“Is that all you got, George?” “You punch like a sissy,” Muhammad Ali said, taunting George Foreman during their 1974 heavyweight title fight. Little did anyone know, however, that Ali’s words were stinging women like a bee, making violence against them more likely. That’s a theory, anyway, disgorged by football commentator James Brown on CBS’ 9/11 pre-game show while addressing the Ray Rice domestic violence incident.
As most now know, Rice was seen on a February 15 Atlantic City hotel surveillance video striking his then-fiancée, Janay Palmer, knocking her unconscious. These actions, not surprisingly, earned him an indefinite suspension by the National Football League.
They’ve also brought to light the indefinite suspension of common sense in America. And perhaps the most ridiculous reaction to the Rice incident was Brown’s aforementioned remedy, which, he said, involves “an ongoing, comprehensive education of men about what healthy, respectful manhood is all about.” He then continued, “Our language is important. For instance, when a guy says, ‘You throw the ball like a girl,’ or, ‘you’re a little sissy,’ it reflects an attitude that devalues women. And attitudes will eventually manifest in some fashion.”
Now, the thesis Brown puts forth — and it’s certainly in fashion — is that the way to make men treat women better is to mold feminist men. Get men to embrace equality and passionately trumpet feminist causes and you’ll have sensitive, caring, non-violent Mr. Moms. Yet this is not at all what I and others have observed.
Coming to mind here is Bill Clinton, a serial philanderer and user of women who has even been accused of rape. Then there’s former Oregon senator Bob Packwood, such a strong supporter of “women’s rights” that arch-feminist Gloria Steinem raised $600,000 for him during one of his campaigns; he was forced to resign in 1995 after 10 women made allegations of sexual abuse and assault against him. Similar charges led to the resignation of San Diego Mayor Bob Filner last year, and ultimately he pled guilty to restraining a woman against her will. All these men talked the feminist talk in the public eye; all walked over the feminine sex during their private time.
Of course, anecdotes aren’t definitive, so let’s consider research. And since it’s difficult to find studies measuring the relationship between ideology and domestic violence, we’ll have to connect some dots here.
One of the best indicators of voting patterns is religious attendance. Upwards of 6 out of 10 voters who attend worship services more than weekly vote Republican; this ratio reverses itself for those who never attend, with more than 6 out of 10 voting Democrat. This reflects that commonly understood correlation between traditional American religiosity and conservative belief. Defining it even more precisely, the more passionately Christian people are, the more conservative they will generally be; just consider that almost 80 percent of born again/evangelical Christians voted for Mitt Romney in 2012 even though, as many analysts pointed out, some of them were leery of the candidate’s Mormonism.
And what does research tell us about this proxy for conservatism — religiosity — and domestic violence? As Dr. Patrick Fagan wrote in the research report “Why Religion Matters Even More,” “Men who attended religious services at least weekly were more than 50 percent less likely to commit an act of violence against their partners than were peers who attended only once a year or less. No matter how the data were analyzed, regular attendance at religious services had a strong and statistically significant inverse association with the incidence of domestic abuse.… Religiously active conservative Protestant men were least likely to engage in domestic violence.” (Emphasis added.)
Put simply, there is no link between traditionalism and domestic violence. It is liberal men — feminist-oriented men — who are most likely to abuse women.
Why? Just consider feminist dogma. Liberals assert that men will treat women better if we scrap antiquated ideas such as chivalry, thought to be condescending, and passionately embrace notions of equality, which, liberals insist, means teaching boys to treat the sexes the same. Let’s translate this: so we’re telling little boys to treat girls the way they would other boys. And how might that be? Are lads known for treating other lads with kid gloves?
This should a true “duh” moment. When men occasionally get into arguments with each other that rise to the volcanic passion level common in domestic disputes (no one can push buttons like those close to you), a physical confrontation will often result. So why would liberal men respond any differently when women — whom they’ve been taught to treat the same — get “in their face” the same way?
If liberals want to believe it’s demeaning to treat women like delicate flowers, fine. But it’s quite silly to claim that, somehow, they won’t get worse treatment if men start thinking of them as being just like the rest of the kudzu plants.
This is yet another reason I don’t believe in Equality™. And, by the way, no one else does, either. Were it otherwise we’d never tolerate having separate sports tours, leagues, and teams for women, and Eric Holder’s DOJ wouldn’t currently be suing the Pennsylvania State Police for treating the sexes equally. To the point here, critics can lament “you throw like a girl” comments, but what’s implied by this preoccupation with male violence against women, anyway? Why do we have a Violence Against Women Act? After all, men attack other men, too, and studies have shown that women are actually more likely than men to initiate violence in relationships. And as this video demonstrates, why will people become alarmed and intervene when a man is publicly abusing a woman, but smile and giggle when the roles are reversed? Is there not a little whisper here, tacit as can be, saying that women need assistance because they “fight like girls”? As for the ignored male victim, doesn’t the laughter in the video indicate, among other things, a mockery saying that it’s his problem if he’s such “a little sissy”?
As for liberal men’s abuse of women, it’s another case where ideology is not just a cause but an effect. Much of what leftists publicly support is a pose, an effort to assuage their own guilt, outsource charity, or justify their personal vice by “balancing” it with what they consider public virtue. I think here of socialist French president François Hollande, who, reports ex-girlfriend Valérie Trierweiler, “hates the poor”; and notorious enemy of “capitalism” Michael Moore, who ex-agent Doug Urbanski says is “more money-obsessed than anyone I have known”; and how studies have shown that leftists in general are in fact more money-hungry than conservatives. Likewise, many leftists’ public-life support for “women’s causes” merely masks their poor personal-life treatment of women. They act as if their embrace of liberal ideas is a “get out of jail free” card that absolves them from sin.
So instead of worrying about schoolyard “throw like a girl” taunts, perhaps society would be better served if we mainstreamed and made most damning another taunt: “You think like a liberal.”
