The story:
Woman Set Fire To Her Boyfriend's Crotch
My comment, re: statements made in the post -
"(quoted from post) Men – this is a good example of why it is never a good idea to fall asleep before resolving an argument with your girlfriend or wife!
That's a hair shy of "This is what you get for making her mad." Would you feel the same if roles were reversed?
The lighthearted mood of both the story and the comments is even worse... how many people find this as funny simply because the victim was a man? Would it be funny for a man to set his girlfriend's crotch on fire after an argument? Even though the post makes a few token comments lightly condemning the act (also with an attitude of humor) it sickens me to see this action laughed at. The same would not be occurring if a man had done this to a woman, a parent had done this to an argumentative, disobedient child, or if a human had done the same to a dog for making her angry. Why is it funny just because it happened to a man? What if it were your son, your brother, or one of your friends who was assaulted? Would it be as funny then?
Attitudes like this are why abused men don't get the kind of help they need to get out of abusive relationships the way abused women do. They know that they are not going to be taken seriously. Folks need to think - actions which are abuse when committed against women, children, and animals are also abuse when committed against men."
It's really rare in situations like this for the police to actually handle things the way they did in this case, by arresting the assailant and not the victim. I've seen it happen more the other way. I've even seen the lengths to which the system goes to favor women over men in domestic violence cases. (Reader, you seriously need to check out that link and follow through the whole thing - all 9 updates - before responding to that sentence, or you will look like a colossal idiot to everyone who is familiar with that case when you flame me for that statement.)
It is sad but not surprising to see this kind of attitude toward violence against men. As a woman who gets along with regular guys better than I do with regular gals, I've seen my buddies subjected to that attitude by the female acquaintances in their lives so much that I'm as hyper-aware of it and offended by it as most folks are to/by such treatment when women are the target instead of men.
Don't believe me? Try this: Watch the video below, but turn off the sound, so you can't hear the song. Do you find the behavior funny? Imagine the roles reversed - switch the singer with the actor who plays the boyfriend. Do you still find it funny?
That's just how the attitude permeates the entertainment industry. For many, they don't count as having a mindset due to a growing lack of tendency to think among their ranks. However, you can see similar attitudes among feminist activists:
Make no mistake: THIS IS CHILD ABUSE
The part of the video discussed in the article starts at 9:56. Prior to that, there is quite enough to cause concern, as the speaker celebrates not equality, but a level of dominance. She doesn't want equality. She wants to outdo, outnumber, and overpower. That is a divisive, abusive attitude. I feel sorry for her family. As the article's writer points out, she is abusing all of them, and handicapping her children in the process.
Let's play the role reversal game a bit more. Check out the following images of products available online.
Now, mentally replace male reference with a female reference, and visa-versa... feeding women to pigs, women as what God created while drunk, the idea that women are FUBAR as compared to men, testing on women instead of animals, setting women on fire as a joke, women as shit, women on a hook as bait. Are you offended by those ideas? Were you not offended by the above products? If you would be offended by these shirts referring to women, but not to men, then you are a bigot, and your attitude is the kind that helps to perpetuate a system of abuse against men. Try looking at these objects one more time, only instead of reversing references, imagine a reference to a guy you know, about whom you care... a male friend... your brother... your son. Is it funny if we suggest on a mouse pad feeding your son to pigs... on a t-shirt that he is FUBAR? How about seeing his image on that fishhook? On fire?
I rest my case.
These things are just a tiny, tiny fraction of what I could have put into this post. There is a whole world of thought, attitude, and behavior behind these, and everything like them. The fact that people are willing to purchase the above items and display them for others... the fact that people find the subject matter of the above videos acceptable and somehow appropriate, these are signs of societal sickness; the attitude that badgering, belittling, and bashing men somehow makes up for society's past abuses of women. It doesn't. All it does is create a new inequality and animosity which must be overcome. It looks to me like that may take a long time.
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Comments: 93 ( 3 removed by ℐґṽїᾔℊ ϟᾔø⊥ρ☺¢к℮тṧ )
I'm in the same postion and am coming from the same point of view on this issue so I really appreciate this article.
Then there was my mother, while I was growing up, and thereafter........
Hopefully you have a better situation now, both without your ex and with your mother.
As long as people accept this kind of treatment, the sexes will never have true equality.
I suppose there is at least one clue to men staying in how people raise their kids.
My family did everything they could to teach my brother that it was wrong for him to hit girls, and to this day he not only would not do that, but would protect any girl he thought was in danger of abuse.
I don't recall being told the same thing with respect to any guy except my brother - and that was mainly that it was unfair for me to hit him because he couldn't hit me back. I was taught not to bully people, just as he was taught, but nothing was said about a specific sex. Men who are the victims in abusive relationships may not leave at first in part because of that mindset.
I didn't see or speak to my father for about 34 years. Now he's 76 and he lives with me. We're closer than we've ever been.
It is good that you've made peace with your father. It had to take a lot of heart to be able to do that.
absolute power corrupts absolutely is the only answer I have come up with
Sadly, too many people seem to confuse equal with identical and perception with reality. It then follows that since the perception that some men's boorish, bullying behavior defines all men as pigs, then the confused will assume that women must also be pigs in order to attain equality. Until we knock that whole thing down, we're doomed to a continue this cycle.
But yes, it should be that way in real life, too. Abuse should not be treated differently when it is perpetrated against a man.
And apparently even he was making jokes about it.
"You tend to, like, get upset when somebody trying to harm the family jewels!" he joked to the station.
Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/2010/12/17/2010-12-17_berlinda_dixonnewbold_arrested_for_allegedly_setting_boyfriends_crotch_
on_fire_p.html#ixzz18h5ZZ8ZI
Boot To Da Head is kind of a play on the name of the game A Whack on the Side of the Head, from Roger Von Oech, but because I always loved The Frantics' Boot to the Head skit. When I write on subjects like this, and other areas that touch or are touched by politics, I aim to make people take the time to think.
I don't expect the name to mean to everyone what it means to me, but you need not fear violence from me. ;P
so this makes it ok!?!?!?!
Every think he was making jokes out of embarrassment? Men don't get looked at as woman.
I think she meant that if a MAN did this to a WOMAN and SHE went on the radio and started cracking jokes, nobody would think it was funny. If a woman got her breasts set on fire and cracked jokes on the radio, I can assure you it wouldn't be funny.
But, because it was a WOMAN that had done it to a MAN, and HE went on air cracking jokes, then there MUST have been a reason for it (like being an SOB) and he should be locked up forever. With men something like this happens then there was a reason for it. Something like this happens to a woman then its he was a SOB and lock him away forever
I am sorry you can relate... that is something I wish wasn't true. Sadly, it's kind of a widespread attitude... the idea that abuse isn't abuse if it is perpetrated against a man. It's amazing the lengths some people will go to in order to marginalize or justify it.
Also, if you haven't all ready, you should join the group Abused Men so you can post it there.
If the parent hits you, you can press charges. The kids can't.
Then there's the abuse a lot of parents don't realize is abuse - after a divorce, a lot of parents criticize the other parent to the kids. This can be really demoralizing to a kid, who loves both parents and does not need to see one of them as the "bad guy." Even in cases of divorce because of abuse, when the estranged parent clearly has done something wrong, the kids should not be subjected to one parent's criticisms of the other. It's tough to live by that, but it's abuse to badmouth a kid's parents in front of the kid, even if what you have to say is 100% true, and even if you think the kid is "old enough to handle the truth."
She did everything she could to keep them away from him. She would cancel visits by telling him they were sick when they weren't and then tell the kids that he was the one cancelling the visits. She told them that their father wanted nothing to do with them when in fact he was spending all of his time in court trying to get the judge to enforce their custody agreement. It was a very sad situation.
His son finally found out the truth when he was a grown man and my grandmother happened to see him at the mall. She walked up to him and told him that his father had done everything he could to see him and his sister and if he didn't believe her then my uncle had the court papers to prove it. Luckily because of this chance encounter my uncle was able to finally have a relationship with his kids.
Fortunately, he had some personal relationship resources among both our and her friends and family who have helped. Still, we had to move clear across the state of Ohio to avoid having all contact with them severed, because she fled with them when it became apparent that he wasn't giving up. That is why we're in Dayton instead of near any of our other relatives.
BUT, I still don't degrade him, nor do I ask "personal questions" unless they could pertain to my son's safety, or anything else that could make him feel like he's "in the middle".
Holly-That's wonderful, and when I write the post I'll be linking to this one, I hope that's what happens for my friend.
Which truly sucks for us!
I agree with the practice of respecting our children's privacy and dignity as individuals. Parents who criticize and micromanage their kids' lives end up with neurotic, helpless adult children. Good parents give their kids roots and wings and always encouragement.
To your second paragraph, all I can say is KUDOS! Exactly! :)
*Applause*
The situation is bad, but awareness is a great tool for changing attitudes. The more people think about this from the "what if" perspective, the more people will wake up about it and stop tolerating abuse.
Not funny so "Why" is irrelvant.
I think sometimes this kind of violence just indicates that the perpetrator is a jerk, male or female. Tension might excuse exclaiming that men can never find anything, or won't ask for directions, but definitely not setting someone on fire.
It's absolutely good that people are aware of male violence against females and that it is being reduced. However, we are not liberated if we cannot have equality without becoming the perpetrators.
What is wrong for the gander is equally wrong for the goose.
Agreed completely. Please don't misunderstand my comment to imply any kind of acceptance or justification.
I did not mean to say that "tension is an excuse", or even a cause. I only noted "pent-up frustration" as an observation. No matter what the generation, I believe there will be tension until we learn to accept our different perspectives. Even though most of us accept (or have been forced to accept) our differences, many of us don't accept why those differences exist.
Now that women are able to attain the same level of power as men have acheived in the past, some are doing exactly the same thing with it, and becoming perpetrators. I don't think this is a new problem; it is an old problem that has infected a new gender.
No matter what the generation, I believe there will be tension until we learn to accept our different perspectives.
Yep, that is key! Too many times people mistake being identical with being equal, and it always makes things worse.
I don't think this is a new problem; it is an old problem that has infected a new gender.
I think you hit the nail on the head, there. It's unfortunately a part of human nature that we all have to combat... the tendency to take "getting back a little of your own" too far, the tendency to throw one's weight around, and the tendency to enforce one's way when one can, even if it hurts others.
To me, abusers are the weakest humans, because they fail to fight those urges and assert control over themselves, choosing instead to give in and allow those urges to prompt them to wrongfully assert control over others.
I have to agree with you - it only fuels hate.
Societal- enforced gender roles take a huge toll on men, too- not just women. They are just as susceptible to abuse as women, but they are afraid to speak out because they'd be seen as weak.
Abuse is not the only way gender roles are harmful to men. Their sexuality is also expected to be based in 'performance' rather than 'expression' and they're expected to live up to the impossible role of 'ultimate provider'.
I am not only a feminist but I am also a masculist.
I agree that men are often afraid to speak out due to the perception of weakness, but I also have to point out that there are instances in which men are arrested and prosecuted as perpetrators when they involve authorities, who though well trained on how to handle situations in which females are endangered by male partners, have little to no training on how to handle the opposite situation.
My husband is in the position of being expected to be the ultimate provider... our child support situation is ludicrous. The same system applies totally different rules when determining what is required of him vs what is required of his ex-wife. That uneven handling of the case has kept our family (and our son) in poverty for a decade, while the ex and her husband have had it so easy that they were able to afford to even help support deadbeat extended family in their large home.
Too often, this is what I'm seeing in the quest for "equality." I think it's vital that we stop being "feminists" and "masculists" and start just being human.
Violence against either sex is wrong. It's never funny.
Statistics from the CDC's 2010 National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey (NISVS) show that it's far from uncommon for the perpetrator in a violent case to be female. It's just not something society has progressed as far in addressing as it has male violence.