By David Futrelle
Men’s Rights activists really do seem intent on finding justifications for men to punch women. There’s the “jokey” slogan they like to use: “Equal Rights mean equal lefts.” There was Paul Elam’s “Bash a Violent Bitch Month,” in which he imagined men responding to physical abuse from women by “beat[ing] the living shit out of them. … I mean literally … grab[bing] them by the hair and smack[ing] their face against the wall.”
Now a Redditor calling herself Tozae222 seems to suggest that men should be allowed to hit their partners in response to verbal abuse that pushes them to their “breaking point.”
Apparently that’s what happened with a friend of hers who, as she explains in a post on the Men’s Rights subreddit, has “just been jailed because his ex has finally gotten what she wanted.” By which Tozae222 presumably means enough of a beatdown to leave visible bruises behind, because cops generally don’t arrest anyone for domestic violence if there aren’t physical markings on the victim. But in Tozae222’s mind she made him do it.
“If its never okay to physically abuse a woman, it should never be okay to push a man to breaking point,” Tozae222 writes.
If a woman has got the balls to be in a man’s face being verbally abusive, even physically they should be prepared to cop the same back.
You’re not entitled to respond to abuse with abuse of your own. And you’re definitely not entitled to escalate — to respond to a finger wagging in your face with a punch –which is presumably more or less what her jailed friend did.
NO one deserves to be screamed at in nose to nose distance. NO one deserves to be constantly threatened that they’re going to leave or going to take their kids away. NO one deserves to be belittled infront of family and friends.
Well, no. All that is clearly abusive behavior. But what it isn’t is an excuse to respond with a punch — even if, in your mind at least, you’ve been “pushed to the breaking point,” whatever that means.
And just who in this scenario gets to define what this “breaking point” is? Some men see any “backtalk” as such a threat to their fragile masculinity that they respond with physical violence. Should these men be able to tell the cops that “she pushed me to the breaking point” and thus wiggle out of any arrest for physical violence? Violence is never the answer, even if the woman in question has been shrieking like a banshee in her partner’s face. Even if someone on Reddit thinks the victim “has finally gotten what she wanted.” This is the case regardless of the genders of those involved.
Hell, even if the woman in question resorted to physical violence herself, the response must be proportionate. You can defend yourself; but you can’t give someone a concussion.
Naturally, this being the Men’s Rights subreddit, most of the regulars responded warmly to Tozae222’s argument, and her post got 100 upvotes. “You’re a really good person and I don’t get to say that often,” wrote one new fan of hers. “That really nice to hear,” wrote another.
Only one commenter had the temerity to suggest that escalating a verbal fight into physical violence was a bad idea.
Maybe there’s a good reason why some people call the Men’s Rights movement an abusers’ movement,
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@Alan
Wait, I’m confused. Were the the parents actually blocked from being able to try the experimental treatment as long as they paid for it and not the NHS, or was it just that the NHS wasn’t going to pay for the experimental treatment because doing so would be cruel, and the parents wanted to get the experimental care covered?
I’ve never got the whole American obsession with socialized medicine leading to “dealth panels”. What do they think private insurance does?
@Moogue : It’s. Alway. Projection.
They have, and want, death panel. The private insurances are death panel of their liking. So because they are unable to think that anyone could not want that system, they think socialized medicine do that, just in a way that they dislike.
Their problem isn’t socialized medicine killing people. It’s because it don’t kill the correct people.
@Moogue
I could be wrong, but what I thought happened was that they refused to let the parents transfer him to New York because they thought it would only prolong his suffering.
It’s a myth the right wing made up to scare people, just like the welfare queens.
@Naglfar : and in a very real sense, welfare queen are also a product of projection. They would exploit any similar system if they could, so for them anyone would exploit it.
They aren’t against people getting money for nothing, but recoil in horror because it’s the wrong one who get it.
@ moogue & naglfar
As naglfar says, the court blocked the transfer on the grounds of risk of further suffering. It wasn’t about costs; the transfer was blocked regardless of the fact funds had been made available by donors.
The parents ended up with some expert, pretty much found for them by American evangelicals.
The expert initially supported the transfer. However at that time he had not had access to the child’s medical file. He was provided with that during the proceedings and then updated his view in light of the new information and agreed with the other experts that the treatment would be valueless.
In fairness to him he abide by the rules here which are that experts owe a duty to the court and not to the party paying them; so experts can’t advocate for one side in a dispute.
ETA: contrary to the article, adults here do have a ‘right to try’. Now there are certain medical things people can’t do without a licences here. But if you want to fly somewhere that does have experimental treatment, or just no rules whatsoever, then you’re perfectly free to do so.
@Ohlmann
Indeed, they already do. Corporations and the wealthy constantly receive massive government handouts, and this is by design.
So, let me explain the origins of “death panels.”
There is a benefit that had recently became available through Medicare, for end-of-life planning and counseling to be covered for beneficiaries. Prior to that, a doctor could do end-of-life counseling but wouldn’t be paid a separate fee for the time spent doing it; it was all wrapped up in the payment for the office visit. So many doctors wouldn’t bother, because they don’t work for free and Medicare wouldn’t reimburse them for their time. A couple of doctors got together and lobbied hard for this to change, and for Medicare to cover end-of-life counseling as a separate benefit with a separate fee payment, and succeeded.
When the ACA was being planned, these same doctors lobbied for ACA-covered plans to offer the same benefit for end-of-life counseling.
This was spun into “death panels” by the ever-in-bad-faith right wing. The spin was that your doctor would be pressured by bureaucrats into pressuring you to sign away your right to care, so as to reduce your cost on the system by making you die sooner with less care. End-of-life counseling does include decision-making as to how much intervention you want if you become incapacitated; the default is “every intervention possible” unless you specifically sign that away in (for instance) a living will. So the right wing, arguing in bad faith as always, decided to argue this meant that everyone would be forced into living wills that would kill them early, by bureaucrats, to reduce costs.
That’s how “death panels” came about. It’s been pointed out many, many times that insurance companies – including Medicare – really do already decide how much care you’re going to get by making coverage determinations, but that doesn’t have the same punchy ring as “death panel” and has never gotten the same reach.
@ wwth:
the Holy Grail of 21st Century American conservatism — the loophole in the law
@Alan:
As Orac is fond of pointing out at Respectful Insolence, a lot of the massive push over ‘Right to Try’ in the U.S. has been from right-wing legal mills that oppose regulation in general, and the supplements industry in particular who absolutely hate the fact that the FDA can tell them what they can and cannot sell; the entire point is to get a workaround to the FDA, not to help patients. Given a lot of the actual details in the laws pretty much make any ‘Right to Try’ drug in the U.S. ‘caveat emptor’, it’s just an even better way to drain desperate patients’ bank accounts than the normal U.S. medical system.
“Right-to-try” in 2019: Still a failure, still all about the Benjamins (and weakening the FDA)
By the sounds of it, the main issue in the case you linked above is that the person in question was a child, and the government has the authority to decide some concept of ‘appropriate level of care’ and override the parents if they refuse to provide it. (Which, of course, is another thing that right-wing folks hate.) If the person had been an adult actually making their own decisions (no matter how blatantly pressured) the courts presumably wouldn’t have stepped in at all.
@Naglfar:
See, for example, the entire way Capital Gains taxes are set up at a different tax rate than other ways of making money.
And there’s a reason why people refer to the rather incestuous right-wing talk-show circuit as ‘Wingnut Welfare’.
Speaking of which, it’s Sean Connery’s birthday.
Honestly, I don’t see any reason to suspect that Tozae222 is really a man. There are tons of MRA and MRA-adjacent women.
And even among women who aren’t MRAs as such, I hear similar sentiments expressed frequently. The idea that domestic violence is sometimes justified given enough “provocation” (whatever that might mean) is not an uncommon viewpoint.
I’ve had so many women say terrible, cruel, and unbelievable things to me because of their hatred. They can hate themselves and hate their own gender and lash out. A certain woman from long ago was written about a lot on this blog itself. I think Tozae222 is a woman, she’s horrible but that doesn’t mean it’s a fake account. it’s true that a woman’s misogyny is different then a man’s misogyny . but it’s misogyny all the same
@ jenora
That’s exactly it.
We have something called The Court of Protection here. As the name suggests that looks after the interests of people who lack capacity; whether that be through age (minors have limited powers of consent; elderly people may be subject to faculty issues); or some other reason.
People can ask the court for a determination where they have responsibility for someone and aren’t sure what the best cause of action is. For example someone having power of attorney over another person’s finances and wondering if they should downsize that person’s house.
Parents of course have, tautologically, ‘parental responsibility’ for their own kids. But in this case the hospital had a responsibility too; and there was a conflict. So the hospital made an application to the court as to what to do.
As it happens the court dealing was technically the Family Division of the High Court; but it’s still the same function and rules.
And decided this:
This actually made me think of the show I’ve been using as background noise today–Investigation Discovery’s “Fear Thy Neighbor.” Every episode is generally the same-something starts a feud going between neighbors, the men involves escalate and escalate until one of them (and it’s usually a tossup which) ends up trying to kill the other family.
Like, on the final episode of the block, I was genuinely with the guy who turned out to be the murderer until he hired people to set his neighbor’s house on fire (the other family literally broke into his garage and spied on him through his windows, claiming his religious practices must have been him “cursing” them, and also held late night parties the entire street complained of). The thing is, he lost all sympathy when he went to murder. Because PROPORTIONATE RESPONSES people.
Every episode is like that. It’s pretty much always the guys in the families starting a fight over something or other (legit or not) and then escalating and escalating until one of the guys decides he “has no choice” but to try and kill people. Once in a while the women in the families are involved (it was the wife spying on the neighbor and breaking into his garage in the final ep) but it’s ALWAYS the guys who eventually escalate it too far. And it’s always pride, this idea that being the bigger person and trying to let it go isn’t the way to go because “this is my property, I can do what I want.” And initially they do things the cops can’t get on them for (low level harassment, stuff that can’t be proven to be malicious or be them) and when the cops don’t stop it the escalation continues because they feel “oh, no one will help me” and eventually…killing spree, or at least an attempt at one.
Anyway, this article made me think of that. Because a lot of guys see defusing or even refusing to engage as a sign of weakness.
POM:
Thanks, interesting. I always assumed it was about framing coverage determinations as a special new ACA thing.
@Kereea
I’ve noticed this a lot in my own personal experience. I’m not a man, but I presented as one for years. One trait of my personality is that I’m very non confrontational and usually will try to de-escalate a situation or get away from it, and this was often seen as strange by men who expected me to fight or be more aggressive. OTOH, when I saw men escalating I often tried to encourage restraint but few listened.
@ naglfar
(The story in question is the old one about the Kung Fu master giving a wide berth to a stroppy horse)
@Alan Robertshaw
I agree. Self defense, if truly defensive, should first attempt to de-escalate the situation rather than escalate it. The goal should be self-preservation, and the best way to do this is usually to get away from any potentially dangerous situation.
@ naglfar
Well, I always say the hierarchy is: avoidance, evasion, de-escalation.
I guess the first two can be subsumed into the third of course.
But very few things being somewhere else won’t defend against!
@Alan:
Well, yes, there are similar courts both in Canada and the U.S., albeit by different names. A lot of their use is as in this particular case, where the parents are trying to do something stupid like use prayer as the sole treatment for their child’s leukemia. It’s one of those things that’s easier to do, again as in this particular case, if the child is already receiving treatment and the doctors know what the situation is, and can be the ones to call on the court.
I’ve heard more than enough horror stories about courts that lean in the parents’ favour even when the parents in question are pretty blatantly responsible for the death of their child (or children in some cases, there have been cases where the parents got off free after one child’s death only to have another die for suspiciously similar reasons). It’s even worse when the grounds to deny care are pretty openly religious, because that tends to get into things that courts are understandably reluctant to step into.
The case of Ezekiel Stephan here in Canada was a nasty one, involving a 19-month old child dead of bacterial meningitis because he’d been treated at home for months while his symptoms progressed, a family heavily invested in selling their own medical ‘supplements’ and thus looking to blame anybody else, a naturopathic nurse left out on a limb because while she seemed to understand she’d reached the edge of her knowledge she couldn’t convince the family of that, and an appeals court judge that seemed to make a decision for the defense based mostly on lashing out at the fact that the black medical examiner testifying as an expert witness for the Crown made him feel stupid.
Back more on subject, yes, the martial arts courses I took very much worked on ‘if you’re in a fight, you probably already screwed up somewhere before this’. Heck, the first aid courses made similar comments, and actually had some explicit discussion on trying to de-escalate from a panic situation.
I’d say it amazes me how many people insist on escalation, but sadly, it doesn’t. (And I’m the sort of person where when I swore out loud at one point, people around wondered what had just happened and commented on how it must have been serious because I hadn’t yelled like that in all the time they’d known me.) There are far too many people out there who seem to live their lives in constant fear that they’re not tough or ‘manly’ enough. And that’s not a mindset that leads to backing down easily.
@ jenora
Yeah, we’re quite lucky here as religious or philosophical objections by parents to medical treatment aren’t something courts will, or can, take into account.
What people here don’t necessarily know is that, in cases involving children, whilst the parents have certain procedural rights (to be heard, have legal representation etc) they don’t have any substantive rights. Only the child in question does. They get their own representative (a guardian ad litem) and their own legal representation.
The relevant law states that “the welfare of the child is paramount” and courts must make a decision based on the best interests of the child.
Children aged 16 and 17 can’t be overruled by their parents. Neither can so-called ‘Gillick competent’ kids. That’s where the child shows enough maturity and understanding to give informed consent to a particular treatment (or refusal of treatment); regardless of actual age. It arose out of an underage contraception case.
Where there is an objection to treatment the consent of one parent is enough; even if the other parent strenuously objects. The exceptions being sterilisation and circumcision in which case both parents must agree or the court order the procedure.
If you have capacity though the law states: “A person is not to be treated as unable to make a decision merely because he makes an unwise decision.”
As to self defence; people often find it easier to remove the ego from the equation then they hear that all the special forces types say they’d just hand over their wallets. I put it like this though “If you found yourself bleeding to death on a pavement, how much would you pay not to be? I bet it would be more than the current contents of your wallet.”
Very OT, but:
https://www.thedailybeast.com/rnc-speaker-boosts-qanon-conspiracy-theory-about-jewish-plot-to-enslave-the-world-1
I don’t really have words and am not okay.
@Alan Robertshaw:
Yeah, like the old joke says: In a dangerous situation, what’s the only thing better than presence of mind?
Absence of body.
@Alan
Philosophical objections to medicine are a big issue in the US, as in most states it’s legal not to vaccinate kids if you claim philosophical differences. The danger of antivaxxers using this to undermine herd immunity, especially now, cannot be overstated.
@Cyborgette
Not sure how to respond either. We’ve gotten to the point where the water is boiling, and we’ve been warning everyone, but no one listened. The party going full mask off about everything, and most people don’t care or don’t even notice anymore. Or like it because it’s what they wanted all along.
@ kimstu
Oh, sooo stealing that.
@ naglfar
Generally there’s no legal obligation to vaccinate your kids here; although until recently that wasn’t really an issue. Just about everyone did unless there was a genuine medical reason not to.
But Andrew Wakefield and ilk really buggered that up.
There doesn’t seem to be the will here, yet, amongst politicians or the general public for mandatory vaccines (but there’s general support for the idea that schools can make it a requirement for attendance etc.)
If take-up gets so low we lose herd immunity though that might change.