The Furies of Hell... As Usual

This week, I came across this intriguing article on Women's Views on News, which references this jaw-dropping article in the Daily Mail. As some may be boycotting the DM, I will quote pertinent paragraphs to save you the trouble (always happy to help!)

The context is as follows: the actor Dennis Waterman has admitted hitting his ex-wife Rula Lenska during his marriage. Carol Sarler thinks he's an idiot, which is grand. I also think he's an idiot.

However, he is "a double idiot for admitting it so may years after their divorce". After all, "Waterman should have known, then, that the Furies of Hell would be unleashed". Wow, surely the inversion of that is to say that if Waterman was to keep this a secret - despite the fact that it would make Lenska's repeated assertions of violence seem like a lie - then that would be preferable, because heaven forfend the Furies of Hell (which, according to the article, include the domestic violence charity Refuge(!))

Sarler's snarky reference to the fact that a high profile domestic violence charity was quick ("First out of the traps, as usual") and 'appalled' is utterly derogatory, regardless of her claim that she agrees with them.

Yet, she only agrees that "[t]here can never be any reasoned excuse for brute force". Evidently there are numerous reasoned excuses for sexual and mental violence in a relationship.

She then claims that, not only is there a difference between 'beaten' and 'hit', but that many couples work this into the framework of their relationships. Wow, you may say, but our good friend Sarler has an anecdotal story to back her up.

Her friend Jean provoked (yep, provoked...) three men to slap her. But it's OK, because Jean told her she wouldn't have put up with "a proper beating", but "with a bit of a slap, at least you know who wears the trousers, don't you?"

Well, quite.

Here she invokes the insight of Waterman once more when he claims that:

"The problem with strong, intelligent women, is they can argue, well. If you're not bright enough to do it with words... I lashed out... It can happen."

Evidently he isn't bright enough to do much, but that's beside the point. Sarler gives us some dodgy sounding wisdom from a psychiatrist who has done research in refuges, where most women had an IQ at least 10 points higher than their partner, ad can therefore win verbal arguments. But (for there must always be a but):

"The trouble is, said the psychiatrist (while admitting that it's not exactly a popular thing to point out), some of them, as with Jean, would prefer not to win." Because winning is unfeminine, and (brace yourself, seriously I winced so hard I was hoping that the wind wouldn't change...) "However much goading it takes, they'd rather be slapped than victorious. When push - quite literally - comes to shove, these women prefer to have a dominant man to whom they might refer as an authority figure."

So, women are manipulating men to beat them, but why? In her best pseudo-intellectual dangerous theorising tone, Sarler informs us that, for these women "the moral high ground is instantly theirs", and further, there are men who seek out these 'aggressive' women because they "love a bit of a tussle". Think of "the highly-charged sex involved in 'making up' afterwards". Well that must be some highly charged sex, or, y'know, frequently rape...

So there you have it, intelligent women feel unfeminine when they win arguments, so deliberately goad their partners into hitting them (but not beating, because we can indulge in a touch of victim blaming, after all "at the first sign of the first raised fist, sensible women do what sensible women have always done: they walk away"). Oh, and once the beating, sorry, hitting, has occurred, women get the moral high ground and some "highly-charged" make-up sex.

Domestic violence: a win-win.