The Ray Rice Incident
This one is a nightmare. It is hard to be logical. It is hard to know where to start, and what part of this episode should carry the most weight. What are the issues anyway? Let’s start there.
Should a man ever punch a woman?
If he does what is the appropriate punishment?
Does prior behavioral history have any impact?
On all these questions nothing is clear cut. It is easy enough to say a man should never punch a woman. It is easy enough to say no adult should hit a child. It is easy enough to say no one should hit a pet. It is easy enough to say no sibling should hit another sibling.
The trouble is the playing field is never level here. Personalities differ. The environment a child is raised in differs and affects his future behavior. Situations differ. The evidence differs. Relationships, some of the most intense ones, can be highly stressful. It is legal to binge drink and everyone knows binge drinking often leads to violence. Why then is it legal to do something which we know can lead to physical violence against others, no matter of what sex or age?
Here are the stats: Over 1.3 million American women are victims of physical assault by an intimate partner every year. That’s a lot. The punishments vary from no punishment, to jail, to a fine, or loss of one’s career/job. There is no consistency. What about verbal violence? Can’t an endless ongoing verbal assault to a child, an employee, an unattractive kid, an unattractive spouse, a coworker produce as much damage to a person as a knockout punch? And a physical punch itself—if it doesn’t knock out the person the punishment is different? Maybe I am free to punch away.
No man should ever hit a woman—that sounds good, but maybe if the woman is attacking him with a frying pan that is different. Maybe it’s different if the person is someone in the public eye. I think there are many things we all know, if we say or do to someone, the response might be physical. Aren’t we part of the problem if we knowingly precipitate a physical response? People argue every which way on these questions.
Physical assaults happen, they happen for all sorts of reasons, and depend on the conditions at the time. We all know we can make the same comment to someone and they will laugh, but the same comment at a different time might result in a verbal or physical assault. We all know this. People make mistakes, especially when they are in a bad mood, the wrong environment, are high on a drug, feel insulted, and so it goes on and on. In some environments, especially ghettoes, the image of potential violence can be the measure used to protect oneself. Many ghetto youths dress and act a certain way to broadcast “no one better mess with me”. Many of the mass murderers of late get the time and space to do what they do because no one who knows them wishes to set them off. We all shy away from people who everyone knows is emotionally unstable and potentially dangerous.
Now enter the case of Ray Rice and his wife. They are angry at each other and apparently high or drunk. She becomes the 1.3 million plus one woman to be physically assaulted. But it is caught on video tape. At first just the aftermath of the punch. We all say, not good, not acceptable, not manly. But Ray Rice is a pleasant enough guy who has no record of violence, drunken assaults on anyone, and most everyone likes him. So maybe his wife may have done something real bad to deserve getting punched. If Ray Rice were not a running back in professional football the punch probably wouldn’t have knocked her out. She would have fared better if I had punched her. Well, said the NFL Commissioner, there are a lot of things we don’t know, and he has no history of violence so it’s a two game suspension, in part because the wife pleaded on behalf of her husband. Then the actual video appeared of THE PUNCH. Now he is indefinitely suspended from football. What really changed here? What do we know now that we didn’t know before? I mean, were we uncertain he really had punched her before? Of course not. We just didn’t see the punch.
And why is the NFL permitted to be the cop, judge, and jury on a domestic violence case? Other such cases are handled by the court system. Why does our society let the 32 rich millionaires who own football teams have a monopoly business which is outside any regulation or limits, and allowed limitless economic predatory behavior against fans, cities, and individual players? The first priority for these millionaires is to make more and more money—enough is never enough—and the second priority to is to hire an army of profession spinners to protect the image of football.
But enough here, what is the solution to this punching a female situation? There probably is no hard fast solution. That is why we have trials. That is hardly the perfect solution, but it is the best we currently have. If the right action has been taken with Ray Rice, what about the other 1.3 million males in our society who have also assaulted a female in a close relationship? Shouldn’t every one of them be suspended from what ever their profession is indefinitely? How many employers fire a guy because the guy physically assaulted his wife or girlfriend? I sense they almost always leave it to the courts. How many times do the police or courts or employer ever press charges if the victim won’t press charges? What have we really established here except that you can’t punch a female IF you are a professional football player because it hurts the image of the sport. Damaged image—reduced revenue and that, above all, cannot be tolerated by millionaires for whom enough is never enough.
The priority here should be measures which will reduce violence between humans period. Violence begets violence whether it is in the home, at work, or in our foreign policies. A tendency to be violent needs to be caught early on. That is where it starts. This is why the recent attention to bullying is good. Let’ not be so restrictive. The use of violence to settle disputes is not ‘manly’ PERIOD. If the NFL wanted to be serious about violence to other people by it’s players it would react to physical violence the same way by any player who resorted to it. But it doesn’t. With the NFL it is always image and spin control. As long as they can maintain a rosy public image their economic predatory behavior against the public, cities, fans, and individual players can continue. Ray Rice was suspended indefinitely because he threatened the image of football.
The only legitimate response to physical violence is to incessantly push the concept that violence begets violence, and to vastly level the playing field so that everyone who uses violence to solve conflict gets similar punishment, one that contributes to reducing the frequency of human violence. Instead, we are focused on the right to ‘stand your ground’. The number of assaults on other people from this kind of focus is clearly going to rise. The NFL has taken it’s ‘image’ stand. Nevertheless, next year, another 1.3 American women will be physically assaulted by a male with whom they have a close relationship. As usual, the NFL is all spin control. Football is a great game to watch, and this enables the NFL to continue it’s predatory actions against the public, fans, cities, and individual players. They have us trapped, these millionaires, and and we are too weak to resist. Try to tell fans to ignore football a week no matter what the cause and see how many of us can really stop.
