Violence tends to escalate because of this---what starts off as a slap here or a shove there can turn into full-blown beatings over time.

I think this statement is what ties it all together. If I did something terrible in a relationship like cheat on someone or betray her, then getting slapped or having my car window broken out of anger from the wronged party doesn’t seem, in and of itself, like something out of line. It might not seem like a big deal: after all, it’s only a car window/it’s only a momentary pain/etc. and after all it makes sense that someone would get extremely angry and lose control. But over time, if this becomes the dynamic of acceptable behavior, it becomes a battering situation unless the boundaries are drawn immediately. This is how abusive relationships happen to normal people: the steps you took to get there didn’t seem to be over the line until you wake up one morning and realize that it’s escalated into something you never thought you would tolerate. And maybe it even looks the same way from the other side: what starts off like a momentary loss of control and attendant guilt on the part of the violent party starts to become part of the violent person’s normal behavior: over time they train themselves to stop holding themselves back and start to justify their violent reactions as normal.

Huh. Maybe I am naive, but somehow I don’t understand why everyone is just assuming she was attacking him with the golf club. It makes a nice story, but at this point, if both people deny it and there isn’t any physical evidence to prove otherwise, can’t we just take their story at face value?

Also, I do think there’s a difference between certain types of abuse in relationships. Many of my friends had fathers who were classic batterers, and it definitely has a certain set of patterns, all centering around the man wanting to control the women/children/etc.  It seemed like the only way to stop it was for the father to die/move to Guam/get threatened with public humiliation and jailtime/get so sick that he can’t get angry without worsening his heart condition. Unfortunately, some of these women seem to wind up with bfs/husbands who follow the same pattern :(.

But I’ve also seen some couples that throw things, shove each other, and basically are in a volatile out-of-control spiral--both people are behaving in a really ugly way and skirting on the edges of violence. One or the other should leave, pronto, because that is the sign of a BAD relationship and it will escalate.  But then they break up, and in the next relationship they’re not like that, and seem to describe it as a kind of bad dream.  I’m not sure that second category fits with the first, but it definitely seems like a different pattern. And I don’t know if it’s about control in the same way, and if the people involved are as likely to repeat offend.

Amanda, I mostly agree with everything you said, except that I think your point 2 is a stretch:

Glenn Beck, in a show of racism that was shocking even for him, actually equated cheating on your wife with murdering your wife.  Beck’s belief that women’s lives have very little value was laid bare there.  Apparently, being a wife is more important than being alive for women, in his book.  If your husband can’t be a good husband, you might as well be dead for all the value you have in his eyes.

Yes, Beck nurses a constant disdain for women, as he does for blacks, gays, liberals, and basically, anyone. However, I think what was laid bare is that Beck believes that every black man is, essentially, an animal. There is no difference in his mind between Tiger Woods cheating on his wife with numerous women, and OJ stalking and murdering his ex-wife, because to him, I believe, it’s all wild animal actions. Cheat, kill, steal, whatever. Yes, a wife is chattel, in his statement, but I don’t get the “more important to be a wife than alive” statement.

I understand and agree with your overall argument, I just think you’re really trying to force Beck’s twisted, racist logic into another frame, altogether.

That Jezebel piece was weird. It was a bit muddled, but a key premise seemed to be that it was okay to see a dude brutally beaten by another dude on MTV, but not a dude beating a woman. Put me in the “no reality TV beatdowns” column. It’s bad enough that these shows are union-busting, they shouldn’t be gladiatorial combat.

Guys who complain about the “never hit a woman” rule remind me of whites who bitch about the fact that black people can use the n-word and they can’t. Why the hell would you want to? I’m all for the “never hit anyone except in proportionate self defense” rule. But “never hit a woman” is halfway there.

If men and women are going to live together in egalitarian relationships, physical force by the guy has to be taboo (over and above the general moral prohibition against violence, which is a prerequisite for any healthy relationship). The reality is that in >90% of opposite sex pairs, the dude would easily win in a fight. Violence has to be unthinkable for an egalitarian relationship to work. Otherwise, the woman always knows in the back of her mind that she’s only equal as long as the guy decides not to get physical.

Domestic violence is yet another example of the patriarchy hurting men. Not only does it give male batterers free reign to terrorize their victims, it stigmatizes male victims of female battery. The retrograde implication is that you wouldn’t get beat if you were a real man who controlled his woman It’s not feminism that makes cops laugh at men who report domestic violence.

Tyro, I don’t think that’s exactly what I was saying.  I was pointing out that violence escalates by plan---the abuser starts small to warm you up.  I don’t necessarily think someone pops off in response to infidelity in nearly the same way.  But I agree that if a beating “works”, that might encourage someone who just popped off to become more deliberate.

Huh. Maybe I am naive, but somehow I don’t understand why everyone is just assuming she was attacking him with the golf club. It makes a nice story, but at this point, if both people deny it and there isn’t any physical evidence to prove otherwise, can’t we just take their story at face value?

But there does seem to be some evidence proving otherwise.  Doesn’t it seem weird to you that she would break out the back window of his car to “rescue” him after a fender-bender?  The story as it stands doesn’t really hold up as a logical series of events.

Mnemosyne,
I guess I haven’t really followed the details...i didn’t know that it was the back window. All I knew was that Woods put out a statement saying her attacking him was preposterous or something, and that the police didn’t find any reason to file a DV report.  I guess I just assumed that whatever went on, it wouldn’t be obvious that it was domestic violence or the police would say something.

As for the weirdness--yes it does seem weird. Something weird went on, for sure, but I am just hesitant to say it follows that she probably attacked him with a golf club.  There could be other weird, sketchy reasons or sequences of events, so I have enough uncertainty I wouldn’t just casually say “yep, she hit him with a golf club.”

would argue that assaulting a cheater is motivated by the belief that you own them sexually.

Partially this, and partially a vengefully-wounded/betrayed “You hurt me, so I’ll hurt you” reaction.  Which doesn’t have to be ownership-based---a “you promised you wouldn’t and then you did” violation of trust could have the same result, albeit less often as it’s a bigger stretch from hurt ---> angry ---> violent rather than insulted/cheated ---> angry ---> violent.  Entitlement does lend itself better to anger and violence.  I can’t say for sure which Elin Nordegren was feeling any more than I know what the actual (rather than alleged) events were, though.  But it’s not always entitlement/ownership that leads to violence.

Another emotional state potentially conducive to violence would be a view of it as a way to gain control of a situation in which one’s lack of control is especially distressing, even if control was never an issue before---a person whose significant other cheats may feel zie has lost any agency in the relationship, and be seeking to compensate.

Mr. Woods’ attempt to save his career is the reason he came up with the ridiculous story about her “brave and courageous actions” (I think that’s the quote) that night.  He was trying to save his wife and children from further damage that his past actions would cause, even if the domestic violence stuff was clearly her responsibility (as far as I can tell.) If the police didn’t have a ridiculous story that Tiger came up with a few days later, they would have had to arrest his wife, which would have instantly brought about a lot of bimbo eruptions and other news events.  So, in that twisted way, because of Tiger’s celebrity and his attempts to maintain it, his wife got away with attacking him.

He can say to himself that he didn’t report it for the children’s sake, and that’s the dilemma every battered or attacked-just-this-once spouse will have.  My (now ex) wife slapped me once, and we were never as close after that.  I know I was right to not report the assault to the police, as it really would have fucked up about four lives for not enough of a good reason (in my case,) but I really should have known at that time just how much it meant.  The last two years together weren’t the same, and it certainly wasn’t just because of that, but that one incident should have been a more obvious clue than I took it to be.

This is just wild speculation bit maybe it was Tiger’s mom, not his wife, who was initially involved. That would also explain why both Tiger and his wife refused to talk to the police.

Brilliant post, Amanda.

I would argue that assaulting a cheater is motivated by the belief that you own them sexually.  This is unfortunately how a lot of people---the majority even---think of monogamy in our culture, which is why I think there’s a deplorable lack of taking the allegations of domestic violence seriously.

I don’t disagree with this statement.  I think it’s a pretty accurate assessment of troubled cultural attitudes toward monogamy.

However, I wish it were more common to think of cheating as a form of violence, too.  Not because of the emotional betrayal (although that’s worth taking seriously) but because cheating can introduce serious and lasting harm to the body of the cheated-on partner in the form of disease.  So I think it’s worth bringing into the conversation that some people might respond to infidelity with violence because the infidelity itself was perceived as a kind of assault - the introduction of strange matter into the relationship without one partner’s knowledge or consent.  This doesn’t excuse vengeful violence, but puts it into a fairer perspective IMHO.

Infidelity is a breach of contract,

There are breaches of contract like bad/fraudulent business dealings with strangers/acquaintances and then there are BREACHES OF CONTRACT when it happens to friends, family, and especially one’s spouse when there was a promise of a monogamous relationship. 

While they are both sketchy in terms of the level of dishonesty, one reason why many people feel so strongly about infidelity is the perception among them that breaching contracts, especially marital ones where the promise of monogamy is present, between two married couples is far beyond the pale than a normal breach of contract.  The latter version is considered far more beyond the pale than the former from what I’ve observed of many people. 

If someone is willing to breach a contract with his/her spouse...presumably someone who is the closest intimate person....how trustworthy could s(he) be when dealing with family, friends, or especially complete strangers? I don’t know about you all, but I know plenty of people who would have second thoughts on business dealings, determining someone’s fitness to hold political office, or other activities requiring a high degree of integrity/trust with a known cheater.

Tyro, I don’t think that’s exactly what I was saying.  I was pointing out that violence escalates by plan---the abuser starts small to warm you up.

I am sure that for some experienced abusers, it does start off as a plan, but I think many (most?) people commit these sorts of acts in a moment of passion and, when they don’t get pushback or punishment, start to regard that as normal-- sort of a “darkening of the soul.” Batterers aren’t born; they’re made.

Amanda, thanks for this. I was beginning to wonder if I was the only one who was bothered by the domestic violence angle here. Especially when you hear people making jokes about “oh, if that were my husband I’d go after him with a golf club too” like bashing someone’s head in with a 9-iron is perfectly acceptable behavior.

Mnemosyne, it actually makes more sense that she’d try to rescue him by smashing out the back window. Windshields are damn near impossible to smash, and if you smash the driver’s side or passenger side window, you shatter glass all over the person you’re trying to get to. In my mind, if you’re trying to attack someone you’d smash the nearest window (it’d intimidate them and the shattering glass would probably cut them, plus you’d be closer to your target). So I can buy the story that she panicked and smashed in the back window in an attempt to rescue him.

Tyro @14:

I think the problem is that people are pre-conditioned to have these “moments of passion.” In a sense, this is the problem with industrialized romance: The idea that the one you love should love you the same way, or at least be consistently loyal to you. The idea has its charm. What happens is a question of perverse empathy: A man knows that he, under similar circumstances, would feel temptation, disagreement and attraction to other people. Therefore, he tries to condition the woman out of what he himself would feel. At best, it’s a sort of ugly self-preservation.

Batterers aren’t born; they’re made.

In more ways than one.  My father-in-law is having a hell of a time trying to raise my now 16-year-old nephew because not only is he very volatile (ADHD and bipolar is an ugly combination when it comes to impulse control), he grew up watching his parents constantly fight and learned that the way you get someone to do what you want is by hitting them.  They’ve been trying to unteach that lesson with years of therapy, but when he gets angry enough to act without thinking, that’s his default position.  Conversely, it also puts him at danger of being the abused one in a relationship since it seems totally normal to him that someone he loves would scream at him and hit him.

Really good article. I might be biased (my relationship has been poly for about two to three years now), but I’ve always thought there was something a little off with uncritical monogamy (meaning the acceptance of monogamy without any conscious thought to the action) and a lot of the baggage of “traditional” relationship structures and this outlines a big major problem pretty well.

I think there is this sort of dual “I’m trapped"/"I own the person” dynamic that people can fall into if they aren’t really thinking about their relationship on any deep level. Basically that people limit their options with really bad “frameworks” of how their relationship is supposed to go and who’s doing what and convince themselves that they are buying as a benefit the complete loyalty and more importantly fealty of the other person, but the lack of individuality and options and ignoring of people for the sake of relationships often leads to all sorts of bad behavior (cheating, growing to resent a partner but not talking things out with them, escalating abuse, engineering a breakup by mistreating a partner, or demonstrating individuality and non-"whipped"ness by exaggerating toxic masculinity behavior).

There’s nothing wrong with monogamy, but there’d probably be less problems if people were more honest and open and figured out what relationship structure works best for them rather than just defaulting to “how things have always been done”.

Excellent post. That is all.

I don’t know about you all, but I know plenty of people who would have second thoughts on business dealings, determining someone’s fitness to hold political office, or other activities requiring a high degree of integrity/trust with a known cheater.

The advantage of being cynical is that you expect people to cheat, and are then pleasantly surprised when they don’t.

I guess where I’m coming from is that if I spent tens of thousands of dollars on sex parties with, over the years, a dozen plus hookup girls, I can’t really say I’d blame my wife for rage associated with the humiliation she was suffering. 

That said, if you are blowing tens of thousands of dollars on sex parties with, over the years, a dozen plus hookup girls, and your wife is so enraged by this that she hit you, that means your relationship is pretty much over.  Because it’s not that Tiger doesn’t deserve a beating; there’s a good case for that.  But there’s no way he deserves to share a bed with someone who beat him.  That’s just awfulness.

I don’t know about Tiger’s mouth wounds, but if Elin just took a golf club to the car and not to Tiger’s person it’s a much different thing. If she blew up that one time and trashed an inanimate object that they can afford to replace 100 times over… it’s not great behavior, but I think it’s forgivable given the circumstances.

I like this a lot:

“Feminists should demand the end of the monogamous mindset, the belief that a vow of fidelity equals ownership over another person’s sexual behavior.”

I dunno about that last part, Amanda, one can think of approaching sex using misdirection (cheating) as a type of assault; because now they’ve been exposed to risks they did not think they were taking - like suddenly finding out that your sexual partner was filming your sex and posting it on the internets or something.  It’s not ownership so much as assault.  And that often elicits a violent response, whether or not it is (at that moment) appropriate.

Second thing, I don’t really thing we should use OJ Simpson as an example because of how deeply the cops fucked that case up.  If they had suspected him so directly to be sneaking around his house, why weren’t they questioning or arresting him?  We’ll never know the truth because of all of that; never know what evidence was real or imagined, and what evidence was lost because it wasn’t preserved correctly.

I don’t think presuming to know the truth in the OJ case is any different than presuming to know the truth in Tiger Woods’ case right now.  At least the latter case is less important:  All we have is property damage.

Although I’m not sure where to draw the line between a case like this where we have circumstantial evidence that some violence did occur, but the victim will not come forward.  Since the damage is such a small part of their total wealth, I would think to treat it more like if I and my spouse had an argument and damaged a plate in the kitchen.  It’s not something that would really put either of us out to fix.

Oh, and since I’m a little paranoid about seemingly attacking Amanda, I actually really think her post here is important, well-written and I agree with it near totally.

I’ve been having a bad week of people hearing completely what I didn’t intend in my words, and I’m a bit gun-shy today.

Domestic violence is yet another example of the patriarchy hurting men. Not only does it give male batterers free reign to terrorize their victims, it stigmatizes male victims of female battery. The retrograde implication is that you wouldn’t get beat if you were a real man who controlled his woman It’s not feminism that makes cops laugh at men who report domestic violence.

I’d extend that even further… it is the patriarchy that allows ANY violence against men to be more socially acceptable.

I say that as a male survivor of sexual assault at the hands of another male.  Not that opening up about sexual assault is easy for any victim, but there’s a ton of stigma associated with being a male who was sexually dominated by another male… it all happened when I was small child, but I was never emotionally capable of even admitting that it had happened until I was well into adulthood.  And even to this day, I’m still somewhat guarded about how and where I will talk about it, simply because I know the patriarchy dictates that I was a “pussy” (I hate that term when used in that way) for having been a victim - nevermind the fact that I was four years old and the perp was ten years older.  But even if I had been a teenager or even an adult, it would still be no less a case of assault, only the social stigma would probably be even worse, I imagine.  I’m aware of the fact that as difficult as it has been for me to open up about it because of patriarchal bullshit, it’s probably a ton harder for men who were victimized as adults.

Punditus, @21, did you even read the post?

How can you just smooth over this asshole’s premise, which is that his stupid female friend was violent and got him punched in the mouth by a bunch of guys even he says were squaring off against her, three against one, when he came out of the restroom? He apologized to the assholes who harassed her even though she was the one who in tears and upset. One guy can be intimidating enough, but three?

He wants to elevate some bar brawl to the same status as long-term domestic violence, even though it wasn’t his friend that caused this incident, and even though his last line is making an excuse----a ludicrous, ridiculous excuse---for the guys who harassed her and punched him: “I’m sure he thought, “I can’t hit a woman.” Which as you say is bullshit, but what’s the biggest pile of bullshit is that this guy is oh-so-certain that Elin Nordegrin is a husband-beating bitch, that men need to go form their own goddamned groups and websites and shelters if they really give a fuck, which of course they won’t because they don’t, and finally, for a mind reader like whatever this asshole’s name is, he sure doesn’t seem to grasp that it’s really fucking annoying the way men constantly invade feminist spaces and demand that we flatter and soothe and listen to them. They want us to do their emotional housework, basically.

Asshole devotes a lot of platitudes toward female-victim DV, but neither he nor you cite the offensive comments that whine about how evil women are--one guy gloats about how feminists would no doubt rejoice at the sight of his brother’s bloody body because he’s a MAN!----and how women should immediately fix this for men who---incidentally---never mention gay guys, transguys, etc., etc., ---only the perfect tit-for-tat situation where it’s some woman. And I can’t get over this Cord dude’s stunning indifference to his female friend while he tries to make it up to the guys who attacked her. I mean, why bother with the pretense that dumping her nachos on them was wrong? If three guys square off with a woman, you better believe they wouldn’t have a problem doing shit to a woman.

This is a really great post.

I have to pick a hole/ express some half-formed thoughts/maybe derail about one of your paragraphs though. I don’t think that the reason female-on-male violence feels different to male-on-female violence is cultural, or only cultural. I had a male friend who was being quite seriously abused by his female partner. She was burning him with cigarettes. And while I was obviously worried and concerned as hell for him, I was never afraid for his life. If that had been a female friend who was being treated like that by a male partner, I would have been.

Just the simple fact that he was a strong guy, easily powerful enough to pick me up and carry me around… well, I didn’t think he was suicidal, so I didn’t worry he’d be killed. And most of my worries for him centered on what his state of mind was, not on the fact that he had a crazy violent abuser in his life. Seemed to me that if his state of mind could be changed he’d be able to shake the abuser off. If that had been a heterosexual woman in that situation, then even if she managed to get herself thinking straight again then standing up to the abuser would still be a very dangerous thing to do. This is obviously not to excuse female perpretators of domestic violence, but of course it’s different, the strength difference makes sure of that. When you combine the strength difference with the cultural idea that women are men’s property, which makes violent men so much more likely to become stalkers… abusive [heterosexual] men are just hundreds of times more dangerous as well as dozens of times more common. Sorry for being so obvious but I felt like I had to say it.

And if that had been a guy attacking his cheating girlfriend with a golf club, even for the first time, she might not be alive to talk about it. (Is “crime passionelle” still a defense to murder in France?)

Also, if anyone can recommend some resources from non-crazy people on female-on-male domestic violence, I’d really appreciate it. I didn’t know how to talk to my friend about it because I felt so angry with him for “letting it happen” and although thankfully I managed not to express that, it still made me a shitty listener. I just couldn’t get into a headspace of how you can be intimidated by someone who can’t hurt you physically without your permission.

I agree with Amanda’s post but I also feel the nonchalance in the MSM over the allegations seems an extension of the dismissive attitude towards women, especially the type that’s aimed at beautiful women. Almost a cultural “Isn’t she cute when she’s angry?” Obviously no assault is cute. It feels like most talking heads focus on her beauty so of course that must mean you can’t take anything she does seriously. Not even assaulting her husband.

There really aren’t any; Warren Farrell has written some real bullshit on the subject, as has Cathy Young. Then there’s that Fong dude, who did shitloads of work for MRAs.

The gay community might have done something. Of course MRAs have done shit because they don’t give a shit. I’ve had to try and find shelter for genuinely abused guys---as opposed to those who seem to think harsh language to one’s lord and master--namely him----is twice as bad as breaking a woman’s arm---and in the process I’ve tried to get help from organizations that have gotten publicity about how evil feminazis are to male DV victims. One of these assholes, in fact, got quite the nice write up from Time Magazine, even though all of his exes and several of his kids had TORs against him at the time of the article.  He’s local here in the Twin Cities and when I got ahold of him and described the victim’s circumstances---in a wheelchair, disabled, etc., etc.,----he was cold and indifferent. He confirmed his identity and everything, but he just didn’t give a shit.

Second thing, I don’t really thing we should use OJ Simpson as an example because of how deeply the cops fucked that case up.  If they had suspected him so directly to be sneaking around his house, why weren’t they questioning or arresting him?

Umm, Nicole Brown Simpson had seperated from him specifically because of his domestic violence.  That the police never actually arrested him prior to charging him with her murder isn’t inherently indicative of his innocence, but very likely indicative of their deference to his celebrity status.  They were called to the Simpson home on many occcasions prior to the murders when the couple was still living together.

As an African-American, O.J. Simpson had a pretty big institutional strike against him in dealing with the criminal justice system.  As a wealthy and famous man, that strike against him was essentially nullified - because wealthy and famous people get more deference than non-wealthy and famous people.

I am convinced that had the details of the case been identical but he had been a poor or middle class person - even if he was white and poor or middle class - that he absolutely would have been convicted.

Frankly, given his behavior following his exoneration in the criminal trial (his infamous, “I’ll hunt down and find the real killer!” bullshit) and his sneaky avoidance of honoring his legal liabilities in the civil trial, I’ve got absolutely zero sympathy for the guy, and don’t really give a shit about the fact that he’s gonna spend at least the next 8 years locked up in a little 8x10 cell, even if the kidnapping charges that sent him there were trumped up.

“Not guilty” doesn’t necessarily mean “Innocent”, nor does it say so anywhere in our criminal justice codes.  He was not found “Innocent” of the crime of murdering his ex-wife, he was found “Not guilty” based on the evidence presented in a trial that was royally fucked up by the prosecution and manipulatively defended by one of the most high-profile and expensive team of defense attornes ever asembled.

Second thing, I don’t really thing we should use OJ Simpson as an example because of how deeply the cops fucked that case up.  If they had suspected him so directly to be sneaking around his house, why weren’t they questioning or arresting him?  We’ll never know the truth because of all of that; never know what evidence was real or imagined, and what evidence was lost because it wasn’t preserved correctly.

Oh, for fuck’s sake already. Yeah, because the LAPD isn’t a notoriously corrupt police force which had palled around with Simpson for years before they reluctantly gave him a wrist slap for beating his wife to a pulp.

Yeah, we do know the truth. Where have you been, under a rock? Simpson killed his wife, got on a plane for Chicago, and a neighbor found the bodies, called the cops. The cops at the scene observed the glove, and various other pieces of evidence that some stupid fucks like to whine were ‘planted’, then called in the detectives, who identified the victims and observed the amateurishness and personal anger of the attacks. Now, keep in mind, this was a pretty upscale neighborhood, and this was a savage attack, using a knife, which is a highly personal weapon.  Burglars do not typically do this. Abusive or calculating men often try. There were no crimes in Brentwood that matched the description, which is another red flag, because crooks do not typically just wake up one day and kill two people by stabbing them to death.

The cops went to Simpson’s house, where they observed the Bronco parked askew and also observed blood inside the vehicle through the window. On the grounds they discovered the bloody glove. (And if you’re stupid enough to chant, “If the glove doesn’t fit you must acquit” keep in mind that blood- or liquid-soaked leather shrinks and that on top of that, Simpson had on rubber gloves and knew if he acted up a storm he’d go free.

At that point the cops were operating on the notion that it could be a domestic or Simpson himself could be a victim.  The fact that he wasn’t arrested immediately was due to the fact that he was a celebrity and probably that the LAPD itself contains quite a few batterers themselves.

There have been no crimes like that of the Simpson murders in Brentwood since Simpson killed his ex wife and her friend. None of the idiotic conspiracy buffs who put forth this crap also factor this in: if Simpson was unsuccessfully railroaded, where did the killer go? (And Simpson, when told of his wife’s death, didn’t ask which wife or how she died. Furthermore, the cut on his finger----which he claimed he got while breaking a glass---was not in the correct position where such a thing was even possible, but it is the classic self-injury that people who are not used to killing with a knife often inflict on themselves.) The cops might be lazy, sexist bastards, but letting a killer go is not going to make their jobs easier.

Simpson got off because his defense team was composed of scumbags---replacing all his pictures of his white friends and girlfriends with those of stray black people he didn’t even know before a jury tour of his mansion----and that the jury was primed to make an ‘example’ out of him.  Sucks to be a rich guy with the LAPD in your pocket, I know.  Let’s have a moment of silence for poor, abused OJ.

I find the interesting angle to this is the MRA/Right wing’s conflation of popular culture and feminism. Because the late night crowd is making jokes about Tiger Woods being assaulted by his wife, somehow this translates into a failure of feminism to be equitable in the treatment of domestic violence victims. Andy Capp cartoons of the wife throwing a rolling pin at her husband is not exactly part of your Gender Studies syllabus. Feminists have long railed against popular culture, and now that the victim is a man and popular culture is pulling the same unacceptable crap, you see this clamor from the MRAs that somehow this is feminism’s fault. It really speaks to the persecution complex fostered by the MRAs and Nice Guys.

A lot of people have violent impulses. I think once you have opened up that genie’s bottle, even under “extreme circumstances”, it’s a pretty short drop to out-and-out battery.

YOu know, I think if women were really this huge danger to men they wouldn’t be joking about it.  You ever notice the tropes that sprang up when women started to fight for their equality? All the pretenses disappeared. I’m not sure if I can articulate this properly now, but in return for holding onto womens’ rights, men would grant little niceties. Once women decided, thanks, we want rights, the attitude of “You wanted equality, you got it!” took over, and men started acting as if equality meant absolute war.  IF they had actual real evidence, or even ake evidence that passed, they’d be on every news show so fast your head would spin. Don’t talk to me about how guys don’t talk about it, either. They don’t have to. MRAs and their apologists sure as fuck have no problem making shit up in their name and bitching about it eerywhere there’s feminists.

I don’t think that the reason female-on-male violence feels different to male-on-female violence is cultural, or only cultural. I had a male friend who was being quite seriously abused by his female partner. She was burning him with cigarettes. And while I was obviously worried and concerned as hell for him, I was never afraid for his life. If that had been a female friend who was being treated like that by a male partner, I would have been.

I agree with this.

Just the simple fact that he was a strong guy, easily powerful enough to pick me up and carry me around… well, I didn’t think he was suicidal, so I didn’t worry he’d be killed. And most of my worries for him centered on what his state of mind was, not on the fact that he had a crazy violent abuser in his life. Seemed to me that if his state of mind could be changed he’d be able to shake the abuser off.

I don’t agree with this.  It’s dismissive of the reality that acknowledging being a male victim of violence at the hands of a female perpetrator isn’t just an issue of not being “in the right state of mind”, it’s also about having to face a ton of cultural stigma that comes attached to that acknowledgement.  You’re right, it isn’t strictly a cultural matter, but the cultural element is definitely a big part of it.

Now, that said, I completely blame the patriarchy for this.  As Lindsay said upthread, it isn’t feminists pushing the cultural meme that men who get abused by women are “pussies”, but it is an overwhelming cultural meme nonetheless.  Many years ago, I had a female friend who was physically abusive towards her boyfriend - she once threw a coffee pot at his head and he had to go to the ER to get stitches on his scalp because of it… all because he forgot to pick up milk on his way home from work one day.  Don’t ask how or why I was friends with this person, it’s a long story.  Anyway, as she recounted the story to me, I asked her why her boyfriend didn’t dump her ass on the spot over it, and he said, “Because he knows that if he did that this would get out and all of his basketball buddies would tell him what a bitch he is for letting a girl treat him that way.  I own his ass.” She was a diminutive 5’2” 120lb. woman, and he was a 6’3” 215lb. man.

Again, the statistics irrefutably show that the prevalence of male on female violence far surpasses that of female on male violence.  This isn’t debatable, and MRAs who scream “women do it too!” as an attempt to minimize the huge prevalence of male on female violence are assholes.  If I had to guess, I imagine that virtually every MRA who has ever asserted this belief has probably never been a real victim of female violence himself - they live vicariously through stories like this one, and project their misogynist bullshit onto these stories.

While I do agree that in most cases the risk of violence escalating to murder is far greater when the women are victims, I don’t think we should minimize any act of violence, regardless of what gender the victim is, by saying that they could walk away from it if only “they were in the right state of mind”.  The issue is much bigger than that, and it involves a whole lot of patriarchy-driven cultural narratives about proper gender roles - one of those being that men can’t really be victims of DV, and if they are, it must be because they are weak-minded wimps.  Part of what is wrong with your friend’s “state of mind” is probably the patriarchal narrative that acknowledging his own victimization is a real threat to his culturally-defined masculinity.

Also, if anyone can recommend some resources from non-crazy people on female-on-male domestic violence, I’d really appreciate it.

I’m not aware of any, but I think such things would be helpful.  As said by someone else, most of what is out there appears to come from asswipe MRAs who are more into hating women than they are into actually helping men.

What would be really helpful is a widespread rejection of cultural gender nroms about femininity and masculinity.  And a wholesale rejection of ALL violence, regardless of the genders of the victims and perpetrators.

I have found some decent resources that address coping with being a male victim of sexual trauma, but even there, the focus tends to be mostly male on male violence, not so much on female on male violence.

It brings to mind all of those incidents involving female teachers having sex with their 10-13 year old male students.  Though the criminal justice system has been cracking down on those cases, culturally, it’s still treated in an infantile joking fashion as if the child involved is some lucky guy who hit the “hot for teacher” lottery.  No, a 12 year old boy being preyed into a sexual relationship by a female teacher more than twice his age isn’t “lucky”, regardless of whether she is defined as physically attractive.  Even if he’s not aware of it, he’ll probably have a hell of a lot of debilitating emotional scars as a result of the experience throughout his life, particularly if he never receives any therapeutic counseling to open up about it honestly.  I know a guy who lost his virginity to his 35 year old female babysitter when he was TEN, and he’s a complete psychological basket case to this day (he’s now 38) largely because of it.

The fact is, though, that male victims of female abuse don’t usually undergo anything like what female victims do, and they’re not tortured, isolated, stripped of finances, car keys, self esteem, independence, etc.,etc. Female abusers, according to the limited research out there, don’t stalk for decades, all with the collusion of a feminist-dominated police force that winks at them.  Male abusers often deliberately impregnate their partners, knowing the kids will bind the women to them forever, but it’s the woman who gets saddled with the kids---and not to mention the fact that male abusers have no compunction about threatneing to hurt or actually hurting the kids to get back at the woman. Abused women are kept without money, phones, friends, anything. It’s the rare abused man who has to go through anything like this. In fact, what I’ve heard---from these guys themselves---is that she slapped him and he walked away. In one case, the wife slapped the husband, and he grabbed her, slammed her up against the wall hard enough to crack the plaster and told her something to the effect that if she did that again he would wipe the floor with her. I’m sure MRAs are talking about what an abusive bitch she is to this day, too----leaving out the guy’s response.

The place where I see a different dynamic is the gay community, especially becuase my roommate is gay and she was in an abuser/abusive relationshiop that’s.....weird.....to see in action. She served time for stabbing her wife. And yet she feels abused. But when she talks about that, it’s clearly a control thing, where she says she feels so angry over something her ex wife did that she has to hit her or something, and that sounds true to what other abusers say. And I didn’t know anything about this till after she moved in. But her ex has been to my house and she’s.....just an awful person. I mean, I’m a veteran with PTSD, I jump at loud noises, and I asked her to turn her phone ringer down because it was LIKE THIS with no warning, and she didn’t do it. When I insisted, she got all up in my face---in my damned house, by the way---and I tossed her out.  And I know she’s put her hands on my roomie, too. So....

I don’t agree with this.  It’s dismissive of the reality that acknowledging being a male victim of violence at the hands of a female perpetrator isn’t just an issue of not being “in the right state of mind”, it’s also about having to face a ton of cultural stigma that comes attached to that acknowledgement.  You’re right, it isn’t strictly a cultural matter, but the cultural element is definitely a big part of it.

Oh, I don’t think I communicated what I meant very clearly, sorry. I don’t think you can separate “state of mind” from cultural conditioning at all, really. The ways that batterers work, both male and female batterers, collude with the ways that the patriarchy fucks with our heads in very insidious ways.

But my friend was trapped in some way of thinking that made him think he deserved it. That’s no trivial thing clearly. But if he could change that thinking, he could get out of there. I don’t think the woman could have been any further danger to him. Whereas a woman would have had to escape from the headfuckery, and, quite likely, also physically escape from the batterer. Does that make more sense?

She’s also have to continue to escape from her batterer.  I don’t think I need to elaborate on that.

I would argue that assaulting a cheater is motivated by the belief that you own them sexually

And I’d argue it’s anger and pain over betrayal of trust.

MKK

But my friend was trapped in some way of thinking that made him think he deserved it. That’s no trivial thing clearly. But if he could change that thinking, he could get out of there. I don’t think the woman could have been any further danger to him. Whereas a woman would have had to escape from the headfuckery, and, quite likely, also physically escape from the batterer. Does that make more sense?

I think I understand… in the case of a woman who is stuck in such a situation, it isn’t just the further psychological harm she’s going to endure, but the reality that her actual life may be in danger.  In the case of your male friend, while it’s certain that he’ll continue to endure undeserved psyhcological harm if he stays, the physical harm will probably be less severe, and it’s far less likely that his actual life would be at risk than if the genders were reversed.

And of course, I agree fully.  The statistical reality makes it undeniable.

And to ginmar @ #38, I also agree.  The rate of male-on-female violence FAR exceeds that of female-on-male violence, and the severity of that violence, both psychologically and physically, is overall much, much worse in the case of male-on-female violence.  I don’t think MRAs who try to dismiss that fact by promoting the bullshit meme that there is any sort of equivalence in the overall rates and severity of violence really care about helping actual male victims of violence (who are mostly victimized by other men, not women), they only care about undermining the reality that females are far more often victims of violence at the hands of men than vice-versa.

I think ALL of it is driven by the patriarchy.  And I think dominant cultural attitudes about all of it is also driven by the patriarchy.  In general, the patriarchy takes a dismissive attitude towards real victims, be they male or female.  Men aren’t supposed to cry or be real victims ever - that’s reserved for sissies and women - and women are supposed to know their place, and if someone hits them, they probably deserved it.

Well, that depends, doesn’t it? Are you deliberately ignoring male privilege?

Well, that depends, doesn’t it? Are you deliberately ignoring male privilege?

I’m not following… could you elaborate on what you mean?

Sorry, perhaps I misunderstood you ginmar… was your comment #43 directed at me or Mary Kay?

DTG, that was directed at Mary Kay. When I typed it out, hers was the comment immediately over mine.  To elaborate, one’s view of cheating seems directly tied to one’s view of marriage. I mean...women are to blame if their hubbie strays, aren’t they? She shouldn’t have let herself go. Meanwhile, the cheating wife is a lying whore, etc., etc.,

MRAs desperately want men to avoid coming to the realization that elimianating gender roles and expectations will bring lots of good things to men, because it will also make men see that dumping a lot of privilege is a good thing.  These MRA types often ally themselves with conservative women, who say the most awful shit about men, yet the MRAs blame this man-hating crap on feminists. Sure, because I think it’s so wonderful when somebody I love feels badly about himself thank to outmoded Thirteenth-Century standards of masculinity.

DTG, that was directed at Mary Kay. When I typed it out, hers was the comment immediately over mine.  To elaborate, one’s view of cheating seems directly tied to one’s view of marriage. I mean...women are to blame if their hubbie strays, aren’t they? She shouldn’t have let herself go. Meanwhile, the cheating wife is a lying whore, etc., etc.,

MRAs desperately want men to avoid coming to the realization that elimianating gender roles and expectations will bring lots of good things to men, because it will also make men see that dumping a lot of privilege is a good thing.  These MRA types often ally themselves with conservative women, who say the most awful shit about men, yet the MRAs blame this man-hating crap on feminists. Sure, because I think it’s so wonderful when somebody I love feels badly about himself thank to outmoded Thirteenth-Century standards of masculinity.

Ah, I see.

I agree with all of this totally… this is great stuff, here.

In regards to “violation of the belief that you own someone sexually” versus “genuine feelings of feeling hurt and betrayed”, male privilege is absolutely a factor in that equation.  I have both cheated on someone and been cheated on.  Both situations created pain for all parties involved.  In the case in which I was cheated on, I did genuinely feel hurt and betrayed, but I also know that part of what was bruised was my male ego, because my own male privilege subconsciously told me that “real men” know how to keep their women in line.  I did not resort to violence when I discovered that my then-girlfriend had cheated on me, but I did get stupidly drunk and felt pissed off and thought all sorts of nasty things about her, and I immediately broke up with her over it.  And while I know that part of the issue behind my hurt feelings was my bruised sense of masculinity, I don’t feel too terrible about the way I handled it.  I didn’t spread rumors about her or try to destroy her reputation, but I was too hurt to even try to work it out.  In any case, after a lot of introspection on the issue, I realized that my own subconscious acceptance of gender norms had a lot to do with my hurt feelings in that mess - I had felt emasculated over it.  It took me awhile to come to a place where I realized that it wasn’t really about anything I had done wrong, nor was it that she was a horrible and evil person, just that our relationship wasn’t working anymore.  Sometimes relationships just stop working, through no fault of either party involved.  I think she was wrong for being dishonest and having sex with someone else behind my back while we were still in what had been mutually understood to be a monogamous relationship, but the fact is, our relationship was over before she ever even got involved with the other person.  I just wish it would have ended before any of that had happened.  But I guess life wouldn’t be life without some messy experiences along the way.

I’ve always wondered why the trope is ‘a scorned woman’---well, no, I don’t, and I’m not referring to you, but that whole idea of infidelity put me in mind of it. You acted like a human being who’s been hurt, is what happened. And at least you were aware enough and honest enough to realize what the real deal was.

I mean, I think the basic difference between men and women is that men turn into OJ and women might send a hundred stinky pizzas to your house.  I don’t mean to joke, but God, I’ve been talking about the Jezebel article with friends and it just seems to destroy any hope one could have that we’ve reached any basic appreciation for women as human beings.

I have a cop friend who goes out on a fair amount of DV calls.  I asked him if the male suspects ever physically attacked him.  He said rarely did they ever.  He’s 6’4” and built like a tank.  Stuff like this puts the lie to the “I lost control of myself” line batterers like to feed everyone.  They tend to be very selective over whom they “lose control”, and it’s almost never with authority figures or people bigger and stronger than they are.

I wanted to comment on the previous post about cheating and sex scandals but it applies here as well.  While women do sometimes physically attack cheating partners, as Elin may have done to Tiger, being caught cheating poses far more danger for women than for men.  There is cultural acceptance of men reacting with explosive violence to a woman’s infidelity.  Judges and juries have been known to go light on men for murdering their partner and/or her lover.

On a somewhat related note, a genre of porn featuring wives “cuckolding” their husbands, often with multiple men, seems to be hugely popular.  Years ago, a guy I dated told me that he used to fantasize about his wife being with other men and even broached the topic of trying it out with her when they were married.  He theorized that turning the image of his wife cheating on him into something sexual for him helped him to deal with the insecurity he felt.  I’m not sure about that but I think it’s telling that female cheating is so taboo that it’s a porn trope, whereas male cheating is just mainstream.

Trying to think about this in light of the standard stereotype that abusive women abuse emotionally rather than physically (and that that of course “drives” the male partner to physical abuse). Which exposes a whole lot of assumptions about men’s emotional stability, about what it means to be trapped in a relationship, blah blah blah.

But it seems that this case is really bad on the facts for making sense of any of this, not just because we don’t actually know what happened, but also because the usual tropes about infidelity leading to violence (even inverted) only work if there’s a reasonable belief that the aggrieved partner was unaware of any infidelity prior to some sudden revelation. With Woods and Nordegren, it seems much more likely that (whatever happened) the infidelity was an ongoing issue, which brings it very much from arguments about sexual ownership to what you do when one person in a relationship does something that the other person in the relationship has told them time and again they don’t want them to do.

Batterers always say shit like, “Look what you made me do. The bitch nags too much!”

And DonnaDiva, that’s a huge point that can’t be stressed too much. These guys don’t ‘lose it’ around their bosses or other people who can do important things for them. Just smaller women that they’ve taken some effort to grind down.

Amanda wrote:

If she beat him, she should face the criminal justice system and an end to her marriage, like any other abuser.

Do you really, for one moment, believe that any jury would actually convict Elin Nordegren on battery (or whatever) charges in this case, even if a videotape of the whole thing was found?

It’s an interesting statement you just made: because her husband was messing around with multiple women, and she lost control, her marriage should end, and, being the only one in the marriage actually guilty of a crime, she’d be out, with few if any of the marital assets, and lose custody of her children.  That is, after all, the end result of your statement.

If we assume that yes, there was actual battery involved, then it’s clear that Mr Woods does not wish to particpate in convicting his wife of a crime.  If he is unwilling to press charges, yet the police had sufficient evidence to prosecute her without his participation, do you think that the DA could or would go ahead?

God, Dana, you’re a passive aggressie asshole. Cops love to nail women for any and everything, probably because so many of them are batterers themselves. If they had a reason to bust her, no matter how small, they would have. Some guys love to break down an uppity woman, and in this case, Elin Nordegren also crossed racial barriers as well.

It’s an interesting statement you just made: because her husband was messing around with multiple women, and she lost control, her marriage should end, and, being the only one in the marriage actually guilty of a crime, she’d be out, with few if any of the marital assets, and lose custody of her children.  That is, after all, the end result of your statement.

Yes.  It is.  And? 

Physical assault is not an acceptable response to infidelity.  That is our principle.  Do you think we’d abandon that principle because a woman happens to be on the losing side of it this one time? 

Do you have some idea in your head that “feminism” means “taking the woman’s side no matter what”?  That’s not quite how it works.

Physical assault is not an acceptable response to infidelity. 
Comment #55: Seraph on 12/12 at 10:38 PM

“Unacceptable response” is not the same as “obligatorily marriage-ending.”

“The Screwfly Solution” is a science fiction story by James Tiptree, Jr. (AKA Alice Sheldon) which a few years ago was turned into a “Masters of Horror” movie on Showtime. It turned on the supposition that in humans, as in some other animals, the sexual response is strongly coupled to violence. Extraterrestials introduced a virus which enhanced the coupling by somehow removing the restraints and at one stroke halved the population and guaranteed extinction within one generation. (Planetary block-busting: beware alien realtors!)

The supposition that sex and violence are deeply connected in our species is almost certainly wrong, but not entirely without support. “Fuck” is a violent word, and its etymology suggests hitting and striking, and a lot of slang is in the same vein. To get back to biological explanations, our nearest relatives, chimpanzees and bonobos, have starkly different attitudes to resolving disputes: making war and making love. Humans seem to be more likely to do the former.

Violence is such a commonplace that a certain amount of fighting is unremarkable; the bonobo solution, mutual masturbation, would almost universally be considered objectionable.

Apropos of what DTG said about jealousy, I had a bout with the green-eyed monster once in high school, when I had no claim upon the girl in question.* It was a miserable obsession which I could not shake no matter how I analyzed or rationalized it. It went away after I’d slept on it. I’ve only had the same sort of inconquerable emotional response a couple more times in my life, once with shame, after making sort of a pass at a sister-in-law, another with anger, which is a bit strange because anger is sort of a constant with me. In each case I maintained a fairly normal façade and it only lasted one day; sleep knitted up the raveled sleeve of woe. It’s tempting to believe that such states are more or less hard-wired.

* We wound up being pretty good friends, and I was privileged to hear a fairly difficult story. At 16 I was a pretty good apprentice therapist. I wound up being an engineer, and a damned good tech once accused me of empathizing with the microprocessors I programmed. He was right.

“Unacceptable response” is not the same as “obligatorily marriage-ending.”

No, but “physical assault” should be.

Amanda wrote

“...Infidelity is a breach of contract, but hitting is violence...”

If the contract in question is an agreement to sexual exclusivity, then doesn’t the breach have direct consequences for the relations between the couple who agreed to be monogamous?  In particular, if you consent to sexual relations with someone under the terms of a contract of monogamy, doesn’t the breach of contract negate any future consent obtained by hiding the breach of contract?

The logical conclusion is that any marital sex that occurs after an undisclosed infidelity is not consensual.

Isn’t obtaining by fraud non-consensual sex an act of violence?

I know that the practical ramifications of treating cheaters as rapists are untenable despite that, logically speaking, they are.  The point is—I do think that equating cheating with a simple breach of contract minimizes the harm to the wronged individual.

The supposition that sex and violence are deeply connected in our species is almost certainly wrong, but not entirely without support.

Sex and violence might not be connected, but sex and status almost certainly are (in many mammals, not just us).

I want to address the previous poster describing how her male friend was abused by his wife. You said you never feared for his life because he was physically strong. Do no wives kill husbands? If someone has a weapon and the anger to use it, it can be deadly. Physical strength is irrelevant if the aggressor has a gun or is using poison. Even a knife or a baseball bat can act as a leveler. I would absolutely fear for a male’s life if his partner was a batterer, regardless of that partner’s gender, and I would encourage any reader here to take female-on-male battering as seriously as any other form of battering.

In other news: Houston now has a gay mayor. Parker won. Of course she would. We been voting her into this or that job for decades. I voted for her when I was 19 and voted for the first time. She was running “at large”, so while the Montrose vote counted, she still had to do well in the suburbs. and she did.

http://texasliberal.wordpress.com/2009/12/13/gay-takeover-of-houston-underway-lets-have-both-social-and-economic-justice-in-our-city/

Apparently Houston is now the gayest of the ten largest US cties. Harris county had an anti-Republican bloodbath in 2008. Lycos and Emmit won, but Repubs were brutalized in the downticket races. And even the Ledge saw fit to reign in the SBOE. Texas is back. We’re shedding off the crazy. I’ll even bet Bill White will win.

Yay Houston!

(Muttering to self: of course my little beachside California community once had an all-gay city council, if rumors are to be believed; odder yet, another council, with some overlap, was all Irish. The town had absolutely no quality control. My mother was even mayor.)

To the extent that Republicans are embracing the crazy, to the extent that they’re competing against each other to demonstrate extremes of craziness, vying against each other to prove their batshit bonafides, I worry less about the next election. I worry that once they get their noses up their assholes that they won’t be able get to the rest of their heads through, but day by day they seem to progress.

There will be losses in the midterms, but I’d bet that the Democrats keep both houses.

Just the simple fact that he was a strong guy, easily powerful enough to pick me up and carry me around… well, I didn’t think he was suicidal, so I didn’t worry he’d be killed.

Phil Hartman’s friends didn’t worry about his physical safety, either, even though they knew his wife was abusive.  Now their children are orphans.

Ta-Nehisi Coates had a really good post along those lines after Steve McNair was murdered about how everyone assumes a man’s physical safety will never be threatened by a woman.

“Unacceptable response” is not the same as “obligatorily marriage-ending.”

No, but “physical assault” should be.
Comment #59: Seraph on 12/13 at 12:04 AM

Who are you to make this decision for everyone?

The point is that it’s cheap, easy and effective for the big, hulking male to bat around his butterfly mate. While it’s true that any 90-lb weakling can fight back if he or she knows what they’re doing, they generally don’t. Pointing that guys can get beaten up too is getting close to blaming the victim.

I’m speaking as one who enjoys fighting, but last got physical in a wrestling match with my brother a year or so ago. Ugly. Middle-aged uncles rolling around the couches. We hugged and made up. It’s arguably an Irish custom, at least the making up. My other brother used to content himself with caged verbal assaults when he wasn’t getting laid; now that he’s remarried my mother and I get Sunday dinners.

Am I supposed to make a point here? Here’s my guess. We make love. We fight. We have fun. These are reasonably distinct experiences. There’s no shortage where they come from.

The difference between violence and battering/abuse is key… the former may be isolated or systematic, and the latter may or may not include violence. But they are separate concepts.

My sister is going through this, and I’m trying to get her to recognize the abuser pattern even though he isn’t hitting her. He throws tantrums, at least daily, based on manufactured outrages--usually related to jealousy or “cheating,” coincidently.

And I’ve seen it wear her down over the last six months… in my conversations with her, she’s gone from saying stuff like, “and it isn’t fair for him to blame me for that,” to “I think he’s using what I did wrong to control me.” Even as she’s aware of it, he’s winning little victories, like getting her to think she actually DID do something wrong by sleeping with a roommate before she even knew him (current abuser boyfriend).

In her last email, she said “it is getting out of control.” I asked her to clarify in my reply, and she’s since replied without clarifying… so maybe he *has* started hitting her. It always escalates.

Who are you to make this decision for everyone?

It’s a common sense decision, as that’s the advice given these days to women who suffer battering from their spouse, does it change with the sex of the spouse doing the battering?

To the people saying I should have been worried about my friend’s life: if i lived in a country like yours where it is common for people to carry arms and easy to obtain them, I almost certainly would have been. As it is, that possibility didn’t even cross my mind.

(I live in Northern Ireland.)

Someone brought up poisoning, which doesn’t fit the modus operandi of the batterer at all. I think it’s pretty important to make a distinction between far-fetched possibilities and likely ones. Of course it’s possible that an abusive woman will kill her partner by poison. It’s also possible that you’ll go out in the street and get run over by a bus. I honestly have no idea which of those is more likely; the vast majority of female killers of male partners were victims getting out the only way they could, not abusers.

I’m not going to pretend that I did this kind of statistical calculation. I just trusted my gut instinct, which is normally pretty reliable if a bit oversensitive; I’m that girl who freaks out for no reason in the presence of Perfectly Nice Guy, can’t hold a conversation with him to save my life, gets called names by a third party for being so standoffish with him, and doesn’t exactly find it comforting later when Perfectly Nice Guy stalks my friend. But I think if I had sat down and looked up a bunch of statistics I would have come to the same conclusion.

(The story has a maybe? happy ending: he broke up with that woman, but he entered into another relationship which can’t exactly have been a healthy one because he said she wasn’t keen on him hanging out with his female friends, so I lost touch with him. I do kind of worry when I think about that; obviously a jealous partner is a warning sign for someone who’s been in an abusive relationship before, but I’m not actually sure it was really her decision for him to stop hanging out with me, he’d said he was in love with me and he may have wanted to not hang out with me any more so as not to fuck up his new relationship. Sorry, I’m just rambling because this is something that weighs on my mind from time to time. I guess I’ll look up his mum this Christmas and check he’s doing all right. )

@Ha—you need to make it as easy as possible for your sister to leave him.  Arrange is so she can go somewhere safe when she is ready.  Let her know that she can start over.  I’m sure that you already do these things. 

She needs to hear that she is NOT crazy; that he IS being unfair and mean and that she doesn’t have to live like that; that she is a good person; that love includes respect and trust; that jealousy is not caring and that you are always there for her and will listen to her and support her no matter what.

There are lots of resources by those in the know that you can use to help you learn how to support her.  From <a href=http://stoprelationshipabuse.org/helpfriend.html>the Center for Relationship Abuse Awareness</a>:

* Know the facts about relationship abuse.
* Assure her that you believe her story.
* Listen and let her talk about her feelings.
* Do not judge or give advice.  Talk to her about her options.
* Physical safety is the first priority.  If you believe she is in danger, let her know that you are concerned.  Help her create a safety plan.
* Respect her right to confidentiality.
* Let her know you care and want to help.
* Don’t be upset if your friend doesn’t react the way you think she should. Let her talk about the caring aspects of the relationship as well. People who are being controlled by their partner’s behavior must consider many factors before coming to a conclusion about how to access safety. Let her make her own decisions and support her throughout the process.
* Give clear messages, including:
o She does not cause the abuse.
o She is not to blame for her partner’s behavior.
o She cannot change her partner’s behavior.
o Apologies and promises are a form of manipulation.
o She is not alone.
o Abuse is not loss of control; it is a means of control.
* It is helpful to provide support to survivors.  However, there are some forms of advice that are not useful and even dangerous for her to hear:
o Don’t tell her what to do, when to leave or when not to leave.
o Don’t tell her to go back to the situation and try a little harder.
o Don’t rescue her by trying to find quick solutions.
o Don’t suggest you try to talk to her partner to straighten things out.
o Don’t place yourself in danger by confronting the abuser.
o Don’t tell her she should stay for the sake of the children.
* Never recommend couples counseling in situations of emotional or physical abuse.  It is dangerous for the woman and will not lead to a resolution that is in her interest.
* Encourage separate counseling for the individuals, if they want counseling.

I occurs to me that all of the advice on abuse also applies to abuse through infidelity.

exholt and anyone else that is talking about the emotional aspects of cheating: I agree that it’s painful to be cheated on.  No one is denying that it hurts, no matter how you view it.  I’m just arguing that if you see it as a breach of contract instead of a violation of your property rights, that will inform how you react, and whether or not you think violence to regain control is acceptable.  I think if you’ve got a healthier point of view, you’ll just cry and end the relationship.

And you caught me, gin.  I’m a misogynist in cahoots with that dude to preserve a man’s god-given right to sexually harass women in bars.

Or not.  Actually, I agree that the bar story shows what a prick the writer is---he clearly thought that she had no reason to be offended merely because she was sexually harassed.  But I didn’t write the post about his bar fight.  I wrote it about how he used the “losing your head” stereotype that lets batterers off the hook.  In interest of not going off on a million confusing digressions, I left it at that.

And yes, I believe that when someone hits in a relationship, that should be the obligatory end of that relationship.  I fail to see why this statement is controversial.  Abusers hit because it works.  If it didn’t, they wouldn’t hit.  This is not a particularly strange idea.

Randomizer, that’s a stretch.  I think the overt belief that you own someone’s body and if they do something with it you don’t like, you have a right to regain control through physical violence is much closer to rape.

I think it might be helpful to untangle “abuser” from “batterer” from “someone who reacted violently this one time”. The latter two have been picked over pretty convincingly in this thread, but it’s important to remember that violence is only one of many ways in which abusers harm their victims.

You can be in a full blown abusive relationship without ever being hit; isolation, gaslighting, financial abuse, emotional witholding, sexual humiliation etc. will give someone all the gratification of full control over another person’s life and actions without catering to a specifically physical sadistic impulse.

I don’t have any statistics about abusers vs. batterers, but my hunch is that most abusers are still men even where battery is not involved, that there are more persistent abusers than chronic batterers, and that battery is something that a small sub-section of men do repeatedly while non-physical abuse, control and emotional violence are much more common because they play into the “woman as property” trope while allowing the abuser to hide from himself because he didn’t “hit a girl”.

That’s exactly what I"m talking about, that attitude right there. You describe the commenters as wrong-headed, but this dude is trying to say that some drink thief hauling off and belting a five foot tall woman is no less important than his long-ago incident---which he seems to feel is all his female friend’s fault.

The dude might have tried the ‘lost his head’ defense for the guys who attacked him and his friend, but he sure didn’t make excuses for his female friend, who he seems to feel bitter about for not getting hit instead of him. He also seems to think that she’s violent, while the guy who even he describes as ‘squaring off against her’ were just provoked by her. “I just can’t hit a woman,” he mind reads, but when it comes to the woman who was threatened by three guys, he’s indifferent.

The commenters are ‘wrong-headed’? Yeah, it’s funny how that happens, when men keep stomping into feminist spaces, only to find men holding forth on how women are abusing them. It’s kind of like watching a straight forward story of a serial rapist and cop killer get turned into a story of police brutality, even though it’s awfully hard to be brutal when you were killed first. There’s something dishonest about it; fitting police brutality onto such a case smacks of taking an existing agenda and trying to put it on a case where it doesn’t fit. Kind of like how Letterman’s case was just “oh, no big deal’ while the hostile working place element of it got downplayed. Because we’re just repressed or something to see the power imbalance there.

Good intentions, certainly, but your execution needs cleaning up.

She was running “at large”, so while the Montrose vote counted, she still had to do well in the suburbs.

That’s awesome news that she won, but I have to ask… why would people in the Houston suburbs get to vote for the mayor of the city of Houston?  A suburb, by its very definition, is an independent geographic entity OUTSIDE the territorial lines of a major U.S. city… for instance, Schaumburg and Orland Park are both suburbs of Chicago, Illinois.  They are both their own independent municipalities - with their own mayors - but they are both inside Cook County and are in such close geographic proximity to Chicago that they are considered suburbs of Chicago.

Anyway, I was just curious what you were referring to when you said that she had to win the “suburbs” in Houston… did you mean the residential areas on the outskirts of the city, but still within the city limits?

Mighty Ponygirl at #34:

I find the interesting angle to this is the MRA/Right wing’s conflation of popular culture and feminism.

And they’ll do it in almost the same breath as they scorn feminists for “not being able to take a joke” or “getting their panties in a bunch” whenever feminists take issue with a particularly sexist pop culture trend.

DTG—that’s not how it works everywhere.  Here in Nashville, the entire fucking county has been incorporated as the city of Nashville/Davidson County (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nashville,_Tennessee#Law_and_government).  So, you may be way out in the suburbs (actually, to me it feels like the suburbs start bout 25 blocks from the center of the city, but that’s a story for another time), but still in the city of Nashville.  Like last night, I drove to a friend’s house; it took about half an hour, we had to take the highway, etc., but we were still in Nashville.  Maybe it’s the same sort of thing in Houston?

DTG—that’s not how it works everywhere.  Here in Nashville, the entire fucking county has been incorporated as the city of Nashville/Davidson County (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nashville,_Tennessee#Law_and_government).  So, you may be way out in the suburbs (actually, to me it feels like the suburbs start bout 25 blocks from the center of the city, but that’s a story for another time), but still in the city of Nashville.

No, I get that… but a suburb is, by it’s very etymology, a city under the city.  “Urb” means city, literally.  So it is impossible to both be a suburb AND an incorporated part of the major city that you are a suburb of.  A suburb is frequently its own incorporated city.  A city can’t be a part of another city, anymore than a country could be a part of another country.  If annexed, it is no longer an independent country.

While people in Nashville may colloquially refer to the outlying recently incorporated areas as “suburbs”, technically, they ceased being suburbs the moment they were incorporated into the “urb” of Nashville.

Murfreesboro, Brentwood, and Gallatin are literal suburbs of Nashville.  They each have their own mayors and city governments, separate from those of Nashville.

Anyway, back to the original point, I guess perhaps Bacopa was referring to the outlying residential wards/precincts of Houston when s/he mentioned “suburbs”.  I realize most large cities have a central urban core, and the further out you get from the core the less urban the neighborhoods look (you see strip malls and whatnot), but I’ve alway understood suburbs to be distinct cities that lie outside of the city limits of the major city for which they are suburbs of.

Wow. This makes so much sense. I’m sure it could be picked at, but overall, it’s clearheaded and principled. Thanks.

Seraph wrote:

“Unacceptable response” is not the same as “obligatorily marriage-ending.”

No, but “physical assault” should be.

Yet many people choose not to end such marriages; Tiger Woods—if the reports are accurate—certainly hasn’t seen fit to dump his wife because he hit him with a golf club.  Are you suggesting that the state should have the authority to declare such a marriage dissolved if neither party wishes it to be?

I’m sorry, I’ve been - um, yeah well, distracted. If anybody’s still reading, I don’t see how ginmar’s comment applies to what I said. Either sex can experience betrayal of trust by their partner and the pain and anger that result can be a very potent combination. I speak from some degree of personal experience. Personally, I’d see it as very presumptuous to suggest I know what is the actual cause of some person’s behavior. Particularly in an intimate relationship in which I am not involved.

Also, human behavior is multiply-based, so it’s not usually any one thing underlying behavior.

MKK

Yet many people choose not to end such marriages; Tiger Woods—if the reports are accurate—certainly hasn’t seen fit to dump his wife because he hit him with a golf club.  Are you suggesting that the state should have the authority to declare such a marriage dissolved if neither party wishes it to be?

I find it interesting how right-wingers always jump directly from “should be” to “should be legally obligatory”.  It says all sorts of things about your authoritarian, legalistic mindset.  Everything is either compulsory or forbidden. 

For the record, if you look at Amanda’s statement - the one I was agreeing with - “the justice system” and “an end to her marriage” were listed as separate things, that all abusers should face.  You ask if we cared that the abuser in this case would get a raw deal in a divorce, despite the fact that she had been cheated on.  Our answer was no - why should we care, because the abuser is female in this particular case?

Why is this such a problem for you?

Also for the record:

If we assume that yes, there was actual battery involved, then it’s clear that Mr Woods does not wish to particpate in convicting his wife of a crime.  If he is unwilling to press charges, yet the police had sufficient evidence to prosecute her without his participation, do you think that the DA could or would go ahead?

Depends entirely on how that state deals cases of assault where the victim doesn’t want to press charges.  If it were up to me, I’d say yes.  After all, if someone “loses control” once and goes after someone with a deadly weapon, should they really be loose among the public?

If we assume that yes, there was actual battery involved, then it’s clear that Mrs Woods does not wish to particpate in convicting her husband of a crime.  If she is unwilling to press charges, yet the police had sufficient evidence to prosecute him without her participation, do you think that the DA could or would go ahead?

Fixed that for you, Dana.

First off, thank you Seraph for responding to Dana. I read it and was so annoyed I left the thread without responding (childish, I know.)

Second,

Depends entirely on how that state deals cases of assault where the victim doesn’t want to press charges.

I just wanted to reiterate that yes the D.A. can and does prosecute abusers in cases where the victim doesn’t press charges if the local statues allow and there is enough evidence.  I believe Albuquerque, NM was the first city to have or maybe enforce a law that allows the D.A. to prosecute an accused domestic abuser without the victim pressing charges. I’m going to do more research (not just a matter of a quick Googling I’m sure) about where these laws exist just to satisfy my own curiosity. I’d really like to see how often and under what circumstances these cases are prosecuted where applicable. So if you know anymore or where I could find such information I’d appreciate the info...thanks.

FWIW, and all the other problems with the rather incoherent Jezebel article aside, I got the impression that the rush-to-apology from the writer had less to do with ownership / diminishment of his female friend and far more to do with saying anything to de-escalate a situation that he (rightly) thought was about to turn seriously violent.  He was dealing with three pig-ignorant sexually harassing hoodlums, complete pigs and barely human.  He said what he thought would prevent fists from flying at her and he wouldn’t be the first person to apologize to some fucking primitive as a way of avoiding a bar fight.  Whether he was right—or sufficiently pure in theory—to do so is a separate question from his motive, which I think was laudable enough: avoid violence.  (I’ve noticed, though, over the years, that the preference for considering a question within a theoretical frame goes up in direct correlation to the lengthening distance the theorist has from a violent situation.)

The problem for non-violent people facing what he did is this: in a situation like that the only way to successfully defend yourself against violence from a larger group of people is to strike first, and with considerable skill, viciousness and ruthlessness.  The problem, of course, lies in the fact that the law doesn’t allow you to do that.  And you end up face down in your own blood waiting for the ambulance.  Add to that the fact that there’s a quite measurable and prevalent subset of cops who take it as a personal affront when you successfully defend yourself.

BTW, am I the only one who found it disturbing that a man who rushed to a friend’s aid, who interposed himself between her and her would-be attackers, who tried to end it nonviolently, and and who ended up in hospital for his pains was treated so cavalierly by the commenters?  Maybe I’m too goddamned Victorian but I do think that some cred should go to somebody with the stones to do that.  The commenters wanted to lecture him on ownership 101, fine, it’s a feminist blog.  But to do that alone, to just metaphorically step over his bleeding body to wag their fingers at him seemed more than a tad extreme.

BTW, ginmar and others were spot on about how convenient the “lose it” lie is. 

Sidebar: back in the 80s and before mandatory DV arrests I knew, though, that it was the practice of some Toronto cops who actually gave a shit about DVs to provoke/maneuver the husband into taking a swing at them; this produced a serious charge and got him out of the house in a way that didn’t rely on placing the weight on an abused wife’s shoulders.

Amanda—I agree entirely with you on violence being always and for any reason completely unacceptable in a relationship.  There is no difference whether the victim and perpetrator are male or female cis or not.  I also agree that an agreement to be monogamous does not give you ownership over another’s body or sexuality.

I know you don’t like to see hidden infidelity in a monogamous relationship as a form of sexual assault of the deceived partner.  Maybe because you yourself have cheated in the past?  Most of us, myself included, have at one time or another breached a contract of sexual exclusivity.  If so, maybe you don’t like the idea that you might have sexually abused someone, admittedly in an increasingly banal and commonplace manner?

I know that reading discussions around “Yes Means Yes” openned my eyes to some uncomfortable implications of some of my adolescent sexual behaviour.  Overt rape, no, never—less than enthusiastic consent, maybe.  It made me squirm to realize that in the broadest sense, I might have at one time been a perpetrator.

Call the “cheating .eq. sexual assault” equivalence “a stretch” if you like but the logic stands for itself and no-one seems inclined to directly and logically refute it.  I admit that there is little to be done about it legally—the criminal law is certainly far too blunt an instrument for these circumstances—it would create more problems than it would solve—tort, maybe—but divorce is already enriching lawyers enough.  So, and rightly so, everyone has to deal with it as a personal matter. 

I bemoan that we live in a society where cheating on your lover is largely considered a relatively minor transgression that mature people just get over or get over and move on—“a breach of contract”, in your words.  I think that mischaracterizes the transgressiveness of the act and gives licence to people to continue to behave abusively towards on another while telling the victims that they should just “put on their big girl panties and deal with it.”

I don’t think that that implies that I believe an agreement to be monogamous gives partners property rights over each other.  In fact the transgression would be lessor if that were my contention.  Who wouldn’t rather be robbed than assaulted?

The idea of cheating as a sexual assault is particularly difficult to conceptualize because at the moment of its occurence the abused person suffers no evident harm (so long as they don’t pick up an STI).  It is only in retrospect when the true nature of the exchange becomes evident (fraudulently obtained consensual relations) that emotional impact hits with a degree of suffering that many have described as almost unbearably painful and disorienting. 

If so many people react so viscerally, is it so hard to understand that it is because they have been been seriously abused?

And again, to be clear, while this perhaps makes the kind of violent reactions posited in the Tiger Wood’s case more understandable, it does not make them in any way acceptable. 

If people were to change their understanding and “stretch” their imagination and empathize with the victim of infidelity as we ought with victims of sexual assault, maybe cheating would be less likely to be seen as a valid choice.

If this point hasn’t already been raised, I’d like to quibble a bit with the argument that assault suggests assumption of sexual ownership.  The other side of infidelity is promised fidelity and the absence of fidelity can be viewed as a sort of mental assault in itself, in light of STDs and unprotected sex and some sort of sexual contract you have with your partner in regards to monogamy.  I see that some of these issues are already in the thread.

It seems to me that equating cheating and assault makes an implicit assumption of ownership over another person’s body. People are free to enter and exit relationships at will, for any reason, because of body autonomy. Maybe if someone hid their infidelity for the purpose of causing harm you could call it assault, but nobody owes you exclusive rights to their body, ever.

I think it is very easy for someone in an abusive relationship to convince herself that violence by a lover or spouse is the exception, or be convinced of it after the first time by an elaborately apologetic abuser. 

And usually once someone tells a friend or family member that she has been assaulted, it’s not the first time, so giving advice to leave when someone tells you is good.

And even if it is only once, usually, when a relationship gets to the point of such a violent outburst, the relationship is over anyway.

But exceptions do exist.  That was my only point.  I don’t want to see the thread derailed by claims that there are a lot of them, or that they’re normal, because they aren’t.  But they exist.

Regarding cheating, I of course don’t think that it justifies violence, ever, but I also don’t think that it’s something as simple as just an impersonal breach of contract. If a person consents to have sex in a monogamous relationship only, for whatever reasons, and the other party breaks that agreement in secret while still having sex with that person, then the cheater gets sex fraudulently, sex that otherwise wouldn’t be consented to. It’s not about ownership of the cheater’s body by his/her partner, it’s about self-ownership of the person that’s been cheated upon. If you have sex with someone who promises to use condoms and then he doesn’t, do you also think it’s just a “breach of contract”?

This is a sore spot for me, because I have seen cheating being used as an instrument of psychological (and also physical - STDs) violence in two cases, and it was exactly this trivialization of cheating that enabled the abusers to continue for so long. A woman I know has been several times in hospital because of STDs she got from her unfaithful husband.

My attitude towards cheating is not a result of some strange moralism - open relationships, polyamory, whatever floats your boat, but people should be honest about the conditions they’re going to have sex under, that’s all.

@banisteropsis.

We agree that “People are free to enter and exit relationships at will, for any reason, because of body autonomy.”

But, if you use your bodily autonomy and act on having changed your mind about being monogamous it is your ethical responsibility to tell your partner about your stepping out before you trick them into having sex with you that they otherwise would not if they knew the truth.  Being required to act ethically in a sexual relationship does not imply a sense of ownership by your partner over your body or sexuality.

My contention is that cheating and then returning to the honest partner’s bed denies the non-cheating partner their bodily autonomy.  Uniformed consent is no consent at all.

@Manoranka—exactly!

#96 and #97 -

I think this raises an interesting point.  Perhaps the case is that the act of cheating itself is a breach of contract (albeit far more severe in the emotional pain it causes than a plumbing contractor not honoring the terms of his plumbing contract), but the act of continuing a sexual relationship with the individual that you have cheated on after having cheated without informing that individual of the indiscretion is a form of assault.

The word “assault” still bothers me a bit, and I’m not comfortable equating it with full-blown rape necessarily, but yes, I do agree that if you secretly cheat on your monogamous partner, and then continue to have sex with that partner while hiding the cheating, you are doing more harm to them than a simple breach of contract.  And most certainly, if you contract an STD while cheating, and then have sex with your monogamous partner without informing them of the affair or the STD, you absolutely are assaulting them in a very literal sense.

Oops.  Placed this in the wrong thread.  Correcting that now.

exholt and anyone else that is talking about the emotional aspects of cheating: I agree that it’s painful to be cheated on.  No one is denying that it hurts, no matter how you view it.  I’m just arguing that if you see it as a breach of contract instead of a violation of your property rights, that will inform how you react, and whether or not you think violence to regain control is acceptable.  I think if you’ve got a healthier point of view, you’ll just cry and end the relationship.

Although breach of contract is serious in any context/event, breaches involving close relationships such as ones with friends, family, and especially one’s spouse is considered by many IME to be of far more severity/seriousness than a breach involving casual acquaintances or complete strangers.

If one’s willing and able to cheat their friends, extended family, or especially their spouse.....what’s going to prevent them from cheating casual acquaintances or complete strangers such as one’s co-workers, clients/customers, or more importantly....the greater public if one is a civil servant/holder of public office??

Personally, I’ve never been cheated on....but I have witnessed too many ex-friend cheaters who ended up manifesting other cases of untrustworthiness in their dealings in other areas of their lives.  One big reason why they are my ex-friends and why other friends/acquaintances who used to be their friends ended their friendships with them.

DonnaDiva (50):

I’m not sure about that but I think it’s telling that female cheating is so taboo that it’s a porn trope, whereas male cheating is just mainstream.

More, I think, that women’s fantasies are rarely incorporated into mainstream porn. I’m not saying women do or don’t eroticize/fetishize infidelity, just you can’t use porn as a guide to the prevelance (or even existence) of any particular female fantasy.

“nobody owes you exclusive rights to their body, ever. “

I’m having trouble with this idea.  if two people get married, exclusivity is usually part of the deal. If one person no longer wants to be exclusive and the other isn’t into an open situation, then the relationship should end. 

i’m not saying that anyone does owe anyone else exclusive rights to their body, but if that’s what you promised . . . .

I dunno. I’m having trouble with that statement and my confusion over it.

Good intentions, certainly, but your execution needs cleaning up

So sayeth…

DTG:

The word “assault” still bothers me a bit, and I’m not comfortable equating it with full-blown rape necessarily, but yes, I do agree that if you secretly cheat on your monogamous partner, and then continue to have sex with that partner while hiding the cheating, you are doing more harm to them than a simple breach of contract.

Maybe “bodily harm” or something involving negligence and/or fraud? Maybe “negligent bodily harm with the intent to defraud.” I’m not trying to be glib (well maybe a little) because the arguments that banisteropsis, Majoranka and others are making are convincing me. But like you, I don’t see the word assault fitting their argument.

Probably my main feeling of wariness is coming from the laws that used to exist regarding adultery. Those laws were all about a man owning his wife so adultery was damaging someone else’s property. I fully realize that’s not the argument being made here. But the possibility of overlap is worrisome.

I think the history of adultery being treated as a crime against a husband’s property interest in his wife (see “criminal conversation laws") may well be what gives rise to the idea that adultery may be a feminist choice.

I think the truly feminist choice is more aligned with the “ethical slut” approach which itself denies the necessity of monogamy but also leaves no room for cheating.  It does however leave room for cheating without continuing to have sex with the spouse.  Now that, while hurtful, would be a breach of contract without an assault on the cheated-on partner.  Many a sexless marriage is likely a solution to the problem of secretly abandoning vows of monogamy without committing sexual assault on the spouse.

I also recognize that the pressures on women (and also but to a lesser extent men) to maintain their relationships and the barriers for many to moving on from a bad or even abusive relationship create a space in which adultery becomes the best of a bad host of choices for those who can’t or won’t live without a satisfying sexual relationship.  In an ideal world people would have real freedom to just leave a bad relationship and then fulfill their needs but usually it is more complicated than that.

I still think that cheating is not an ethical choice and that the victim of infidelity suffers a serious wrong, but I realize that there are all kinds of infidelities and that marriage vows are often breached in various ways before the contract of sexual exclusivity collapses.

We’re human—sometimes we fail ourselves and our partners and sometimes we are indifferent to or want to hurt the ones we hold accountable for our misery.

“nobody owes you exclusive rights to their body, ever. “

I’m having trouble with this idea.  if two people get married, exclusivity is usually part of the deal. If one person no longer wants to be exclusive and the other isn’t into an open situation, then the relationship should end.

i’m not saying that anyone does owe anyone else exclusive rights to their body, but if that’s what you promised . . . .

I dunno. I’m having trouble with that statement and my confusion over it.
Comment #101: Gypsy Lee on 12/14 at 12:59 PM

If I owe exclusive rights to my body to my husband, then how is it still mine?  I can’t get a tattoo without his consent. 

If you say it’s just limited to sexuality, then still, I’m not allowed to masturbate without his consent.  Or kiss someone in a way he thinks might be sexual, for whatever weird reason he might come up with.  Or walk in a provocative way, or wear a dress he thinks is too seductive, or laugh at a dirty joke.  And he can’t look at any other woman’s body, because his eyes belong to me and I don’t want them there.

Or kiss someone in a way he thinks might be sexual, for whatever weird reason he might come up with.

I’ll give you the others, but that seems fairly self-evidently infidelity to me. You’re poisoning the well a bit, if you will, with the phrasing, and I suppose it’s not all that unusual for someone to not class making out as infidelity, but I don’t think it’s overbearing or claiming ownership when someone in a closed relationship doesn’t kiss anyone outside the relationship sexually,and expects his or her partner(s) to show the same restraint.

Other commenters are equating infidelity with assault because it introduces the possibility of STD’s into a relationship, and that is something which is understandable to be upset about.  But the solution isn’t monogamy, obviously, the solution is to not expect your lover, no matter what a great person they are to set aside their interests in order to protect yours.

That means we have to have conversations about bodily fluids, we might have to think about and define our expectations and then defend those boundaries when they are crossed, we might have to use barrier contraception even in monogamous relationships.  Being an adult means taking care of yourself, and being in relationships with adults means trusting that they are able to take care of themselves as well, up to and including their naughty bits.

...the solution is to not expect your lover, no matter what a great person they are to set aside their interests in order to protect yours.

I have a big problem with this line of reasoning. 

It is easily used as an excuse to betray not only spouses, but also friends and by extension....anyone else in one’s life....especially considering how all of those cheater ex-friends I mentioned above used that as one of their justifications for cheating their spouses, family members, friends, and others in various areas of their lives in various ways.  It sounds a bit too much like the mantra a con artist or fraudster often uses to excuse their unethical behaviors/actions......it was all for “their interest”. 

Ummm . . . I think it only sounds radical because we are convinced our entire lives that once we enter a relationship our interest and our lover’s interests will automatically become the same, and if they don’t one partner will willingly, or at least quietly, compromise. 

That sets up a relationship which proceeds according to the wishes of the partner who, at best, is the most persuasive, or, at worst, is most coercive.

I agree with belcoker but only insofar as it extends to relationships with egoists and sociopaths.  No one expects pro-social behaviour from such people and should do their best to avoid entering into relationships with them.  Of course, it’s probably safer to assume everyone is like this and live a life without the possibility of intimacy </snark>

I’d agree that anyone in a relationship with such a person should never trust them to behave in a loving way and should probably never be in the same room with them without a hermetically sealed latex suit.

What a depressing outlook.

What a depressing outlook.

Indeed. 

It is also a cop-out as it basically implies that expectations of ethical behavior, especially among those in close relationships as with friends, family, and especially one’s spouse is an extremely idealistic/unreasonable expectation.  Maybe I am a freak....but IMHO....ethical behavior is the absolute minimal standard one should expect from oneself and others...especially those in close relationships if we are to have any semblance of healthy social relationships and by extension...a healthy society.  Otherwise, the default is sociopathy.

I think the truly feminist choice is more aligned with the “ethical slut” approach which itself denies the necessity of monogamy but also leaves no room for cheating.  It does however leave room for cheating without continuing to have sex with the spouse.

Notably, New York state is one of the few states which does not have no-fault divorce so couples seeking to divorce must cite a reason which implies fault to one or both parties.  One of the choices couples can use is essentially citing that there was no sexual relations with spouse for at least one year.  Found that out when I was assisting a college friend in divorcing her asshat husband in NYC.

I’d agree that anyone in a relationship with such a person should never trust them to behave in a loving way and should probably never be in the same room with them without a hermetically sealed latex suit.

I wonder if Malcolm McLaren is still hawking such suits....especially the one he wore in that self-promotional film of his......The Great Rock and Roll Swindle indeed....

Or kiss someone in a way he thinks might be sexual, for whatever weird reason he might come up with.

I’ll give you the others, but that seems fairly self-evidently infidelity to me. You’re poisoning the well a bit, if you will, with the phrasing, and I suppose it’s not all that unusual for someone to not class making out as infidelity, but I don’t think it’s overbearing or claiming ownership when someone in a closed relationship doesn’t kiss anyone outside the relationship sexually,and expects his or her partner(s) to show the same restraint.
Comment #106: Hershele Ostropoler on 12/14 at 07:30 PM

I think you misunderstand. 

I’m saying that putting this in his hands means that he can define *for me* what a sexual kiss is, even if it’s not intended or received in that way.  I hug some co-workers and friends—those hugs could be interpreted as sexual, too, by a partner who has a crazy ass idea of owning my entire body and sexuality as he defines it.

Other commenters are equating infidelity with assault because it introduces the possibility of STD’s into a relationship, and that is something which is understandable to be upset about.  But the solution isn’t monogamy, obviously, the solution is to not expect your lover, no matter what a great person they are to set aside their interests in order to protect yours.

That means we have to have conversations about bodily fluids, we might have to think about and define our expectations and then defend those boundaries when they are crossed, we might have to use barrier contraception even in monogamous relationships.  Being an adult means taking care of yourself, and being in relationships with adults means trusting that they are able to take care of themselves as well, up to and including their naughty bits.
Comment #107: bellacoker on 12/14 at 09:15 PM

Maybe I’m misinterpreting, so apologies in advance if I am.

If we use barrier methods, how will anyone get pregnant?  That’s kind of important in some relationships, and if there’s no expectation of monogamy in any relationship, then every woman who wants to get pregnant is doing double dangerous duty, and should expect so, according to you.

That’s okay for a relationship where I accept the possibility my partner may have sex with others.  It isn’t if we’ve agreed not to.  Being an adult means not making a commitment you don’t at least plan to commit to, and letting the other parties know if the situation has changed.

I see your point in saying that a person may be not monogamous and should therefore be careful enough to use barrier methods with others to avoid disease.  But the nature of sex while supposedly in a monogamous relationship, like other “forbidden” relationships, tends towards the not-so-careful.  Kids who plan to be chaste until marriage sometimes find themselves about to have sex without a condom or the sure knowledge of how to use it, or are too drunk/stoned/emotionally messed up to use it; the same happens with supposedly monogamous people.

I don’t expect that in every relationship, hell, in some nominally monogamous relationships, sex outside the relationship is not going to happen, and one can often predict or guess when it won’t.  But that’s the ideal, that’s what many people strive for, and while we fail eventually along that road a fair percentage of the time, that doesn’t mean it’s not something we should never hope for.

Failure in this particular commitment often comes with life-threatening consequences, and that can make us more dedicated to living up to the commitment, or more cautious about those who promise it, or both.

exholt:
Has Coercion is Bad become a rallying cry for sociopaths?  I would think they would be fans.
I also think it’s odd that you conflate having freedom of choice with choosing to be evil.  Most of the people I know and associate with are nice and friendly and good because they want to be, not because they aren’t given the chance to be assholes. 

Oldfeminist:

Oh, god.  I’m not trying to say I know how everyone should behave in all of their relationships, I just generally think relationships can be improved through paying attention and making decisions based on the facts at hand and, frankly, accepting the possibility that no one is going to care as much about our safety and happiness as we should care about ourselves.  And if we accept that responsibility, the next step is not trying to control the decisions of the people we interact with, because they are best positioned to make decisions regarding their safety and happiness.

This seems to be a more radical proposition than it is in my head, but perhaps I’m framing it poorly.

It seems to me that equating cheating and assault makes an implicit assumption of ownership over another person’s body. People are free to enter and exit relationships at will, for any reason, because of body autonomy. Maybe if someone hid their infidelity for the purpose of causing harm you could call it assault, but nobody owes you exclusive rights to their body, ever.

There is a difference, I think, between monogamy as a matter of ownership, versus monogamy as a matter of consent and communication. 

If you’ve made a monogamous commitment with your partner, it’s a commitment that may affect your behavior in various ways (such as agreeing to not use condoms to prevent STD transmission, because you have decided to try to have a child together).  There are times and ways in which a mutually monogamous commitment is appropriate, there are times and ways in which it isn’t. 

But if such a commitment has been made, then breaking the commitment without communicating with the person that you’ve made the commitment with is a breach of trust. 

If you see consent as a continuum, then it can be conditional.  For example, if you consent to have sex with a partner using a condom, and your partner uses slight-of-hand to remove the condom surreptitiously during the sex act, so that you wind up having sex without the condom without your knowledge, I’d say sexual assault has been committed, and consent violated.  Or consent to sex with person A is not the same as consenting to sex with people B, C, D and E, whatever the slut-shamers may say. 

Likewise, if you agree to have sex in a mutually monogamous relationship, and decide that you do not want to continue to be monogamous, then whether or not monogamy is something society should promote, the concept of consent demands that you either remain monogamous or you discuss your desires with your partner and establish a new agreement (end the relationship, agree to an open relationship, etc.)

It would be a violation of consent to decide that monogamy isn’t important, so you won’t remain monogamous, but you won’t tell the person whom you promised to be monogamous with that you’ve changed your mind.  Because you’re unilaterally changing the terms of the agreement you have with that person, without their knowledge or consent. 

There are appropriate ways to react to a violation of your consent, and there are inappropriate ways.  And sometimes, there are ways that are inappropriate, but understandable, because we know humans don’t have perfect self-control, particularly when their consent is violated. 

Interpreting an unprecedented action that happens in the immediate aftermath of the discovery that your consent has been violated as if it was a routine part of the relationship or as if it occurred without the context of the sudden discovery of the violated consent, doesn’t make sense, and undermines the importance of ongoing consent in relationships.

exholt (111):

New York state is one of the few states which does not have no-fault divorce

I seem to recall that 2% of states lack no-fault provisions

oldfeminist (113):

I’m saying that putting this in his hands means that he can define *for me* what a sexual kiss is, even if it’s not intended or received in that way.  I hug some co-workers and friends—those hugs could be interpreted as sexual, too, by a partner who has a crazy ass idea of owning my entire body and sexuality as he defines it.

Well, to grossly paraphrase Randomizer, if you’re in a relationship with a crazy person, that’s the problem, not the idea that if you’ve committed to a monogamous relationship with one person you shouldn’t have sex with anyone else.

Ursula (115):

Interpreting an unprecedented action that happens in the immediate aftermath of the discovery that your consent has been violated as if it was a routine part of the relationship or as if it occurred without the context of the sudden discovery of the violated consent, doesn’t make sense, and undermines the importance of ongoing consent in relationships.

On the oter hand, someone capable of provoked violence is that much more likely to be capable on unprovoked violence.

I also think it’s odd that you conflate having freedom of choice with choosing to be evil. 

I’m not sure freedom of choice includes unilaterally making choices/changing the terms of a relationship/contract without any consideration or giving any damn about the other partner, family member, or friend.  This argument combined with your previous ones sound too much like the overentitled expectations of a self-absorbed adolescent who lacks awareness that there are others to take into consideration or a quasi/total sociopath who doesn’t give a damn about how their decisions affect people they supposedly care about whether spouses, family, or close friends. 

I’m sorry, but I am speaking with some experience dealing with cheater ex-friends who felt completely justified in what they’ve done using similar/same arguments....and allowed this “looking out for #1” mentality to include screwing their family, friends, and everyone else.

Oh, god.  I’m not trying to say I know how everyone should behave in all of their relationships, I just generally think relationships can be improved through paying attention and making decisions based on the facts at hand and, frankly, accepting the possibility that no one is going to care as much about our safety and happiness as we should care about ourselves.  And if we accept that responsibility, the next step is not trying to control the decisions of the people we interact with, because they are best positioned to make decisions regarding their safety and happiness.

This seems to be a more radical proposition than it is in my head, but perhaps I’m framing it poorly.
Comment #114: bellacoker on 12/15 at 02:10 PM

It’s not radical, but it is far different from the norm, where neither one actually makes these decisions, they’re based on a standard given to us by some religious or moral authority.

I don’t think the kind of person you describe in this relationship is a sociopath.  But there is an expectation of not sacrificing for another, of keeping the best for oneself. 

This is realistic on average, I guess, but then who will take care of you when you get sick?  Even enlightened self-interest would tell me to go find a new husband when the old one is dying and is going to take several messy years to do so, for example.

It just goes to show that the belief that someone “belongs” to you is the cause of abuse in all sorts of situations.

That certainly seemed to be the case with my ex - she only escalated to physical abuse after I decided that I had to leave the marriage.

That means we have to have conversations about bodily fluids, we might have to think about and define our expectations and then defend those boundaries when they are crossed, we might have to use barrier contraception even in monogamous relationships.  Being an adult means taking care of yourself, and being in relationships with adults means trusting that they are able to take care of themselves as well, up to and including their naughty bits.

Yeah… umm, that doesn’t really work if you are in a relationship in which you’re actively trying to get pregnant.  I don’t really have a strong desire to have kids at this point in my life, or perhaps ever… but that doesn’t mean that everyone shares that position.  Some people actually do want to get pregnant.  And if your spouse cheats on you and doesn’t disclose that indiscretion but continues to have sex with you and you allow that to happen without barrier contraception because you’ve mutually agreed to try to get pregnant, that really doesn’t make the cheated-on partner responsible for getting an STD from their lover who has been sleeping around.

Are you saying that everybody should just stop trying to get pregnant altogether, always use barrier contraception, and always assume that their partner might be cheating, just to be on the safe side?  And if they don’t, oh well, sucks to be them if they get an STD from a cheating partner?

#105 - I get your point, even if it’s not the point I was ineptly trying to examine.  Are we saying then that monogamy is anti-feminist? 

Mary Kay, sweetie? The world isn’t neutral. There’s these things called genders? Yeah, you might want to look into them one of these days. They kind of influence the way women get treated.

On the oter hand, someone capable of provoked violence is that much more likely to be capable on unprovoked violence.

That’s often true, but it’s not a certainty for any person or relationship.

And we don’t want to get into a situation where people who react violently to breaches of their sexual consent are treated as if they are acting violently without provocation. 

People have the right to have their consent respected, to have agreements of the terms of sexual consent respected by their partners, and to be outraged if a partner does not respect and honor the terms under which they have reached sexual consent with each other. 

Sexual consent goes hand-in-hand with interpersonal trust. Whatever the problems may be with the assumption of monogamy in marriage, if a couple has agreed to be sexually faithful to one another, with or without marriage, then a violation of the terms of their consent with each other is as serious as any other time when people having sex with each other violate the other’s consent.  It makes no sense at all to expect more respect for consent in a casual relationship, while treating violation of the terms of consent in a long-term relationship as a more minor issue.