Katrina Cooke Brownlee and her children were living with her fiancé, a New York City Correction officer.
“I don’t remember not having a black eye. … Whether it’d been the right one or the left one. … it was a busted lip (sighs). It was always something. … that’s why shades became a signature for me,” she told 48 Hours. Each time she called 911 after he beat her, he would flash his badge to the police. “And every time he flashed that badge, they would walk away,” she said.
As she was powerless to fight back her sadistic fiancé, she made up her mind and was about to leave him.
When she came home, “He opened the door and he just had, like, a weird look on his face. It was strange. … And … he pointed a gun to me and said, “this is the day you die, bitch,” and he shot me in my stomach. And then he shot me again. And —”
As she was crying unable to recount further what happened next, the assistant district attorney, Keri Herzog had to do it for her, “He emptied the gun after the first five … reloaded and proceeded to shoot her again five more times…Each time he would say to Katrina, ‘are you ready to die, Katrina?’ Bang. ‘Is this the day you’re going to die, Katrina?’ … Bang. ‘You know you deserve this, Katrina.’ Bang.”
Was it an isolated incident? Hardly. According to the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence, 1 in 4 women in the U.S. will experience severe intimate partner violence in their lifetime. Millions of women reported being physically assaulted or stalked by an intimate partner in a single year.
Worldwide? – 1 in 3.
Why has such horrendous crime gone unstoppable for ages?
Men are taller, heavier, and physically stronger. The disparity in power and reach has given them an advantage. They have known it, appreciated it, sickly treasured it, and refused to let it go even such “privilege” put their mothers, wives, and daughters at risk and in horrific harm. Even learned men such as politicians did not lift a finger to help. They did not care to certify the Equal Right Amendment to elevate the status of women and therefore provide them with more protection.
But do not just blame men. Women have never put up a real and effective fight against such injustice. Blame it on the Stockholm Syndrome. But the reality was that without the help from their fathers, brothers, husbands, and male children, they were helpless. They continued to fetch beer for “their men” who sat in their La-Z-Boy drinking beer and watching a football game while their women washed the dishes, cleaned the house, and put the children to bed. When the men left his La-Z-Boy to go to bed, their women had better be ready.
For good, or at least justifiable reason: men had to handle hard and dangerous tasks such as tilling the land, running cattle, killing wild animals, and fighting enemies. Women did not have physical strength to do all that and men over time assumed that they did not have brain either. And over time, they came to believe that they were the master, not an equal partner, and started to treat their wives like a possession doing to them whatever way they wanted – like a slave.
Such a master-slave relationship should not have existed between a man and a woman – or between any two human beings for that matter. It was against nature because, men and women came together to pursue common goals like security, safety, comfort, and chiefly to reproduce. But the moment men realized that they were physical stronger and could force women to comply with their wish, they did everything including using deadly weapons, to maintain such social orders.
Circumstances have allowed them to stay being the master and they were determined to maintain their status as the relationship afforded them more opportunities for comfort and the freedom to do crazy things.
It is worth noting that dictators and kings were the archetype of this kind of men: they had so low an appreciation of a woman’s worth that they never appointed a woman to any cabinet level position. During his long reign as the dictator of Germany, Hitler appointed NOT a single woman to his government. The women known to play certain important roles during his time in power were his consort who he married only a short time before their death, and a cinematographer. Kings were no difference.
But things have changed. The disparity of power is no longer significant. Women can work in the farm by using mechanical tools such as tractors, heavy jobs previously reserved for men. They fly jet fighters and space crafts. They head governments. They run mega conglomerates. The usefulness between men and women has been equalized. The reason for men to feel superior and behave bossily should disappear, considering that women are the only sex which solely carry, for nine months, the burden of guaranteeing the existence of men including those horrible men who heartlessly and brainlessly demand total control over women.
But women have had to overcome another hurdle very similar to hand-to-hand combat. In close quarter, in the house for example, the reach of men’s arms is longer that could still produce a punch with more force than women’s. That puts women at a real disadvantage. Their fight against bad and non-thinking men might be heroic but futile – unless and until they found strong enough allies. Happily, they have found one, quite unexpectedly.
The National Rifle Association, the terrific, fierce, and effective defender of the right to bear arms, especially concealed weapons.
The bully type would stop making demands when they know their women mean it when they say no. They would think twice before rashly acting out knowing that their partners practice shooting three times a week and they don’t know where their Smith and Wesson M&P 2.0 are.
It is about time for men to acknowledge and respect women’s power and rights. Heavy handed actions by men such as the Dodds v. Jackson decision (one might suspect that Justice Barrett joined the decision probably to show her loyalty rather than her inclination or reasoning. She was quite aware that her vote, one way or another, would not change the outcome, which had already been decided by the five male Justices), could transform a considered and peaceful evolution into a cantankerous and chaotic revolution – a shouting match between the sexes.
JOHN P. LE PHONG.
