Violence Against Women and Stand Your Ground

[Jarhyn]

We need to do much more to prevent violence towards women and children —and men —all people. We need to do much more to treat mental illnesses and to help people cope with stresses and strains that all of us experience but for some, much more than others.

Indeed. To me, it starts with a piece of philosophy that to me has come up time and again: those who want to leave a situation need a way made clear for them; societies which wish to define situations which necessitate such an open way must provide the surety to those seeking such an exit. It cannot simply be "you have a right to leave", but "because you have a right to leave society has an obligation to ensure you have somewhere to go".

This means shelters for abused people with a guarantee to a bed for everyone.

It means shelters that do not automatically assume the person there is there because they are abusive (which is an unfortunate fixture of the majority of homes for a certain fraction of victims).

It means providing legal defense for those who must fight through an illegal barrier to their exit.

I also wonder what impact this whole situation has on suicides, as the domestic violence situations I have observed skewed towards a preference for suicide in situations where it is the "atypical" partner committing the abuse, and there is no opportunity for social recognition of the abuse.

I will reiterate though that every time someone blames the problem based on looking at "probability someone is an abuser due to demographics" it exacerbates those very demographics.

I would as soon think that instead of there being such major population differences, that we may be blinding ourselves to the ways that different populations achieve "abuse".

We do know that due to differences that follow demographics that the specific actions someone takes to pursue an outcome may have outsized effects: more often, men will take a definitive approach to suicide and murder, and fail at social attacks against career/livelihood/family access, and women are just the opposite insofar as their responses are more socially oriented including the violence they engage in.

I would absolutely support an "open way" doctrine far more expansive than merely domestic situations. It already ostensibly exists in the right of travel, and I think it also ought exist for anyone who wishes to leave any country, for any other country that will have them. It's an important doctrine, and I think that anyone who stands in someone else's way to close it "has their own blood upon them" as it were.

That said, I see an issue in framing it as "against women", because it's yet another message that leads to too many suicides at the hands of people for whom there is no way out, for whom the only options would be to kill a lying spouse who everyone will believe (and go to prison for it and suffer some fates worse than death), or to kill themselves and let that be the end of their suffering, or to give everything up and start over and never see your kids or family ever again.

It makes me think of the story of Fenris, a fearsome beast capable of devouring the world. It struck fear even into the hearts of the gods, and burst many chains thought to be physically indestructible. The thing that eventually served to bind Fenris was not such a chain, but a dainty ribbon made of that which barely even existed at all! I wonder at hearing this if there is not more reciprocity among the statistics, but that the chain that binds some is obviously a chain, and that others are instead bound by the ribbon.

 

[laughing dog]

I find it fascinating that the same people who approve of a country going after a lethal threat for weeks with lots of attendant collateral damage have an issue with a woman waiting a couple of days to go after a lethal threat with no collateral damage.

 

[Janice Rael]

My actual Rael life. Markie Z and The Shareholders did not consider this post from my abuser to be a violation of Meta Facebook Community Standards, even though the few friends that this abuser had not siphoned off had reported it as the actual genuine threat it was, after several years of isolation, hours of endless abuse in every way he could think of, from all my social media to my email and texts, as I cried in the bathroom or in the closet.

December 2023, we all thought he was actually going to kill me dead. The useless cops had been out over 10 times, but they only had 6 times in the printout I later got from the police that showed their uselessness and coddling of this man who told me all day, every day, how much he enjoyed my suffering and was going to put me out of it.

Spoiler

Fortunately for me, I already have most of IIDB's horrible people blocked, so, I did not see their clearly and expected atrocious comments.

I hope all their chocolate is carob, to say the least.

 

[Rhea]

You define self defense as needing “immediate threat”, showing that you don’t understand the article.

That's what self defense is. I don't think you or the article understand what self defense is.

And this is where you show exactly what the article exposes; that “threat” to you is a threat that has warning, that is finite, that comes to an end and must be re-established to be credible in a repeat. That you think “self-defense” only has one look, the way it looks when you need to defend yourself from a stranger.

The immediate threat is, “if you ever try to leave me, I will kill you.”

That is a serious threat but I don't know that you can kill your spouse/partner/whatever three days later and claim self defense.

This is where you show that you didn’t read the article and don’t understand the issue.

There is no three days later. It is always today. The threat is always today. Every day. The threat is now. All the time. Any time, without fresh warning, from inside the house.


If someone told you credibly they would shoot you on sight, and then you see them, you would not wait for a new threat. A cop certainly would not wait for a new threat to consider it “imminent”. Nor would a soldier if they saw someone in the enemy uniform. The threat has already been given, and hovers over the current situation.

 

[Arctish]

There is no three days later. It is always today. The threat is always today. Every day. The threat is now. All the time. Any time, without fresh warning, from inside the house.

QFT

 

[TSwizzle]

You define self defense as needing “immediate threat”, showing that you don’t understand the article.

That's what self defense is. I don't think you or the article understand what self defense is.

And this is where you show exactly what the article exposes; that “threat” to you is a threat that has warning, that is finite, that comes to an end and must be re-established to be credible in a repeat. That you think “self-defense” only has one look, the way it looks when you need to defend yourself from a stranger.

Self defense is self explanatory and understood to be a reaction to being under attack. That's the way the law sees it, right?

You disagree with the law is what I think you are saying. That if someone reacts to a threat of violence with physical force that should be classed as self defense? Maybe, at the time of the threat I suppose, depending on the circumstances, nature of the threat etc.

The immediate threat is, “if you ever try to leave me, I will kill you.”

That is a serious threat but I don't know that you can kill your spouse/partner/whatever three days later and claim self defense.

This is where you show that you didn’t read the article and don’t understand the issue.

I did read the article as I mentioned it in one of my earlier posts.

There is no three days later. It is always today. The threat is always today. Every day. The threat is now. All the time. Any time, without fresh warning, from inside the house.

The article used a case where the woman paid two men to kill her abusive husband. I wouldn't class this as self defense. You may think the woman was justified due to the abuse she had to take and the threat of violence she was under but I don't think this is self defense. Apparently the jury at her trial didn't think so either.

There should be a better way to protect women from these monsters but I don't think giving women carte blanche to off their abusive partners under the cover of self defense is the way to go.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

You define self defense as needing “immediate threat”, showing that you don’t understand the article.

That's what self defense is. I don't think you or the article understand what self defense is.

And this is where you show exactly what the article exposes; that “threat” to you is a threat that has warning, that is finite, that comes to an end and must be re-established to be credible in a repeat. That you think “self-defense” only has one look, the way it looks when you need to defend yourself from a stranger.

Self defense is self explanatory and understood to be a reaction to being under attack. That's the way the law sees it, right?

For abuse victims, not as much. Being a traumatized abuse victim changes things because their mindset is altered. And how someone thinks is a big part of demonstrating if they are guilty of a crime. This isn't a black/white, either/or, litmus type of test. These cases need to be adjudicated on a case by case basis.

 

[TSwizzle]

Of course, it's not just partner/spouse women should be afraid of. A curious case;

A mom whose son is accused of brutally stabbing her to death in an argument shared haunting posts on Instagram in the days prior to her murder. Catherine Griffith, 39, was found knifed in the neck at a home in Auburndale, Florida on Sunday night. Her son Collin Griffith, 17, told police she 'fell' on the weapon, but has since been charged with her murder. Her death came a year after she had bailed the teenager out for fatally shooting his father, in an act he claimed was self defense. Witnesses reported seeing Griffith dragging his mom out of the house by her hair two hours earlier and a medical examiner found she had been stabbed – twice – in the neck. A year ago, Catherine paid $50,000 to bail her son out of jail after he shot his father dead. Charges were dropped after he argued that he killed his father in self-defense.

Daily Mail

The mom actually bought her psychopath son a new car. Thank fuck she didn't buy him an AR-15, who knows what the pyscho would have done.

 

[ZiprHead]

Kids of violent parents are quite often violent themselves. It's what they were taught.

She should have gotten him into counseling instead of buying him a car.

 

[Tigers!]

Kids of violent parents are quite often violent themselves. It's what they were taught.

Indeed. Parents often complain that their children do not pay attention to them. They are paying attention. Just to the wrong parts of us.
My daughter surprised me when she was quite young (~4yrs) by giving another driver the finger whilst siting in her seat booster. When I asked her why she did that she replied "Mum does that all the time!"
But not whilst I was in the car.

She should have gotten him into counseling instead of buying him a car.

A whack on the seat of learning with a rolled up newspaper would have been more effective. Works on puppies I'm reliably informed.
(Though that will tend to give one a distorted view of the MSM)

 

[ZiprHead]

She should have gotten him into counseling instead of buying him a car.

A whack on the seat of learning with a rolled up newspaper would have been more effective. Works on puppies I'm reliably informed.
(Though that will tend to give one a distorted view of the MSM)

Violence to counter parent taught violence. I guess you do you.

 

[Rhea]

A whack on the seat of learning with a rolled up newspaper would have been more effective. Works on puppies I'm reliably informed.

A wise man once said,

Indeed. Parents often complain that their children do not pay attention to them. They are paying attention. Just to the wrong parts of us.

So perhaps using violence to send a message is not the lesson you really want to teach.

I found that asking the kids to think through what their behavior would result in did the trick, no need to treat them like badly treated dogs.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

I would call them on the books, "captive spouse" defense laws or "open way" laws, which is to say, if there is no "open way" to leaving, there ought be a legal defense to making one.

When Marissa Alexander left her ex's house to retrieve a gun from her car and came back to shoot toward him and his children, the feminist brigades here and elsewhere have defended her even though she had an open way to leaving. Just because she is a woman.
Note that when she was released on bail, she went to her victim's house again and attacked him. And yet, because she is female, she is automatically considered the "victim". Same goes for women who murdered men - Mary Winkler and Nikki Redmond have been defended here as well.

Marissa Alexader's case is a good example of what the OP describes.

Under Florida's Stand Your Ground law, a person has no duty to retreat and may use lethal force if threatened or if they simply believe they are in danger. But using a gun to fire a warning shot got Alexander a 20 year prison sentence despite her having more than sufficient reason to believe her estranged husband would attack her just like he'd done in the past.

Obviously the law is deeply flawed. But I think the OP is right about the unspoken intent behind that law: to shield white men who use lethal force. I don't think the people who pushed for SYG to become law ever intended it to exonerate women who shoot their partners or husbands, or blacks and POC who shoot whites.

I think you seriously fail to understand what happened. The law is more complex than "no duty to retreat".

1) She had retreated. She went back. Legally, a new engagement in which she was the perpetrator. (It could be justified if you had to go back to rescue a kid or something--in that case the original encounter would not have ended.)

2) If you fire a warning shot you are almost always in the wrong. If you have time to do something like that that normally means the threat to you is not imminent.

3) She fired with disregard for where her kids were.

As for the case in the OP: Taking her story at face value she's guilty but not of first degree murder and she was sentenced way too heavily. Her kids were not in danger, there was no need for her to pick a deadly confrontation with him.

And despite being offered a very generous plea deal she went for trial and lost.

 

[Arctish]

I would call them on the books, "captive spouse" defense laws or "open way" laws, which is to say, if there is no "open way" to leaving, there ought be a legal defense to making one.

When Marissa Alexander left her ex's house to retrieve a gun from her car and came back to shoot toward him and his children, the feminist brigades here and elsewhere have defended her even though she had an open way to leaving. Just because she is a woman.
Note that when she was released on bail, she went to her victim's house again and attacked him. And yet, because she is female, she is automatically considered the "victim". Same goes for women who murdered men - Mary Winkler and Nikki Redmond have been defended here as well.

Marissa Alexader's case is a good example of what the OP describes.

Under Florida's Stand Your Ground law, a person has no duty to retreat and may use lethal force if threatened or if they simply believe they are in danger. But using a gun to fire a warning shot got Alexander a 20 year prison sentence despite her having more than sufficient reason to believe her estranged husband would attack her just like he'd done in the past.

Obviously the law is deeply flawed. But I think the OP is right about the unspoken intent behind that law: to shield white men who use lethal force. I don't think the people who pushed for SYG to become law ever intended it to exonerate women who shoot their partners or husbands, or blacks and POC who shoot whites.

I think you seriously fail to understand what happened. The law is more complex than "no duty to retreat".

1) She had retreated. She went back. Legally, a new engagement in which she was the perpetrator. (It could be justified if you had to go back to rescue a kid or something--in that case the original encounter would not have ended.)

She went to the attached garage. She was still in the residence and the confrontation wasn't over. What followed was not a new engagement, it was a new development in the same engagement.

Alexander said Gray has just threatened to kill her because of some text messages he read on her phone. He had physically abused her on more than one occasion, and in fact was a serial abuser of multiple women. Any such threat would be credible.

She said she tried to exit via the garage door and was unable to open it. She then got a gun from the car and went back inside the living space. It appears she didn't get it in order to commit murder, since she did not shoot to kill. It appears she got it in order to compel Gray to back off and let her leave through another door.

2) If you fire a warning shot you are almost always in the wrong. If you have time to do something like that that normally means the threat to you is not imminent.

And that's why the law is so seriously flawed.

People who are unwilling to commit homicide can be sent to prison for 20 years for firing a warning shot as part of an attempt to avoid taking the most extreme action against someone who had just threatened to kill them, while those who are willing to kill someone they find threatening are protected from legal consequences, even in the absence of an actual threat and even if they themselves are responsible for the confrontation and made sure the other person couldn't get away.

3) She fired with disregard for where her kids were.

Claiming she "fired with disregard for where her kids were" is an unsupported assertion, and a pretty scurrilous one at that. She fired a shot into the wall at the height of Gray's head. Surely she knew her toddlers and the newborn infant weren't floating around the house willy-nilly.

As for the case in the OP: Taking her story at face value she's guilty but not of first degree murder and she was sentenced way too heavily. Her kids were not in danger, there was no need for her to pick a deadly confrontation with him.

And despite being offered a very generous plea deal she went for trial and lost.

If she were a white man defending himself from a violent individual who had threatened to kill him, she would not have been facing a sentence of 20 years even if there was a trial that s/he lost. That's the point. SYG benefits white men who kill. Black woman who don't even try to kill face far more harsh consequences than what men like George Zimmerman risk when they get their guns from their cars and go confront people who are actually trying to get away.

 

[laughing dog]

I suspect if Ms Alexander had killed Mr Gray, she’d have gone free and the same people sho are defending her conviction for not killing him would defend her release for killing him. And if Ms Gray was an on duty police officer, she’d be canonized. It is just weird.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Of course, it's not just partner/spouse women should be afraid of. A curious case;

A mom whose son is accused of brutally stabbing her to death in an argument shared haunting posts on Instagram in the days prior to her murder. Catherine Griffith, 39, was found knifed in the neck at a home in Auburndale, Florida on Sunday night. Her son Collin Griffith, 17, told police she 'fell' on the weapon, but has since been charged with her murder. Her death came a year after she had bailed the teenager out for fatally shooting his father, in an act he claimed was self defense. Witnesses reported seeing Griffith dragging his mom out of the house by her hair two hours earlier and a medical examiner found she had been stabbed – twice – in the neck. A year ago, Catherine paid $50,000 to bail her son out of jail after he shot his father dead. Charges were dropped after he argued that he killed his father in self-defense.

Daily Mail

The mom actually bought her psychopath son a new car. Thank fuck she didn't buy him an AR-15, who knows what the pyscho would have done.

Odd, some are arguing that responding to abuse with lethal means is unethical, except when it is close to being or simply is too late.

But the name calling is very useful. Psychopathic behavior is an actual thing. Was this kid abused? Is this kid a clinucal psychopath? Would Derec et al. have castigated this mother being let off on charges for pre-emptively killing her own son? Probably not in this case. It seems some men are only particularly worried about certain cases they apparently feel they themselves could find themselves in.

 

[TSwizzle]

Odd, some are arguing that responding to abuse with lethal means is unethical, except when it is close to being or simply is too late.

What on earth are you blathering about now?

But the name calling is very useful. Psychopathic behavior is an actual thing. Was this kid abused? Is this kid a clinucal psychopath?

One of the officers dealing with the case called him a psychopath. The son, Collin as far as I know hasn’t been diagnosed as being a psychopath. Nevertheless, there is something far wrong with the kid. He has killed both his parents.

Would Derec et al. have castigated this mother being let off on charges for pre-emptively killing her own son? Probably not in this case. It seems some men are only particularly worried about certain cases they apparently feel they themselves could find themselves in.

His mother is a bit of a dope for not recognizing her son was a danger he posed and trying to deal with it herself. Not a situation I would put myself in.

 

[Jarhyn]

I would call them on the books, "captive spouse" defense laws or "open way" laws, which is to say, if there is no "open way" to leaving, there ought be a legal defense to making one.

When Marissa Alexander left her ex's house to retrieve a gun from her car and came back to shoot toward him and his children, the feminist brigades here and elsewhere have defended her even though she had an open way to leaving. Just because she is a woman.
Note that when she was released on bail, she went to her victim's house again and attacked him. And yet, because she is female, she is automatically considered the "victim". Same goes for women who murdered men - Mary Winkler and Nikki Redmond have been defended here as well.

Marissa Alexader's case is a good example of what the OP describes.

Under Florida's Stand Your Ground law, a person has no duty to retreat and may use lethal force if threatened or if they simply believe they are in danger. But using a gun to fire a warning shot got Alexander a 20 year prison sentence despite her having more than sufficient reason to believe her estranged husband would attack her just like he'd done in the past.

Obviously the law is deeply flawed. But I think the OP is right about the unspoken intent behind that law: to shield white men who use lethal force. I don't think the people who pushed for SYG to become law ever intended it to exonerate women who shoot their partners or husbands, or blacks and POC who shoot whites.

I think you seriously fail to understand what happened. The law is more complex than "no duty to retreat".

1) She had retreated. She went back. Legally, a new engagement in which she was the perpetrator. (It could be justified if you had to go back to rescue a kid or something--in that case the original encounter would not have ended.)

2) If you fire a warning shot you are almost always in the wrong. If you have time to do something like that that normally means the threat to you is not imminent.

3) She fired with disregard for where her kids were.

As for the case in the OP: Taking her story at face value she's guilty but not of first degree murder and she was sentenced way too heavily. Her kids were not in danger, there was no need for her to pick a deadly confrontation with him.

And despite being offered a very generous plea deal she went for trial and lost.

Sometimes there is no option that ends with you alive, you free, them alive, them somewhere else, and you losing nothing that you care about (even in the long term) because the consequences of creating that environment lay on the person removed, who then must become

You know I have said we ought make justice inevitable? Some abusers make abuse inevitable.

There are people paranoid even today that someone who abused them will find them.

Someone could just turn up in a city where the victim fled to, having researched enough of the victim's life to sabotage that life.

Sometimes the victim can't even get financially prepared to even go that far.

Sometimes there's a marriage certificate and the divorce won't happen because there are no accessible allies for unilateral divorce.

I'm going to say there should be a legal defense for actions taken, even premeditated, when planning an escape from a situation,. especially when aspects of captivity occur in a regular and clearly premeditated way.

When the only way out is over someone else's dead body, when "you're never going to be free of me; I will always bring you home," when there is a deliberation behind that, there are a lot of things I would call time served as a result of such a defense, or mandatory abuse and decompression counseling with followups at 6 months, 12 months, and 2 years, something like parole or probation and a social worker to help them avoid setting up with another abuser (and entering a cycle where similar enough context may lead to a repetition of events).

The very fact someone has deliberately killed someone does cast enough doubt on them.

I do think that a lot of suicides may be associated with partner abuse. It's hard to say because suicides don't always have the reach to really do anything with their deaths.

It's not enough to just leave. Sometimes that abusive SoB knows the town sheriff, and they report the vehicle stolen. Suddenly the victim's getting brought in on a report of being armed once she's gone and has a gun in the truck.

Who does the victim know who won't let it get back around to the abuser where they went?

Abusers make all sorts inroads to maintain abusive situations. Sometimes the only way out, really out and not just getting picked up the next day, is going to be to come back and put someone in the ground. Sometimes the only effective response is over their dead body. Cue the "I'm sorry Steven, but I think we're gonna have to kill this guy" sad Steven meme.

Maybe there's a more socially acceptable or forgivable way to get there but when you have played the game and know all the moves, perhaps when the abuser has discussed at foul length exactly how the victim is trapped and why and what their options aren't, sometimes the answer is to get the gun, come back, and pray the kids will have someone to look out for them when the victim is (hopefully not) in corrective custody for having done what they could to get freedom.

I would argue that she should have shot him dead, because I think that some people just won't change as a result of any reasonable consenting activity.

Most people really want to believe that anyone can change and learn to be a better person. And maybe they can. Sometimes the situation doesn't create that latitude. Sometimes the only way to let them get there is through the creation of another victim or three. Sometimes it is inevitably going to involve collateral either way. Sometimes it's a trolley problem.

The solution to trolley problems is to look at the tracks, and decide in advance how that class of problems is to be solved, and to agree on or at least discuss values as a society.

But sometimes I would absolutely hold that the right answer is going to be "kill the abuser before you're dead and they're on to the next victim until the next victim is themselves."

I'm not sure it was the case here because I know very few details, but the discussion of the existence of a case exemplifies the inevitability of the issue, anyway. I think that sometimes the ribbon holding someone captive may be long and reaching social influence, whispers on the wind, and the "Virtues" of "Men" and "Women".

It may be someone ransoming 10+ years of education with a threat of scandal.

It may be someone drinking too much and beating their spouse slowly to death who happens to know a guy who gets the abuser out of trouble, and the victim'll be dead by the time anyone sees it going "too far".

Sometimes, the abuse creates a guarantee of a future death by violence.

This sort of situation should constitute a defense.

Sadly, it is one I can see abusers trying to exploit to get away with their abusive murders.

 

[Tigers!]

A whack on the seat of learning with a rolled up newspaper would have been more effective. Works on puppies I'm reliably informed.

A wise man once said,

Indeed. Parents often complain that their children do not pay attention to them. They are paying attention. Just to the wrong parts of us.

So perhaps using violence to send a message is not the lesson you really want to teach.

I found that asking the kids to think through what their behavior would result in did the trick, no need to treat them like badly treated dogs.

Memo to one's self.
Most Americans would not recognise sarcasm if if he walked up to them and slapped them hard across the chops.

 

[Rhea]

A whack on the seat of learning with a rolled up newspaper would have been more effective. Works on puppies I'm reliably informed.

A wise man once said,

Indeed. Parents often complain that their children do not pay attention to them. They are paying attention. Just to the wrong parts of us.

So perhaps using violence to send a message is not the lesson you really want to teach.

I found that asking the kids to think through what their behavior would result in did the trick, no need to treat them like badly treated dogs.

Memo to one's self.
Most Americans would not recognise sarcasm if if he walked up to them and slapped them hard across the chops.

Some people think it’s okay to make sarcastic jokes about the abuse of children and are suprised when other people are not amused by it. It happens.

Curious; do you have children? Do you whack them? Do you think it’s funny sarcasm to talk about whacking them? Would they think so?