Not sorry not sorry
The Guardian cautiously mentions that inciting violence against women may not be entirely admirable.
The government’s lead adviser on domestic abuse has written to the editor of the Sun to condemn the newspaper’s decision to publish a front page interview with JK Rowling’s first husband, under the headline: “I slapped JK and I’m not sorry.”
In the letter seen by the Guardian, Nicole Jacobs, the independent domestic abuse commissioner, said it was “unacceptable that the Sun has chosen to repeat and magnify the voice of someone who openly admits to violence against a partner”.
Of someone? A partner? It was a man who openly brags of hitting a woman and saying he would do it again. It’s not a gender-neutral someone who brags of hitting and it’s not a gender-neutral partner he does it to. It’s a man doing it to a woman. If we can’t name these specifics we don’t even know what we’re talking about – everything becomes random and mystifying and unfixable.
“The media can play a vital role in shining a light on this issue and bringing it out of the shadows, but articles such as this one instead feed the shame that so many survivors will feel every day, minimising their experiences and allowing perpetrators to continue to abuse without fear of consequence,” Jacobs wrote to Victoria Newton, who was appointed the Sun’s editor in February.
“I am troubled knowing that this article comes at a particularly difficult and dangerous time for victims and survivors, many of whom are being forced to stay under lockdown conditions with their perpetrator. The huge increases in calls to helplines is testament to that.”
Still all gender-neutral language – thus drawing a tactful veil over the fact that this is overwhelmingly a crime against women by men, on account of how men have a large physical advantage and a bigger supply of available aggression.
Domestic abuse claims the lives of around 100 people every year, and last year there were 2.4 million adult victims.
The Guardian too: gender-neutral.
Don’t say “women.” It never pays.
Finally, someone does say it.
Jane Keeper, the director of operations at Refuge, said: “The front page of the Sun this morning is as irresponsible as it is disappointing.
“It would ordinarily be troubling for such an editorial decision to be made – but to run with this during lockdown, when demand to Refuge’s national domestic abuse helpline have increased by 66%, is shocking. What this has done is give national media coverage to a perpetrator of domestic abuse to attempt to justify his actions.
“It is never acceptable to hit a woman. The first ‘slap’ can lead to a pattern of violence – and domestic abuse is against the law.”
And it’s evil and wrong.
Jess Phillips, the Labour MP for Birmingham Yardley, tweeted that the Sun headline was “awful”.
Gillian Martin, a member of the Scottish parliament, wrote on Twitter that the article would be “beyond triggering for many abuse survivors, and enabling to abusers”.
“It is irresponsible and dangerous. I could weep for the way women are treated by the tabloid press – still – in 2020,” she said.
Tabloids on the one hand and Guardianists on the other. Women can’t catch a break.
I was told when I was a very young lad, that tabloids were complete bullshit and not worth paying attention to. Good to see that advice still serves me well all these years later. I still haven’t opened one up, the covers are enough to dismiss them entirely. It’s utter rubbish, and the people who contribute to it are beneath contempt.
My own father was in many ways was an overgrown child. He used to get ‘abusive’ with my mother, which is to say he would beat her up. He did this not once, but many times. He also had another side to his personality, open, friendly, very generous, and with a great sense of humour. But I never forgot his violent side, nor ever forgave him for it. It destroyed our relationship, and fathers are important to sons.
His first violent episode caught me completely by surprise, at the age of ten. The sounds of thumping, yelling and smashing of furniture brought me out of my attic room and down the stairs to see what it was all about, to find my mother battered about the face. With me in private later my father told his side of the story and attempted to justify himself. “But you should not have hit her, Dad” was all I could say. He was very remorseful, and said “I know, I know”. But then it happened again, and again, and again; right to the door of the divorce court. No siblings involved. And I did not want to talk about it to adults, not even to my mother’s brother, an uncle I idolised and who became my male role model.
My parents did not divorce. After a fashion, they ‘reconciled’, and lived together in the same house for a further 39 years; but without too much in the way of open affection for one another, and my father constantly making little jokes at my mother’s expense; which she got very tired of. But, for lack of anything better or a career of her own, she stuck it out.
I can only say that my father’s time of violence also had a profound effect on my own life, causing me to lose interest in school and to abandon my childhood ambition to become a veterinarian; becoming something of a vocational drifter instead.
Nothing, repeat nothing raises me to white hot anger as quickly as a man assaulting a woman. No excuses. I might add here that in the course of 28 years of martial arts training, I have met some pretty skilful and formidable females, who I would advise any bloke to stay very much on the right side of, and who earned themselves a lot of respect, both on the mat and off it. I also give women concerned for their safety when out in public tips on pretty cheap and simple yet devastating one-shot weaponry that can never be captured by an assailant and turned against them. No firearms involved. Details on request.
Ouch. That’s excruciating, Omar. I can imagine few things worse for a child than to have to witness and live with that. The part about constantly making little jokes at her expense is…[shudder].
Sorry Omar, that’s a rough thing for a young person. I have some similar experience, not physical so much but the animosity and verbal and implied physical abuse that was terrifying when I was young. My father could be awful at times for no reason, along with some other unsavory characters I was exposed to back then. So I am of a similar mindset, and whenever I encounter males abusing women or children I feel extremely vengeful. There is nothing worse than a man assaulting a woman or a child, and I retaliate on their behalf, violently if necessary, which runs completely against my nature of being a peaceful and cooperative person. It irks me to no end. Being largely powerless to do anything as a child, I remember wanting to be an adult so badly, so I could do something, and as I approached adulthood it caused me no small amount of trouble, but I was relentless. Now I’m an old guy, but I still don’t tolerate abuse and when I encounter it, I still tend to stick my nose where it doesn’t belong, and I’ll probably regret it at some point, but haven’t yet. I have never gone looking for trouble, but it does seem to show up from time to time. :)
I grew up in a household where I was hit – a lot. I was the favored punching bag because I didn’t fight back. I was not as strong as my mother or my siblings. My brother did some of the hitting, and when he hit me, I wouldn’t breathe sometimes for several seconds because he would hit me across the back, right across my lungs. I have seen other women beaten; sometimes they were doing something that made the man mad, sometimes the man was just mad and hit the woman and then claimed she did something that made him mad. Even in the few cases where I thought what the woman did was sufficient to make someone mad (it usually wasn’t, but was just her not bowing and scraping to him enough), I never, ever felt it justified him hitting her.
I have only on one occasion experienced a woman hitting a man. My sister had never been beaten by my brother because she was big enough and mean enough to not take his guff, but one time, he forgot and whacked her. He got a bloody nose for his trouble; she got a broken rib.
The pretense that women hit men more than men hit women is bogus, and the pretense that some women are just asking for it is bogus. And the pretense that it is okay to hit someone because they express a view you don’t like is bogus.
Wow, Ikn, that’s pretty violent, sorry to hear. When I was young my sister and I were equally terrrified and it was more like we were allied, and hid from the violent chaos that was our folks fighting, screaming, throwing things… I had an uncle too who would chase my cousins down and smack them. I despised him for his drunken rages. I learned pretty early on how I didn’t want to be, it was ugly and scary, and I’m so glad I grew out of it and became strong enough to defend myself and others against that kind of horrifying abuse. I have no tolerance for it.
OB and twilighter: Thanks. Much appreciated.
iknklast:
I have heard that it goes on; unconfirmed. But my ex hit me once; a slap on the back of the head, on the baseless charge that she thought I’d had too much to drink. I was just a bit merry, that was all. I should have taken my case to the Human Rights Commission, and on to the UN.
Too forgiving; that’s my trouble.
Omar, I have heard it goes on, too. I simply have not experienced it, and coming from a world where people were always hitting people, and the women were hitting people constantly, I would have expected to see more of that if it was common. The women in my family hit women. The men in my family hit women. And every case of domestic violence I know of was men hitting women. The cases where I am aware of women hitting male-bodied people involved child abuse, women beating their sons, not women hitting adult men.
Again, this is not scientific, it is merely my observation. We may be an unusual family. I wish I believed we were, as that sort of violence and fear is not something children should have to encounter.