On Sunday afternoon, one of my closest male friends called me to ask what I had to say about the whole Chad and Evelyn debacle. At first, I thought it was funny he called me as if I was some sort of authority on the topic, but it didn’t take long before I realized where he was going with his line of questioning. He was reviving our age-old debate about women and their aggressive, emotional nature, and how they’ll push a man to the point of him putting his hands on her and then play victim as if they didn’t incite the violence in any type of way. As far as my friend was concerned, women carry out the same behavior in their female interactions, it’s just that when those fights come to fruition they don’t get to call the cops and be the innocent party.
I tried to argue points about men being just as violent and aggressive, but after a while it became senseless to try to defend anyone putting their hands on another. Besides, the woman in question, Evelyn Lozada, had already established a pattern of behavior that showed she was habitually ready to get physical at the drop of a dime. If she could exchange blows with Tami, throw drinks at Royce, toss a bottle at Kenya, and jump over a table to launch an attack at Jennifer, why are we surprised that she would head-butt or be head-butted by a man? And better yet, does she get to cry victim now when she had no problem putting her hands on women for four seasons of a reality show on VH1 and only the Bronx knows how many years of her life before “Basketball Wives”?
Evelyn is in a bit of an interesting position some might label karma right now after having victimized several women throughout the course of “Basketball Wives.” It wasn’t really until Tami decided to pick on someone smaller than her size in the person of Kesha Nichols that the idea of girl-on-girl violence being a real problem became a dominant concern. But still, all those slaps, punches, and other altercations were looked at as examples of bullying, not domestic abuse or assault, simply because the legal term is limited to violence acted out between intimate partners, be it family or a romantic partner, and the violence was exchanged between two women. But is there really any difference between the two? Though Evelyn was having what many characterized as an opportunistic change of heart towards the end of the last season of her reality show as endorsement deals were being threatened if she didn’t clean up her act, now that she’s unfortunately gotten a taste of her own medicine with a male, it will be interesting to see how her “I’m gonna beat you every time I see you” tune changes, if at all.
In the other land of the reality TV lost, you have a woman like K. Michelle. We all know the backstory, as she’s told it, of her physically violent relationship with Memphitz. We’ve also witnessed K. Michelle take some ownership for the part she may have played in that outcome by pushing Memphitz to get physical with her. But how does a woman who knows what it’s like to get her a** beat as she says she did, turn around and threaten that same level of violence to another woman? No less than a week after detailing how she was bruised, bleeding, and smothered at the hands of her ex, she turned around and said she would “slap the s**t out of Toya.” Is that not a major conflict of interest? My point isn’t to say that K. Michelle could have never been physically assaulted or else she would have never made that threat to Toya. I’m saying there needs to be some level of consciousness that violence perpetrated against anyone is not okay just because they are the same sex. And a crime isn’t any more egregious simply because a man is the perpetrator and a woman the victim. Yes, I know there is an issue of physical force and the assumption of a man being stronger, but the bigger issue is the double standard of who can really be a victim when it comes to violence and the entitlement women feel under the law.
Much like sexual assault, rape, and sexual harassment laws, when it comes to domestic abuse, the legal system favors women. It doesn’t take much more than a 911 call and an allegation of abuse to have the cops on a man’s tail. In many ways that’s a good thing and I don’t think there’s any excuse for a man putting his hands on a woman. But there comes a point when women have to be somewhat accountable for the buttons they push with their tongues that lead to men pushing them with their hands. And if you’re going to be a female advocate against domestic abuse then you need to stand strong against abuse of all kind, be it between males, females or males and females. So many women relish in their ability to be invisible under the law when it comes to domestic abuse with a male but proudly want to be seen punking, fighting, or beating another woman. We may not be able to do anything about the privilege we have under the law but we can control our own actions so that we don’t continue to support a female culture that shames men to the point of no redemption for getting physical with a woman but goes and rewards women for doing the same.
What do you think about the paradox of women who have been abused by men being equally violent with women?
Brande Victorian is the news and operations editor for madamenoire.com. Follow her on twitter @Be_Vic.
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