http://www.thehamandlegsshow.com

The facts, as they’ve been reported, support both stories – one of DV, one of a wife trying to help her husband out of a wreck. Tiger’s behavior certainly is in line with that of a victim of DV (taking blame for what happened, embarrassed about the incident, etc.).

As is often the case with domestic violence, only the two people involved really know the truth. The general public will probably never know the whole truth.

It’s time to leave them alone to get on with their lives.

My discomfort stems from my five years working at a municipal jail. Maybe it was just the area I was in, but I seemed to see a disproportionate amount of men in jail for Domestic Violence that, according to the women who put them there, never should have been arrested. I’m not talking about women afraid to press charges so the police do it on their own. I’m talking about women who would show up for visiting hours and threaten their husband/boyfriend that if they didn’t do as they were told, she would have them arrested again. It seems that an entire sub-group of women who use the system has arisen out of an otherwise noble goal.

That being said, I do not think that the problem should be trivialized. I just think that more effort needs to be put into weeding out these false accusations. So from my stand point, I see where Mr. Mystal is coming from. If the situation were reversed, we’d be talking about how much Tiger’s bail was.

I do think you have missed a key point. You are correct in theory that the gender of attacker and the attackee are irrelevant. However, historically women have disproportionately been the victims of domestic violence and have often failed to receive adequate protection from law enforcement when they have been. For example, there was a study conducted between 1995 and 1996 where 16,000 people were surveyed in the 50 States and the District of Columbia. Nearly 25% of women and 7.6% of men were raped and/or physically assaulted by a current or former spouse, cohabiting partner, or dating partner/acquaintance at some time in their lifetime. (Patricia Tjaden & Nancy Thoennes, U.S. Dep’t of Just., NCJ 181867, Extent, Nature, and Consequences of Intimate Partner Violence, at iii (2000), available at http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/nij/pubs-sum/181867.htm). I am going to out on a limb and suggest that among the 7.6% of men who reported this, the attacker was probably a man in proportionately more cases than than women were the attacker among the 25% of women who reported being a victim of domestic violence.

So I would suggest that the disproportionate focus on the woman as victim of domestic violence as opposed to men is not merely the reflection of stereotyped views of gender roles but some scientific data.

While violence is a lousy solution, take a look at the number of women who kill their cheating husbands — versus the three women every single day who are killed in the U.S. by the men who are persuaded that these women belong to them and, if they dare to leave, they deserve to die for their impudence.