If someone is talking about domestic violence, what do you picture? Most people, men included, tend to think of a man assaulting a wife or girlfriend. Of course, this kind of domestic violence does happen, but there are also cases of women assaulting their male or female partners and men assaulting their male partners, too. Even though we all know that, the presumption still remains that domestic violence is an act of violence, committed by a man, against his female partner.
It is not just common citizens that think this way, however. When police officers arrive on the scene of a reported domestic assault and both a man and woman are hurt, they often arrest the man, believing that the only reason he is injured is because the woman fought back, but what if it was the other way around?
When Baltimore Raven Ray Rice and his wife were visiting Atlantic City, they got into a physical fight, but only the husband, Rice, was implicated. He has said, however, that he was merely acting in self-defense after his wife attacked him first. Though he believes he could have won in court, he also recognizes that the public would hardly consider him to be innocent.
If we are to believe him, the football player only hit his wife after she assaulted him first. Despite the fact that he was just defending himself, people are quick to jump to the conclusion that he had acted inappropriately. If the roles had been reversed and he threw the first punch, there might not be many people criticizing Rice’s wife for fighting back.