Double Standards

I don't believe in double standards. Not in any situation (as far as I can think of anyway). I don't think men should be rewarded when their number of sexual partners rises while women are chastised and demeaned.

Similarly, I don't believe women should stand up against victim blaming when a man murders his wife and claims abuse but stand silent when a woman does the same.

Recently, a man in Westchester who was apparently going through a divorce beat his wife to death, then shot his two kids and himself. Allegations of abuse from both sides flew. The man's friends claimed she was verbally abusive, and worked to turn their children against him. The woman's family claimed she had expressed fear of her husband, and wanted him out.

The feminist issue arose when one of Sam Friedlander (the murderer)'s friends told a reporter that if Friedlander had shot only his wife, not the children, "I would have baked him a cake with a file in it [to help him escape from prison]." People protested against the victim blaming. No matter what abuse he may have endured, they say, nothing justifies murder.

I agree. Especially when they're already going through a divorce. He was in the middle of getting out of this marriage when he "snapped." But where were these protesters when Barbara Sheehan shot her husband eleven times and argued self defense at her trial?

Why weren't people protesting that victim blaming? She shot and killed her husband while he was shaving in the bathroom, although allegedly, he had threatened to kill her with a gun he owned. She claimed years of abuse led her to this inevitable and irreversible decision.

Where is the argument against victim blaming there? Sheehan was acquitted of the murder charge because the battered wife case. The jury believed it to be the victim's fault that he died of unnatural causes. But if Friedlander hadn't killed his children or himself, no jury would acquit him. Because domestic violence against men just isn't accepted.

But it's real. Whether or not Friedlander or Sheehan were victims of years of domestic violence, I don't know. I'm not sure that anyone but the families themselves can really know. But clearly, domestic violence knows no boundaries. No gender, cultural, racial, class boundaries. No one is exempt from the possibility.

To deny men the right to a life free from violence while allowing a battered wife argument to hold sway in court is gender discrimination. It favors women, but it is still a double standard, and gender equality requires eradication of such policies.

Yes, it is victim blaming to say that someone caused their own murder. Should that stance, that belief, change with the gender of the victim?

Absolutely not.