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This lack of sentencing disgusts me. Oh, well. At least she wasn't tried in the U.S. She'd end up with counseling and probation.
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Oh, and speaking of domestic violence, I thought I'd share with you folks something I heard on a Nashville radio station last night (Music City 103.3, for those of you in the area).
One of the local DJs read a survey that claims that 1 out of 5 Americans has spent a night in jail. The DJ requested that people call him with their "night in jail" stories.
One (really redneck-sounding) woman called in and said she spent the night in jail because the police "asked her a trick question." Apparently, the police were called because she was beating her boyfriend to death with baseball bat. When the police arrived on the scene, they asked her:
"Ma'am, were you afraid for your life when you were hitting him?"
Her answer (in her dialect): "Hell, naw. I ain't ascared of him."
The police: "Well, ma'am, you're going to jail."
After she told the story, she burst out in laughter. The DJ, who was not laughing, at least, just let the call go as if nothing had happened. I attempted to call the station and inform them about my thoughts on Ms. Redneck, but I only received a busy signal.
http://www.musiccity103.com is their Web site. The DJ's name is Eddie Fox. I'm going to send an e-mail tonight about the incident. If any other folks out there heard this caller (or if you're just outraged by her story), contact the station.
Her story is said and done, but perhaps we can make the radio station call screeners more sensitive to the subject of domestic violence.
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I hate to keep replying to my own posts, but I thought I'd share the e-mail that I just sent to Music City 103.3's Eddie Foxx:
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Mr. Foxx:
I enjoy your show on 103.3 every evening. I hear the first part of it on my way home from work. I would like to request, though, that your call screener screen calls a little more carefully when you're asking listeners to call in with questions like "Have you ever spent the night in jail?" I was deeply disturbed by the woman who called in with what she obviously thought was a funny story about attempting to beat her boyfriend to death with a bat (or was it a stick? I don't recall). This woman's deranged blathering about how she "knows how to answer the police's trick questions now" is a slap in the face to victims of domestic violence (and, yes, men can be victims of domestic violence as well as women), and is most certainly not funny.
That woman committed assault, and she deserved to go to jail. Committing assault and claiming to have done so in self defense when you did not is not only immoral and an abuse of the justice system, but it's also cowardly and ignorant. And airing her story as "humor" on your show was also, in my opinion, irresponsible.
For the facts about domestic violence, I suggest you check into some Web sites dedicated to the protection of everyone (men and women) against this crime: http://www.safe4all.org is a good starting point.
Again, I usually enjoy your show, and I wish you the best in your jail fund-raiser.
------
IF I receive a reply (and I doubt it), I'll post it as well.
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What's interesting about your radio story is the 'trick question' the woman was asked:
"Ma'am, were you afraid for your life when you were hitting him?"
Presumably if she'd said "Yes" it would have been the man who got arrested, irrespective of any evidence or anything the man might say. Isn't it astonishing to think that the hysteria over domestic violence (against women) has reached such a frenzied pitch that the unproven word of a woman is enough to damn a man even if he's the one covered in cuts and bruises and she's the one standing there holding the stick. Can anybody remind me of exactly what it is we're supposed to respect about women?
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by Anonymous User on Thursday November 22, @10:10AM EST (#5)
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> Can anyone remind me of exactly what it is
> we're supposed to respect about women?
Don't blame this on all women, Uberganger. That would be like women saying all men are worthless because some men have used their greater physical stregth to rape women.
Scott Garman tells me that he is writing a new section for the web site to check this kind of hypocrisy. I hope he adds it soon and you, in particular, read it carefully.
Zend
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Don't blame this on all women, Uberganger. That would be like women saying all men are worthless because some men have used their greater physical stregth to rape women.
Yes, blaming it on all women is wrong, but Uberganger makes a good point by phrasing his question this way. If abuses of the justice system like that do not stop--and if law enforcement doesn't change its automatic bias against men in those situations--it could become *very* easy for men to feel resentment toward women in general, starting a cycle of hatred of one sex by the other all over again.
Not good.
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p.s. Zend, while I do believe that we need to keep this site in check so that it does not become anti-female, I also believe that this site should NOT become a place like the American workplace, where men are afraid to express themselves for fear of reprisal for offending women. No doubt you're going to find arguments here with which you do not agree, but please do not demand that they be censored just because you do not agree with them.
In other words, just be careful that when you complain about hypocrisy you are justified in so doing, and not just complaining because you disagree with the comments. I'm not accusing you of anything, I just wanted to make those points clear.
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Zend, my question about respecting women wasn't meant to suggest that we should hate them. This is typical dualistic thinking in which the refusal of the positive is assumed to mean the negative, as if the neutral point in the middle doesn't exist. I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of people I have a real respect and admiration of. That doesn't mean I hate everyone else. There are a lot of people I like, but who don't make it into the standing on a pedestal category. There are a lot more people I'm neutral towards because I just don't know them. Yes, I resent the idea that I should respect women simply because they're women; nobody insists that I respect men in that way. Sure, you may not be as bad as the woman on the radio programme, but after over thirty years of feminists' sytematic hate-mongering towards the male gender it would be quite something for you to be entirely untainted by it. Just look at this discussion now. Here I am having to defend myself because I've made a remark that makes me seem tainted, as if I have a nasty disease. The fact of the matter is that there does exist the idea that women are somehow morally superior to men, irrespective of individual merits or failings, and that anyone that dares to suggest otherwise has got something wrong with them. That idea has to go, and it won't go if we pander to it. You may not like that, but that's how it is. Don't worry, we won't promote the hatred of women like feminists promoted the hatred of men, but women, as a group, are going to have to confront a lot of things about themselves, a lot of attitudes and beliefs that they aren't going to like facing up to.
By the way, my overall view of women is that they're just a bunch of people. Not righteous victims or morally superior or any of that rubbish. If that seems problematic to you, that just underlines the problem.
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Hi Zend,
You seem to have jumped the gun a bit, and I don't appreciate how you used our prior discussion in this context.
I saw Uberganger's comment as rhetorical, and not particularly troublesome. The article I have written is intended to remind people that we are getting a lot of new visitors and that we need to approach educating newbies in a positive manner, and exercise patience and good will toward them. It is meant to head off any problems we could run into and address a couple of concerns that you and other readers have e-mailed me about, and which I think are valid.
In any case, the article in question will probably be posted tomorrow. I wrote in the article that I did not intend to single anyone out, and let me make it clear that this case is no exception to that.
And as for Uberganger, I think he's made his intentions clear in another comment on this page. I hope you are not still offended.
Take care,
Scott
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by Anonymous User on Thursday November 22, @09:50PM EST (#10)
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I think this is not so much a difference of opinion as a misunderstanding, and points out the need to take care that our writing adequately conveys what we mean to say, so as to avoid misinterpretation. While I completely agree with what Uberganger says in his last post, I do think the misunderstanding could have been averted if he had written something like this instead:
¡±Can anybody remind me of exactly what it is we're supposed to find ¡®morally superior¡¯¡¡about women?¡±
I do think something really valuable came out of this thread though and that is that it is not just the one extreme of hypocrisy (following the misguided path of feminism in hating women as they hate men) that we need to avoid--but the opposite extreme as well¡ªthat of bowing to PC and self-censoring ourselves for fear of giving offence. These are not separate issues, but opposite poles of the same one; we need to try to avoid both extremes, and we can do that simply by approaching what we say with the sincere intention of being honest, fair and balanced. We do need to take some care in what we say, but not out of concern for meeting the external standards of PC, but rather our own standards of fairness, and concern for expressing ourselves in the most effective way.
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Agreed 100%, Anon. When I made the original comment about respecting women it was meant in a rhetorical/sarcastic way, but I can see how it could be misread. Obviously I have to beware of this in future, while at the same time not limiting myself in what I want to express.
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I am not an expert on the Japanese system of justice (nor the American one, either) but the fact that she was convicted and she was sent to prison says something good. In the U.S. and probably in the U.K., she would have been acquitted through the use of the battered woman defense, even if he had never touched her. There is the on-going, and now not so visible case of the Marine charged with rape on Okinawa. I note from reading some analyses of the case that the Japanese do not traditionally assign as much jail time as we do here. I've also read that Japanese jails are in some significant ways more brutal than American jails. Prisoner-to-prisoner violence is not tolerated but guard-to-prisoner violence is much more severe, and also permitted by law. So, by our standards, 4 years is not much, but by Japanese standards, it may be a much more severe penalty.
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