I want you to watch the footage below and make a mental note of what you see taking place. Stop reading here, until after you have watched the video.
There are a number of things happening in this. Did you spot them all?
The woman in the video is clearly a monster. Her behaviour is disgusting and violent; the issue of where the young man should or should not put the refuse is irrelevant. What’s more, if he were to lift a finger to defend himself and she picked up the phone to the police as a result, the consequences for him could be severe.
That was the obvious bit.
Then there’s the guy with the camera, who thinks it’s amusing — until she comes after him that is, at which point the footage ends abruptly. The original up-loader put the video under the “comedy” category and describes it in the low-bar as “highly funny.” This says a lot about society’s perceptions of male targeted aggression.
But did you spot who is, potentially, the real victim in all of this?
The guy in the blue top — his role in trying to restrain and calm the woman was largely incidental, but he is almost certainly her husband or partner.
While it’s not possible to know for certain on the strength of this video alone, I would strongly suspect that he has, in fact, endured a living hell for decades at her hands. Look again at how delicately he attempts to intervene — he is afraid to antagonise her.
A man like this could be in a dire position. His only options would be live in misery or try to escape and lose his home. But at his age, with his parents gone, where would he go and how would he live?
Moreover, wider society will not easily recognise him as the victim in this — did you? For him, there are few options, and they are dwindling…
Recent UK trials with Domestic Violence Protection Orders (DVPOs) have facilitated the immediate removal of those accused of abusive behaviour without need of evidence. An accusation alone suffices, and police are trained to see men only as abusers, not suffers. For example, the title of the 2011 UK government policy paper, “A Call to end violence against women and girls” says it all.
It is an incarnation of the Duluth Model of domestic violence, if ever there was one.
The Duluth Model is a standard intervention approach used throughout the world and is based directly on feminist “patriarchy theory,” i.e. that men, such as the man with the blue shirt in video, oppress women. As such, it focuses solely on teaching men not to be batterers.
If that wasn’t enough, men, especially those of older generations, are culturally conditioned to believe that should be able to sort out their own problems, thus isolating themselves.
In reality, an innocent man trapped in a relationship with a manipulative and malicious woman would be uniquely powerless. His life would be lived on the edge of a knife in which the threat of a phone call to the police over some perceived wrong or slight would be an ever present reality. If he attempted to flee, the police could be weaponised against him, especially if past allegations had established a track record of his purported behaviour. If, having been abused for years, he snapped and resorted to physical violence himself — that would only condemn him.
If you heap abuse on a man, while denying him the ability to respond, then you are killing that man.
I wonder just how many men, who are primary abuse sufferers, are made to undergo Duluth based “education” programmes each year in order to “teach them not to batter?” In such cases, the effect would be utterly dehumanising — the state would be perpetrating psychological abuse against the abused.
This article was first published on MRALondon.org.
