NO HITTING THE WIFE

The talk locally and internationally this week was the case involving former Baltimore Raven Ray Rice knocking out his wife in an elevator at a casino earlier this year, a transgression that saw him this week being cut by his team and sponsors and being banned indefinitely from the National Football League, the NFL.

That incident brought the whole issue of spousal abuse sharply into focus because it is a universal issue. Most of the people who saw Ray Rice deck his wife inside that elevator were appalled. Rice is a powerful man. At five-eight and more than 200 pounds, he is well muscled; built to take on the on-field battles with linebackers and linesmen in the NFL. His wife, Janay, is not. So she hits him and spits on him and in retaliation he cold-cocks her with a wicked left hook that would make Floyd Mayweather proud.

The consensus is that he should not have. People who love each other shouldn't be hitting each other, but there is no way in which anyone can justify that punch he hit her with that knocked her cold. He then dragged her lifeless body out the elevator like she was a bag of trash. It was difficult to look at.

As much as my wife can anger me sometimes I could never bring myself to hit her, let alone that hard. Also as much as I have angered her sometimes, she has never hit me.There have been those who have empathised with Rice saying he is being punished for reacting to his then girlfriend, now his wife hitting and spitting on him. Comedian Whoopi Goldberg even said that anybody who gets hit has a right to hit the person who hit them. She may have a point, but it is not a very strong one. While I agree that women should not hit their men, it is wrong when the man responds with a much bigger hit. And, as the man, the protector of his family, Rice should have shown restraint. I am not saying it is easy to do, but it can be done.

Let's say when her head hit the railing inside that elevator and she had died, what would Rice have said then? He would have gone to prison because he chose to hit the woman whom he says he loves, so hard that it caused her to hit her head and die.

The men who believe he was justified in hitting her and hitting her as hard as he did, need to think about if it was their sister, mother, aunt who was on the receiving end. Would it be the same for them?

The only way I can ever empathise with a man hitting a woman like that is if his life depended on it. I mean, like the woman is coming at him in a rage and armed with a knife, any other sharp cutting implement or gun and the only way he can disarm or protect himself is to disable her by knocking her out. That is the only way.

Otherwise, a woman can be restrained or calmed down enough so as to defuse any tension-filled situation. If that is not possible, then perhaps they should not be together. If a relationship is based on violent contact, the parties involved should never live under the same roof because then that would not be a relationship; it would be a constant confrontation.

Not even people who get their kicks by hitting can live with being hit every day.

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