Male celebrity beats a woman: fans and media never allow him to live it down. Female celebrity beats a man: it gets swept under the rug while she remains heralded as a hero for women and girls. Ronda Rousey and Hope Solo are just some of the female celebrities who have beaten on their husbands, boyfriends, or male family members.
According to some sources, other high-profile women include Hillary Clinton and Rihanna. Unlike male celebrities, a famous woman's abusive actions aren't permanently treated as synonymous with her name. The public tends to be more open to her side of the story. For the most part, she won't get condemned by the general public before we hear the full story.
You may know The Baddest Woman on the Planet from her years in UFC. Ronda Rousey admitted in her book "My Fight/Your Fight" that she once beat on her ex-boyfriend. After confronting him about what would soon become her excuse, she tried to leave the apartment. In her own words:
"I punched him in the face with a straight right, then a left hook. He staggered back and fell against the door... I slapped him with my right hand. He still wouldn't move. Then I grabbed him by the neck of his hoodie, kneed him in the face, and tossed him aside on the kitchen floor."
She then got to the car. He grabbed the steering wheel to stop her. So she walked around the car, pulled him by the neck of his hoodie, and dragged him onto the sidewalk. Then she got in the car and left him writhing there as she drove off.
She defended her actions in a UFC 193 interview:
"So if someone is blocking you into an apartment and won't let you leave, you're entitled to defend yourself and find a way out. If you're trying to get into your car and leave and they're grabbing your steering wheel and saying you can't leave, technically you're being kidnapped, and you can defend yourself in any way that is necessary."
The same source shows a response from Kim Pentico of the National Network to End Domestic Violence. She said, "I'm not comfortable with her behavior. What I am absolutely not willing to say is she's committed domestic violence without speaking with him and learning more about that relationship."
Ronda's excuse for the entire ordeal was that he had taken nude pictures of her, and she was afraid that he'd leak them. In the eyes of many people, he deserved what he got. Understandable. However, men get dragged for hitting women who did worse than that. When a man says that she provoked him, it's called victim-blaming. If we're going to "end domestic violence," we need to stop giving females a pass while crucifying men who would hit a woman "for any reason." About half of the abuse in hetero relationships is instigated by women, and 1 in 7 American men have been physically abused by their partner. That's called a clue.
Hope Solo was a goalkeeper for the United States women's national soccer team, and is considered one of the greatest ever soccer players. In 2014, she had drunken dispute with her half-sister and 17-year-old nephew. After a heated argument, she grabbed his hair and repeatedly punched him in the face. Then she got on top of him and bashed his head into the cement floor over and over.
Her half-sister, Teresa Obert, managed to pull her off, but Solo began beating on her. After calling the cops, the nephew tried to defend himself and his mother with a broom handle. By the time the cops showed up, Obert had a bruised face and a large scratch mark on the side of her neck, and had trouble standing. The nephew had a bloody cut on the bottom of his ear, as well as scratch marks on his arms and redness around his nose and jawbone.
While trying to book her, the police had to wrestle Hope Solo to the ground. All the while, she insulted them. She yelled to one cop, "You're such a bitch. You're scared of me because you know that if the handcuffs were off, I'd kick your ass." When asked to take off her necklace, she told the cop that it was worth more than he makes in a year.
What a great role model for little girls everywhere. Fighting a man. Resisting arrest. Insulting police. Threatening police. All this after beating on a woman and her minor son. A man would have been beaten and possibly shot by those cops. Thank god the US Soccer Federation suspended her for all of that.
Hope Solo received no serious punishment from the federation. Not a single day of suspension. She kept her endorsement deals. They promoted her while the charges were going on. She kept her place on the team in the Women’s World Cup. Meanwhile, the federation called it a "he said, she said" situation and didn't bother interviewing the people she attacked. Or the cops who were working that night, apparently. Hell, it took months before they publicly commented on her situation.
Yet Hope painted herself as the victim, complaining that she was being compared to Ray Rice and complaining about her concussion caused by a teenager who was defending himself and his mother. She even used that defense, as well as the nephew's size, to claim that he was the aggressor. Imagine how much she'd whine if she were treated like a man in the exact same situation.
Of course, she won her case. An attorney claimed that the circumstances were unlikely to be repeated. Last time I checked, when a man is abusive, people say "if he did it once, he'll do it again."
One might agree that this really is a "he say, she say" situation. I challenge you to keep that same energy when a man is accused of assaulting a woman. There are people fighting right now to make a woman's word alone enough evidence to have a man labeled and punished as abusive. We all know how badly that tends to work out. Again, let's make things equal and believe all stories when a woman is the accused, not just the accuser.
Better yet, why not use that logic when a man claims self-defense? For instance, let's look at Kareem Hunt. According to police reports, Abigail Ottinger (the woman who was "brutalized" by him) wasn't completely innocent. The issue allegedly started when she and a friend were going to bars with Hunt's entourage. When they got to the hotel, it was revealed that the two were 19 years old, so Hunt's friend gave them money for a ride home and kicked them out.
For the next 30 minutes, Ottinger banged on the door and yelled. A female friend of Kareem opened the door and tried to get her to leave. Ottinger then hit her in the face. She said to Kareem, "Fuck you nigger. You ain’t shit." All we see in the video is the aftermath of all this, which conveniently has no sound.
This is why male celebrities need to hire both male and female bodyguards. Then they'll have misandrist-approved witnesses in situations where females pick fights and then play the victim, and they'll have an equalizer.
Many female celebrities fight for equal rights. They'll gladly support women who have been abused by men. They speak loud and clear about these issues. So it's almost funny how silent they are in regards to the sexist double standards that protect abusive women from equal punishment.
