So the execrable Andrea Hardie — Twitter abuser, violence-threatener, Canada-embarrasser — has been pondering a deep philosophical conundrum: “Do some women benefit from being slapped around?”
If you have even the slightest familiarity with Hardie — known on the internet as JudgyBitch and/or Janet Bloomfield — you probably won’t be shocked to discover that her answer is yes.
You might be a little surprised that she considers herself, at least hypothetically, one of these women.
“There are all kinds of reasons I don’t cheat on my husband,” she explains, “but an important one is that I assume he would beat the sh*t out of me if I ever did. And I would bloody well deserve it.”
While Hardie insists that her husband “has never hit me in any context that wasn’t erotic and consensual” or even acted in a threatening manner towards her, she tells her readers that she “very much assume[s] that he would, and further, that in certain situations, he should.”
Cheating on her husband would be one of these “certain situations.” Being “disrespectful” of him in front of other people would be another. As she explains:
There are many things I would simply never dream of doing to my husband, because I assume I would get a slap or worse, if I did. All of those things are linked to respect. To be clear: all of this comes from me. Tim has never said “Don’t ever think of doing x because I will hit you.” … I just feel that he would, and he would be perfectly justified in doing so. There are a multitude of reasons I wouldn’t be disrespectful of my husband, especially in public. The possibility of taking a well-earned beating just happens to be one of them.
But unfortunately, Hardie claims, not all women are as well-behaved as she is.
I don’t go around inviting my husband to slap me by screaming at him in public or humiliating him by flirting with other men. But lots of women do. How much of domestic violence is caused by women pushing men into hitting them because that level of domination is familiar, and in a f*cked up way, deeply erotic for the women?
Yep, she went there, conflating consensual kink with men “beating the sh*t” out of women to punish them for their “disrespect.”
“[S]ome women do benefit from being slapped around,” Hardie concludes. “Some women crave it.”
She isn’t the only MRA who has tried to erase or complicate the clear distinction between consensual BDSM and domestic abuse. Youtube bloviater Karen “GirlWritesWhat” Straughan has suggested that many abused women “demand” their abuse, which Straughan thinks can lead to “scorching” sex. Anti-domestic-violence crusader turned domestic-violence apologist Erin Pizzey describes situations in which both partners are violent as “consensual violence.”
It’s not hard to tell the difference between violence in, say, sports and violence in real life — hitting someone in the face is perfectly acceptable, even encouraged, if you’re a professional boxer in the middle of a boxing match; it’s not acceptable to just go down the street punching random people who annoy you.
So is it really that hard for Hardie and other MRAs to tell the difference between, say, consensual spanking and “beating the sh^t” out of your partner? I don’t think it is. As you may recall, Hardie made clear early in her post that she understands this distinction quite well, telling us that her husband “has never hit me in any context that wasn’t erotic and consensual.”
The point of this phony “confusion” between consensual kink and domestic violence is to support an old victim-blaming narrative in which male violence is considered an excusable response to deliberate provocation from women who, in many cases, secretly love being beaten.
“For lots of women, submission to a violent man is a bonding experience,” Hardie writes.
[I]t’s incontrovertible that many women find violence erotic and even comforting. How many women feel this way, but have no way to articulate it, and thus end up provoking violence that can easily get out of hand?
Even more perversely, Hardie goes on to suggest that, when things do get “out of hand,” the abusive men are also somehow victims of the abuse they themselves inflict on their female partners.
Sure, Hardie says, women “may provoke more violence and anger than they intend, and thus end up getting really hurt.”
But men suffer as well, she writes, from being “provoked” into inflicting “violence [that goes] well beyond what is beneficial or wanted.”
Should men be punished when they’re “provoked” into beating their partners? I doubt it will come as much of a shock to discover that Hardie says “no.”
Oh, hitting women should still be illegal, she says. But, she insists, female “provocation” should be seen as “a mitigating factor … [e]ven to the point that provocation results in dismissed charges.”
How much “provocation” would be required to dismiss charges against a man who pummeled his wife so badly that he broke her nose and knocked out some teeth? Could this be considered a justified response to her cheating on him? To her flirting with other men in public? For her being late with dinner two nights in a row?
Hardie’s “logic” here is the same logic abusers themselves use to justify their abuse, spiced up a little with disingenuous references to kink.
Men who punch women for being “disrespectful” towards them don’t deserve that respect. Neither do the women who excuse this abuse.
Bad enough that she’s a self-loathing woman, but even worse that she tries to drag every other woman in the world down with her.
What a horrifying human being!
On behalf of Canadians, I’m sorry.
Surely she’ll run out of new lows eventually? Surely?
Well, maybe?
So if her husband is disrespectful to her, would she be doing him a favor by popping him one? Or does this principle only apply to male-on-female DV?
Never mind, I already know the answer. The woman is a walking double standard.
All Canadians should sign a petition to stuff Judgy Bitch in a small rocket and jettison her to Pluto.
This is sad. I don’t cheat on my husband, or yell at him in public, or humiliate him, but I am pretty sure he would not beat me for any of it. The reason I engage in positive behaviors toward my husband is that he engages in positive behaviors toward me. We have a partnership that includes mutual respect. How much better is that for a reason not to cheat on someone than the fear that you will get a “well-deserved” beating?
And of course, the MRAs in the comments section are lining up to agree with her. My favorite is this gem from Tyler
Because domestic violence is comparable to necessities like eating or basic hygiene?
Oh, but he’s not done
Now he’s a casting himself (presumably) and other abusers as some kind of heroes for only beating women when they had it coming.
I’ve always struggled to understand what kind of man would want to be married to this woman… presumably she would only go for a True Alpha, the kind of Red Pill MRA dude that understands “his place” in relation to his wife… and yet, as I’ve pondered before, she is very much NOT the kind of woman that she herself (and other, male, MRAs) say women should be. so what “neomasculine” MRA dude would want to marry her?
I still have no freaking idea, but if we take her at her word here, he’s as much of a monster as she is.
If you don’t want to do X, because you consider it’s a bad thing to do, and you welcome the prospect of someone hitting you if you were to do X because it helps you not to do it… then you might want to work on your self control so you can get to a point where you’re able to not do X all by yourself. Or failing that, at least rethink your extrinsic motivation strategies.
(Or basically, what iknklast said.)
That’s not how it works, nope.
Canadians, are there no hate crime laws that apply here?
She’s written many, many times about being beaten unconscious by her parents as a child. This is tragic. It’s not an excuse; many of us had awful childhoods and adapt better, but I’d never judge anyone who is permanently damaged by such an experience.
My compassion runs out when she literally encourages violence against women.
ETA: Brian – no, he’s not a monster, IMHO. He’s not the kind of person I’d want my kids marrying; he’s a narcissist who enjoys being catered to, and seems baffled at the neo-Right (I think that’s the term of art) turn she’s taken.
Opinions vary as to whether it’s true love, a desire to do right by his kids, or secret sympathy with her newfound passions, up here. But opinions also vary as to how long he’ll sit tight while this is the gossip of the faculty lounge. They live in a fairly diverse, left of center (by Canadian standards – that’s Commie by US standards 😉 ) city. This gon’ get interesting.
Provocation already is a mitigating factor in America (and sorta in Canada, but only for murder). Regardless, it’s bullshit. There’s no such thing as ‘fighting words’, it’s just ‘words’. Unless those words are, ‘hey, you, please fight me,’ keep your hands to yourself. And even then…
And what the fuck does “being disrespectful” mean!? Unless it’s code for, ‘and then she hit me in the mouth like Tyson’, keep your damn hands to your damn self! And even then..!
Also, do answer your own question, Mrs Hardie-Bloomfield. How much domestic violence is caused by women just hankering for a beatdown? Don’t go all vague on us. I’ll await your data…
Pretty sure that hate laws wouldn’t apply here, you have to be pretty specific for them to apply. Might be different over in Ontario though. I’m certainly no lawyer or expert, mind you.
I won’t speculate on their actual relationship or life. MRA’s and their adjacents, like most right-wing ideologues, love to make a show of things, and aren’t above lying or confabulating, or just plain old not-understanding-the-situation-of-their-lives. Reality has a well known liberal bias, after all.
Is it? Is it really? Because everyone I’ve ever seen who stopped doing so, didn’t last long after…
Maybe so, but those who choose not to, tend to end up alienating everyone around them, and also tend to catch infections rather easily. Washing: It’s not really a choice so much as a MUST.
(But what am I saying…these are MRAs, and like Roosh, they think every woman in the world should be lining up to lick their unwashed taints.)
There, I actually agree with him. If a man is beating me up for imagined infidelity or imagined disrespect (because I’m not the sort who would actually do those things to a partner I loved), I do think I should be able to fight back and ward him off by any means necessary. But those are pretty rare extenuating circumstances, I should think.
Um, NO. See: Every war declared and waged, EVER. If you call that “measured”, then I suggest you go stand on a nuclear test site with a Geiger counter, and stay there no matter how hard it buzzes.
Dude, please. Fairy tales are the province of little girls. Or at least every masculist moron I’ve ever had the displeasure to hear from tells me so. If you’re going to indulge in fairy tales, you will also have to dispense with your conventional belief in gender roles, such as:
Pimps: men of valor. And here I thought they were just parasites, living off the avails of the world’s oldest oppression.
One really does learn something new every day with these wankers, doesn’t one?
(Mind you, it’s a shitty something, but hey.)
Didn’t Hardie at one point say she was in a sort-of “open” relationship wherein her husband is the only one allowed to sleep with other people? Or am I getting her confused with someone else?
Not that I want to conflate consensual polyamory/open relationships with cheating. But if the aforementioned one-sided arrangement is true, it adds a whole new level of wtf (if unsurprising) to the idea that he’d hit her if she ever slept with another man.
Part of me feels sorry for her. I loathe her behavior and dangerous attempts to rationalize it, but thinking it’s OK and even expected that she’d get a beating from her husband for falling out of line is just…very sad.
I think poor Pluto has been through enough already – it’s bad enough that it lost its prestige as a planet, but were it a cognizant body I think the last thing it (or anyone) would want is to be stuck on the cold, dark edge of the solar system, all by itself… with her as its only other choice of company. Plus if there ever does actually turn out to be even a modicum of life on Pluto, I would feel terrible gracing it with such an awful housewarming gift from Earth.
It is rather concerning that they would equate abusive relationships with sadomasochistic ones for convenience sake. To say that most women consciously goad a man’s ire to the extent of making them resort to physical violence, the payoff being they find the pain pleasurable is, to put not such a fine point on it, a real slap in the face to true abuse victims. Not just women, but men as well – is this paradigm they have presented supposed to go both ways? It seems like just another instance of blaming the victim for the wrong done upon them in the most convoluted way possible.
@Bina
Can we please not? I know you followed this with stating that it’s an MRA belief, but let’s please not lend any validity to that idea.
So… if I did something illegal because JB pisses me off, then it’s her fault? If I were to take a dump on her living room, would she at least be 25% as responsible? Or that doesn’t work because I’m a feeeeeeeeeemale?
Um, None? None percent? Or at least, so few as to make it statistically insignificant? So let’s just say zero fucking percent?
Look, I’m sorry for whatever abuse may have happened to this woman in her life, but there is just no excuse for this. She is literally an abuse advocate. Who says things like this?
http://orig05.deviantart.net/7b72/f/2011/305/e/a/rainbow_dash___no_by_cptofthefriendship-d4erd69.png
Hardie, being a masochist myself, all I have to say is you are a stain on humanity, and for the love of god, never say anything again.
JB said this? Geez, between this and her head bolting tweets and calling people homophobic slurs all the time, she sounds like a very angry 12 year old boy who drank too many Code Reds and stayed up all night playing CoD and watching South Park reruns. No shaming intended if you like any of those things, but that’s not someone who we should look to for a reliable analysis of an issue as serious as domestic violence. She can’t even speak like a grown up. “Pimp hand?” who says that unironically?
@rosadelava
If she pissed me off and I did that I might have a better chance than you. But I might get points off for being a male feminist.
Possibly. Criminal code, section 319:
I don’t know why, but she reminds me of the dudes who spend all their time rationalizing why it’s normal and healthy for men to have sex with 12 year old girls.
There’s something especially despicable about trying to universalize a kink based on a power differential, when it has the potential to seriously hurt the less powerful person if they are an unwilling/unwitting player. To paraphrase John Oliver, if you don’t have the enthusiastic consent of both participants, then one of you is committing a crime.
She’s so goddamn smug about it, too. Wouldn’t it be a bigger sign of respect to stay with someone who isn’t holding the threat of violence over your head? Who’s more awesome, the man who has to resort to low-level fear and threats to get a woman to stay, or the man whose partner voluntarily sticks with him through thick and thin?
@Eitan rosen
I have no doubt that JB and other MRAs would say that you wouldn’t count either because being a feminist would mean you can’t comprehend what a “measured use of force” would entail(bonus point if they suggest you were triggered!)
Still, how do they know when they should use force, and just how much force they should use? If they can’t give a clear response, wouldn’t it be better to just not use force at all?