The Huffington post recently decided to resurrect the story of John and Lorena Bobbitt. There doesn’t seem to be any compelling reason for this resurrection. Nothing new has recently occurred in the twenty-three-year-old case. Nothing remarkable has recently happened to either of the individuals involved in it.
Huffington Post senior reporter Melissa Jeltsen decided the public needed reminded of the story anyway. Well, not the whole story, of course, but the femitopian version with the one-dimensional characters; a melodrama with a totally evil male villain and an all-good, innocent and helpless female victim. What other version would a progressive writer with a narrative to promote tell?
She certainly could not include the fact that Ms. Bobbitt administered her unkindest cut to a sleeping man who represented no immediate threat to her. No way was she going to mention that Ms. Bobbitt initially told police she cut her husband’s penis off for a totally different reason than the one she gave in court: He was “selfish” in bed, always having an orgasm himself, but never waiting for her to have one. Later, she accused her husband of coming home drunk and raping her. In court, she claimed that the drunk man was coordinated enough to hold her wrists with his hands and remove her underwear with his feet before holding her down and raping her. No word on whether she explained how her drunk-yet-acrobatic husband held her legs in a position that wouldn’t prevent her underwear from coming off, or how he stopped her from kicking the crap out of him while he tried.
Also not included in the Huffington Post article was the fact that Ms. Bobbitt was later charged over alleged domestic violence of her own. On December 8, 1997, the New York Times reported that Ms. Bobbitt, then going by her maiden name, Gallo, had been arrested for assaulting her mother. The article quotes police as saying the mother suffered “minor injuries, including an abrasion around the eyes and scratches.” Nancy Glass, a neighbor who comforted Mrs. Gallo following the alleged assault, later testified that Mrs. Gallo had told her Lorena had attacked her after a verbal exchange while she was watching TV.
Once her daughter was facing charges, Mrs. Gallo totally changed her story, claiming she started the fight herself and attributing the injuries on her face to “a pimple, a big one.” In a court case with testimony that once again did not reflect what was initially told to police, the judge found Ms. Bobbitt not guilty due to reasonable doubt. The Washington Post quoted Juvenile and Domestic Relations Court Judge James Robeson as saying, “If you asked me if I think she’s guilty, I’d say yes,” (But) “I have reasonable doubt, so I’ll find her not guilty.”
In addition to omitting those relevant bits of information, Melissa Jeltsen included a small plot hole in her article. Lorena Bobbitt is quoted in it claiming that she didn’t know there was any way out of an abusive relationship. However, also mentioned in the story is a pamphlet on rape given to Ms. Bobbitt by a friend, which was found in the home after the assault.
Think for a moment about what we’re being asked to believe here. First of all, it’s not likely this friend picked up that pamphlet at a local dairy bar. It probably didn’t come to her randomly in the mail, either. She most likely obtained it from an organization which routinely distributed such materials.
Remember, this was in in 1993, the supposed dark ages of victim’s advocacy. What kind of an organization would distribute that pamphlet, except one focused on resources for victims? Are we to believe that the friend knew about that organization and didn’t take Ms. Bobbitt to seek assistance, or even tell her about it? That such an organization would produce or distribute informational material that excluded information about victim’s resources?
And contrary to popular modern belief, there were resources. Feminists talk today as though the Violence Against Women act was the first ever government response to intimate partner and sexual violence.
It wasn’t. There’s a longer history of protection for women than feminists admit, but what’s relevant to this article is more recent.
Ten years prior to VAWA’s passage, President Ronald Reagan signed the Family Violence Prevention and Services act, or FVPSA, into law. FVPSA established grant money for the establishment, maintenance, and expansion of programs and projects to: “(1) prevent incidents of family violence; and (2) provide shelter and related assistance for victims and dependents of victims of family violence in order to prevent future violent incidents.”
I covered this a bit more a few years ago on the third page of an article titled “VAWA is not like that.”
Lorena Bobbitt’s claim to not know there was any way out of an abusive relationship was made after 10 years of organized federal funding for shelters and other victims’ resources, and despite having received information most likely to have come from one of those shelters.
While none of this excuses intimate partner abuse, it does cast doubt on the alleged desperation and necessity of Ms. Bobbitt’s actions. Even if Mr. Bobbitt was abusive, she clearly had other options besides maiming him in his sleep, and she clearly had access to information about those options. That leaves Ms. Bobbitt with no defense but an old feminist standby, Battered Woman’s Syndrome.
Battered Women’s Syndrome was initially coined by Psychologist Lenore Walker, who attributed women’s endurance of abusive relationships from which they had avenues of escape as a symptom of Post Traumatic Stress disorder. Dr. Walker’s initial description and study of this behavior was geared toward improving treatment options. However, it soon began to be used as a legal defense. It is primarily used in cases like Ms. Bobbitt’s, in which a woman alleges abuse while facing potential legal consequences for having done something violent to her male partner. The basic premise of the defense is that the woman was justified in escalating partner violence because her psychological response to it blinded her to other avenues of resolution or escape.
This is in stark contrast to the experience of male victims of female abusers, as any act of self-defense can get an abused man labeled the abuser. The lack of equal consideration for male victims stands out even more when you realize the environment they face after the Violence Against Women act of 1994 gendered everything in the victim’s services industry to exclude adult and adolescent male victims. While feminist organizations and lawyers argue that a woman who kills her abusive husband is not guilty of murder because despite the widespread existence of assistance, she felt trapped, a man is expected to refrain from any violence against his abusive spouse regardless of his circumstances.
This indicates that at the very least, Battered Women’s syndrome as a legal defense is bullshit.
And that’s the real legacy of Lorena Bobbitt… not increased awareness of family violence, but the exposure of yet another example of feminism’s selective response to it.
Lorena Bobbitt is done being your punchline.
Court TV: John & Lorena Bobbitt
World News archive: Wife cannot recall cutting off man’s penis
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Love the headline!
I knew the facts already – but the framing is very good. Yes, Feminism is fake news. To the T.
Just more feminist hatred and justification of violence against men by a disgusting excuse for a so-called news organization.
That HuffPo article is pure deification of Lorena and the media-spun preferred justifications of her act on that day,
The comment section is so choked with blind arrogant misandry, it makes me want to vomit. This is the mob that wants to rule. Small wonder they pitched such an unprecedented post-election hissy-fit. Any male victorious over any female in any walk of life is viewed as a patriarchal “cock block” of women getting the power they crave. (“Women,” of course, being the sjw code term for female androphobes.)
You might like to add a bit about her sister Louella seeing how Lorena had profited from this crime by becoming a sort of celebrity attempting the same thing on her own husband.
Thanks for mentioning that. I did not know about that part.
Well, upon searching I haven’t been able to link this to an actual news story, just a lot of forum comments. Was there one, or is there a police report or something on which this is based?
That is actually just a (very unfunny) joke. It didn’t happen.
The fact that feminists and so many Americans see nothing wrong with what Lorena did, even going so far as to say it was justified (even despite the fact that John was acquitted of any charges brought against him, and that he was overall the greatest victim at the end of the day) really reveals the amount of hatred western society holds for males. They would never condone any type of sexual violence a man inflicted on a woman in retaliation for suffering abuse at her hands. But the rules suddenly change if the perpetrator has a vagina and an unfounded accusation against her male victim. I also found it beyond tasteless how the article tried to make Lorena seem like the victim of the jokes surrounding her actions. John was the real victim. The unforgivable jokes made light of the horrific abuse he suffered; they did not make light of Lorena’s (alleged) suffering. Of course in North America, women are always the victims. Even when their own disgusting actions lead them to notoriety.
When it comes down to it, anyone who feels they can rationalize Lorena’s actions:
1) Thinks a woman sexually mutilating a man is a reasonable response to suffering far less severe physical abuse at his hands
2) Thinks female victims of alleged physical abuse who have the option to leave but don’t, and then use this as an excuse to maim someone, are victims and not perpetrators of abuse.
3) In a case in which the evidence shows that the man suffered the most harrowing abuse out of both parties, the woman is still the greater victim.
With logic like this, thank God the Hillary shills did not get their way last election. We don’t need more of this clearly immoral gynocentric thinking in the white house.
On the bright side, feminists’ refusal to condemn the actions of female lunatics like this is really helping to bring the movement to an end quicker. Nothing opens up the eyes of fair, rational, egalitarian people like a movement who is disgusted at a man slapping a woman, but then celebrates a woman committing a grievous sexual and bodily violence against a man.
That being said, thanks for writing this article! It’s important to be reminded that there are still sane, moral people in the world.