Posts by Anita Easton
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Ian writes:
Starting from just yelling/swearing at someone through to a sadistic killing it is all a matter of degree and chance.
As I think I wrote somewhere up thread there is an element of chance, my genetics make it much less likely that I will cause serious damage if I were to attack an adult.
But even if I was born huge and strong and with a genetically predetermined impulse control deficiency, and grew up in a household where violence was the norm, I could still control myself. It might be physiologically harder, it might be psychologically harder, but it would be possible, and whether I beat my partner to death or not would be entirely my responsibility, not a matter of chance.
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Ian writes:
What a nightmare. Wrong if you front up. Wrong if you do. Wrong if you have a cheerful photo. Wrong if have a sombre one. Wrong if you express admiration for the victim. Wrong if you don't etc etc. What ever you say or do is wrong after the event.
Yes, it's very hard to see what Veitch could do right at the moment - partly because we're all reacting to the utter wrongness of what he's already done, and partly because the right things would be really really hard for him to do.
In my opinion right would be to walk away from the publicity, from the media and walk toward the justice system. Issue one statement which says "Although I woul like to explain my actions and seek public forgiveness and acceptance I will not cause my victim, or her and my family and friends, any further pain by encouraging the media coverage of an issue which is so intensely private and personal. What happened is my responsibility and mine alone, I will bear the consequences. I have contacted the Police and will be making a full statement to them directly."
Every time he talks to the media at the moment we can hear him avoiding any truth that would see him charged. We also hear him prolonging the media fuss, which can only hurt his victim and others.
Both of these are the sound of a man continuing to avoid responsibility for his actions.
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What conclusions and actions are there for us?
We can conclude that Veitch did a bad thing.
We can conclude that the justice system should do something about it.
We can express that we think that Veitch should not be held up as role model or put in positions where he might be seen that way.
We can express that we would like people and organisations associated with him to express their condemnation of his actions.
We can try to change our communities so that the next time a man is in the position Veitch was he does not act as Veitch did.
We can try to change our communities so that the next time a woman is in the position that his victim was she feels supported, and knows that she will not be blamed, shamed or attacked for her attacker's actions.
Anything else? We seem to have all the evidence we need to draw all the conclusions and take action.
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I'm very happy with clouded in mystery.
The victim deserves us to respect her privacy, the last thing she needs is to know that every stranger on the street knows all the guesome details of the worst minutes of her life.
I hope the justice system does its job, and I think we should make an effort to make that happen. But nothing justifies us poking about in her life without her permission.
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What if the *bitch* had broken "veitchy's" spine?
I think we'd be more surprised, a woman doing that much damage to a man without a weapon would be really unusual, so perhaps we'd be more willing to accept that it was, at least in part, a freak accident. I think we might expect the victim to have thrown a punch as well.
I also think our attitude to the victim would be different, the attitude to a female domestic violence victim is pretty ho-hum, we know it has hurt her both physically and psychologically, we know from our friends and family what that looks like, what it takes for a woman to rebuild her life. With a female victim we're talking about the physical damage and taking the psychological as a given.
If the victim was a man I think there'd be more discussion of the psychological damage, what it would take for a man who'd be beaten by a woman to put himself back together. We would be less drawing on common shared experiences and more trying to construct what it must be like.
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robbery,
I can summon up a lot more hate for someone who does a marfia style beating.
It's not hate for me, but my judgement of someone who commits acts of domestic violence is no kinder than of someone who is violent for profit or business power. Why does domestic violence bother you less?
I'm surprised more people don't have a problem with this whole celebrity trial thing
I think almost all of us do, I definitely do.
I would far rather live in a society where the cost to the victim of going to the police would have been much lower, where our justice system would have picked this up and dealt with it. Where the media didn't spend the week running round madly being excited about it all.
Given, however, that is not what happened, I am glad some people have done enough to get this into the justice system.
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Ian,
Although the restraint can be trying
I think everyone finds it hard, from time to time, to be the person they want to be. I think our honour and self respect comes in large part from our success (or otherwise) at the hardest parts of that series of challenges.
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Danielle & Ian (wow :),
One of the challenges for me thinking about domestic violence is how much size and strength matters.
I'm 5'2", in every relationship I've ever been in an equal "lashing out" by me and my partner would have done more damage to me than to them. Every child I've ever looked after has been littler than me, an equal "lashing out" would have done more damage to them than to me.
So we have a situation where, as a gross generalisation, men will do more damage when they hit women than vice versa. In addition men, potentially, are wired to be more physically aggressive than women and are brought up in a society which condones/encourages physical aggression in men.
But, and it's a big but, with physical violence we are responsible for the outcome of our actions not just thei intent.
So while both men and women must work to manage their behaviour so they don't hurt their partners, the average straight man must, in some sense, work harder than the average straight woman. He has to manage both the much greater likelihood he has of doing damage if he does hit her, and physiological and societal reasons for being more likely to hit her in the first place.
Whether that's "fair" or not, it's real.
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For me, the most unsettling part of the discussions has been the way we talk about the victim, all the "should"s and assumptions about power - she should have gone to the Police, she signed the confidentiality agreement because Veitch made her, she should have spoken out, and so on
Veitch's actions and role in this are very black and white. He did an inexcusably wrong thing, he was the one who used his strength to overpower and hurt someone.
But we shouldn't use that utter wrongness to rob her of power when we talk about the issue.
It is clear that, in the minutes in which she lay on the floor while he kicked her, she was without power. We can hope that in the intervening years she has regained that power, that she is now a strong and capable woman who can make decisions for herself. We don't know when that occurred, maybe the moment she wasn't physically overpowered, maybe not for many years.
Going to the Police is not easy (or compulsory). I would love for her to live in a society where it was an easy simple thing to do without painful consequences for the victim, but she doesn't. Maybe she was psychologically overpowered by Veitch and didn't talk to the Police out of fear, but maybe she made her own powerful decision about what was the best action for her given her limited options.
Maybe she carefully weighed up her options about the confidentiality agreement and decided what was best for her. Maybe she has been careful about who she has told because she has recognised the pain and shame our society would lay on her.
Is there a way to discuss the issue laying the blame with Veitch, but also without robbing her of her power and strength by writing as if she was no more than a puppet he controlled?
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Wammo,
Brash's "I don't remember" statements were a deliberate tactic. Which does the raise question of whether the wider "bumbling and doddering" which they fitted so neatly into were also deliberate.
I personally wonder whether it was natural behaviour which was played up for tactical effect. Given the option of trying to playing it down but failing reasonably often perhaps the better political tactic was to make it part of the "honest Don" persona - too awkward and "real" to lie.