Ok, so this is fairly long post inspired by a NSWATM post. It's about the question of whether someone who thinks him or herself a feminist could ever imagine there could ever be a circumstance where Becker's actions could be justified in contemporary, non-fringe feminist terms. The answer isn't just no in humanitarian terms, nor is it just no in never-blame-the-victim terms. It's no in terms of 40 years of feminist activism!

While pondering the problem of blaming the victim in response to limited but loud reactions to the Catherine Kieu Becker, DoctorMindBeam said

You might’ve heard about Catherine Kieu Becker, the woman who recently attacked and mutilated her husband, apparently without provocation. If you haven’t, here’s the short version of the story: They were estranged, and he had filed for divorce. She drugged him, tied him up, waited for him to wake up, cut off his penis, turned on the garbage disposal, and threw it in.

...

We talk a lot about not blaming the victims of rape, sexual harassment, assault, etc. So why is it suddenly acceptable to assume that this guy cheated on her or did something else to provoke it? Not even mentioning that even then, this action is heinous and indefensible. But why are people making that assumption?

It started for me on Facebook. I wrote about the story, briefly, and one of my friends said something to the effect of, “Why do I think that he did something to provoke this?” This morning, it spread over to The Pursuit of Harpyness. Now, I want to don kid gloves for this section. I discovered the blog because they recently gave [NSWATM] props, and so I don’t want to assume ill intent and slap them in the face. But ladies, seriously…

The victim reportedly told the police that her husband—who had initiated divorce proceedings—”deserved it.” Maybe. Maude knows, I’ve been keeping a list of men I think deserve it for some time now (yeah, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, you’re at the top).

No. Just, fucking, no. No one deserves to have their genitals brutally mutilated.

Source: No Seriously, What About Teh Menz?

First of all this is an obvious point: no blaming victims, m'kay?  No speculating about why they should be blamed.  No assuming the victim must have done something to deserve it.

Secondly, as DMB points out, in civil society no individual acting alone has the right to render another person unconscious and then mutilate them even if their victim really is a very bad person.

But third of all?  Almost no matter how you look at it, even if you could construct a case where Becker's husband "deserved" it, in contemporary non-fringe feminist terms Becker's assault is no cause at all for feminist celebration.  In fact quite the opposite!

A few years ago I took a continuing-ed course that included a feminism 101 section (the other two were sex education and communications. Best non-degree course I've ever taken!)

Anyway, at one point the women's studies professor brought up the Lorena Bobbett castration case and pointed out that contrary to popular imagination and conservative Senator's wive's bravado (“I’m a lot more like Lorena Bobbitt than Hillary,” Wendy Vitter told Newhouse News. “If he does something like that, I’m walking away with one thing, and it’s not alimony, trust me.”) most actual feminists were horrified by Bobbett's act. Here's why, here's why this is relevant to the Becker case, and here's why anyone who claims to be a feminist yet celebrates rather than abhors husband castration is a really bad feminist.

My professor pointed out, correctly, that instead of trying to escape an abusive relationship by cutting off her husband's dick she instead could have contacted a number of hotlines, agencies, support groups, and shelters, and relied on a huge array of policies, procedures, and laws that were available and well-publicized in her area.

Instead, in keeping with her deeply religiously-conservative upbringing she didn't initiate divorce proceedings against her husband the first time he came home after sleeping with prostitutes. Or the second. Or the Nth. Because of her upbringing she didn't dial 9-1-1 the first time he physically assaulted her. Or the second. Or the Nth.

In fact, when she'd gotten literally to the end of her rope and began contemplating, and then fantasizing, and then resolving to violently disable her husband in hopes of being able to get away she didn't instead contact one of the many public or private resources that could have helped her non-violently divorce her husband. She didn't try to locate of the shelters that would have helped her quietly establish a new life.

Instead she took it upon herself to wait till her husband had incapacitated himself with alcohol, cut off his dick with a kitchen knife, jumped in the car with some belongings, and drove... not really all that far because she didn't have a plan, didn't have resources, and just plain had no idea there was any real way out to begin with!

In other words, said my professor, there were multiple points where a feminist would have decided she wasn't going to put up with her husband's shit, there were multiple points where a feminist would have known she didn't have to put up with his shit, and there were multiple resources that a feminist would have known she could have taken advantage of rather than put up with his shit, and multiple resources that a feminist would have resorted to long, long, long before.

In other words, Lorena Bobbett did was a triumph of anti-feminism and not a feminist act at all.

Now this long digression is relevant to this post for two reasons:

First, it invalidates any hypothetical assumptions that Catherine Kieu Becker's actions could somehow be "justifiable." Thanks to the hard legal cases, legislative action, social activism, and educational outreach of mainstream feminists the answer is no. Even if there was any substance to speculations or assumptions about abuse (so far at least there isn't) then Becker could, and should, have made use of any of those legal, accepted, and entirely non-violent ways to exit her relationship and protect herself from her husband. Instead her decision not use any of those resources but instead to commit violence invalidates any possible justification within a feminist framework.

Second, any actual feminist who imagines Becker or Bobbett's in terms of "delightful as the thought is of some particularly loathsome men having their junk cut off…” is at best alienated from or ignorant of the achievements of contemporary feminism, or, at worst completely contemptuous of it.

So!

Even if there was ever any justification for blaming the victim of a violent crime Bobbett or Becker's actions would still be a repudiation of feminism rather than a feminist act. Consequently anyone who entertains fantasies of justifiable castration rather than speculating instead about the long chain of missed opportunities to avail one's self of feminist resources is just looking at these cases from at least a pre-feminist and possibly an anti-feminist perspective.

I mean, let's go waaay back up to the top of this too-long comment to that quote I pulled from Sen. David Vitter's arch-conservative wife Wendy Vitter:

I’m a lot more like Lorena Bobbitt than Hillary,” Wendy Vitter told Newhouse News. “If he does something like that, I’m walking away with one thing, and it’s not alimony, trust me.

That's not feminism talking.

Bottom line: do not ever assume that someone who either commits castration (or other violent assaults) on her husband is a feminist. Don't ever assume that someone who approves of such an act is a critically-conscious feminist either. For the most part the clowns and asshats we see on The View and elsewhere around the cable networks are going to have a lot more in common with Wendy Vitter than Shulamith Firestone. And not to put too fine a point on it but the trolls and "harpies" around the blogosphere who've been nodding approvingly have far, far more in common with Spearhead-style MRAs than they ever have or ever will have with mainstream feminism.

So I was walking home from the grocery store just now thinking about gender assumptions, sexual assault, and domestic violence (as I've been doing more lately.) And just as I turned down the block towards my street a thought popped into my head.

The thought was "If it took me 26 years to learn that women can sexually assault, how many women fail to recognize they're doing it?"

Without knowing the answer that led to a whole 'nother thought. One that's actually so useful that in a way it doesn't really matter what the answer is.

The thought was that over and over we see men derailing DV and assault threads with But this or that happens to men too. Which then throws up this extraordinarily predictable spiral that ends in whole rafts of did-not's and did-to's and other hard feelings.

And the answer, it occurred to me, is that what we really need, what would really alter those conversations, would be to stop saying, say, "But men get raped too."

And change it to "And men get raped too."

Because, seriously, when your real goal is to overturn rape culture it seems like you want to include as many people as possible. You want to identify as many victims as possible. You want to mitigate, divert, or reform as many perpetrators as possible.

I mean, look at the ridiculous disconnect between women's and men's activists. They're all so busy disputing each other, and privileging themselves, and just generally derailing each other that no conversation takes place at all.

At all!

Do more men or women commit sexual violence? Do more women or men commit domestic violence? I think those are entirely the wrong questions because then the focus is just on comparison instead of change.

The right question to ask, then, is do men and women commit sexual and domestic violence, period. And the answer is overwhelmingly yes.

So.

What do you want to do about it?

Keep arguing over which yardstick to use?

Keep arguing that, no, in this one particular biological sex matters so much more than any other consideration?

I don't think so.

Not if you really want to stop it. Instead of complain about it.

When viciously anti-choice Congressman Chris Smith proposed a return to the "if she drowns she isn't a witch" style credibility test for "forcible" rape in an anti-choice bill the progressive blogger Digby at Hullabaloo quickly warned that such extremism a "shiny object" ploy. The idea being to intentionally get opponents so massively worked up over a blatant offense that they ignore all the other viciousness in the bill. Smith's conservative masters can then claim to have "listened to reason" (this part's already happened), progressives declare victory and go home, and the 'wingers get everything else they wanted in the bill.

Dibgy's right that that's a concern, of course, but it doesn't need to be a deliberate conspiracy for it to still work. As quipsters at least since Napoleon have said: ""Never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence."

According to the Wikipedia entry on the incompetence vs. conspiracy adage, Robert Heinlein's version even more accurately sums up the situation. He said "Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity, but don't rule out malice." In addition to stupidity and incompetence Republicans really are plain old-fashioned malicious.

Via Brilliant at Breakfast the DLCC says

Georgia Republican state Rep. Bobby Franklin (of gold-standard-wannabe fame) has introduced a bill to change the state’s criminal codes so that in “criminal law and criminal procedure” (read: in court), victims of rape, stalking, and family violence could only be referred to as “accusers” until the defendant has been convicted.

Burglary victims are still victims. Assault victims are still victims. Fraud victims are still victims. But if you have the misfortune to suffer a rape, or if you are beaten by a domestic partner, or if you are stalked, Rep. Franklin doesn’t think you’ve been victimized. He says you’re an accuser until the courts have determined otherwise.

To diminish a victim’s ordeal by branding him/her an accuser essentially questions whether the crime committed against the victim is a crime at all. Robbery, assault, and fraud are all real crimes with real victims, the Republican asserts with this bill.

Rep. Franklin surely is aware that the crimes for which he believes there are no victims are disproportionately committed against women—and are disproportionately committed by men.

When there’s violence against women involved, the rights of the accused clearly are more important to Rep. Franklin than the rights of the victim.

But if there’s no such thing as a victim in cases of rape, stalking, and domestic violence, he may think there’s no need to for him to be concerned with their rights, anyway.

Source: Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee

Note that the DLCC, like many even moderately feminist-friendly progressive organizations, acknowledges that men are also victims of sexual assault and rape.  I'm confident the notion has never crossed Mr. Franklin's bitterly anti-feminist mind.  (Or, to the extent he's thought of it at all he's assumed that becoming a male "accuser" also makes you gay.)

Anyway, while Digby raises a valid concern about progressives being distracted by "shiny objects," it's also the case that, no, seriously, Republicans really, really mean it: they really are willing to go to extraordinary lengths to coddle, pamper, encourage, and protect rapists.

Not to sound dumb or callous or anything but in the context of health insurance as presently formulated in the United States it makes economic sense to define domestic violence as a “preexisting condition” for which insurers can profitably add insult to injury.

As constituted the insurance industry is a low-profit business. Considerably lower-profit compared to almost any other healthcare-industry sector. The problem is that in low-profitability situations there are high marginal benefit for cutting corners and screwing customers. I mean, if you can get a customer paying $13,000 a year for insurance, and then deny coverage when she hospitalizes her partner or one of her children or when she’s hospitalized by a domestic partner, you’ve just put that $13,000 towards your bottom line. And not to put too fine a point on it, but if you can do that three more times you’ve freed $52,000, enough to put one FTE headcount to work doing nothing but tracking down more paying customers to fuck over. Or 5.2 maximum campaign contributions (for the time being anyway) to help make sure what you’re doing isn’t correctly redefined as criminal fraud.

So yeah, that’s the way the system works. Pre-existing conditions, including the morally reprehensible but evidently profitable domestic-violence precondition are an artifact of that system. I don’t think it’s how the system ought to work. It’s certainly not how it has to work. But evidently all 40 Republican Senators and at least 3 Democratic senators it’s important enough for insurers to continue forcing domestic violence victims to pay for their injuries out of pocket that they’re willing to vote against healthcare reform. Sort of a shame when you think about it. Surely they’re not all partner and child abuse sympathizers.