"Cory Upton-Cosulich sat in a parked car by a hiking trail in Maine this week, fuming over the implosion of Graham Platner’s Senate campaign."

"Her anger wasn’t directed at him. It was aimed at the powerful people far away from her working-class harbor town who, one after the next, had rescinded their endorsements of a candidate she supported in the Democratic primary last month. The feeling was familiar — watching people in Washington decide who should represent her. She said she believed the woman who had accused Mr. Platner.... She decided to support him anyway, because he had promised to work on her behalf, and she believed him... [S]ome women in this independent-minded slice of the country who powered the progressive upstart’s meteoric rise are angry and grieving.... Several women said they recognized Mr. Platner’s swaggering style from men in their lives who had hurt them. They supported him anyway...."

From "Why Some Women in Maine Are Mourning the End of Graham Platner’s Campaign/They believe the accuser, but they also grieve the demise of a campaign that promised that politics could be different — and they blame those who failed to find a less flawed candidate" (NYT).

"Ms. Upton-Cosulich, 40... a mother, a pottery studio owner and a survivor of abuse... was in the kitchen of the house she cannot afford to buy when she learned that Mr. Platner had suspended his campaign. The feeling reminded her of 2016, when she read reports that officials with the Democratic National Committee had privately derided and mocked her preferred presidential candidate, Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont...."

"Forced to marry her cousin at 12, Kouhkan became pregnant at 13 and gave birth to a son. She suffered physical and emotional abuse..."

"... for years. On the day her husband was killed, Kouhkan found him beating their son, then aged five. She called her husband’s cousin, Mohammad Abil, for help. When he arrived a fight broke out which resulted in the death of her husband...."

From "Child bride spared execution in Iran after blood money is paid/Guardian story helped to draw attention to planned hanging of Goli Kouhkan over death of abusive husband" (The Guardian).

"Iran executes the highest number of women in the world, according to available data. Amnesty International said that at least 30 women were executed in the country last year. At least 42 women have been executed in 2025 so far – 18 for murdering their husbands, including two child brides, according to Iran Human Rights."

"It was hard not to interpret these recent offenses within the broader context of a roving and seemingly ever-more-insidious misogyny."

"In 2022, the most recent year for which there is available city data, women were killed by intimate partners at a rate 30 percent higher than the previous year. Reports of domestic violence also increased during that period, and nationwide, between 2018 and 2021, incidents of domestic violence involving guns went up by more than 7 percent. According to a survey from the Pew Research Center, a third of women under 35 report having been sexually harassed online. And this is to say nothing of the less manifestly aggressive if pervasive abrasions — the distillation of any middle-aged woman who complains about anything to the favored signifier of oblivious bourgeois entitlement, the 'Karen.'..."

Writes Ginia Bellafante in "Sexism, Hate, Mental Illness: Why Are Men Randomly Punching Women?/Conversation about the attacks on the streets of New York have centered on mental illness, but the offenses seem to have their roots in hatred of women" (NYT).

"The Supreme Court seemed ready on Tuesday to rule that the government may disarm people under domestic violence orders...."

"Justice Neil M. Gorsuch... asked a series of questions sketching out a minimalist ruling upholding the law, suggesting that the case before the court was an easy one. 'We actually have a finding of a credible threat,' he said... ... Justices Barrett and Brett M. Kavanaugh — made similar comments.... "

Writes Adam Liptak, in "Supreme Court Seems Likely to Uphold Law Disarming Domestic Abusers/The potential sweep of a decision could extend far beyond domestic abuse by clarifying the scope of the court’s ruling last year that vastly expanded gun rights" (NYT).

"Does even this trigger-happy Supreme Court want to be seen as stripping from women in mortal danger from their intimate partners whatever safety this 29-year-old law has provided?"

Asks Linda Greenhouse, in "Will the Supreme Court Toss Out a Gun Law Meant to Protect Women?" (NYT).

Research shows that the presence of a gun in the hands of an abuser makes it five times as likely that a female victim will be killed. That inconvenient fact will remain a fact even for a court more attentive to life in 1791 than death in 2023.

The Supreme Court is reviewing a 5th Circuit opinion that that struck down a federal law that criminalized possession of a firearm by someone subject to a domestic violence restraining order.

"Zack suffered from fetal alcohol syndrome, the result of his mother drinking heavily throughout her pregnancy."

"When he was 3, he was hospitalized for drinking about 10 ounces of vodka.... [H]is stepfather... forced him to perform sex acts, kicked him with spurs, beat him, ran him over with a car, forced him to drink alcohol, injected him with drugs, attempted to drown him and created devices to electrically shock him if he wet the bed.... When he was a child, Zack’s older sister killed their mother with an ax.... As an adult... [h]e was unable to cook, measure, select weather-appropriate clothing, follow a bathing routine, follow directions, pass a driver’s test or open a bank account.... In 2002... the Supreme Court held that executing people with intellectual disabilities violated [the] constitutional protection against cruel and unusual punishment.... but courts repeatedly denied him relief, citing Florida’s IQ score cutoff...."

 
From "Florida Executes Man Sentenced To Death By Split Jury/Michael Zack’s lawyers say he had an intellectual disability. He was killed amid Gov. Ron DeSantis’ push to make it easier to execute people" (HuffPo).

"When, in the late sixties, the emergent radical-feminist movement began to advance a critique of heterosexuality, [Betty] Friedan found the focus on sexuality both crude and a bit naïve."

"'Young women only need a little more experience to understand that the gut issues of this revolution involve employment and education . . . not sexual fantasy,' she wrote in a memo.... Betty was intellectually serious, politically committed, and not very pretty. She craved romantic devotion from men that was not forthcoming. Her problem, one that would frustrate her for the rest of her life, was that she could not find a man who respected her as an equal and also wanted to sleep with her...."

Writes Moira Donegan, in "Betty Friedan and the Movement That Outgrew Her/Friedan was indispensable to second-wave feminism. And yet she was difficult to like" (The New Yorker).

Before blogging, there were proto-bloggers, and I have encountered another example: Rose Kennedy.

I have commemorated proto-bloggers before. For example, something John Keats did in 1816. And, in the first year of my own blogging, I told you about my grandfather, Pop. And though I can’t find where I've blogged about it, there's something I myself used to do in the 1990s. I'd read the paper NYT at the dining table in the morning and if I found something distinctly interesting, I'd tear it out and put it on the other side of the table, where my sons would see it when they eventually came into the room.

Anyway, the proto-blogger I discovered today was Rose Kennedy. As a consequence of reading that Rebecca Traister article about RFK Jr. — blogged here — I started reading his book "American Values/Lessons I Learned from My Family." 

Here's what I consider to be like blogging:

Why did Ted Cruz drag Pat Benatar into this?

Ted Cruz: “I don’t think Senate Democrats, if you had video of Joe Biden murdering children dressed as the devil under a full moon while singing Pat Benatar, they still wouldn’t vote to convict.” pic.twitter.com/ysYei6Rr3E

— The Intellectualist (@highbrow_nobrow) June 15, 2023

Let's read "Pat Benatar roasts Sen. Ted Cruz after he suggests she’s demonic" (NY Post). Ah:

Cruz’s comment may have been a reference to the Rock & Roll Hall of Famer’s 1980 hit “Hell Is For Children.”

It's odd that Cruz assumes people know this song, which I see was the B side of "Love Is a Battlefield." This is a recording from 1980. I'm older than  most Americans, and I remember living through the songs of 43 years ago, but I only knew the A side.

Here are the lyrics. To quote a bit: "It's all so confusing, this brutal abusing/They blacken your eyes, and then 'pologize/You're daddy's good girl, and don't tell mommy a thing.... Hell is for children...."

Of course, the Post headline is silly. Cruz didn't "suggest" that Benatar is "demonic." He created an exaggerated image of Joe Biden — something along the lines of Trump's "shoot a man on 5th Avenue" — as a way to say that nothing would be enough to turn Senate Democrats against Biden. Singing "Hell Is For Children" is a stray detail probably intended to add color and coolness, but of course, Benatar doesn't want her song thought of as celebrating the point of view of the child abuser. 

"My brother, who is 12 years my senior, witnessed my mother repeatedly slapping infant me, not stopping til my father restrained her."

"He told me some 30 years later, with visible guilt. I was appreciative. I had always felt fearful and alienated by my mother from an early age, but without knowing about that incident, thought it was due to some defect in my own character. Truth is a disinfectant, even if it hurts, initially."

That's the highest-rated comment on a NYT advice column, "My Sibling Was Abused as a Baby. Should I Share What I Saw? The magazine’s Ethicist columnist on the disclosure of a horrific event in a family’s past."

The columnist, Kwame Anthony Appiah, concludes "To insist on disclosure when the knowledge would only cause long-term distress would be acting on that old maxim fiat justitia, ruat caelum — let there be justice, though the heavens fall. That, I fear, would be a kind of moral fanaticism."

There's a Wikipedia article on fiat justitia, ruat caelum. I'll just quote some of the famous examples of the use of the Latin phrase, which The Ethicist used to warn against doing something for the sake of justice. Is that the way it always goes, or is it often — more often? — used to mean put justice first and let the chips fall where they may?

J.K. Rowling quotes Andrea Dworkin.

“Men often react to women’s words—speaking and writing—as if they were acts of violence; sometimes men react to women’s words with violence...Most women have experienced enough dominance from men—control, violence, insult, contempt—that no threat seems empty.” Andrea Dworkin pic.twitter.com/ZJwHZeR5hh

— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) March 25, 2023

"Inside, the church was less than half full. There were plenty of Hermès bags but few boldfaced names from the gilt-covered slice of Manhattan society the couple had inhabited..."

"... in the 1980s and 1990s.... 'In the tumultuous times of the last few years, with all the attacks we faced,' [Donald Trump Jr.] said, 'she was the first person to call and see if I perhaps wanted, or maybe needed, to move back in with her. That call was simultaneously the sweetest and most emasculating thing ever. And she could do that with the best of them, and usually it was on purpose.' When he was a small child, Mr. Trump said, he went with his family to the Hamptons. While there, he acted at Gosman’s (Montauk’s best-known seafood spot) in a way that 'exceeded the limits' of everyone’s patience. His mother, he said, took him to the bathroom and showed him 'what Eastern European discipline was really all about.' When it was over, he said, she told him, 'And if you cry, we’re going to come back in here and do this again.'... [Eric Trump] told another story about his sister Ivanka destroying a very pricey chandelier while playing in the house with a beach ball. 'Ivanka managed to quickly convince my mother that it was me,' he said. That time, the 'remedy,' as he put it, was a 'wooden spoon,' and what made his mother even more irate as she spanked him was his fervent denial of having played any role in the misbehavior. 'Not only had I broken the chandelier, but now I was also lying to her,' he said. But by the time she realized he was telling the truth, Mr. Trump said, she was 'too tired to deal with Ivanka.'"

From "At Ivana Trump’s Funeral, a Gold-Hued Coffin and the Secret Service" (NYT).

I'll just say it was mean of the Times to say "the church was less than half full" and tag this post with "mothers," "domestic violence," and "gender difference" and move on.

"I want to scream. I want to vomit. I want tear down every courthouse brick by brick because there is no justice to be had in our system of laws."

Said a woman — identified only as "Meghan" — who had experienced "physical and emotional abuse" during her marriage.

Quoted in "'Men Always Win’: Survivors ‘Sickened’ by the Amber Heard Verdict/It didn’t matter what the verdict was — as one domestic violence survivor puts it, 'this case is my worst fear playing out on a public stage'" (Rolling Stone).

This morning, I'm brushing off the many knee-jerk reactions to the Depp/Heard verdict — low-quality ravings about how women in general will suffer because this one woman wasn't believed. (It seems to me, the greater cause is the truth, and we can very coherently side with real victims and oppose phony victims. This was a case of catching a liar in action.)

But this quote struck me as different and bloggable because it speaks of destroying the buildings that house the governmental entities that are functioning in a way that you believe falls below proper standards: I want tear down every courthouse brick by brick because there is no justice to be had in our system of laws. 

It made me think of the January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol building. Put to the side whether you agree that the 2020 election was rigged or that Amber Heard didn't get justice. The question is, if you do think something like that, should your reaction be to attack the building?

"This particular mess is due to Wapo having seen fit to accept Heard as a credible voice against domestic violence, and to publish her cynical screed as something positive and truthful for the world."

"Sure they both suck, but how bout a little more due diligence next time, Post?"

That's the top-rated comment at the Washington Post article, "Depp’s cross-examination wraps up with rehash of texts, audio clips."

"Timothy and Tracy Ferriter told [the handyman] exactly what they wanted him to build [in their garage]: an 8-foot-by-8-foot structure with its own ceiling and door..."

"The space also needed to have electricity, a window air conditioning unit and a camera in the ceiling — and it had to be built in two days.... The Ferriters... also requested the structure have a doorknob only on the outside.... The handyman said something felt off, so he contacted the Jupiter Police Department to report the incident. It wasn’t until police visited the house about one month later — after the Ferriters’ 14-year-old adopted son had run away from home — that they discovered a small room in the family’s garage that matched the specifications described by the handyman.... Jupiter police began looking into the family’s situation starting Jan. 28, when Tracy Ferriter called police to report that the teen had gone missing...." 

From "A handyman was asked to build a ‘strange’ room in a couple’s garage. Police say their son was locked inside and surveilled" (WaPo). 

The police seem to have done nothing in response to the handyman's report and only acted when the mother reported the boy missing.

"The moral price of life in a fallen world was not a thought exercise for Simmons [DMX], who died this past April of a cocaine-induced heart attack."

"Born in Mount Vernon, N.Y., in 1970, he was the only son of Arnett Simmons and Joe Barker. Barker left, leaving Simmons — a teenager — to raise her child alone in Yonkers. She struggled with how to raise a Black son amid the poverty of the School Street projects, and subjected him to outrageous abuse. In a 2019 interview with GQ, Simmons recounted being beaten so badly by Arnett that she knocked his teeth out; he was 6 years old. The mistreatment cloaked his life in almost total, grinding fear.... The abuse begot criminal and antisocial behavior — Simmons once stabbed another kid in the face with a pencil — which in turn triggered more abuse. One summer, trying to discipline Simmons, Arnett locked him in his bedroom for months. He was allowed to leave only for bathroom breaks. In 1983, Arnett effectively severed their relationship when she took him to the Children’s Village group home on the pretense that they were just visiting. It was a trick: She left him there. 'Right then and there... I learned to just put away, conceal, bury whatever bothered me. End of story. I think another side of me was born right there, that enabled me to protect myself.'"

From "DMX/His music seethed with aggression and the kind of pain Black men rarely get to air in public" in "The Lives They Lived" — the NYT collection of essays about people who died last year.

"Alex Jones’ wife Erika Wulff Jones allegedly struck the far-right conspiracy theorist 'over 20 times' and threatened to hit him in the head with a stone ball, causing him to 'fear for his life'..."

"... according to police documents reviewed by The Daily Beast... According to the Travis County arrest affidavit, during an initial 911 phone call with police, Jones told an emergency operator that his wife had struck him over the head multiple times and was 'holding a polished club in her hand' and attempting to 'hit him with it.'... According to Jones, Erika had accused him of 'cheating on her,' leading to a violent altercation as the duo bathed their child.... Police located a stone, weighing approximately five pounds, in the primary bedroom... Jones told police that she never hit him with the stone, but 'threw it at his head, missing by inches.'... Jones insisted that she took down two police officers at their Austin home on Friday night after striking him '30 times,' mostly in the back of the head. 'So that’s what happens when someone has a chemical imbalance after surgery and the medication they had mixes together,' Jones said, 'and they literally go to cuckoo world, cloud cuckoo.'"

The Daily Beast reports.

"A dark future is awaiting everyone in Afghanistan, especially female judges."

"I lost my job and now I can’t even go outside or do anything freely because I fear these freed prisoners."

Said Nabila, a former judge, quoted in "Female Judges in Afghanistan, Now Jobless and in Hiding/They fear that they or their loved ones could be tracked down and killed because of their work delivering justice to women. 'We have lost everything — our jobs, our homes, the way we lived'" (NYT).

And there's this, from Susan Glazebrook, a supreme court justice of New Zealand, who is president of the International Association of Women Judges: 

"They are women who had the effrontery to sit in judgment on men. The women judges of Afghanistan are under threat for applying the law. They are under threat because they have made rulings in favor of women according to law in family violence, custody and divorce cases.... Women judging men is anathema to the Taliban.... These women believed in their country, believed in human rights and believed in the importance of the rule of law and their duty to uphold it... [And because of that, t]hey are at risk of losing their lives.”

"The U.S. military has sent 'gender and protection advisors' to Fort McCoy... to address gender-specific needs of the nearly 13,000 men, women, boys and girls..."

"Gender advisors for the Department of Defense were created by a 2018 law that mandates the U.S. military to address the gender needs of people and minorities in war and conflict zones.... The Wisconsin State Journal reported in September that some Afghan women at the base had faced harassment by Afghan men, many of them former members of the Afghan military. One Afghan man at the base was charged in federal court for sexually abusing two underage boys, while another is charged with choking and suffocating his wife."

From "Military deploys 'gender advisors' for Afghans at Fort McCoy" (Wisconsin State Journal).

"Evan Rachel Wood Accuses Marilyn Manson of Abuse ... Hours later Mr. Manson’s label dropped him."

 The NYT reports.

“The name of my abuser is Brian Warner, also known to the world as Marilyn Manson,” Ms. Wood wrote in an Instagram post. “He started grooming me when I was a teenager and horrifically abused me for years. I was brainwashed and manipulated into submission. I am done living in fear of retaliation, slander, or blackmail. I am here to expose this dangerous man and call out the many industries that have enabled him, before he ruins any more lives. I stand with the many victims who will no longer be silent.”

Wood was 19 — a teenager — when the relationship began. Manson was twice her age. His Instagrammed response is:

“Obviously, my art and my life have long been magnets for controversy, but these recent claims about me are horrible distortions of reality. My intimate relationships have always been entirely consensual with like-minded partners. Regardless of how — and why — others are now choosing to misrepresent the past, that is the truth.”

From the NYT: