Advert via Stylist. The Mail has tried to draw a distinction between a man “beating” his partner and “hitting” her
Sometimes, an article will come along that is so anger-inducing, so latently misogynistic, that joking about it is nigh on impossible. Thankfully today’s article justifying domestic violence in the Mail is not one of them. Well, it’s borderline. Your blood may boil as you read it, but anger is cathartic, yeah? When you think about it, the Mail is, by providing a ‘safe place’ for Islington-based liberals to express their rage, preventing hundreds, if not thousands, of us from engaging in violence on a daily basis. If it wasn’t for the Mail, there’d have probably been a Socialist revolution by now (and not just because of their fine work on the Zinoviev letter). But instead of lining them the capitalist swine up against the wall and shooting them like the dogs that they are, I’ll open my Macbook Pro and read the Mail while sipping on a Lemon & Ginger Twining’s Tee, before jumping on a privatised train feeling pretty bummed out for the duration of my morning commute.
There’s nothing right-wing tabloid journalists love more than pissing off people like me. They thrive on it. Indeed, amoebic toad-man James Delingpole has built a career from it (365 Ways to Drive a Liberal Crazy). So I am not going to give you the satisfaction, Carol Sarler, you ghastly, horrible woman. Instead, I am going to let you speak for yourself, in the form of a few choice quotes from this morning’s article about how women sometimes ‘ask for it’ (all of which is based on a dubious account of something that happened to your probably hypothetical friend Jean:
Background: ‘Journalist’ Carol Sadler is friends with three different men, all of whom have had a relationship with Jean which has resulted in them hitting her.
“She’d (Jean) never have put up with ‘a proper beating’, she said. But ‘with a bit of a slap, at least you know who wears the trousers, don’t you?’”
“A psychiatrist I once interviewed had done extensive research in women’s refuges that showed in most cases where a man ‘lashes out’, regardless of age, class, wealth or background, the one thing the women have in common is an IQ at least ten points higher than their partners’.”
“They don’t want to ‘wear the trousers’, as she put it. It doesn’t make them feel womanly enough. However much goading it takes, they’d rather be slapped than be victorious. When push — quite literally — comes to shove, these women prefer to have a dominant man to whom they might defer as an authority figure.”
“While these women might rebel against it constantly, and push that rebellion to the brink, in the end they want a man to dominate them.”
Wow. Just wow.
At the end of the article, Carol obviously chickens out a bit and says that we should have a zero-tolerance approach to any kind of violence, but by that point, the damage- the implication that women are asking for it (especially the clever ones!)- has already been done.
I really don’t know what to say to you Carol. If your assertions about intelligence are correct, then you are in no danger of being hit any time soon (subtext: I’m telling you you’re stupid) Because this article is utterly imbecilic. And it’s difficult to take something that stupid seriously.
And on that note, I shall repair to bed in order to lambast my boyfriend while he’s trying to watch Match of the Day for not having read enough Shakespeare or Dickens. I’m 99.99999999999999% sure he’s not going to hit me; he’ll just think I’m a bit of a pompous twat (which I am) But, in accordance with my mother’s advice, I will not be going to bed angry. In that you have failed, Carol Sarler. Which makes me think it might be time for that revolution after all.
Link please? x
perhaps this one?
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2117836/Dennis-Waterman-stupid-thug-dark-truths-need-confront.html
Thankies :] x.
The saddest thing about Sarler’s article is the way it masks a valuable social imperative (zero tolerance for all forms of domestic violence) behind ten paragraphs of meandering idiocy. The truth of the conclusion is so watered down by her semi-justification of pseudo-consensual violence that it’s about as potent as homeopathic medicine. Bravo, Ms Sarler!
‘…let us always remember there are also women quite happy to do the slapping — and men quite happy to let them.’
Pablo, domestic violence makes us all happier – didn’t you know?!
Jeez…good job Ms. Sarler is here to keep reminding us, eh?
I love that the tagline to a photo of an aggressive, shouting man pinning a scared woman down on a bed is ‘Some relationships seem positively to thrive on aggressive physicality. Especially the highly-charged sex involved in ‘making up’ afterwards’
Rape can be quite highly charged, yes… Bit rapey too, though.
Congratulations Carol, you fail at feminism, and humanity. Rest assured no-one will be beating you as a result of your high IQ.