're talking about law. Single, nearly unique anecdotes facts become precedent.

If the OP had proven a trend in spousal abuse being used to forgive murder, based on a single case, that might be valid. But, as I said, we have no way of knowing how many times this defense was used, how often it succeeded, or whether women were more likely to use it.

 

[joesixpack]

The study of and response to spousal/partner abuse should be removed from gender - not only for men but also for the LGBT community.

I agree 100%. Unfortunately those in the identity politics industry see it as an erosion of their powers.

 

[bookitty]

I agree 100%. Unfortunately those in the identity politics industry see it as an erosion of their powers.

The identity politics industry? Big gender?

 

[jj]

Well I believe that the temporary insanity plea is BS for one. Also, people leave abusive relationships without killing people all the time. And lastly all the abuse I've seen in my life has come at the hands of women not men so I take the idea that men are more abusive than women with a grain of salt.

So, you are denying outright everything others have said in this thread, you haven't considered others' points, and you're just repeating your position over and over?

That's not dialog.

 

[jj]

The government wouldn't even allow research into male victims of domestic abuse until just the last few years.

Uh, which government, where, citation please.

 

[jj]

Sexual violence against men and boys is also widely ignored, but this is just leading into oppression olympics here.

Are you perchance referring to the cruelty that boys show to each other?