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Old July 21st, 2015 #17
Zorost
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Join Date: Jun 2015
Posts: 1,110
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Best example I've come across:

In criminal law class in law school there was a section on the so-called 'burning bed' defense for murder. There was a TV movie about an abused woman who set her husband on fire, and apparently feminists decided this was excellent legal precedent for excusing women for murdering their husbands even though they were in no immediate danger (the usual standard.)

The way this defense was supposed to work was that because a woman had been so abused she lost her will, and couldn't be held accountable for any of her actions. Because she was effectively a will-less zombie she had no 'mens rhea', or 'guilty mind.'

Some male lawyer tried to defend a female who killed her husband with this theory. Since the woman had to be shown to not be able to make competent decisions due to her will being dominated by her husband, this lawyer played up how the woman was incompetent, couldn't make decisions on her own, and was completely dominated by her husband.

Feminist reaction: they viciously attacked the lawyer for being a sexist pig, and tried to ruin his career.

Reason: the male lawyer portrayed his female client as incompetent, unable to make decisions on her own, and completely dominated by her husband. Which was the definition of the defense they had wanted him to go with...

In other words, both the killer and the feminists were desperate to escape responsibility for their actions and words.


I'm not sure why the prof included this in the class, since it's not really useful anymore; I got the impression that he thought it was funny too, but couldn't connect the dots in class due to worries about being attacked himself. So he just threw it out there for those with eyes to see.