No doubt you’ve seen the video of Baltimore Ravens running back Ray Rice knocking out his then-fiancée, Janay Palmer, that went viral a week ago today, inciting unprecedented public outrage.
But I waited until today to comment for two reasons:
My first reason for waiting is that I did not want to join the visceral, viral vultures rabidly feeding off Ray, purportedly to support Janay. For this struck me as rather like trigger-happy cops shooting the hostage to arrest the hostage taker….
Moreover, I was already on record with this:
Conspicuously absent amidst the virtual pillorying Smith is getting – most notably from his ESPN colleague Michelle Beadle – is any criticism of the decision Rice’s fiancée made to marry him less than six weeks after he beat her senseless.
Clearly the message Smith sends, by insinuating that women provoke the physical abuse they get, is wrong. But the message she sends, by cleaving onto her abuser, is no less so.
(“NFL: Wife Beating No Worse than Dog Fighting,” The iPINIONS Journal, July 26, 2014)
You can well imagine the criticisms this incited – ranging from clichés about blaming the victim, to threats about doing to me what Ray did to Janay. Except that here, in part, is what Janay herself had to say to all of her self-appointed avengers – who were attacking her husband as if he were King Kong and she the little damsel in distress:
No one knows the pain [the] media & unwanted [opinions] from the public has caused my family…
THIS IS OUR LIFE! (sic) What don’t you all get. If your intentions were to hurt us, embarrass us, make us feel alone, take all happiness away, you’ve succeeded on so many levels.
(Baltimore Sun, September 9, 2014)
This statement clearly vindicates my view that Janay marrying Ray is far more troubling than ESPN commentator Steven A. Smith insinuating that she provoked his abuse. After all, we have laws to deal with men who abuse women; we have no laws to deal with women who enable and willfully tolerate their own abuse.
Meanwhile, if this sad episode has taught us anything, it is that telling women to just leave abusive relationships is no more helpful than telling kids to just say no to drugs. It’s not as if any victim of domestic violence today is not acutely aware of the potential consequences of staying or, more importantly, of the protections and support available to her from law enforcement and social services if she leaves.
Interestingly enough, Craig Malkin, a clinical psychologist at Harvard Medical School, likened a relationship with an abusive partner to gambling addiction. Here’s how he weighed in on tweets from tens of thousands of women who shared their stories last week under the hashtag #WhyIStayed:
The person being abused is focused on the positive and waiting for the next positive. There’s a psychological effect like gambling: the moments of tenderness and intimacy are unpredictable, but they are so intense and fulfilling that the victim winds up staying in the hopes that a moment like that will happen again.
(TIME, September 9, 2014)
Therein lies the rub/paradox.
What is truly perplexing, even vexing, about this is that, just as being educated and sophisticated does not make one immune to the spiral of drug addiction, being so does not make one immune to the cycle of domestic violence.
Many dismissed – as a symptom of “battered woman syndrome” – Janay’s defiant cry to be respected as a college-educated and socially liberated woman quite capable of deciding what’s best for her and her family. But these pop psychologists strike me as the sort who would dismiss – as a legacy of slavery – Blacks who choose to steal and sell drugs instead of going to school and finding a job.
As a principled feminist, however, I appreciate Janay’s exasperation. This is why I am so dismayed that the self-appointed guardians of women’s liberation at the National Organization for Women (NOW) have turned Janay’s abuse into a political cause celebre.
What they don’t get is that she made an informed and free choice to stand by her man, and the only thing those presuming to advocate on her behalf have done is to undermine that choice. Not least by putting so much public pressure on his NFL team that it felt compelled to terminate a contract that would have paid her husband in excess of $10 million over the next three years; to say nothing of compelling a number of sponsors to terminate endorsement contracts that would have paid him millions more. The NFL, caving in to the pressure too, suspended him, indefinitely.
Incidentally, Ray is 27. Reports are that his initial two-game suspension would’ve cost him almost $470,000. If this indefinite suspension forces him to remain out of the game for two or more years (as seems likely to be the case), it could spell the end of his career. And only God knows how a wife beater, thusly embittered, might feel “provoked” to lash out….
What Janay’s statement makes distressingly clear is that it’s nobody’s business if a woman chooses to stay with her abuser, for whatever reason, but hers. I don’t think any woman should choose to become a prostitute. Yet even NOW endorses a life of prostitution as an informed choice many women make. However, this organization for women would be hard-pressed to explain why it treats women who sell their bodies for a living (with all of the risk and inherent abuse that entails) as liberated free agents, but those who stay in abusive relationships with the men they love as mentally incapacitated and in need of guardians ad litem.
More on point, one wonders why NOW isn’t stoking public outrage over no less a woman than Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) making light of the fact that male senators routinely groped and sexually harassed her on Capitol Hill. I watched an obviously incredulous Mika Brezinski ask Gillibrand (on the September 8 edition of MSNBC’s Morning Joe) why she refuses to name, let alone prosecute, the culprits. She said, in effect, that she didn’t want to because it’s no big deal and they’re her colleagues. I was stupefied.
Perhaps Janay wanted no further action taken against Ray because she didn’t think it was a big deal and he’s her friggin husband….
My second reason for waiting is that I was already as outraged as I could possibly be. After all, that first video six weeks ago showed Ray dragging a clearly unconscious Janay out of an elevator … as if she were nothing more than a piece of furniture he was struggling to move.
I did not need to see Ray actually landing the blow that knocked her out to condemn the NFL for giving him just a slap on the wrist. I’m on record, in the above-cited commentary, in this respect too:
You probably know about the viral outrage this suspension incited. What you probably don’t know, however, is that Rice’s slap on the wrist actually reflects the prevailing culture – not just of the NFL but of all professional sports.
For years I’ve been decrying the perverse values that guide the NFL’s code of conduct. Nothing demonstrates this perversity quite like juxtaposing the two-week suspension Commissioner Roger Goodell gave Rice last Thursday for abusing his fiancée with the three-month suspension he gave Miami Dolphins offensive guard Richie Incognito last year for bullying his teammate.
In fact, that I titled this commentary “NFL: Wife Beating No Worse than Dog Fighting” probably says it all.
To be fair, though, I feel constrained to note that Goodell took decisive steps to redeem the NFL long before TMZ released this second, more graphic video last week.
Saying ‘I didn’t get it right’ with Ray Rice, NFL commish Roger Goodell announced a dramatic new domestic violence policy for the league Thursday.
A first offense under the new domestic violence policy calls for a six-game suspension, while a second offense would result in a lifetime ban.
The NFL’s new policy applies to all league personnel, not just players.
(CBS News, August 28, 2014)
This is why it’s unfair that NOW is leading a chorus of avenging feminists calling on Goodell to resign. Especially when one considers a) that, unlike NOW, Goodell probably bent over backwards to accommodate what Janay thought was in her best interest; and, more importantly, b) that, after examining all the evidence, including this second video, the New Jersey prosecutor ultimately decided that it was in the best interest of justice, in this case, to let Rice enter a pre-trial intervention program, instead of filing criminal charges against him. No doubt he was influenced by the fact that Janay not only supported this alternative but would have been an uncooperative victim/witness.
All bets are off, however, if it turns out Goodell lied on national TV about what Ray told him about what happened from the outset, or about when he first saw that second, galvanizing video.
One wonders why NOW and other women’s groups aren’t calling on this prosecutor to resign….
Then, of course, there’s the media’s complicity in all this. Regular readers know of my abiding and unbridled contempt for the mainstream media. This was only reinforced last week when, as Janay insinuates, they thought nothing of compounding her abuse by airing the video of Ray knocking her out as if it were a GIF on a website for men who get off on abusing women. And nothing betrays what little journalist integrity they have quite like major networks announcing their intent to stop playing this video:
ESPN, CNN, ABC, NBC, Fox News Channel and Fox Sports all said Thursday they would no longer show the video unless there are compelling news reasons to bring it back.
(Media Matters, September 11, 2014)
After all, this came after each of them had already aired it a thousand times for purely prurient purposes (i.e., ratings).
Mind you, this is the same media that enforces a policy of not revealing the names, let alone showing the faces, even of alleged victims of rape. Therefore, what are we to make of their regard for victims of domestic violence that they would think nothing of not only revealing their names and showing their faces, but of airing video of that violence being perpetrated against them?
Utterly contemptible!
With that, here are some takeaway points:
- A snarky tweet or, better still, a viral video is all far too many people think they need these days to vent morally indignant opinions on any issue, including one as complicated as domestic violence.
- I would have advised Janay against standing by Ray, but I respect her decision to do so.
This case has taught us nothing about domestic violence – not just in the NFL but in society at large – that the O.J. Simpson case did not teach us over two decades ago. Remember that teachable moment? This case has only demonstrated the untenable influence viral mobs have not only on public debate these days, but on public policy. (Only the outrage of viral mobs over the beheading of two American journalists explains why Obama is starting a war against ISIS that seems even more a “march of folly” than Bush’s invasion of Iraq.)- You’d never know it, but, because of that O.J. case, law-enforcement authorities are keen to press criminal charges in cases of domestic violence – often against the wishes of the victim.
- Janay’s statement makes clear that, far from advancing the fight against domestic violence, the public hysteria this case incited might set it back decades – as even more women become loath to report domestic violence for fear of becoming fodder for viral tweets and a cause celebre for crusading, latter-day feminists.
- While all of her putative supporters turn their attention to the next viral video or social-media outrage, Janay will be struggling to come to terms with Ray’s loss of millions in contracted and future earnings; to say nothing of a domestic life that might prove far more stressful, if not violent, thanks to last week’s tsunami of support.
- The NFL has taken commendable steps towards meting out more appropriate penalties for incidents of domestic violence. But last week was arguably the worst in its history — from a PR perspective — with reports of even more egregious domestic-violence cases and a child abuse case (involving former league MVP Adrian Peterson disciplining his four-year-old son with a switch … the way many Black parents discipline their children).
I know Blacks constitute 66 percent of the players in the NFL. But it is truly disheartening that, according to the U-T San Diego NFL arrest database, all of the 14 players currently playing who have been charged or accused of domestic violence are Black.- I appreciate that, according to a November 29, 2013, report in USA Today, Black NFL players are arrested nearly 10 times as often as White ones. But it is truly disheartening that all of the 24 players who have been arrested this year, for one reason other another, are Black.
- Unsurprisingly, according to the Department of Justice, women of color are far more often than Whites to be the victims of domestic violence (e.g., 50 percent of Native American females have been raped, beaten, or stalked by an intimate partner; and 30 percent of Black American females have been subjected to domestic abuse). Notwithstanding Janay’s circumstances, there seems to be a direct correlation between social maladies—like unemployment, poverty, education, and violent neighborhoods—and domestic violence.
- Finally, and this might be the most sobering point of all, as “epidemic” as domestic violence might seem in the NFL, statistics show that it is even worse in society at large.
Enough.
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