Men who mistreat women

The Norwegian monarchy has come in for its share of criticism lately, what with the upcoming wedding of the king's daughter to a shaman, and the recent revelation that the son of the future queen has a (alleged) penchant for abusing the women in his life. Normally I don't care at all what goes on in the monarchy; I grew up in a country that went to war to rid us of the British monarchy. In this day and age kings and queens are good for PR but they have nothing to do with running a country. Thankfully. The current king and queen are good and decent people who have represented Norway well. I am sure that they are quite shellshocked by the recent doings of the future queen's son. 

Firstly, a young man who allegedly abuses women in this manner is not only a coward but a morally-weak person. He does not deserve any leniency at all as far as the criminal justice system goes. If he did what he is alleged to have done to one woman in particular--the most recent casualty--he borders on being a psychopath and is a danger to others. Hardly to himself; these types tend to put themselves first, being the egocentric moral vacuums and emotional vampires that they are. He seems to enjoy behaving badly when he is under the influence of alcohol and cocaine. I've seen enough aggressive and mean alcoholics in this country to last me a lifetime. I saw a few of them when I was a child too, so it's not necessarily country-specific. However, what is different here is how quickly some people 'turn' when under the influence of alcohol. Like Jekyll and Hyde. It's scary. 

Secondly, men who abuse women physically and psychologically deserve a special place in hell. When such abuse happens in your twenties (as in this case), it can scar you for life. It destroys trust, hope, faith, and belief in a better life and in a better relationship. One thing that helps is to talk about what happened with family and friends, as was the case here. And then to get the police involved, because physical abuse of others is a crime and should be prosecuted as such. The young women (two more have revealed similar instances of abuse by the same young man) are being interviewed by the police, as well they should. I'm hoping these women press charges so that this moral vacuum of a man will be forced to have his day in court. A reckoning. He will definitely have it when he meets his maker. Do I feel any compassion for him? No, I don't. And I doubt I ever will. Perhaps his mother can forgive him; perhaps his ex-girlfriends will be able to do the same one day. But I doubt it. 

This young man has now lawyered-up and it's anyone's guess if he will face prosecution. He did issue a statement saying he was sorry for behaving in this manner to his (now ex-) girlfriend (much like Diddy, another pathetic excuse for a real man, or Johnny Depp). The only reason Diddy made a statement was because there was a video that went viral of him abusing his former girlfriend, kicking her while she lay on the hotel floor in front of the elevators, and him dragging her by her hair back to their hotel room from which she had tried to escape. Another man under the influence of God knows what combination of drugs and alcohol. Another man who said that this violent person is not who he really is. Really? If you believe that, I have a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you. He, and all the other abusers, do what they do because they get away with it for the most part. The women don't press charges; they should. The men blame the women (she nagged me, she made me do it). If it's true that the women nagged them, I can only imagine why (please stop drinking, please stop doing drugs, please stop yelling at me, please just talk to me). And if you are that unhappy with the women in your life, for God's sake, get a divorce or end the relationship. But no, you need to have complete power and control. Because in the end, abuse is all about power and control. I can hurt you, so I will, to keep you in line, to keep you under my thumb. The world would be a much better place without these aggressive tyrants who poison the lives of those with whom they come into contact. 

I made a decision a while ago, and have mostly stuck to it, that I will never travel to countries that do little or nothing to stop abuse of women. And I've traveled a fair amount in my life; those countries will never see my money. I'm not listing those countries here; it's easy to go online and google 'countries that have the highest rates of abuse of women'. I'd love if the tables turned, just once, so that male perpetrators experienced the abuse these women experienced. Then perhaps they would understand how harrowing it really is. Laws need to change, to become more stringent. The length of prison terms needs to increase drastically. We don't need to go backwards to a time when women 'obeyed' men. I find all of that kind of talk pure nonsense. If women can't live in a world where they can expect the same treatment under the law as a man, then they're better off single. Perhaps that's one reason why an increasing number of women don't want to marry or have children. It should at least be considered. 

Reflections on men who kill their partners

I read about the Gabby Petito case as it was unfolding; it was no surprise to me that Brian Laundrie who went missing ended up dead. My guess is that he simply couldn't live with what he had done and that he knew he would go to prison for a long time for killing her. He also knew he was one of the most hated men in the USA at that point. He simply couldn't face a trial and life in prison so he probably ended his own life. There are several other plausible scenarios, but this is the most likely one in my mind. Brutal enough in one instance to take his girlfriend's life; cowardly enough not to want to pay the price for doing so. Although committing suicide takes some guts, so go figure. I guess he figured it was the lesser of two evils, one that spared him the horror of reliving his crime in a trial. He spared his family and Gabby's family the horror of it as well.

Today I read about another young man who beat his girlfriend to death while they were on vacation in Mexico. Her family had gotten bad vibes about him and wanted her to end her relationship with him. She didn't. The night before he killed her, she had contacted her family to let them know that he had assaulted her viciously enough so that she needed stitches. A day later, she was dead, 'beaten to a bloody pulp' as the newspapers reported it. 

Every week there are news stories about men who murder their wives/girlfriends/lovers and their children. Or about women who disappear and are never found (and are presumed dead, just that the body cannot be found). If it's not a divorce case where the man stands to lose custody and takes revenge, it's a man wanting out of his marriage because he met someone new and doesn't want to pay alimony/child support to the woman he's discarding. Or you have the cold-blooded psychopaths who enjoy gaslighting and abusing their wives/girlfriends/lovers/children. All of these cases are reported on the news, made into films and crime series, or written about in articles and books. And if these men don't kill the women in their lives, they physically and mentally abuse them and make their lives a living hell. They threaten them with bodily harm and death, they threaten to kill their children if there are any, they threaten to make the lives of these women and their extended families a living hell. Sometimes they do. It's hard to predict which of them will act on their threats. 

What is wrong with these men? With regard to the murder cases, why do they go down the path of murder rather than just walking away from the women? Why do they kill them? Is it a moment of rage, or is it years of rage that have built up? Where does that rage come from? Are these men who don't want to be tied down by marriage and children, or by demanding girlfriends and lovers? Men who don't want to pay alimony and child support? Are they all psychopaths? According to my online searches, about 1% of the general population are psychopaths; in the USA that amounts to circa 3,337,548 people. The majority of crime films and television crime series nowadays present many men as predators, opportunists, pricks, and despicable human beings (read psychopaths). They are fooling around with other women while their wives are at home taking care of the kids. They are gaslighting their wives or complaining that she doesn't work/bring in enough money/look the same as before she had children. They are aggressive, brutal, and only interested in demeaning the women in their lives.

The odd thing is that many of the photos of these couples that end up on social media in real life these days present a united and happy front. When you see the violent outcome, you realize how fake it all is, all the lovey-dovey fakery on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook. The poses, the fake happiness, the perfect family. Except it's not. You could wonder why women in these relationships go to such lengths to present the image of a happy relationship/family. Psychiatrists and psychologists have probably written a plethora of books on that subject. Abused women retreat into their own twilight world, forced there by the men in their lives. They are forced into secrecy; they cannot tell their families about how bad it all is, because the men in their lives would punish them and/or their families. So they put on the happy face. You could wonder if the men want this image presented to the world in photos, or if the women feel guilted into doing this. It's hard to know. One thing is clear; the use of social media seems to actually help crime scene investigators, because there's usually something of interest, something useful, that they can find to help them with their cases. The Gabby Petito case made that clear with the different video footage that documented escalating tensions between the two young people. Why didn't Gabby just go home? What did she believe would change? That's the tragedy, that when you're young, you have a lot of hope--that people can change, that situations can change, that life can be better. Regardless of what people say to you, you hang onto that belief. In some few cases, things do get better. In the majority of bad relationships, they don't. And that's what you know when you are older. Don't waste your time. Cut your losses. Better to be alone than together with someone who doesn't love you. We need to do a better job with our daughters when it comes to telling them that men who gaslight and abuse them don't love them. It needs to be drummed into women's heads from the time they are young, along with 'don't get into strangers' cars' and 'don't talk to strangers'. A man who truly loves and respects a woman will never be violent with her, will never try to manipulate or control her, will never humiliate her in front of others, will never be a Jekyll/Hyde personality. It's that simple. 

People choose to go down the path of evil. It doesn't matter if they're young or old. The more incidences of abuse, violence, lying and other bad behavior, the further along the path of evil they come. Literature is full of references to a person's demons. Are demons real? I believe they are when you look at the depravity of the crimes committed by some of these people. I wonder if the perpetrators, the men, ever thought about the repercussions of their behavior on their consciences. The more frequent the bad behaviors, the more dulled and numb the conscience becomes. The final destination on this path is a completely-numbed conscience, where physical and mental abuse become commonplace. Is that what happened in some of these high-profile domestic violence cases? We may never know. 

I'll end this post by including some links to online articles that discuss this topic in more detail:

• Domestic abuse: Killers 'follow eight-stage pattern', study says - BBC News
• Men who murder their families: what the research tells us 230412.pdf (ojp.gov)