(ThyBlackMan.com) First of all, I have never hit my wife, my mother nor any of my sisters. I shouldn’t and I wouldn’t. This article is not about making excuses for anybody hitting anybody. This article is about fairness, being treated with respect and accepting no less. Society says a man should never hit a woman. But is that all there is too it? Are there other aspects we need to look at? Are there cases where a man should hit a woman? And has there been a double standard embedded in our courts, our law enforcement, our minds and our communities that allows women to get away destructive, abusive behaviors?
Equality demands that men and women are seen as equally important – our safety, our physical, spiritual and emotional well being. Most major belief systems support this view and our constitution confirms it in the 14th Amendment which took effect in 1868. But that is not what has been happening. If a woman hits a man and the man hits her back, all over this country and 90% of the time, he is the one likely to go to jail. Men are told to walk away if we are hit but women are told to call the police. This is not fair at all.
If hitting another person is wrong, the perpetrator should be punished without regard to gender. If the man should walk away when the woman hits him, then she should have to do the same. If the woman should call the police when she is hit, the man should do the same without fear of being the one to go to jail. Fair is fair, right is right and wrong is wrong. But that is not what we are seeing in the courts.
Our society has come to accept a double standard when it comes to men and women hitting each other. Clearly BOTH people should keep our hands to ourselves and neither person deserves to be hit or physically abused. Sadly people looked down on Ray Rice when he punched his fiancée without ever noticing in the video that she struck him before they even got on the elevator. This of course is no excuse for him punching her but there is more to the story that needed to be acknowledged. Nobody should hit anybody. If you say I am wrong, you believe that men and women should be treated differently and therein lies the problem. If we are equal, we should be treated equally.
When Solange attacked Jay-Z in the elevator, we shook our heads and said “wow“. But if Jay-Z had attacked Solange in the same way, most of us would have called him every name in the book. Then we should do the same towards her. I consider women equal to men and women are either equal or they are not. Therefore women should
not be able to proclaim equality on one side of the coin then pretend to be the helpless unequal gender when they want more rights and to be treated differently. Tell the ladies they cannot have it both ways.
Just as it is with Child Support, women’s feminist groups who hate men have bought off, bullied or and poisoned the system, the media and the community to see the man as the culprit 90% of the time without ever taking ALL the plain, verifiable and indisputable facts into account. And I can prove it!
But what about all the stats on abuse of women? I refer to Bureau of Justice Statistics which state that 1.2 million women are abused every year. But those same stats show 837,000 men are abused every year. Therefore the gap is not as wide as the media and feminist groups would lead you to believe. There is a deliberate effort by feminists masquerading as women’s rights groups to vilify the man almost always when a confrontation occurs while absolving the woman of any responsibility.
Most people say “no matter what the woman does, the man should not hit her“. But why isn’t this same standard applied to the man when the woman hits him? Instead we see women blowing up men’s cars in Waiting To Exhale, women keying men’s cars like in Friday After Next, women stalking men like Idris Elba faced in Obsession and women trying to kill the man who rejected them like in A Thin Line Between Love And Hate. Again we laugh and say “wow“, often justifying the woman’s actions instead of expressing outrage at her lack of accountability. From Gone With The Wind to the weekly Soap Opera to Jerry Springer, it is common place to see a woman slap a man because of what he said – and our society ignorantly accepts that.
Sometimes it’s a fight, not domestic violence. And in the African American community, many of us can think of at least one scenario where “somebody should have gotten their butt kicked“. Sometimes that somebody is in fact a female and if you are honest, you will agree. Does that mean we consciously condone violence? Consciously, no. Ironically, when we were little kids, a boy fighting a girl on the playground was not looked upon as domestic violence – it was looked upon as a fight. But African Americans as a whole are not making the laws in this country and those who do are seeing things very differently.
Abuse is abuse, whether it is verbal, spiritual, sexual , physical or emotional. And we need to stop accepting the excuses when women do it to men. It is a matter of right and wrong, not a double standard. It is a matter of the law and equal protection under it.
Abuse begets abuse. That means any kind of abuse can trigger a response of abuse in return. This is a fact, not an excuse. That includes physical, spiritual, emotional, mental or sexual abuse. The laws in most states and on a federal level are clear about one person being the primary aggressor. These laws also address the issue of language that provokes another person. For example, in Georgia, there is code section 16-5-25 called “Opprobrious Language: Fighting Words” and when such words are used, the use of simple assault or simple battery may be justified by law. Of course if you can help it, don’t risk it.
http://law.justia.com/codes/georgia/2010/title-16/chapter-5/article-2/16-5-25
What about the issue many people raise that a man should never hit a woman because he is much stronger than she is? This is usually followed by an ignorant statement such as “he can take it” or another idiotic statement such as “she can’t do anything to hurt him“. The fact of whether he can take it or not does NOT make her actions lawful. Nor does it mean he deserves to be hit by the woman. As for the assumption that she cannot hurt him, that is not an absolute truth at all. It all depends on where she hits him, what she hits him, how hard she hits him and what happens afterwards.
Let’s look at an example that I encountered as a former detective. The man is 6 foot 5 inches tall and muscular. His girlfriend is 5 foot 2 inches and petite. She strikes him in the back of the head with a steel baseball bat swung at full force. He suffers blunt force trauma to the head. She hits him again. He falls and hits his head on the fireplace. His brain starts to hemorrhage. He now has brain swelling and a major concussion. There is internal bleeding and loss of fluid from the brain. HOW MUCH OF A FACTOR WAS HER SIZE OR THE FACT THAT HE WAS MUCH LARGER AND STRONGER THAN HER? None.
If a woman hits a man, she is apparently not concerned that he may be bigger and stronger. So now we are expected to exercise the woman’s judgment for her, take the abuse and walk away? No. Anybody who hurts or abuses anybody should be punished period. If the man should keep his hands to himself (yes he should), then so should the woman. This extends to destroying belongings of the other person.
If you are a man who is involved with a woman who hits or physically abuses you, realize that she is showing you what she thinks of you by her actions towards you. Don’t make excuses for her and don’t accept her excuses, apologies and attempts to make up or blame you. Nobody deserves to be abused period, men included. If she continues this behavior, she could either hurt you or provoke you into hurting her. Such is not a healthy relationship and once the courts or the police get involved, it will likely go downhill anyway – probably taking you downhill with it. Draw the line in the sand just as they have told women to do. You as a man are just as valuable and your safety is just as important as hers.
What would I do? And yes I have been involved with a violent and hot tempered woman in times long since past. Knowing what I know now, I might walk away the first time, if she did not hurt me. But if she injured me, she better run. I might call the police. Or I might leave and ask her to get counseling that would make a change and fast or the relationship would end abruptly. I might record the incident. I might notify one of her family members she highly respects, seek his/her advice and ask him/her to speak with her. Whatever choice I made, I would not, do not and will not accept physical, emotional, spiritual, mental or verbal abuse from a woman any more than I would accept it from a man. And you shouldn’t either. Even if she says she loves you, her actions say otherwise and she has a problem. We all must keep our hands to ourselves because we all are valuable.
Staff Writer; Marque-Anthony