Self-defense laws require an act of imagination. They ask judges and juries to place themselves in someone else’s shoes and consider: What can we ask of a person in this situation? They have failed abused women for so long not only because the legal system has had trouble seeing the world through female eyes but also because it particularly struggles to see the world through the eyes of someone whose perceptions have been shaped by years, sometimes decades, of brutality, a circumstance for which all of us bear some responsibility. Perhaps this was understandable once; to lack this capacity for imagination still, despite all we know today about intimate partner violence and despite the willingness of so many women to share their stories, feels like a deliberate choice.
For women like Ms. Ford, Ms. Ayobi and many others, killing their way out of a relationship was an act of salvation — for themselves, for their children. Among the most haunting statements from many women I’ve spoken with was that they were sorry to be going to prison but that at least in prison the violence against them would stop. It took hearing this multiple times for me to fully take it in and to appreciate what it said about the scale at which society failed these women long before they went to prison and the depth of the injustice being perpetrated against them now. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/09/04/opinion/women-kill-self-defense.html -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. View/Reply Online (#32120): https://groups.io/g/marxmail/message/32120 Mute This Topic: https://groups.io/mt/108343733/21656 -=-=- POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. #4 Do not exceed five posts a day. -=-=- Group Owner: [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://groups.io/g/marxmail/leave/8674936/21656/1316126222/xyzzy [[email protected]] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
