Bad Arguments on Responding to Female Violence
Bad Arguments on Responding to Female Violence
The Case of Eliza Jordana and online responses to it
In April of this year, the Howard Stern writer, Eliza Jordana, filmed herself, while driving, physically assaulting her boyfriend, a man known as “Szcorro”, whom she believed to have cheated on her. The video shows her striking him in the face and yelling “You don’t talk” as well as grabbing him by the ear and slapping him around the upper body. The man responded by calling her a “dumb cunt” and “retarded cunt,” saying that she had nearly broken his (reddening) nose and threatening to “deck her” if she touched him again. When she did, he seized her by the hair and pulled her over to his side of the car. He then forced her to pull over and ejected her physically from the car. Ms. Jordana was arrested on misdemeanor battery charges and later issued an apology. This was appropriate as she was the aggressor in this situation although both of them appeared, in this incident, to be unpleasant people and their relationship thoroughly unhealthy. There was a great deal of discussion of this, most of it not very helpful.
Recently, the activist, Meghan Murphy, caused another flurry of heated discussion on the subject when she posted,
The difference all the morons playing at the “Women abuse men too! And deserve retaliation!” narrative don’t get (or pretend not to get in order to defend abusive men) is that in these kinds of scenarios the woman is afraid of being killed whereas the man just feels disrespected.
The critical responses to Meghan were a mixture of arguments that men have a right to defend themselves against people of either sex, that it is wrong for women to use the social expectation that men will not hit women back to act as a free pass to be physically abusive to men and that anybody who hits another person deserves to be hit back. (Most of them were not phrased this neutrally).
All four of the points above have validity.
A woman does typically have much more cause to fear that she could be seriously injured or even killed and be at a serious disadvantage in defending herself if a man physically attacks her than the other way round. It is not true that men merely feel disrespected, however. They also feel pain when a woman does something like strike them hard on the nose. It should also be noted that women can present a serious physical threat to men. In a physical contest between an unarmed able-bodied man and an unarmed able-bodied woman, the woman will nearly always lose. However, women have caused serious injury or death to men by being armed and/or using the element of surprise. A man in a relationship with a violent woman does have cause to fear for his safety and this should not be dismissed, even as we continue to recognise the particular vulnerability of women faced with a violent man and the evidence that the vast majority of violent offenders are men. (Intimate partner violence by women against men is almost certainly underreported to a greater extent than the other way round, however, both because women are less likely to inflict serious injury and because men who are being physically abused are more likely to feel ashamed to report this or fear that their report will not be taken seriously).
Men do have a right to defend themselves against anybody who presents a threat to their physical safety and this can include women, particularly if they are armed (or driving a car). The form this self-defence takes should be proportionate but it can also be difficult to calmly evaluate the extent of the danger and the level of force needed to contain it while being assaulted.
It is wrong for women to abuse social norms that it is particularly morally reprehensible for men to hit women and the reluctance of most psychologically healthy men to do so even when they are being attacked. The moral intuitions of honourable men on this issue and the social norms are surely related! Women, I would argue, have a moral responsibility to be honourable too and recognise that, because any decent man will be highly reluctant to use violence against a woman, it would be dishonourable for her to exploit these intuitions and norms. Women should control their own tempers and restrain any temptation we have to express anger physically against men as we expect them to do for us. The strength difference between men and women certainly makes it more dangerous for women when men do not restrain their anger from physical expression, but the moral obligation to do so belongs to both sexes.
It is reasonable to argue that violent actions deserve punitive consequences or to feel that somebody who inflicts violence on another person has little grounds to complain if that person responds in kind. One man, whose tweet I cannot now find, responded with something like, “Yeah, it is dangerous to go around hitting men in the face and that’s why we don’t tend to do it.” However, a strong ethical case can also be made against the ‘eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth’ mentality and good arguments be made that consequences for violence should still avoid violence wherever possible.
The vitriolic misogynistic and misandrist factions which engage in the Battle of the Sexes conducted on social media typically make a complete mess of these kinds of arguments, politicising them according to what they perceive as the interests of their own (oppressed) sex.
The least reasonable and ethical feminist positions tend to think collectively and argue that because women are so much more vulnerable to violence from men and the numbers of women injured or killed by men so vastly outweigh the number of men injured or killed by women, speaking of any incidents of violence against men by women at all is simply an attempt to divert attention away from the problem of male violence against women and girls and should be ignored or shut down. We simply do not need to worry about any man in this situation because he is quite capable of defending himself and it is probably only his feelings that got hurt anyway. This last attitude can even be derisive or scathing of male victims of domestic violence. While it is true that we probably do not to put huge amounts of time and energy into the cause of male victims of female violence, dismissing the victims of it that exist does them an injustice. It also infantilizes women. We know that a main reason that people remain in abusive relationships is not because they are physically compelled to do so but because ongoing psychological abuse has undermined their sense of self and made them feel hopeless and even as though the situation is their fault and they deserve to be treated this way. We also know that women are, on average, more socially and verbally skilled. These skills are those which are twisted and abused by a psychological abuser. It does not help women to act as though members of our sex can never be abusive, cruel or psychologically damaging and it does not help men to act as though they are invincible beings who can never be hurt, manipulated or abused.
The worst of the input from the least reasonable and ethical men’s rights activists or general misogynists tends to take the form of blaming feminism or social changes over the past 60 years or so that have enabled women to live independently, control how many children they have and have access to all arenas of the public sphere. It is most commonly summed up as “Women wanted equality and now they’ve got it. How do you like it?” Some of them even form or follow accounts dedicated to showing videos of women being abusive to men and getting punched or otherwise seriously injured so that they can make this genre of comment. In this worldview, women who strike a man or even just push him or shout at him and then get beaten up are only reaping what they have sown. Apparently, when women (supported by very many men) sought legal equality with men, we also signed up for the rules of engagement conducted within the least ethical, stable and emotionally mature male subcultures. If one man hits, pushes or shouts abuse at another man, he can expect a violent reaction. If women want equality, that’s what they get. If they wanted to be able to physically or verbally abuse men and rely on their chivalry protecting them from getting hurt, they should not have sought equality with men in the first place. This is clearly an extremely twisted view of how both society and personal relationships between men and women (and men and men) should work. It is extremely unlikely to make any sane woman respond, “Yes, I see your point. I would now like to reinstate a patriarchy and place myself in your power, please.”
To address incidents of men responding violently to a woman’s violence in an ethical way, we need to reject “Battle of the Sexes” narratives and also break the issue down into two questions which we do not confuse or conflate.
What level of force did this individual need to use to ensure his own safety in this situation where he is under physical attack?
What punitive consequences are appropriate to impose upon the aggressor?
It can be extremely difficult in the heat of the moment to separate considerations of practical action to achieve a self-protective goal from a sense of justice or revenge. It is difficult for humans to do this even when we are not in those situations as we see in debates about the purpose of prisons. To what extent do they exist to protect the public from criminals and to what extent is their purpose to impose punishment on criminals? Nevertheless, for the purposes of forming an ethical position, I would argue that we need to try to do that.
In the immediate situation, the individual under attack must have the right to consider his or her own safety first and foremost and to have significant leeway to err in the direction of overprotection rather than underprotection. The US and the UK differ significantly here, from my observation, with the US allowing for considerable and even deadly use of force when one’s person or property is under attack while the UK places more responsibility on the individual to ensure that their use of force is proportionate to the threat. Reasonable disagreement can certainly exist here on how much responsibility an individual has to consider the safety of someone attacking them or presenting a clear risk of doing so.
Sex is highly relevant here. We might well feel more sympathetic to a woman who immediately uses what later turns out to be excessive force when confronted by an aggressive man -perhaps by using a weapon to incapacitate him - rather than waiting to see if he will attack her physically. A man may well be more able to afford to ‘wait and see’ if he will need to respond to a physical threat, especially if it is coming from someone he can already be fairly confident he can overpower if necessary - e.g., an unarmed woman. This places an extra burden on men to consider the safety of a female attacker than the other way round, but this should be understood not as a female privilege or sexual inequality, but as the responsibility of a much stronger person in any situation to control their physical strength when confronted by a much weaker one. Exactly the same principle applies in situations where a female person is stronger than a male person - for example, when the male is a child or a disabled elderly man. Because I have worked with elderly people with mental impairment and challenging behaviour, I have had to use this responsibility myself and seek ways to get away from a frail, elderly man whose dementia has made him aggressive rather than fighting him. (I did once have to push a man with dementia over because he was still too strong for me to restrain but I knew he had difficulty getting up from the floor so this gave me the chance to get away & press the alarm button). When people have the ability to consider the safety of someone attacking them without jeopardising their own safety, they should do so. This would mean that a large man would be perfectly justified in punching a small woman in the face and risking fracturing her skull and killing her if she were aiming a gun or swinging a machete or baseball bat at him, but if she is striking ineffectually at his chest and he can contain the situation by simply restraining her by the wrists, he should do so.
This will feel unsatisfying to many people who feel that those who behave violently deserve to be responded to with violence, but I would suggest that it should not. Unnecessary violence is very seldom the best solution or appropriate consequence for anything. (This stance may strike many men as a particularly female one, but I am not referring to the kind of consensual contests and tussles that go on between boys and very young men with no intent to do any real harm and that often result in friendships forming or strengthening. If you want to engage in that, knock yourselves out, but, preferably, not literally. Ideally, join a boxing club or some other form of martial arts where your contests can be supervised by someone trained in preventing you from accidentally doing each other serious harm). Generally, in the case of a violent attack by one individual on another who has not sought a violent confrontation, if the violent individual can be restrained safely, they should be. Non-violent consequences can result later, if appropriate, when the immediate danger is passed. This can range from the end of a marriage, relationship or friendship, to being fired, to being arrested and charged with a violent crime. These kinds of consequences can also often be much more profoundly impactful and likely to lead to serious examination of one’s life choices and changes in behaviour than being punched in the face. Within a relationship, particularly, responding to violence with violence is very likely to result in an escalating mutually abusive relationship.
In this particular case, the consequences for Ms. Jordana were that she has been convicted and received 12 months’ probation, 45 hours of community service, 12 hours of anger management classes and a small fine. Her reputation has been damaged and she has felt compelled to issue an apology. “Szcorro” was within his rights to take physical action to ensure that the violence against him stopped and that the car was pulled over and Ms. Jordana evicted from it. However, he cannot be said to have covered himself with glory with his hairpulling and abuse hurling. His reputation is unlikely to have improved in the opinion of anybody whose good opinion is worth having either. I suggest we all now try to forget about this particular couple but have healthier conversations about appropriate responses to violence that do not feed into any misogynistic or misandrist narratives and do not conflate self-defence with justice or revenge.