FanPost

Stephen A. Smith suspension

Stephen A. Smith -- who I am no fan of -- was suspended a week by ESPN. For reference, here is a transcript of his comments as transcribed by nj.com:

"We know you have no business putting your hands on a woman. I don’t know how many times I got to reiterate that. But as a man who was raised by women, see I know what I’m going to do if somebody touches a female member of my family. I know what I’m going to do, I know what my boys are going to do. I know what, I’m going to have to remind myself that I work for the Worldwide Leader, I’m going to have to get law enforcement officials involved because of what I’m going to be tempted to do.
"But what I’ve tried to employ the female members of my family, some of who you all met and talked to and what have you, is that again, and this what, I’ve done this all my life, let’s make sure we don’t do anything to provoke wrong actions, because if I come, or somebody else come, whether it’s law enforcement officials, your brother or the fellas that you know, if we come after somebody has put their hands on you, it doesn’t negate the fact that they already put their hands on you. So let’s try to make sure that we can do our part in making sure that that doesn’t happen.
"Now you got some dudes that are just horrible and they’re going to do it anyway, and there’s never an excuse to put your hands on a woman. But domestic violence or whatever the case may be, with men putting their hands on women, is obviously a very real, real issue in our society. And I think that just talking about what guys shouldn’t do, we got to also make sure that you can do your part to do whatever you can do to make, to try to make sure it doesn’t happen.
"We know they’re wrong. We know they’re criminals. We know they probably deserve to be in jail. In Ray Rice’s case, he probably deserves more than a 2-game suspension which we both acknowledged. But at the same time, we also have to make sure that we learn as much as we can about elements of provocation. Not that there’s real provocation, but the elements of provocation, you got to make sure that you address them, because we’ve got to do is do what we can to try to prevent the situation from happening in any way. And I don’t think that’s broached enough, is all I’m saying. No point of blame."


I'm scared to be coming down on the wrong side of this but...
I feel like he did everything he could to say it right. It's not like he was Chris Rock talking about his daughter saying "I'm not saying it was right -- I'm just saying I understand."
He was unequivocal that hitting a woman is never under any circumstances an acceptable action, and simply said that as a minor point, that women shouldn't "provoke" it -- which I understand to mean don't hit a man, don't go on and on with the crazy sh*, etc. He's saying that despite the fact that man-on-woman violence is always wrong, we should address prevention efforts from every possible perspective.
Which... I agree with. It's something I would tell my daughter: Rape is a terrible, evil crime -- thus I exhort you to do your part: Don't go to a sleazy club, get entirely inebriated, and go home with a total stranger. Keep your drink covered and don't take drinks from strangers. Go with a group of friends and make an agreement to not become separated.
And I don't think by telling her this I'd be blaming her if it happened.
It's not condoning, it's not placing blame. It's simple risk management, "hard target" type stuff. I realize some men will hit women regardless of what the women does, but throughout society we do things to minimize crime -- we do our part. We put fences around our pools, we put motion detector lights on our houses. We don't walk down an alley in the toughest part of the city with obvious signs of riches on us. Yet for some reason when it comes to crimes against women this same principle gets cast as blaming the victim.
I apologize if my stance offends anyone and I truly am open to changing my mind -- frankly, I'd like to change my mind so people don't think I'm a misogynist! I consider myself a feminist and a strong advocate for equality and women's rights. I'm going to gChat my feminism mentor on this later today! But I'd love to hear your thoughts.

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