She Hit Him First, but Nobody Cares

1,556 words

Women say they want equality — unless you hit them back. In that case, they suddenly become weak, frail, shuddering kittens with no personal agency who must be protected by the all-powerful state from physically superior males.

It’s a biological fact — remember biological facts? — that men are physically stronger and more likely to inflict physical damage in an altercation than women are, but if you know that, why would a woman hit a man unless she knows she can destroy his life if he hits her back?

You’re mocked as an emasculated pussy if you don’t hit them back, and you’re ostracized as a monster if you do. There’s no winning for men either way in this equation. In the grand scheme of things, which causes more demonstrable harm: a black eye that lasts for a week (along with eternal public sympathy), or three years in prison (along with lifelong pariah status)?

The idea that men hitting women is never acceptable under any circumstances is one of the few things on which the Left and Right tend to agree in lockstep, although for different reasons. The Left depicts women as helpless victims of patriarchy, whereas the Right depicts women as weak little orchids who need the patriarchy’s protection. Either way, both sides believe that we live under a patriarchy, which couldn’t be further from the truth. If we did, men would live longer than women and have the presumption of innocence in all legal disputes with women.

Dana White ^[3] is a mixed martial arts promoter who’s been the head of the UFC (Ultimate Fighting Championship) since 2001. His business is to oversee men smashing in each other’s brains, which is taken as entertainment. (A tiny quotient of UFC fighters are women, but they generate roughly as much interest as female basketball players do.) White’s net worth is estimated at $500 million.

His position as the UFC’s president, as well as his personal fortune, were placed in jeopardy on New Year’s Eve after video ^[4] emerged of White and his wife and childhood sweetheart Anne slapping one another at the Squid Roe nightclub in Cabo San Lucas. She slapped him first, he slapped her back, and the grainy footage shows a few mutual shoves and attempted slaps before others intervene.

As is the unspoken cultural commandment, all of the news reports mention Dana White hitting his wife. But hardly any of them note that his wife instigated the violence by slapping him first.

Sensing a looming public-relations and possibly financial disaster, White rushed to the press to apologize ^[5]:

I’m one of the guys, you heard me say for years: There’s never, ever an excuse for a guy to put his hands on a woman. . . . My wife and I have been married for almost 30 years. We’ve known each other since we were almost 12 years old. We’ve obviously been through some shit together and we’ve got three kids, and this is one of those situations that’s horrible. . . . People are going to have their opinions on this. Most of the people’s opinions will be right — especially in my case. You don’t put your hands on a woman ever. My wife and I obviously love each other. We’ve been together for a very long time. We’ve known each other since we were very little and this is just one of those unfortunate situations. . . . There was definitely a lot of alcohol, but there’s no excuse.

To her tremendous credit, White’s wife Anna released a statement blaming both the alcohol and herself:

Dana and I have been married for almost 30 years. . . . To say this is out of character for him is an understatement — nothing like this has ever happened before. Unfortunately, we were both drinking too much on New Year’s Eve and things got out of control, on both sides.

’Tis a pity that almost no one in the press mentioned the whole “on both sides” thing.

White is also being haunted by comments ^[6] he made in 2014 insisting that

[t]here’s one thing that you never bounce back from and that’s putting your hands on a woman. Been that way in the UFC since we started here. You don’t bounce back from putting your hands on a woman.

When we hear about “police brutality,” we never hear about the brutality against police that often triggers it. When we hear about “hate crimes,” we never hear about white people as victims. When we hear about “domestic violence,” we never hear about women hitting men.

The only stats I’ve ever seen that reflect popular prejudices and misconceptions about domestic violence come from law enforcement. According to the United States Department of Justice, 96% ^[9] of federal domestic-violence prosecutions target males. The Department of Justice also says that around 85% ^[10] of domestic-violence victims are female. Studies also find that both judges and society at large ^[11] are far more likely to come down harshly on male abusers while squirming for creative ways to justify female violence against men. Knowing that, men are far less likely than women to call the police when their partners start swinging at them. They assume that she won’t get arrested and that the cops may either laugh at him or arrest him — or worse, both.

Although studies based on self-reports are not scientifically precise, our culture rewards women who say that men hit them, while it ridicules men who claim the inverse. Keeping that in mind, the following stats may sorely underestimate the prevalence of female violence against men:

• Crunching the numbers from 1975’s US National Family Violence Survey, Suzanne K. Steinmetz ^[12] found that nearly identical percentages of husbands and wives had hit, shoved, or thrown an object at their spouses.
• The 1988 book Intimate Violence ^[13] by Murray A. Straus and Richard J. Gelles focused on 2,146 families and found that men were slightly more likely than women to report being violently victimized by their spouses. Straus and Gelles based their results on the National Family Violence Surveys from 1975 and 1985, which both concluded that about a quarter of domestic violence featured males as the sole perpetrator, a quarter featured females as the only aggressor, and about half of family violence consisted of mutual combat between males and females.
• The National Comorbidity Study of 1990-1992 ^[14] found that similar quotients of men and women had experienced both “minor” and “severe” violence from their intimate partners.
• A 1995 Home Office Research Study ^[15] in England and Wales found that identical quotients of men and women between ages 16 and 59 reported being assaulted by a romantic partner.
• A 1997 survey ^[16] of 55,000 members of the US Armed Forces found that nearly two-thirds of domestic-violence situations involved mutual combat between men and women.
• A 1999 study ^[17] published in New Zealand found that women were less likely than men to report being abused by their partner, while women were more likely than men to admit abusing their partner.
• The Canadian General Social Survey of 2000 ^[18] concluded that men and women experienced equivalent levels of assault from their romantic partners. The same survey in 2005 ^[18] found similar results.
• A 2000 meta-study ^[10] of 82 surveys of interpersonal violence found that “women were slightly more likely than men to use one or more acts of physical aggression and to use such acts more frequently.”
• The 2001 National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health ^[19] concluded that about half of domestic-violence situations involved mutual combat between men and women. But in the cases where there was only one perpetrator, it was a woman in 70.7% of the cases.
• A 2004 study ^[20] found that being an initiator of violence is the strongest predictor of women becoming a “victim of partner violence.”
• The 2006 International Dating Violence Study ^[21], which covered over 13,000 students in 32 countries, concluded that “about one-quarter of both male and female students had physically attacked a partner during that year.” In nearly 70% of the cases, the violence was “bidirectional,” meaning both sides were swinging fists. But in cases where only one perpetrator was violent, even in situations involving “severe assault,” the assaulter was twice more likely to be a woman than a man.
• A five-year study ^[22] of nearly 1,000 California college students found that female abusers cited “self-defense” — which is frequently trotted out by feminist apologists as the only reason women ever hit men — far less often than reasons such as “my partner wasn’t sensitive to my needs” (46%), “I wished to gain my partner’s attention” (44%), and “My partner was not listening to me” (43%).
• A 2007 study ^[19] of 11,370 young heterosexual adults concluded that nearly a quarter of all relationships between men and women aged 18 to 29 featured violence. Half of those situations involved mutual combat, AKA “reciprocal violence.” But in the 70% of cases where only one partner was violent, it was the woman.
• A 2014 study ^[23] by the Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics found that “equal proportions of men and women reported being victims of spousal violence during the preceding 5 years (4% respectively).”
• A 2010-2012 meta-study ^[24] of 1,700 peer-reviewed studies of domestic violence in the US, United Kingdom, and Canada found that women were more likely to instigate violence than men (28.3% vs. 21.6%).
• A 2014 study ^[25] involving over 1,000 male and female students found that women were more likely than men to use physical violence in an attempt to “control” their partners.

It’s so simple that I’m exasperated even having to say it, but if you don’t want someone to hit you, don’t hit them first. Either that, or shut the fuck up about equality, because you obviously don’t believe in it.

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