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Wednesday, 26 June 2013

Apparently, Charles Saatchi is just a "bore": The DM's response to Saatchi's Violence

Posted on 04:11 by Unknown
The Daily Mail is back with yet another piece of vile victim blaming. This time they are outright saying that Nigella Lawson was not a victim of intimate partner violence at the hand of her husband Charles Saatchi. According to the DM, Saatchi is not an abuser. Just a bore. Because strangling your partner is completely normal behaviour during an argument.

The entire article is a pile of misogynistic victim-blaming. Every line minimises Saatchi's history of violence and ignores the clear evidence that he assaulted his wife. The article is so full of myths about intimate partner violence that I'm not entirely sure where to start with criticisms.

First up, we have this gem of information:

Charles Saatchi is being portrayed worldwide as a wife-beating monster on the basis of scant, if any, evidence. 
Now, it's possible the "journalist" didn't actually look at any of the images of the assault but I'm fairly sure putting your arms around someone's throat, without their permission, to choke them constitutes violence.  It doesn't matter if it only happens once. It is still intimate partner violence and Saatchi is guilty of assault.

Then, we get this:
Nigella Lawson, famously her own woman and a goddess to boot, is being characterised as a pathetic victim of domestic violence — which, try as I might, I just don’t buy. 
I guess this means that if you are a successful woman, you can't be a victim of violence. I would link to every study on intimate partner violence but, frankly, we all know the DM doesn't actually like "evidence". For those of you who are interested, the Centre for Disease Control and Prevention in the US has this handy little factoid. 

Next up, we get this:
Saatchi is indeed a volatile and physical man. Always has been. Back in the days when he began to make his millions in advertising, there were tales of him hurling items of furniture around the office like so many missiles, the better to ease any fleeting frustration. 
So, we have a man with a well-publicised history of violence but his physical assault on his wife doesn't count because she's married to him? Any man who thinks it's acceptable to toss furniture around the room when having a tantrum is a violent man. It really is that simple. Frustration is not, and has never been, a valid excuse for violence. The fact that Saatchi is white, wealthy and male should not minimise his personal responsibility for the violence he has committed.

The DM, in a moment of generosity, does suggest that Saatchi is "... pretty darned physical with his wife, too ...". I would have thought getting "physical" with one's wife without consent would be intimate partner violence but it not in Daily Mail World. It's just evidence of Saatchi being a bit cranky: 
Nevertheless, to put such unpleasantness into the catch-all basket called ‘domestic violence’ is to do grave disservice not just to this couple but also to the real victims of real horrors that happen daily behind closed doors.
I'm not entirely sure what the DM requires as evidence of "domestic violence". Clearly, attempting to strangle your wife in public isn't sufficient evidence. I'm so glad they thought to tell us that. I had no idea that attempting to strangle one's wife is normal behaviour for a man. I mean, I know that the trauma of intimate partner violence manifests itself in numerous ways and that it usually takes a minimum of 30 incidents before women report their partners to the police but I was unaware that being married to a rich, white man made the trauma less of a problem. I shall, of course, take note of that.

And, I do love the theory that Saatchi taking a police caution was a "joint decision". That, clearly, is not an example of victim-blaming at all. Saatchi chose to physically assault his wife but they both decided he should take a punishment for it. If he hadn't, would that have been Lawson's fault too? I've got myself all mixed up as what is and is not her fault, that I'm just not sure anymore.

It is also, apparently, both "patronising ... (and) insulting" to label Lawson a victim. This is the worst that could have possibly happened: labelling Lawson a victim of intimate partner violence; not being assaulted by her husband. That's just an irrelevancy that the rest of us keep whinging on about. Nope, the worst thing about Saatchi throttling his wife in public is labelling her a victim:
It is both a marvel and a sadness that what, barely a generation ago, was a vibrant movement of women jumping up and down to yell about their strengths has dissipated into a perpetual whimper about poor little us, victims all. 
Victims of harassment, victims of discrimination, victims of husbands, victims of men.
Everybody is in on it: the police, the courts, the law-makers and, as we’ve seen here, even the politicians rush to join in.

Should a woman have any manner of altercation with a man, she is instantly labelled ‘victim’ until and unless his innocence is proved — the opposite of the way our trusty system has traditionally and properly worked.
This is rather a clever "feminism is ruining the world" sub-plot. What is the world coming to when we name the perpetrator of male violence as a perpetrator? After all, the DM thinks we should feel "slightly" sorry for Saatchi for painting his character in a bad light. Poor diddums will have sad face at all the nasty feminists holding him personally accountable for his own actions. I mean, we all know that men can't ever be responsible for their own actions. That would be sacrilege. Or, something.

So, there we have it: men aren't responsible for the violence they perpetrate. Nasty feminists are ruining the world and successful women can't be victims of domestic violence.


God bless the DM for keeping us poor ickle wimmen straight on such complicated issues: putting your hands around your wife's throat in a argument is no biggie and anyone who suggests otherwise is a nasty whiner. 




I've reproduced the entire DM article below. It includes images of the violence committed by Saatchi.


Calm down! Saatchi's no monster and Nigella's no battered wife 

By CAROL SARLER
PUBLISHED: 22:40, 25 June 2013 | UPDATED: 22:46, 25 June 2013
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Volatile: Charles Saatchi grips Nigella's neck
Volatile: Charles Saatchi grips Nigella's neck
The time has come for all this to stop. The nation has thoroughly, if rather disgracefully, enjoyed itself by gossiping about Charles Saatchi and Nigella Lawson for quite long enough. We have pored over every ugly picture — and ugly they certainly were — and we have gaped and gasped to our national heart’s content.
But what began as graphic titillation has started to smell altogether too much like a witch-hunt: a frenzy of speculation that is becoming as unseemly as it is unfair.
Charles Saatchi is being portrayed worldwide as a wife-beating monster on the basis of scant, if any, evidence.
Nigella Lawson, famously her own woman and a goddess to boot, is being characterised as a pathetic victim of domestic violence — which, try as I might, I just don’t buy.
Saatchi is indeed a volatile and physical man. Always has been. Back in the days when he began to make his millions in advertising, there were tales of him hurling items of furniture around the office like so many missiles, the better to ease any fleeting frustration.
We know, now, that he is pretty darned physical with his wife, too — far more so than you or I might find acceptable if we had married him. Heaven knows, I wouldn’t want my throat grasped Saatchi-style, or my nose ‘tweaked’.
Nevertheless, to put such unpleasantness into the catch-all basket called ‘domestic violence’ is to do grave disservice not just to this couple but also to the real victims of real horrors that happen daily behind closed doors.
The nation has thoroughly, if rather disgracefully, enjoyed itself by gossiping about Charles Saatchi and Nigella Lawson for quite long enough
The nation has thoroughly, if rather disgracefully, enjoyed itself by gossiping about Charles Saatchi and Nigella Lawson for quite long enough
Of course I condemn physical violence by men against women and, for that matter, by women against men. But there is no reason to believe  that Charles Saatchi, though he may have a volcanic temperament, has ever hurt his wife. 
Indeed, it is telling that his previous wife, Kay — though no fan of his, this woman scorned — has gone out of her way in recent days to defend him on that score. Ill-tempered, yes. Controlling, yes. 
Violent, never.
It is telling that his previous wife, Kay (Pictured) - though no fan of his, this woman scorned - has gone out of her way in recent days to defend him
It is telling that his previous wife, Kay (pictured) - though no fan of his, this woman scorned - has gone out of her way in recent days to defend him
Nor is there reason to believe that Nigella Lawson fits the mould of the battered wife. I do not pretend to know her well, but we worked on the same newspaper many years ago and I found her perfectly affable, quietly ambitious and wholly able to stand on her own two feet.
Her first husband, John Diamond, I knew much better, and of this I am sure: he was not a man likely to have been charmed by a dormouse.
In short, there is nothing about Nigella that puts her in the class of subjugated woman. She has no need of Saatchi’s money, being worth many millions herself. 
She is not without a place to run to should she choose to leave — her family is loaded, loving and influential — and the idea that Saatchi has somehow managed to strip her of self-esteem and independent thought is frankly laughable.
The truth about their very public quarrel is that only two people know exactly what happened, that they are never going to tell us, and that claims of an ‘assault’ lasting a full 27 minutes are, after all, only the claims of a paparazzo with pictures to sell.
All that the rest of us know, from seeing his pictures, is that at any point Nigella could have reached for her bag and left — yet chose not to do so. 
And from another picture taken on another day, we know that the pair returned to the same table at the same restaurant a week later, which hardly suggests lingering trauma.
Saatchi accepted a police caution — but that, likely as not, was a joint decision taken in the vain hope of damage limitation. She left the family home — but that, too, was probably a joint decision taken to protect their children’s privacy.
How they live is surely their choice. It is their marriage, after all. Yet still the court of public opinion will not let the matter rest.
It has even reached the stage where a marital tiff has become fodder for party political point-scoring. Nick Clegg says that if he’d been there he would not have intervened; Ed Miliband and Lord Kinnock both say they would — so nul points for the Libs and hurrah for the Labs, even if Nigella would no doubt have been first to tell the chivalrous creeps where to shove their ‘intervention’.
Nigella Lawson, famously her own woman and a goddess to boot, is being characterised as a pathetic victim of domestic violence
Nigella Lawson, famously her own woman and a goddess to boot, is being characterised as a pathetic victim of domestic violence
I do wonder, though, whether Messrs Miliband and Kinnock would be as quick to reach for the shining armour had the ‘assault’ happened the other way around. Had Nigella shoved her fingers up the Saatchi beak — do you think, then, they would have thought it any of their business?
No, me neither.
And it does happen the other way around. My guess is that if Nigella had been photographed slapping Saatchi’s face it would have been a two-day wonder in which she would have emerged as the heroine.
Indeed, mea culpa, I once entertained a packed and costly restaurant when I flung a large glass of vino over a companion’s head, and all I got as I stalked out were admiring winks from fellow diners.
A critical difference, of course, is that the cultural mindset is these days so feminised that the automatic presumption in my case was that the man must have done something to deserve it (in my case he had, but never mind) while in the Saatchi debacle the equally automatic presumption has been that Nigella is a ‘victim’.
Nick Clegg
Ed Miliband
Nick Clegg says that if he’d been there he would not have intervened, Ed Miliband says he would have
Why? Because she’s a woman. It is both a marvel and a sadness that what, barely a generation ago, was a vibrant movement of women jumping up and down to yell about their strengths has dissipated into a perpetual whimper about poor little us, victims all.
Victims of harassment, victims of discrimination, victims of husbands, victims of men.
Everybody is in on it: the police, the courts, the law-makers and, as we’ve seen here, even the politicians rush to join in. 
Should a woman have any manner of altercation with a man, she is instantly labelled ‘victim’ until and unless his innocence is proved — the opposite of the way our trusty system has traditionally and properly worked.
Some women, of course, need our help and protection, and it is to our credit that increasing awareness and resources are poured in where necessary.
There is nothing about Nigella that puts her in the class of subjugated woman, and to call her a victim is insulting
There is nothing about Nigella that puts her in the class of subjugated woman, and to call her a victim is insulting
Nonetheless, to confer the title of ‘victim’ where it is not warranted — and it is hard to think of a better example than that of Nigella Lawson — is worse than patronising; it is actually insulting.
I might feel slightly sorry for Charles Saatchi, insofar as the response to his behaviour, beastly and boorish as it undoubtedly was, has painted him far blacker than is probably appropriate.
But I feel a great deal more sorry for Nigella. Not because of what he did — she’ll take or leave that and make decisions about her marriage as she sees fit — but because she has become the subject of such prurience.
From the day those pictures reached the Sunday newsstands, all the hard-won, well-deserved admiration she has enjoyed for years for being a strong, independent woman faded to nothing in a tidal wave of public pity. And that, I’ll bet, hurts a lot more than her nose.


Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2348439/Charles-Saatchis-monster-Nigella-Lawsons-battered-wife-Carol-Sarler.html#ixzz2XJUZbDUM
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Posted in #maleviolence, Domestic Violence, Intimate Partner Violence, Male Entitlement, Male Violence, Male Violence Against Women, Victim Blaming, Violence against Women | No comments
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