I think we’re confusing “deserved” with “provoked.” Does anyone really deserve to be shot, hacked, burned or beaten by another person? Of course not. Do people sometimes, by their own selfish, abusive, outrageous acts, provoke equally outrageous attacks? Almost certainly, they do. So then the question becomes, why is it funny when a man provokes a woman to attack and mutilate his genitals, but it’s outrageous when a woman provokes a man to beat her senseless. Both are unacceptable behavior, but one is treated with a wink and a slap, the other with imprisonment and social condemnation.
I’m a lawyer with a family law practice in a region with a lot of aboriginal people. For example, today I was dealing with a matter in which one party was aboriginal while the other was not. In this case, the aboriginal female had assaulted the non-aboriginal male spouse in a drunken rage. Her background was that her father had been shot to death in a bar fight, her brother has lost body parts from frostbite due to passing out drunk in the winter and has been hospitalized for liver problems, her husband (not the non-aboriginal spouse) has have many very violent fights with her and has been stabbed by his aboriginal girlfriend , and her mother is a street drunk with whom she has had several very violent fights. Unfortunately, this is pretty typical.-- dealing with domestic violence, particularly in the aboriginal community, is a large part of my job.
My first reaction is to find it funny. However, I’m trying to grow beyond that, and see it as one human hurting another human. I’m still working on it.
Hey, all this talk about a woman setting a spouse’s parts on fire reminded me to bill out my file in which the female spouse is alleged to have tried to murder her spouse by setting the sauna on fire while he was in it.