Abuse is not provoked; it is perpetrated.

Several weeks ago, Stephen A. Smith was widely criticized and suspended for saying this:

"What I’ve tried to employ the female members of my family — some of who you all met and talked to and what have you — is that ... let’s make sure we don’t do anything to provoke wrong actions, because if I come — or somebody else come, whether it’s law enforcement officials, your brother or the fellas that you know — if we come after somebody has put their hands on you, it doesn’t negate the fact that they already put their hands on you."

Even in the wake of this suspension, I saw a lot of folks defending Mr. Smith. Those people were not trying to defend Rice's actions, they merely felt that what Mr. Smith was saying (that, essentially, one should not provoke violent people, I guess?) seemed to be "common sense."

But here's the thing: abusive relationships don't work like that. Couples like Ray Rice and Janay Palmer do not have first dates where he knocks them around. Abuse is a pattern that develops over time. And abused victims are very often caught in a "stockholm syndrome" like effect -- to you it may seem impossible for a woman to love a man that beats her, but frankly, if you've never been a victim, maybe you should get over your superiority complex. It may also seem obvious to you that women shouldn't date men who abuse women. I'm sure every single guy on earth who has a Ray Rice jersey is convinced that if he were a woman, he'd have obviously known that Ray Rice was not dating material. Because, yeah, that guy was obviously bad news, right?

I'll quote from the House of Ruth FAQ:

Similarly, the victim may minimize the violence because she does not want to accept and face the fact that the person she loves most is abusing her. Furthermore, because the batterer may go through dramatic, Jekyll-and-Hyde changes of behavior, the victim may be genuinely confused. Is he the violent man who hit her last night, or the contrite man who bought her roses the next day and promised it would never happen again? Often, this period of reconciliation following a violent episode (a regular and recognized phase of the cycle of violence) serves to undermine the victim’s confidence in her perceptions and her sense of reality.

And finally, the by far most important part of this is that the provocation is irrelevant. Hasn't it occurred to anybody that victims of abuse have tried this? Don't you think a woman who has been beaten by her husband already lives in fear of bringing out Mr. Hyde? In fact, this is precisely how so many women continue to think that the abuse is their fault:

When it comes to domestic violence, it does not take two to fight. Many victims report that the violence occurs unexpectedly, sometimes without warning. Often, the incident is caused by something insignificant that the offender later claims as ample provocation. Unfortunately, the victim may blame herself — as may everyone else.

It still amazes me that "Well, we don't know what happened in that elevator" was actually a thing that lots of people said. When they walked in, she was conscious. When they walked out, she was knocked out. There was no possible story that could provide Ray Rice any absolution in this. The fact that we've now seen it on actual videotape is irrelevant; the real damning thing is that people feel that this somehow fundamentally changed anything.

 

UPDATE: Vox has a pretty good article up today which might help illuminate how women get trapped in abusive relationships.

Also, Dre has pointed out that the police have seen the in-elevator tape, and have had it since the beginning. It is why his charge was elevated from domestic assault (and Janay's charges were dropped) in the first place. There has never been any need to "hear both sides of the story" here. If you ever made that claim, you were defending a man who abuses women, and that was the case long before the second video came out.