Could not agree more
I get really angry when people reel out the old "double standard, women get a free pass to abuse" balls. Its simply not true. The world is much harder on women. Public opinion is much harsher. Men are allowed to redeem themselves, women are vilified and demonized.
I sound dramatic cos I'm tired after a night shift and I'm not trying to derail this Caroline Flack thread onto a wider feminist argument. What I am saying is that men and women are equally kind, horrible, vicious, gentle as we all human. The difference lies in how our characters are viewed. Gazza will always be a lovable rogue yet he broke his wife's arm!
Apols for lack of coherence but I hope I'm making my point!
Thank you, I was getting sick of the ignorant comments about 'if it was a man, he wouldn't be getting this sympathy'. As you rightly point out, women are judged by much higher standards than men, society is much more forgiving of their bad behaviour especially when they are famous ' boys will be boys' etc.
You rightly point out the Paul Gascoigne is treated like a saint by some football
supporters despite beating his wife on a regular basis, more recently Kobe Bryant has been canonised into sainthood despite raping a 19 year old girl and anyone who dares to mention it has been sent death threats. There are loads more examples of men who have a history of much worse domestic violence like Chris Brown, Gary Oldman, Michael Fassbender, Sean Bean, Tommy Lee, Bobby Brown, Dennis Waterman, Eminem, Sean Penn, Josh Brolin, Sean Connery, Bill Murray etc who have all gone onto have successfully careers while their abusive backgrounds are ignored.
It's the same situation with men getting away with sexual offences and even
grape/paedophilia, like Polansksi, Woody Allen, James Franco, Casey Affleck etc.
Meanwhile Hollywood exiles Winona Ryder for years for the heinous crime of shoplifting.
Of course the biggest example of how the bar is set much higher for women is that Trump became US President after being a reality TV star who was caught bragging about sexually assaulting women and having 20 odd women come forward with sexual assault allegations against him.
But apparently Hillary Clinton wasn't good enough because of her errr...emails.
So yeah, can we forget this ridiculous 'if it was a man' narrative, I suspect some of people pushing it have a misogynist agenda and don't give a damn about male abusers but just go online to attack women.
I am particularly sickened by the persistent poster on here who seems to be wageing a one man hate (or woman) campaign against Caroline and even compared what she has alleged to have done with Brock Turner who was convicted of drugging a college girl and brutally raping and sodomising her unconscious body. I couldn't believe what I was reading.
Domestic violence is wrong regardless of gender but Caroline's case would never have been brought to court before the law was changed last year because her bf dropped the charges. The law was quite rightly changed because women have been intimidated and threatened by their partners into dropping charges who then go onto repeat the cycle of violence and even murder their partners (2 women are murdered every week in the UK by their male partner, thousands of women round the world murdered every day) but this doesn't seem to be the case here. From what I understand there was no pattern of abuse but a one off situation and Caroline wasn't an ongoing threat to her boyfriend. Still not excusable but at the same time not worthy of a criminal prosecution considering how many more violent cases I have heard that never come to court.
Certain unsympathetic and judgemental posters have a very black and white view of the world where everyone who is accused of DV is an evil psychopath who needs locking up, completely ignoring the fact that CF has very obvious mental health issues, suffered depression (she was on anti Depressants), history of self harming, which were obviously so severe that she felt no option but to take her own life.
It all suggests that she was much more of a danger to herself than other people What she clearly needed was help, not to be put through the horrendous stress of a trial which the media vultures would have covered with glee.
There’s a lot of people on here acting holier than thou. Whilst I would NEVER EVER condone domestic violence, you have to tread carefully because everyone has done something stupid at some point, some more serious than most and they’ve faced the consequences of their actions. I have a friend of a friend (not the best source I know) who, like your friend, was party to what went on that evening and from what they say, alcohol played a huge part in that evening. In my opinion, clearly their relationship wasn’t healthy, they both suffer/suffered with mental health issues and I’ve seen it first hand with a friend that when you add alcohol to the mix - especially when you’re also on medication, it will never end well.
. I, too am not condoning DV in any way, shape or form. No way! DV isn’t talked about enough and I feel that it should be.However, I was just trying to explain that I can see where it stemmed from and her past erratic behaviour. I’m not making excuses for her or for anyone, I was just trying to put a bit of perspective on it all and to basically just convey my sadness for the whole thing and how important it is to always seek help for everyone involved.
