It has been a diabolical week for men. On Saturday, an NFL player that no one cared about decided to give a speech in which he more or less said that, ‘a woman’s place is in the kitchen,’ while a music star is seen beating up his ex-girlfriend. Both these videos have been shared thousands of times and these two men are trending. I’m not interested in repeating their names. You know who they are. The algorithm does not need another hit. The names I want to shout out loud are Elizabeth Butker, the mother of the football player, and Cassie Ventura, the abused woman.
We can spend hours dissecting the bad behaviour of men, but let’s be really honest with ourselves here and admit that the majority of women are not surprised. Those videos do not come as a shock to us. We’ve either been told that our place is in the home, made to stay in the home, felt the sickening thud of a male fist connecting with our cheekbone, or lived under the shadow of a devil of a man who the world thought was delightful and brilliant, only to face our own horrifying reality behind closed doors. This is not our first rodeo. We are in familiar territory. We know the drill.
As such, it is the women I think of in these scenarios. How Elizabeth Butker, a physicist at Emory University working in the Department of Radiation Oncology, must be feeling right now. A highly educated woman who is probably being lambasted from all sides about her son’s misogynistic ideology. How people in her life that she thought were friends, might be behaving towards her in this moment. How perhaps she knew her son had wildly problematic views but she had done everything she could to change them. How she might be feeling like a failure herself, because of his stupidity. How the shame of having such an embarrassing son might be making her feel in this moment. I wonder what her week has been like.
Similarly, I think about Cassie Ventura and whether or not she had any say in this video being leaked. Was her autonomy taken from her, once again? I think about how awful it is to see one of the darkest periods of your life blown up on screens all over the world for everyone to see. How painful it must be for her to relieve that moment again, and again, and again. How awful she must feel if she ever wanders into a comments section and the question ‘why didn’t you leave?’ is thrown carelessly around. How it must make her feel so small. How the irrational shame of domestic abuse must be hanging heavy around her neck. How embarrassing it is to have people in her life reach out constantly with the question, ‘Have you seen the video?’ How infuriating it must be to have people believe her now there is video evidence. I wonder what her week has been like.