Janay Rice and the Domestic Violence Narrative

It didn’t take long ruminating on the Ray Rice story to realize that it provided not just one—not two—but three touches of the Third Rail. How could I resist?

Prepare to be offended...

I’ll start by acknowledging that not only do I have no knowledge or interest in the principals involved, but I have little interest in the sport itself. It usurped the name from the greatest sport on the planet—for a game, evolved from rugby, in which kicking the ball isn’t allowed in the normal course of play.

Part of the enjoyment of watching sports is the vicarious fantasy of imagining yourself in the athlete’s boots. I have no affinity for the typical football player.

So, I had never heard of Ray Rice. From what I’ve seen of the video, he’s one more argument for ignoring the sport.

 

What I find compelling about this story is that it rides on the intersection of two politically correct paradigms. The victim-feminist narrative meets the imperative to minimize and rationalize black violence.

Let’s begin with the video.

Once the video from the inside of the elevator emerged, it was obvious by the careful editing what had happened.  The video cut started almost immediately at Ray Rice throwing the knock-out blow. But even with the careful editing, it was evident that his wife was the aggressor. She wasn’t cowering with her back to the wall of the elevator, covering her face. She was moving towards him, arms swinging.

The only question then was how long it would take to see the rest of the video.

Now that it’s available, we learn that Janay spat in her husband’s face, and threw punches at him. That’s assault and battery, by the way. What I get from the video is two trashy human beings, and quite frankly, I don’t give a whit for either of them.

But we need to analyze this, regardless of the quality of the individuals, because this is being played out in the court of victim-feminist political correctness.

When a man is physically attacked by a woman—especially one with whom he is intimately acquainted such as a wife or girlfriend—he essentially has four options:

1. He can defend himself by fighting back.
2. He can attempt to defend himself by raising his arms to ward of the blows or otherwise constraining his attacker’s movements.
3. He can flee to avoid the assault.
4. He can stand by and let himself be beaten.

Most, if not all women know that if there is a physical altercation between a man and a woman, the man is toast once law enforcement and the judicial system get involved.

This is why women are empowered to assault men. They know they can get away with it, and they presume that their victim knows it.  And so they can strike with impunity.

Perhaps Janay was operating on this assumption. But what happens in a fight is not predictable. Adrenalin flows. Emotions flare. I don’t know if Ray Rice was in control of his emotions and he lashed out in cold, calculating fashion to put his wife in her place, or if he acted impulsively, under duress, and retaliated in rage. Whichever it was, I doubt Janay was expecting it.

So, for whatever reason, perhaps sheer stupidity, Ray chose the first option. Let’s examine the options he didn’t take.

Option 3 was not available to him. He was in a small enclosed area from which he couldn’t escape.

Most reasonable people would say that the only appropriate response was Option 2: try to thwart his wife’s blows in a purely defensive manner. The most obvious way would be to grab her wrists, disabling her arms. His wife would then likely kick him, and perhaps keep spitting. The struggle would likely continue as Ray would try to maneuver his much weaker wife into a position where she couldn’t kick him until the elevator arrived at their destination when he could exit and get away from her.

But here’s what people don’t understand about how domestic violence is handled thanks to the “feminist jurisprudence” that reigns in the legal system in domestic relations cases.

Option 2 is treated no different than Option 1. Regardless of who initiates violence, once a man lays hold of the woman—or even raises his arms to ward of blows—he is the aggressor, the guilty party. He is the criminal, and he will suffer the legal consequences, which can include jail, probation, and if the altercation occurs within a family breakup, loss of his children, as in the criminalization of any contact with his children and the legal stripping of all his parental custodial rights (except to provide financial support for them).

So, in a scenario such as the Rice’s, Ray really only had one choice: Option 4.

The only way that he might emerge legally blameless in this situation would be to put his arms down and his let his wife spit on him and repeatedly strike him. Or he could curl up, turn his back, and cower in a corner of the elevator.

That is the only option that the legal system allows for a man in this situation.

At this point, you might think that I am being sympathetic to a wife-beater. I’m not. I have no sympathy for Ray Rice. His response was despicable.  But I am attempting to tear away the utter bullcrap of how this incident is being presented. Janay Rice is no victim. She spit in her husband’s face and assaulted him. She is a violent woman. And she made the mistake of thinking her thug of a husband was smart enough to realize that he had no choice but to take his punishment.  

Enter Whoopi Goldberg, the only person I have seen to date who has actually stated that women should not be surprised to get hit back if they hit their husbands/boyfriends. Therefore, she says, don’t do it, gurrls.

As if this actually has to be said. But sure enough, Whoopi was met with quick condemnation for stating the obvious.

I was raised to never hit girls. It was considered un-manly. I passed that life-lesson on to my boys. All boys were raised this way. If they were raised by a mother and a father.

But that was a different time. A time when men aspired to be “gentlemen” and women to be “ladies.”  Feminism has since remedied that.  “Lady” is a term of patriarchal oppression.

And hence we get the present-day, post-feminism of Whoopi Goldberg, essentially erasing the code of chivalry that established men’s protective role of women—even if being assaulted by one.  Just deck the bitch... Women, if you don’t want to get clocked by your man, don’t hit him.

What a world we have carved out for our children thanks to feminism.

And now the third touch to the Third Rail: the violence of the African-American population.

We are now getting inundated with domestic violence propaganda, targeting its prevalence in the NFL.  I have no doubt that there is a large amount of domestic violence committed by football players. The overwhelming majority of football players are African-American. And they, as a population sub-group, are incredibly violent, in relation to whites, Asians, ... the rest of the population.

But we’re not supposed to notice this. Mentioning it is tantamount to professional suicide, depending on your career. I heard Jesse Jackson say on TV, in Ferguson, MO, addressing the ostensible violence systematically perpetrated by racist white cops against blacks, that “black-on-white crime is rare.”

He actually said this.

When counting violent crime (which includes things like robbery as well as assault and battery), black-on-white violent crime occurs at rate of 5 : 1 compared against white-on-black violence.

But that’s not the whole story. The population ratio of whites-to-blacks is also, coincidentally 5 : 1.

That means, on a population weighted normalizing of these statistics, the ratio of black-on-white to white-on-black violent crime is 25 : 1.

Furthermore, if we single out purely violent crime, that is, aggravated assault, the ratio jumps to an incredible 200 : 1.

When African-American youths make a game out of knocking out a random white person on the street with a single punch, and videoing it to broadcast on social media, the affirmative denial of black violence by white liberals reaches the diabolical.  “Flashmobs” are really groups of African-American youths ransacking and looting a place of business; occasionally pausing to join in a beat down of a shopper.

The incredible level of violence in the African-American population is directly a result of what I have coined the War on Fatherhood. Two-thirds of black children are raised without their father in the home. Without the male role model provided by the father, African-American youth look to successful black role models: pimps, rappers, and athletes. Like Ray Rice.

It’s not inferior schools. It’s not institutional racism. It’s not racial profiling. It’s not racist cops. It’s not white privilege. It’s fatherlessness. The destruction of the biological nuclear family; the ultimate failure of the African-American culture.

I offer a conjecture. It is my opinion that levels of fatherlessness of two-thirds cannot be attributed solely to inherent defects in the black culture.  Of course that is what feminism attributes it to: failures of men.  But single-maternal households are rising in the white population, too.  I assert that fatherlessness is attributed to public policies, laws and social engineering that are demanding it. Fatherless families are now part and parcel of our culture, promoted in our schools, the media and the entertainment industry.

I attribute it to one more “success” of feminism, the open-ended goal of which is female empowerment. Nothing may contradict it. After all, a woman needs a man like ...

But on the Rice case, the domestic violence narrative is trumps.  And there’s no need to downplay Ray’s violence because he’s African-American, because this can easily be masked under the ‘domestic violence in sports’ paradigm.

I still have yet to hear a whimper of even questioning Janay’s behavior in the elevator.  Victim-feminism is many things. Here, it serves as an instruction to stop thinking. Man knocks out wife. What’s to question?

When a woman assaults her husband, on those rare occasions when it breaks the news, the typical line of inquiry begins, “What did he do to her?” And the words “domestic violence” are assiduously avoided in any news coverage.

Victim-feminism is more than an ideology of hate, it’s quasi-religious. One of its fruits is the new definitions of family, specifically, the fatherless family. Hence, the growing toxicity in African-American communities like Ferguson, and people like Ray and Janay Rice.

The family civilizes the beast in man. And it provides the safe environment for a woman to procreate. Without it, especially in the African-American population, we see boys and girls brought up with no concept of civility, no apparent understanding and appreciation for the value of life, and young men committing violent crimes of senseless brutality.

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