Nicola_Red wrote:That said, the quote in the article that really bugged me was this: "The problem with strong, intelligent women is that they can argue, well. And if there is a time where you can't get a word in … I lashed out." That seems to me like the oft-repeated message that if women want to be treated well by men, they should just shut up and look pretty. God forbid a woman be strong or intelligent. *sigh*
It does also include 'I made a mistake' and that 'he wasn't intelligent enough to fight back with words' - which is pretty key to the interview. I saw subtext of 'I made the mistake that lot of men have in the past and succumbed to my physical rage to dominate a physically weaker woman , which was wrong of me'.
Perhaps he couldn't verbalise this correctly, bit it's just irritating that someone who has been guilty of a crime like domestic abuse is unable to talk about it retrospectively without people jumping to the conclusion that they're that person now. But you're never on the right side when you're defending Dennis Waterman - it's more about people's reactions to sensitive issues. You get this with other socially taboo topics too, it's just annoying that people won't hear the full story.
And my issue with the quote from refuge saying 'It doesn't matter if it's once or a hundred times'. Generalisations like that are really dangerous, as I said - "An isolated incident IS different from a repeated pattern of behaviour in any form of criminal activity."
If we're picking apart lazy statements (which happened to Dennis Waterman) then "no man is entitled to hit his wife and domestic violence is never acceptable" is using language which separates the subjects of 'a man hitting his wife' and 'domestic violence' (through unnecessary repetition)- which are exactly the same thing, but enforces the view that men aren't subjected to domestic violence (through omission). except there's no reason to scrutinise the words of a charity spokesperson, no matter what message they're portraying through a poor choice of words. it's not a sexy headline which will get people outraged, but someone should mention it too.
But annoying me today, is the backlash which Tulisa (whose ex released a sex tape of) is getting for explaining her side
here from a load of girls on twitter who are acting as if what she did was 'whorish' and makes her a bad person, for doing something that's far from uncommon in today's society (in allowing herself to be filmed).