I assume your point with these links is that there is a double standard.
This is a false equivalency and a bad faith argument.
In the first place, Lorena Bobbitt (now Gallo) was arrested and went to trial. She pled not guilty due to mental duress, or temporary insanity. During the course of her trial (former) President Clinton signed the Violence Against Women Act which allowed the jury to consider years of domestic abuse as a mitigating factor. Due to national attention around several shocking and particularly gruesome murders of women by their husbands as well as the details of the years of abuse she suffered at the hands of John Bobbitt, the jury acquitted her. She spent 45 days confined to a mental health facility for evaluation. So it’s not like her attack on him was allowed by the justice system and society with impunity. She faced justice by a jury of her peers. The fact that they acquitted her does not mean she did not face consequences. She did.
Did I miss the news report of Marilyn Manson being tried by a jury of his peers for rape, battery, assault, etc?
Secondly, she attacked her abuser, not some random guy who had nothing to do with the violence against her. You can argue whether or not it was revenge or duress and whether or not it was justified. That’s what a trial is for. You cannot argue that it was an example of PROXY revenge. I can find no accounting of her ever having attacked her new husband whom she shares a daughter with, any other man she has dated, any man she has worked for or employed, or any other random dude off the street in a similar fashion. Clearly, she is not blaming and assaulting ALL men for what ONE man did to her. Marilyn Manson cannot say the same. Did Rachel Evan Wood, Rose McGowan, or any of the others beat him? No? Then how is that equivalent?
Thirdly, she got help and therapy counseling. She did the work and healed her trauma. She is now an advocate for domestic violence education and prevention. Yes, even including male victims of domestic violence. Marilyn Manson could do that and become an advocate for child abuse prevention. But he’d rather drug and rape the women who try to love him.
I assume the purpose of the first link was to suggest that women want revenge against men because they applauded her and she got a standing ovation which made Steve Harvey and other men, like yourself, uncomfortable.
You need to understand though, that those women weren’t applauding because she cut her husband’s penis off. They were applauding because she’s a survivor (like many of them) of male violence against women, because she survived the gauntlet and public scrutiny of the justice system which far too often fails and blames victims of violent sexual crimes and came out the other end, and because now she’s fighting for all of us. They are not applauding because she “got away" with revenge.
It’s a misogynistic narrative that is clearly phallic oriented and phallic obsessed; implying that women “get away with revenge" by claiming victimhood. In reality, up to 80% of women serving time for murder killed their abusers. 90% of women serving time for killing a man killed their abusers. This dynamic happens because self defense arguments are defined and applied from a male perspective and male experience which means they don’t properly come into play in murders committed by women. There is also a HUGE disparity in sentencing. Women who kill their abusive male partners serve on average 15 years. Men who end up killing the female partners they’ve been abusing serve on average 2 to 6 years.
Read that last sentence again and think about it. Let it sink in for a minute.
It should also be noted that the Violence Against Women Act has given abused women a state supported path out other than murder. As a result the number of women in prison for partner murder has decreased dramatically since it’s inception. The number of men imprisoned for murdering their partners has not decreased significantly in comparison, suggesting that it is well past time to address the (male) aggressor side of the domestic violence equation with legislation and perhaps psyche holds for violent, threatening men when they first show signs of losing it rather than when you’re trying to find all the parts so the woman’s family can have a proper burial.
At the time of Lorena Bobbitt’s trial, there was another case. Cyntoia Brown, a trafficked teenager who shot and killed a john, a youth pastor who had a history of creepy behavior towards teenage girls, one of whom said he raped her after luring her to his house at Brown’s trial. There was clear indication of exploitation (the prosecution stipulated he was there to purchase sex from a teenager) and probable drug involvement in regards to mental status and/or mental health issues (she was trafficked). She was tried as an adult and sentenced to life with possible parole after 50 years, a sentence that was clearly too harsh given the circumstances, but more in line with how the justice system treats battered/trafficked women, and domestic violence in general. She did not have the legal advantage Gallo did because she wasn’t white and the Violence Against Women Act did not come into play during her trial. She was seen as nothing more than a thieving whore and not a battered, trafficked, teenager who had experienced a lot of trauma in her life. This case is more equivalent to Marilyn Manson’s history of abuse so let’s all take a moment to witness this equivalency: life in prison vs. a collective 'meh' from the justice system and men like you. Funny how y’all are so quick to say “poor Marilyn Manson" yet you can never muster up an ounce of empathy for “that whore who shoulda fried for what she done”. Pretty telling actually.
Last note: After 25 years, after Lorena marrying another man and building a family with him, after the indictment and trial, after a psych hold where she could have been institutionalized indefinitely, after losing his penis and going through reattachment surgery and painful physical therapy, after the public humiliation of his penis being made a running joke John Bobbitt still sends her love bombing letters telling her how much he loves her and how she’s his soulmate sort of stuff trying to woo her back under his control. He STILL will not leave her alone. Which means at some point he still may try to kill her. You have to admit somebody who can’t let a former partner go and is still obsessing about them after twenty-five years has serious and potentially violent mental issues. Come on.
