Tuesday, April 26, 2005

John Altman on Cock Fighting and Domestic Violence



I'm sure that you have heard or read about how South Carolina decided to make cock fighting into a felony crime while tabling a similar attempt in regard to domestic violence, which remains a misdemeanor.

John Altman, the Representative who decided to give his reasons for supporting the cockfighting punishment while opposing the domestic violence one, has this to say about attempts to compare the two:


"People who compare the two are not very smart and if you don't understand the difference, Ms. Gormley, between trying to ban the savage practice of watching chickens trying to kill each other and protecting people rights in CDV statutes, I'll never be able to explain it to you in a 100 years ma'am."


Ms. Gormley is a tv reporter interviewing the Representative. He then goes on to call her "not very bright" for suggesting that the decisions reflect a higher value on the lives of fighting cocks than of women (unfortunate pun there).

Well, maybe the two bills should not have been compared. But Altman reveals much more about himself in the same interview than just his lack of manners:


Rep. Altman spoke about domestic violence, "There ought not to be a second offense. The woman ought to not be around the man. I mean you women want it one way and not another. Women want to punish the men, and I do not understand why women continue to go back around men who abuse them. And I've asked women that and they all tell me the same answer, John Graham you don't understand. And I say you're right, I don't understand".

(Bolds mine.)

And:


During the same interview, he responded to the reporter's question, "You seem to be drawn to this fixation that women have to go back. I don't think that speaks highly of women. I think women can think and be responsible for their own actions. Woman are not some toys out there, drawn back to the magnet of the man a lot of these men are bums and cretins and they have to be punished but I think women are independent enough to not go back to the men who beat them. And we have a lot of men who are abused by women, but they are too ashamed to admit it.

(Bolds mine.)

It's going to be fun to analyze Mr. Altman's real message. I suspect that he reads mensnewsdaily.com rather religiously but with very little scrutiny. Or else he has just decided that domestic violence is sort of the victims' fault, that having it treated as a real crime is insulting to women who are strong enough to kick back if need be. He would never go back if someone punched him in the nose even once! Of course he is not a person with possibly no income and several dependent children to worry about. He's probably not someone who grew up in a dysfunctional home, either. And he'd never be swayed by the idea that if he left his abuser the abuser might come after him and shoot him dead. It does happen, even if Mr. Altman can't quite imagine it.

Why doesn't he care about the men who are victims of domestic violence? His offhand comment about men being too ashamed to mention it implies that this somehow makes the misdemeanor status of domestic violence ok. Or am I misreading his ramblings here? Is he just really saying that if violence affects men, too, it doesn't have to be punished?

I should stop playing cat and mouse with Representative Altman. We all know what he is saying: that domestic violence is not really a special problem for women, that feminists exaggerate its importance and that stricter laws about domestic violence are unfair special interest pork. Everybody knows that it takes two to tango.

I actually agree with Mr. Altman on one point, and one point only. There are indeed men who are the victims of domestic violence. I even know one man in this situation, and he keeps on going back. He has also been completely isolated by his wife so that he no longer sees his birth family, his college friends or even his colleagues from work. When he goes out she sends him furious text messages. He gets his face clawed regularly, his paycheck appropriated, and he keeps going back.

Yes, domestic violence doesn't discriminate by gender. Where the differences arise are in the outcomes of domestic violence. The female sufferers tend to have worse physical damage from the attacks, and as more women are financially dependent on their spouses (due to our history of sexual division of labor), more women find it difficult to leave unassisted. There is also a difference in the prevalence of domestic violence by sex of the perpetrator and victim, and this reflects the social power structures and gender role expectations. But men can indeed become victims, too.

To understand why victims so often return just consider how you would feel if you had to leave everything in your life behind. It is a hard thing to do, and the harder the less resources you have. Then add to this all sorts of deeply ingrained beliefs about love conquering all, about giving people a second chance, about worrying what happens to the children without the other parent. And maybe you grew up in a family where beating was regarded as God's will (see my post below on some Christian child correction views). Finally, perhaps you are now convinced that the perpetrator will kill you if you try to leave. - It is easy for those of us who are outside to judge the victim, but then it's easy in general to make judgments from some high perch.

Representative Altman managed to identify with the horror of chickens that are killed just for the fun of it. He should be able to identify with a domestic violence victim, too. All it takes is a little empathy.