For any modern day (western society, anyway) examples you have a really good point, but keep in mind for women in the recent past there would realistically not be any “due process” if they even managed to get an abuser into a courtroom.
“I hunted this guy down and killed him cuz he was an asshole” is very different from “I had no way to escape this guy and I did what I had to to get away”. The fact that these women had to resort to murder to get away from their abusers is disgusting, but until/unless I live thru a situation like theirs I’ll personally save my judgement for the system that put them in that position rather than the women themselves.
My point is we’ll never know if these people were actually abusive. I’m not saying murder is never morally justified, but simply assuming the murderer is in the right because they said so is certifiably nuts.
We might not know, but people back then absolutely did know. It wasn’t even illegal to beat your wife until 1920, and not really enforced until the 70s. It was easier to just call it an accident or a heart attack.
I get what you mean - in any particular case it might not be possible to ever prove that the murder was actually morally justified, so maybe we’re just giving some batshit crazy stab-happy lady a pass for no reason. Still, even if we can’t know whether or not it was morally justified, we can and do know that the conditions that would justify it were common enough that I’m personally comfortable with the odds ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
For any modern day (western society, anyway) examples you have a really good point, but keep in mind for women in the recent past there would realistically not be any “due process” if they even managed to get an abuser into a courtroom.
“I hunted this guy down and killed him cuz he was an asshole” is very different from “I had no way to escape this guy and I did what I had to to get away”. The fact that these women had to resort to murder to get away from their abusers is disgusting, but until/unless I live thru a situation like theirs I’ll personally save my judgement for the system that put them in that position rather than the women themselves.
My point is we’ll never know if these people were actually abusive. I’m not saying murder is never morally justified, but simply assuming the murderer is in the right because they said so is certifiably nuts.
We might not know, but people back then absolutely did know. It wasn’t even illegal to beat your wife until 1920, and not really enforced until the 70s. It was easier to just call it an accident or a heart attack.
Have you heard old men speak about women? The amount of lamenting is completely absurd. Sad they can’t do certain things anymore.
It’s an easy assumption to make that the majority of husbands were cruel and demanding.
The ones that complain about not holding puppet strings might shift the balance. The vocal ones speak for the lot, and they suck.
I get what you mean - in any particular case it might not be possible to ever prove that the murder was actually morally justified, so maybe we’re just giving some batshit crazy stab-happy lady a pass for no reason. Still, even if we can’t know whether or not it was morally justified, we can and do know that the conditions that would justify it were common enough that I’m personally comfortable with the odds ¯\_(ツ)_/¯