You and I probably don't mean the same thing by remorse. If a person experiences remorse for their actions, then they make amends and take steps to ensure that it never happens again.

Back in the 1940's my grandfather drove a bus for his family's business. I don't know all the details, but there was an accident and a child was killed.

He was a careful driver and a lifelong teetotaller (Baptist), but he was never the same man after this accident for which he blamed himself, suffered a stroke a year later, and died a year after that.

Today he probably would have been given Prozac and blood pressure medications, but the point is that that was remorse. Being sorry and then doing it again is not remorse. It is being an asshole.

Women kill their husbands all the time.

Women kill their kids all the time.

And invariably, when they do, newspapers write articles about how horrible their lives must've been. And how horrible their husbands must've been. And all the women's columnists pile on. And Oprah.

Look at Gilberta Estrada last week, then look at:

In 2004, Dena Schlosser fatally severed her 10-month-old daughter's arms with

a kitchen knife.

In 2003, Deanna Laney beat her two young sons to death with stones in East Texas.

In 2003, Lisa Ann Diaz drowned her daughters in a Plano bathtub.

In 2001, Andrea Yates drowned her five children in the family's Houston bathtub.

And on and on and on.

But we must remember that girls are made of sugar and spice and everything nice and jo vandenberg can't remember a single time when women hurt their families.

Jo vandenberg, yet another sexist bigoted female chauvinist pig.

I was pleased so many Salon readers were interested in my book. So let me put some things straight. First it called "Coercive control" to highlight that woman battering is as much about tactics used to intimidate, isolate, and control women as it is about physical or emotional abuse. I start by showing how far we've gone over the last decades to tackle abuse. But I show these interventions are failing-- almost no offenders are going to jail and violence against women hasn't changed much in 30 years-- because we're taking on the wrong target. All the laws against domestic violence focus on acts of assault. But the reality for millions of women is that abuse consists of a much broader,ongoing, and unrecognized, pattern of subjugation called coercive control. Violence is an important piece of this pattern. But even the violence has been misunderstood. In most cases, what is most harmful is not the sort of bone-breaking violence you see on TV, but the accumulation of poushes, shoves, slaps, grabbing and the like-- what I term routine violence--and the fact that this pattern is combined with tactics that isolate women from friends and family, intimidate them with direct as well as more subtle threats and gaslight games, and most importantly to regulate their lives,the control piece of entrapment. While its true that this pattern looks like kidnapping in some sense, it is also highlgy personal, because the offending men have a personal knowledge about their victim the kidnapper doesn't have about his, and because these tactics often can cross social space and oppress women at work or at other sites far removed from the men. The other new thing I argue that is that unlike violence, where injury is the focus or psychological trauma, coercive control is designed to take away women's freedom, autonomy and dignity and so should be considered a "liberty" crime. And it does this not just around their money or access to transportation or phones and such, but also around sex and the conduct of everyday life such as how women dress or clean or cook or care for their children. Others have said some of this before. But I think you'll find, when you read the book, that it hasn't been put together in this way before. Coercive control is happening all arouund us. Yet it has been invisible in law, medicine, and even to much of the movement dedicated to helping battered women. I'm happy to answer any questions Salon readers may have. the underlying point is that if these harms happened to men or in a public setting, we would see them as completely unacceptable. And I don't say why women stay with abusers...but the tactics men use to stay with them and how hard it is to get them off women's back,

Psychotherapists like Alice Miller would probably say abused women stay because they were abused as children. That is, a caregiver abused the female child "for her own good." That's confusing, soul-deep: a parent who's supposed to love, abusing. Unless other adults support the abused girl, even if they can’t change her circumstances, she will become warped. Love will be conflated with pain. If she doesn’t process feelings later (the rage and sorrow she was forced to suppress), she will tend to be drawn to similar circumstances ("I know he loves me because he beats me.")

The interesting thing is how the public reacts when men are abused. Few care. When females are victims, any an all displays of "controlling" (from looks to words) are deemed domestic violence. Meanwhile, a woman here answered a shove by threatening to use a gun (some proportional response!) It's only when men are shot, though, that attention is paid...then mostly to blame him, she saying she "finally" struck back after years of abuse.

Right.

In the meantime, in and out of movies, women feel free to insult, slap, kick, punch, stab men when they are “upset”…all the while saying it's the men are out-of-control. Most such scenes in cinema are occasions for humor, too. Rare (non-existent?) is the film that has a man smashing female genitalia to thundering audience applause.

Someone wrote: "Clearly women are at greater risk of being killed, because men are stronger and generally more violent than women." Like black men? Do police arrest men in fights based on size? Is a whale more dangerous than a scorpion? Women compensate for size and lack of strength by using weapons, the element of surprise, and attacking when men are asleep, sick, etc.

The idea that women are less violent is myth. Much physical violence by women goes unreported because men are socialized/shamed to take abuse from. Plus society pedestalizes mothers. How many crib deaths were actually caused by mothers?

To say that women aren’t as violent as men based on police data is to say battered women didn’t exist until recently because, well, there were few reports in years past.

The point is that unless and until female violence is examined, and male reticence noted, little will change. Women will continue stealth abuse and victimized men will continue suffering, perhaps snapping since no help is offered. The cycle will continue.

Look at the female "soldier" who deserted after 3 extensions of leave. Men have been shot for desertion in war time. She, on the other hand, got an honorable discharge from a service she served unequally in (gender sparing her combat). So...what was her reason for deserting? To get her daughter out of an abusive home. Fine. Even laudable. Except the abusers were female. They not only attacked each other, they beat the male-- the father. Were the women arrested? Was the man helped by a shelter for the battered? No. Instead, he lost custody of his daughter. Why?

Imagine a male GI deserting and getting rewarded for taking custody from his abused ex…she not getting help, her abusers remaining free, the father cheered!

Such is the world we live in where only women matter. Guys remain the expendable gender, in war and peace. Are we really surprised, then, when divorced men commit murder-suicides after custodial mothers mock them, squeeze them for money, give them no reason to live? Do we really expect guys to endure daily insults in a society where male pain is deemed deserved, non-existent, or funny?

In general it’s not a good idea to smile or smirk at someone who is angry. Feminists, though, do this all the time. Sooner or later the tipping point will be reached. Men will finally tire of being held to double standards while women skate.

In the meantime, think Broadsheet will do a piece on abusive women without making excuses for said perps?

Thought so.