There has been plenty of warning
Joan Smith reminds us that footballers and movie stars can also be men who punch women in the face.
Imagine a man hitting his partner. The picture that comes to mind probably involves a scruffy individual, his hand raised and his face contorted with fury. We can all condemn that, can’t we? But what if the angry face is familiar, seen thousands of times in a very different context? If it belongs, say, to the world’s most famous and admired footballer, Diego Maradona?
He was very good at getting the ball into the net, but that doesn’t mean he wasn’t a violent bully. That’s a very complicated thought, I know, but it’s true.
Domestic abuse is routinely overlooked or rendered invisible, especially if the alleged perpetrator is an elite sportsman or famous actor. When the Olympic athlete Oscar Pistorius shot dead his girlfriend, Reeva Steenkamp, commentators initially bought his story that he believed she was an intruder. It was only much later, and after protracted legal proceedings, that Pistorius was found guilty of murder.
…
Last month glowing tributes were paid to the Scottish actor Sean Connery – recipient of a knighthood, among other honours – who had died at the age of 90. Like Maradona’s, his biography had an irresistible rags-to-riches element, with lots of references to the fact that he left school at 14 and did manual labour before becoming a hugely successful actor. “Our nation is today mourning one of our best-loved sons,” said Scotland’s first minister, Nicola Sturgeon.
Predictably, most of the accounts of his life glossed over allegations that Connery was violent towards his first wife, the Australian actress Diane Cilento, leaving her bruised and battered. In her autobiography, published in 2006, Cilento described locking herself in a bathroom for protection after Connery hit her in the face, knocking her to the floor, and a second blow “sent me flying”.
It’s not even as if he was a repentant abuser. “I don’t think there is anything particularly wrong about hitting a woman – although I don’t recommend doing it in the same way that you’d hit a man,” he said in an interview with Playboy in 1965. “An open-handed slap is justified, if all other alternatives fail and there has been plenty of warning.”
Nothing particularly wrong with that, eh what?
Because a man is always entitled to get his way, and if the woman doesn’t give him what he wants, she is in the wrong.
An open hand slap is not justified. I was taught from a young age that striking a woman (or a girl) is never acceptable, absolutely never. Even in self defense, retreat, or in worst case, restraint is sometimes necessary, but striking? No way, that is abuser bullshit. Fucking Neanderthals. My daughters, during some difficult pubescent episodes, became physically violent with me. I did have to grab their arms to keep from getting a bloody nose, but striking them, or any woman has always been out of the question. Some men are just abusive, cowardly creeps.
And for some of us who lived with those men, it can be difficult for us to form normal relationships with better men later.
For the record, I don’t believe in hitting men, either.
Chivalry is just the prettiest part of misogyny. Men are larger than women, on average. However, the bell curves overlap such that the largest woman is far larger than the average man, and vice versa. Such rules serve more to diminish than to protect.
I once bumped into Kara Wolters, who had several inches and a couple stone on me. If someone her size were trying to hurt me, self-preservation would dictate my actions, not chivalry. I would clarify the praxis of non-abusiveness thus: hitting someone smaller and weaker than you is always abusive. Hitting someone bigger than you can be abusive too, if that person is unable to hit back. Cutting it short, just don’t hit people. Use your words.
I’m not surprised Zardoz was an abuser. Macho is as macho does.
@ iknklast #3:
Yes, in law that’s called a “negative pregnant”: specifying that it’s not okay to hit a woman, ever, leaves open the inference that it is okay to hit men, because that was not included in the denial.
It’s not okay to hit anyone.
Aha, but what about Nazis? What about “punching up”? Surely that’s ok… surely finding the slimmest excuse to harm someone we don’t like is moral and honourable.
/s
Haven’t you heard? Nazis have a right to their opinion, too.
The only people it is okay to hit are TERFs. Because they have no rights we need to consider of any kind. Pace PZ Meyers.
/s
iknklast, did you just deliberately mis-spell PZ’s surname because you know it annoys him?
AoS, you found me out. ;-)
Papito @4
If physically bigger and stronger Connery refused to strike his actress wife on principle, I wouldn’t consider that misogyny. It might fit under the umbrella of chivalrous behavior to never strike a woman or girl, but I sure don’t think it’s based in hate or condescension. I tend to think the principle is based more on respect and protectiveness. There are always alternatives, as you say, use your words (among others). Also, chivalrous behavior is not necessarily exclusive to men’s behavior toward women, I’ll open the door for you too, fella. ;-)
#7 ikn
Not quite, PZ and the usual suspects over there are fully in favour of punching Nazis too. It’s just that there is no daylight between Nazism and “men can’t become women” in their eyes.
They only really squabble over how much punching is too much punching, with the most vile among them saying that punching until they die of it is fine. He didn’t get banned for saying that by the way, in fact the only substantive pushback he received was an instruction that he no longer call on the people he hates to commit suicide. And even then, only because fellow commenters that have had suicidal ideation said that it added to their struggles, implying that the comments were fine in and of themselves but for the collateral harm on their own tribe.
And even then, it took days before PZ weighed in and told him to drop it. Not banned, just ‘don’t do it on my blog’.
Maradona was a hopeless drunk and addict. Which is shuffled out of sight along with his propensity for violence. Just keep kicking goals and everyone will keep quiet.
There is also no daylight between being in law enforcement and being a Nazi, in PZ’s mind, so he is really a lost person. He is ranting away at John Cleese in a personal insulting manner while doing nothing to actually shut all of us gender critical people up forever by just doing this:
Proving HOW an adult human male (“trans woman”) is the same in material reality as an adult human female (woman) using facts only. Not circular definitions, not chanting trans cult dogma. And not being stupid enough to try and use DSD conditions because the fact that people with DSD conditions can never alter their chromosomes in any way shows that sex is truly immutable in our species.
PZ, as a biologist, should be able to make an airtight case for trans cult dogma IF any of that twaddle was true. But the gender woowoo crowd starts with a Big Lie (that sex is changeable in our species) and then plays the shell game of sex=gender one second while screaming that sex and gender are different the next second. And the Drama Llama name-calling and poo-flinging they so often engage in would not be needed if WHAT THEY CLAIM IS TRUE WAS ACTUALLY TRUE! :)
Since all they have is lies and drama, don’t leave home or surf the internet without poo shields handy!
@13 Good one SW, but that would shut down the chance to troll everyone. Bullshit dries up, turns to dust, and blows away. It looks like he needs to provide a fresh batch pretty often to keep the blog going. Never mind actual science, that’s boring. ;-)