The Guardian's Julie Bindel (no stranger to Jezebel) writes that while British men who kill their wives often use the defense of "provocation" to reduce their sentences to manslaughter, women who kill abusive husbands or boyfriend are often convicted of murder. She contrasts the case of Sara Thornton, who killed her husband after he repeatedly beat her, with that of Joseph McGrail, who kicked his common-law wife to death. A judge in Thornton's case said she should have "walked out or gone upstairs" instead of killing her husband; she was sentenced to life in prison. The judge in McGrail case, meanwhile, expressed "every sympathy" for him, and said his wife "would have tried the patience of a saint." He got a two-year suspended sentence.

Bindel writes,

For men who kill their partners, the defence of provocation is tailor-made. Provocation will reduce a charge of murder to manslaughter if the defendant can show that things were said or done to provoke them, causing them to experience a sudden loss of control. In such cases they will often justify their actions by claiming that they "just snapped" or "saw red". Judges have been known to express sympathy for men who claim they were nagged or cheated on by female partners, but often appear to have little for women who kill after being raped by their partners or experiencing domestic violence. This tends to be because when women who are being regularly beaten by their partners kill, their dominant emotions are usually fear or despair - not exactly a sudden, explosive "loss of self-control".

Judges may be more sympathetic to male killers because they see their anger at more justified, or because violent outbursts are more accepted from men than for women. But Bindel implicitly buys into double standard by writing that women's "dominant emotions are usually fear or despair." Society may expect the dominant emotions of abused women to be fear or despair, but that's a stereotype — one that may cause judges and juries to treat women more harshly when they do turn angry or violent. Killing an abuser obviously isn't a good solution for anyone, but the idea that it's somehow more natural for men is deeply damaging.

The view that men are provoked and somehow forced to kill, while women should know better, jibes with recent research on perceptions of male and female responses. Women who get angry are seen as emotional, while men are assumed to be reacting to some outside stimulus. Bindel illustrates this upsetting dichotomy in her analysis of Thornton's case: "as the judge's comments made clear, little was known about what drives a battered woman to kill her abuser." Wouldn't that be abuse? If McGrail's wife's actions drove him to kill her, why couldn't the beatings Thornton received drive her? Again, murder is never justified, but why can the British courts explain it away for men but not for women?

The research on emotion implies that people see women as flighty and fragile, but the cases Bindel discusses bring up another stereotype: that women have a greater obligation to control their tempers than men do. Bindel mentions Alicia Crown, who killed her boyfriend in what she says was self-defense. Her lawyers argued that she suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder from her boyfriend's abuse and from a difficult upbringing in Jamaica, but the jury rejected this defense, seeing her as "remarkably resilient." Domestic violence expert Marai Larasi comments, "In my experience black women are particularly susceptible to being viewed as 'strong', able to cope and somehow not vulnerable." In this case it wasn't Crown's fragility that got her in trouble, it was the assumption that she, a black woman, should be "strong enough" to take abuse and not fight back.

Kirsty Scamp was sentenced to 12 years in prison for killing her abusive boyfriend Jason Bull. Scamp worked in a home for adults with behavioral problems, and Bindel writes that "the judge commented to the jury that Scamp should have been able to tolerate Bull's erratic outbursts because of her experience at work." Again, the assumption is that women have the responsibility to "tolerate" abuse.

The cases of Thornton, McGrail, Crown, and Scamp show that the way we perceive men's and women's emotions can have a terrifying impact on people's lives. We see men's feelings as determined by outside factors — if someone "provokes" them, it's natural for them to respond with violence. Yet for some reason we don't think of women's anger as being triggered in this way. The assumption that women's emotions come from within — that women are simply "emotional" creatures — delegitimizes these emotions. When a woman gets angry, or when she turns violent, it's not because of something someone else did — it's because she didn't sufficiently control herself. This leads not only to unfair gender disparities in sentencing, but also to victim-blaming and indifference to domestic violence. Certainly murderers deserve justice, but so do abuse victims, and no one is going to get this justice until we stamp out the view that a man's anger is justified, while a woman's is somehow her own fault.

Driven To Kill [Guardian]

Earlier: Study: Women Are "Emotional," Men Are "Having A Bad Day"

Bindel says the 1981 booklet Love Your Enemy? The Debate Between Heterosexual Feminism and Political Lesbianism, which states that "all feminists can and should be lesbians," jibed with her early experiences growing up in England. She writes,

I was surrounded by men - my father and two brothers - and at an early age I had picked up on the stories of domestic violence, child abuse and general unhappiness that seemed to emanate from neighbouring households. I was also struck by the drudgery on display. While men were out drinking, embarking on fishing trips and generally enjoying their freedom, women were stuck cooking for them, cleaning for them, and running around after children. For women, heterosexuality seemed a total con.

For Bindel, "lesbianism is intrinsically bound up with my feminist politics and my campaigning against sexual violence," and she believes the same can be true for other feminists. "Political lesbianism continues to make intrinsic sense because it reinforces the idea that sexuality is a choice," she writes. "I also suspect that it is very difficult to spend your daily life fighting against male violence, only to share a bed with a man come the evening."

It's good to think of homosexuality as something that can be joyful and empowering, rather than some sort of congenital disease. But Bindel's view does a disservice to people who don't feel they chose their sexual orientations, and especially to people who have been fighting for equal rights partially on that basis. It also assumes that men are the enemy, and that women can achieve happiness and political self-actualization only by living apart from them.

A modified version of this principle governs the lesbian communities — known as womyn's lands — profiled in Sunday's Times [the pic above is from the womyn's land of Alapine]. Women came to these communities in the '70s, when lesbianism was much less accepted; for many they were a refuge from discrimination. Now the womyn's lands provide residents with a feeling of safety and a close-knit group of likeminded women, both of which are awesome. But one resident says, "Men are violent." Another adds: "Women, when they're together, tend to be more cooperative. They don't look for one to succeed and all the others to fail."

Men are undoubtedly violent — but so are women. And it's not always true that women "don't look for one to succeed and all the others to fail." An all-female community can be a great choice for some women — and sex with women can be a choice for some too. But to say that it's the only valid choice for every feminist doesn't just demonize men and glorify women. It also tells consenting adults what to do with their bodies, which is something both feminists and gay rights activists have long fought against. There are a lot of wonderful things my generation can take from second-wave feminism — mandatory lesbianism just isn't one of them.

My sexual revolution [Guardian]
My Sister’s Keeper [NYT]