Jamie Reidy comments on news that NFL Hall of Famer Deion Sanders pressed charges against his wife for assault.
CNN’s Lateef Mungin reports that Sanders’s estranged wife Pilar Sanders has been booked in a Texas jail.
Naturally, the former Cowboy star took to Twitter to inform the world of this development.
How crazy to think that a once happy couple created a reality television show about their lives… and ended up apart.
Off the top of my head, we’ve got Jessica Simpson and Nick Lachey, Whitney Houston and Bobby Brown, Jon and Kate, Hulk and Mrs. Hulk Hogan, and Kim Kardashian and Kris Humphrey.
Thankfully, Jezebel.com did this research a year ago.
Note to married people: if you want to stay that way, don’t go on reality TV.
Photo by: ericifeng
About Jamie Reidy
What is disheartening are the comments in the CNN article. Many question the validity of the assault and Deions masculinity for allowing the attack?
Sadly that makes sesne and a men is not even allowed to defend himself by law against an assault by a female. I hope this trail gets some press as it will highlight the abuse amny husbands suffer in silence.
I’m really with you here, PH.
There’s a HUGE problem where we believe and teach that men should never hit a woman. And he shouldn’t hit a woman, absolutely. I’m 100% behind this. But we also need to be teaching men that when women are abusing them, they can stand up for themselves.
It’s heartbreaking to think that he’s being criticized for not stopping her, when often in relationships where the female is the abuser, the man fears hurting his partner, and therefore won’t do anything physical to protect himself. Does that make him a pussy? No, that makes him a human being who doesn’t want to hurt someone.
And no doubt many men know that if a domestic brawl ends up with cops around, if the guy has in any way touched the woman, he’s going to be presumed the perpetrator. It’s a terrible double-bind.
I teach my kids never to hurt ANYONE unless someone is trying to hurt your body. I make it gender-less because the fact is, there is a startlingly high rate of women who abuse their male partners and the stigma is so wretched that there is very little help for male victims.
All I can feel for Sanders here is pain and sadness. But I agree that hopefully this case will help blow the lid of female perpetrated domestic abuse.
There’s a HUGE problem where we believe and teach that men should never hit a woman. And he shouldn’t hit a woman, absolutely. I’m 100% behind this. But we also need to be teaching men that when women are abusing them, they can stand up for themselves.
This is a dark side to growing up male that a lot of people simply choose to avoid. For some reason there is this idea that when it comes to hitting girls/women men are only actively being taught that its not just okay but some sick necessity. While in truth a lot (and I really want to say most) males when young are taught that we should never hit girs/women. But of course instead of talking about how that exposes men to danger it gets twisted into how that’s so unfair to women becuase that means women are not being taken seriously.
Chris Rock once joked about how he would “Never ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever hit a woman but he would shake the hell out of one”. Honestly the reason I laughed at that was because it reminded me of how I was actively taught never to hit a girl/woman.
It is a terrible double bind that males are trapped in. We’re suppsosed to be tough and not take any (physical) crap from anyone….unless that crap is from a woman.
What’s interesting, though off topic (and I recognize that), is that I know plenty of women who are taught they shouldn’t hit anyone. (No, I am not saying this in any way lessens the problem of teaching boys not to hit women). I am saying that I think it’s indicative of problems with the way our society discusses violence. We teach that “violence is never an option,” but in reality sometimes it’s the only option.
This all reminds me of the post I did about bra-snapping and bullying.
http://goodmenproject.com/good-feed-blog/is-bra-snapping-the-beginning-of-domestic-abuse/
What’s interesting, though off topic (and I recognize that), is that I know plenty of women who are taught they shouldn’t hit anyone.
Which of course feeds into how men should never hit women. It works under the idea that a woman would never hit a man therefore a man has no reason to hit a woman. Problem is this dynamic is unraveling out of order. Some women have taken the “a man should never hit a woman” and taken that to mean “a man should never hit a woman but its okay for a woman ot hit a man because he shouldn’t be hitting women in the first place”.
I am saying that I think it’s indicative of problems with the way our society discusses violence. We teach that “violence is never an option,” but in reality sometimes it’s the only option.
I wouldn’t say that the lesson is “violence is never an option”. I think the lesson being taught is “the gender of the people involved is what dictates whether or not violence is an option, not the situation at hand”. That’s the only way I can reconcile the ideas that males are taught that when a woman hits us we should “walk away” or it means we enjoy commiting violence against women but when a man hits us we are supposed to fight back or it means we aren’t real men.
Seriously, those clowns should get an opportunity to play on Sundays and then ask themselves how much of a man Deion isn’t
(Somewhat off topic)
Recently I recall reading a post here on the idea of getting athletes to talk to young guys about masculinity and how to change it for the better. Problem is the only angle they seemed to come from was “masculinity is harmful to women and we need to change that” without much thought and care for men and boys themselves.
I would very much like to see the folks that push for athletes to talk to young men push for men like Deion here to talk to young men on the complexities of being a man that (allegedly) has been abused by a woman. I’m sure there are plenty of abuse victims, bullying victims, addicts, depression sufferers, and all sorts of other walks of life among athletes. But the only ones we ever seem to hear about are the ones that want to talk about how men treat women.
We aren’t going to change the image of masculinity by acting like the only important part is how men treat women. In fact that only reinforces the chivalrous idea that a man’s moral value is tied to how he treats women.
I recall seeing a photo of what looks like him and his sons filling out paperwork to file charges being passed around in the MensRights reddit. If its legit it should be passed around.
I feel the need to be consistent here. I want to make sure I do this for every case like this, no matter the genders of the individuals:
The assault is still an alleged assault. She is innocent until proven guilty. To say otherwise in an article title is not good journalism. I would certainly demand the same if she accused him of assault.
The facts on hand seem to be that he is accusing her and she was booked into jail under those charges. That doesn’t mean she did it. So far these are allegations. Saying innocent until proven guilty doesn’t mean he’s lying or that I am denying him his experience. But, she is innocent until proven guilty.
It happens a lot more than we think. It happened to a college roommate of mine – she would beat him badly 2-3 times a month. He took karate so he could defend himself against the attacks. He threatened to press charges, so she filed for divorce and lost contact with his son that they adopted for more than two years because she had told the courts it was a violent home – but failed to mention she was the source.The court moved swiftly to make sure he had no contact with his son, and the attacker got full custody. The gender bias is rampant and it affects men more than gets written about in very real ways. Hearing how he felt like the biggest pussy in the world in front of a woman judge who never wanted to investigate his claims as being the one getting the shit kicked out of him still makes me grind my teeth.
I am happy to say that he fought back (in the courts) and got the right to see his son two weeks total a year. I am proud to say that I supported him through the whole thing (often times just wanting to retaliate) but calmer heads prevailed and while the emotional scars are there for him to this day, he is still a Good Man in spite of it all.
I actually was thinking about what I would tell my kids about violence. Sadly my most egalitarian form still is pretty sexist (simply due to the application of the law and social mores):
To my daughter:
– if he ever hits you in anger that is the end of the relationship
– leave immediately if you can and fight if you must
To my son:
– if she ever hits you with a closed fist or slaps you more than once that is the end of the relationship
– leave immediately if you can but don’t hit back unless she’s got a club, a blade, or a gun
Looking at it on the screen it looks kinda messed up. Am I wrong? (I’m not sure at all what to say if they are gay…)
Well first, if you’re saying that your changing it based on the gender of your kid simply to make sure they don’t violate the law, okay I can understand where you’re coming from. It should be genderless, but I understand that you also want to protect your kids from the way the law can be applied unfairly.
As for the bit at the end about what to do if they’re gay…well how does that matter?
First off they are gay then there is the fact that people don’t like to talk about DV in gay relationships (personally I think its because in order to acknowledge gay DV you would have to acknowledge gay relationships and as we can see a lot of people still can’t handle that shit).
Once you get past that two things will probably happen.
If its gay guys then some people may be ready to spring into action….to drag the abusive guy through the mud. Remember when it comes to DV way too many people still think its “something that men do to women”. Well male/male DV has a male attacker. But damn the male victim though.
If its gay women then some people may be ready to spring into action….to help the female victim. Remember when it comes to DV way too many people still think its “something that men do to women”. Well female/female violence has a female victim. But damn the female attacker though.
“people don’t like to talk about DV in gay relationships ”
This is also because it is difficult to explain DV in gay relationships if you believe in feminists explanations of DV. According to feminism, domestic violence is just an expression of patriarchy. This means that DV is all about men dominating women. But in male gay DV, it is men dominating other men whereas in lesbian DV its women dominating women. Both these possibilities don’t fit into the erroneous feminist theory of DV which can only conceive of men dominating women.
True but frankly I don’t want to give them the satisfaction of giving them yet another thing that they can say they are blamed for creating as an excuse for letting it slide when it suits them.
Right well this also means that DV in lesbian relationships is wicked difficult to get people to recognize too.
However, I think it’s too simplistic to blame all of this on feminists. The traditional gender models put women as weak and men as physically strong…which means that if you’re going to talk about DV, the assumption will be that men are physically stronger so they are the abusers. Mind, feminists made a huge mistake in not breaking away from those traditional gender norms, and many have continued to totally screw it up by refusing to recognize that they didn’t break away from the norms. But feminists didn’t create them, they did perpetuate them.
Are you wrong? Only if keeping yur son out of jail is wrong. It’s unjust, but it’s necessary. So how wrong is that?
Looking at it on the screen it looks kinda messed up. Am I wrong?
If anything else the people who trip over themselves to defend Schroedinger’s Rapist should side with you on this. By their logic its unfair that men are worried about not being able to defend themselves against a female attacker and the onus is on women to stop attacking men if men are to ever feel like they can defend themselves from a female attacker without getting into trouble.
As a guy, if I’m being attacked by another man I will do what I have to in self-defense. I don’t worry about legal ramifications because I’m comfortable that the outcome will be fair. If I were attacked by a women things are totally difference. I think one of the first things that would come to mind is that that if I defend myself with any kind of force, I run the risk of being arrested and accused of abuse myself. The reality is that men have their hands tied when it comes to DV. So I guess the best way to handle men being abused is to simply take it and not fight back. There are quite a few men that are dead and women walk because she claimed self-defense.