In your opinion, can a wife beater be a good person?

[ZombieHorde]

This poll is about your opinion and ethics.

Gandhi beat his own wife, and then he did many many good things.

Can good deeds, such as being a civil rights leader, outweigh bad deeds, such as beating women out of anger?

[Why Syzygy]

1. What is your source for:

Gandhi beat his own wife

[ZombieHorde]

2. Gandhi was very open about his wife beating. He wrote about it in his autobiography.

[CoffeeCat]

3. Ghandi beat his wife?

Who knew?

[Warpy]

4. Yes, he mistreated the poor woman horribly

especially in their early life together. He was a total shit, a product of both his culture and his time who never questioned his right to abuse another human being.

He also allowed her to die, not trusting the "foreign" penicillin that might have saved her life.

However, his politics were impeccable and his strategy of provoking all the violence on the British side was masterful.

Men can be total shits in one area and outstanding in others. There isn't a single person alive who is either all good or all bad. He was a complex being and so are we.

It's just a peculiarity of the west that we expect our heroes also to be saints.

[struggle4progress]

24. Here's a link to the autobiography. Can you document your claim please?

http://www.scribd.com/doc/3517307/Gandhi-An-Autobiography-The-Story-of-My-Experiments-With-Truth

[struggle4progress]

27. If you cannot document your claim "Gandhi beat his wife," perhaps you should not make the claim

[ZombieHorde]

28. I googled the claim for your pleasure.

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0003987/bio

eta: I did not see your original request because I usually use "My DU" to view new replies, which only shows replies to posts in the last 48 hours, a window you missed by a few hours. I just happen to notice this thread was kicked.

[struggle4progress]

29. What a cheap and lazy cop-out! You claim it's in the autobiography. I give you the autobiography,

and ask you to support your claim -- so you give me a link which repeats the claim in even less detail and without any supporting evidence

Pbffth

[ZombieHorde]

30. Do you really expect me to read the whole book just for you?

Well I skimmed it, because I love you so much.

On page 14 Gandhi mentions he was often violent with his wife.

On page 7 Gandhi mentions he was severe with his wife because "I wanted to make my wife an ideal wife. My ambition was to make her live a pure life" Italics his.

On page 146 you can read about big strong Gandhi physically dragging his wife about their house in anger.

"It is better to be violent, if there is violence in our hearts, than to put on the cloak of nonviolence to cover impotence." - http://www.quotationspage.com/quote/2742.html">Gandhi

[struggle4progress]

31. I can't find any references to beatings. Your first two citations apparently refer to his

bossiness and treatment of his wife as a sex object when he was still in his mid-teens (though it's really impossible to tell exactly to what you refer); the third citation refers to an argument they had while he was practicing law in South Africa, when he ordered his wife to do something, she essentially dared him to throw her off the property, and he stupidly obliged -- all of which he regretted as he became more mature

[ZombieHorde]

Page 14, 2nd paragraph, 5th sentence, quote, "And I have never forgiven myself the VIOLENCE OF WHICH

I HAVE BEEN GUILTY IN OFTEN HAVING PAINED MY WIFE by acting of this information."

Gandhi was violent with his wife, and then he felt bad about it.

I have to say, I am really going out of my way for you here.

treatment of his wife as a sex object

The whole book is kind of creepy on the subject of sex. His sexual relationship with is wife did not seem healthy to me, not just when he was young, but all throughout the book.

Thanks for the link by the way, I may have to give the book a more thorough read when I have more time.

[struggle4progress]

33. I suspect you are unfamiliar with Victorian-era English:

... She started up -- Elizabeth was ever violent in her resolutions as well as in her feelings -- she went to the door ... Her distress was so violent that she could not speak for a few minutes ... He actually shook with anger; he crushed the letter in his hand till not a word was legible; then, trampling it under foot, he burst into the most tremendous invectives against those who had written it. Agnes trembled with terror at his violence. She almost forgot her grief in her anxiety. She rose up, and clinging to his arm, implored of him to be more composed. "Dear Richard," she said, "it can do no good to use these terrible words against them; let us think rather what we are to do. I cannot go, I feel that I cannot; it would kill me!" ... In one manner only was this possible--she must consent to marry him. The violent start, the rush of warm blood to her very forehead, the wild bewildered glance of her eyes upon his face--for all this Richard was fully prepared; but he trembled for the success of his plan, when he saw that she shrunk from his side where she had placed herself so confidingly, and that her breast seemed heaving with some strong emotion ... Agnes was deadly pale: she shivered violently, and averted her head as they passed the churchyard ... When they reached the church, the lady ensconced herself in a pew, and, desiring them to call her when they were ready to return, left them to proceed alone towards the altar. Agnes trembled so violently, that she could scarcely walk ... "What an existence!" said Richard, rising and pacing the room in violent agitation; "father and son living within a few hundred yards of each other on such terms as these! You will bear it calmly, I doubt not; but to me it will be insupportable" ... Lord and Lady Verney spoke violently, unmoved by their son's despair ... Throughout the whole of that long dreadful night he watched beside her, with Agnes kneeling by his side, and when morning broke, just as he expected, she was in the first stage of a violent brain fever ... Her life was spared, but not her intellect; the succession of violent shocks she had received, had completely overthrown her reason, and she rose from her illness a confirmed and helpless idiot ...
The Inheritance of Evil
by <Felicia Skene>
Joseph Masters
London 1849
http://www.indiana.edu/~letrs/vwwp/skene/evil.html

In Gandhi's Victorian English, "violence" might references real physical violence or the threat of real physical violence, but it might also simply means he was inconsiderately loud or agitated or unpleasantly imperious in his treatment of her. The latter seems to be the correct reading to me, since he notes that he set out to teach her how to be a good wife, according to his childish view, and wanted her to stay at home, and that the more he insisted on this the less likely she was to pay attention to what he told her. They were married at puberty, and she was pregnant at sixteen; the Indian culture seems to have anticipated that such early marriages had some difficulties, since (as Gandhi relates) the young wife was expected to return regularly to her father's house for extended periods. The young married Gandhi doesn't seem to have been more much enlightened about girls than most other teenaged boys, and he is fairly frank that he was originally more interested in sex than in her personal feelings. But given the confessional slant of the book, he would probably have explicitly said so had he actually ever battered her

[darkstar3]

34. Just stop.

1. Whether Ghandi ACTUALLY beat his wife or not is irrelevant to the overall question posed by the poll.
2. Your interpretation of Ghandi's own words is very different from mine, or from ZombieHorde's, and the funny thing is, unless you start reading things INTO what Ghandi wrote you can't reach your particular conclusion.
3. Even if what you say about Ghandi is true, you still sound like you are DEFENDING verbal and emotional (if not physical) spousal abuse, so you come off looking like a douchebag.
4. Pull as many quotes from other sources as you like and flood the board, as is your way, you won't be able to change the fact that Ghandi himself, a man who knew much about violence, claimed that he was violent toward his wife. If you continue to defend the actions that he himself wished to recant, then you will serve only to disgust the other members of this board.

[ZombieHorde]

36. "Violence" is used in your example is an adjective, while Gandhi was

using the word as a verb.

"Her distress was so violent" versus "the violence of which I have been guilty in often having pained my wife".

These two examples are obviously using different uses of the word "violent."

"he would probably have explicitly said so had he actually ever battered her"

He did explicitly say he battered her when he said he was often violent with her, and again when he gave the example of dragging her through their house.

"I suspect you are unfamiliar with Victorian-era English"

This debate is not about me.

darkstar3 is correct, this poll is actually about ethics and redemption.

[Schema Thing]

5. Jehovah's Witness women are admonished that their unbelieving

husbands who beat them may be "won without a word" (taken from a bible verse and meaning, in a JW context "converted into a Jehovah's Witness") if they respond in a "meek and mild-tempered manner" (which manner includes staying with the abuser unless it's *really* really bad) :eyeroll:

[Why Syzygy]

6. Marriage

My advice on how to beat your wife: don't – she'll always win
By Tom Utley


All sensible husbands will agree with me when I say that it is very important to beat one's wife. They will therefore share my sympathy with Mohamed Kamal Mustafa, the preacher who was given a 15-month prison sentence in Spain this week for writing a book offering tips on wife-beating, the Muslim way.

In Women in Islam, published three years ago, Mr Mustafa recommends a three-stage approach to keeping the little woman in order: first, give her verbal warnings; next, if she still refuses to mend her ways, subject her to a period of sexual abstinence; finally, if even stage two fails to do the trick, administer judicious beatings. "The blows should be concentrated on the hands and feet," Mr Mustafa advises, "using a rod that is thin and light so that it does not leave scars or bruises on the body."

Mr Mustafa may or may not be right when he claims that his methods are sanctioned by the Koran. That is a question for theologians to argue about. But what is quite clear is that, in writing his book, he was attempting to perform a public service. He was doing his best to help solve a problem that has bedevilled husbands through the ages. That hardly deserves a prison sentence.

I should say at once, before I am extradited to Spain and clapped in irons under a European arrest warrant, that I think Mr Mustafa's advice is very stupid and bad.

For a start, verbal warnings are completely useless. I have lost count of the number of times, over the 24 years of our marriage, when I have warned my wife that she mustn't touch the little stash of unanswered letters and unpaid bills that I file away on the shelf in the kitchen behind the cookery books. But does she listen? Does she hell. She goes on tidying them away, so that nobody can ever find them again.

As for the threat of sexual abstinence, I conducted a little experiment in the office this week. I showed a number of my female colleagues a photograph of Mr Mustafa, and asked them how they would feel if they were married to him, and he withdrew his sexual favours. Without exception, they said that they would regard it more as a relief than as a punishment.

One of them told me that the photograph put her in mind of a certain minister in the Thatcher government. My colleague had once asked this man's first wife what it had been like, submitting to her husband's carnal attentions. "Well," the ex-wife replied, "it was rather like having a very large wardrobe falling on top of me, with a very small key in the door." Women are cruel like that.

Mr Mustafa's most fatuous suggestion, of course, is that we should beat our wives physically. I say this not only because I am a coward, and I know that, if I hit my wife, she would hit me back a lot harder. Nor do I say it simply because I am old-fashioned enough to believe that hitting a woman is about the most contemptible thing that a man can do.

The advice is idiotic, because the moment when a man hits his wife is the moment when she has won. People often ask why battered wives keep going back to the husbands who attack them. At least a part of the answer must surely be that every blow that a man inflicts on a woman is a little victory for her. I know that this is no laughing matter, but do admit that there is a grain of truth in what I am saying.

Mr Mustafa is quite right to identify marriage as a battleground, in which each partner is constantly seeking to defeat the other. But where he goes wrong is in completely mistaking the nature of the war and the weapons that are most likely to win it. For a man to beat his wife properly, he must never use a rod. The only effective weapons are psychological.

All couples are different, and there was never a truer word said than that you should never try to read a marriage.

For example, my wife and I have a pair of dear friends who have been married for ages and who, to all outward appearances, detest each other. Their life is a constant shouting match.

The last time we saw them was at a wedding in the country, where he started the fight by saying: "You bloody stupid woman! You've forgotten to pack my tie!" You can imagine how the conversation developed from there, with her reflections on whose responsibility it was to pack his clothes, and his protestations that he had far more important things to think about than filling a suitcase, and her observation that, if packing was so bloody unimportant, then why was he getting so hot under the collar about it…

For the first year or two of their mega-decibel marriage, I was convinced that they were charging towards the divorce courts. But now I think that they will still be together, long after our lovier-dovier friends have parted. They have struck on a method of conducting the psychological warfare of marriage that suits them both to a T.

I would never dare to tell my wife that she was a bloody stupid woman, even if she forgot to pack my tie for a wedding. That is because I have always been more comfortable with passive aggression than with the active sort. I specialise in the hurt, martyred, Princess Di look. Had I found myself in the same circumstances as my tie-less friend, I would probably have said something like: "Don't worry, darling, it's only a stupid tie. I don't suppose anyone will notice that I look like a complete wally." And she would understand everything.

http://www.paktribune.com/pforums/posts.php?t=2310&start=1

[ZombieHorde]

7. Unusual reply. I guess I am not a sensible husband. nt

[dmallind]

8. So so far 3/4 of DUers deny Gandhi was a good person or ever could be?

MLK had affairs - I suppose he's a bad guy too eh?

[ZombieHorde]

9. I may have to make a MLK poll on another day. nt

[darkstar3]

10. I haven't read about MLK's affairs,

but I can tell you that there is a huge difference between lustful indiscretions and willful violence against another person, especially when that other person is someone who is supposed to trust you implicitly.

But it is possible that I am biased. I hold no pity for wife or child beaters, because I think that once you cross that line and commit such violence against a loved one you have forfeited a certain piece of your humanity.

[dmallind]

11. Probably true, but once you steal, or lie, or embezzle have you not done the same?

Really is there a substantive difference between beating a weaker person and stealing the life savings of a more stupid or more gullible person? Is hitting a trusted partner worse than taking advantage of them in other ways? After all bruises heal far more quickly than bankruptcies.

My intent of course is not to minimize physical violence against the weak, but to question how much worse or more unforgivable it is than financial or emotional mistreatment of the less capable.

[darkstar3]

12. It's not just about "the less capable".

It's about the fact that not only did you (not you, personally) commit an act of violence, you did so in the process of violating a deeply held trust.

I would feel the same way if a banker husband bankrupted his wife and ran off with the cash to plow hookers in the Bahamas.

In a way, I think the gross violation of trust is more heinous to me than the actual crime.

[GliderGuider]

17. The violation of trust is the biggie, all right.

When one violates another's trust it doesn't much matter if it's done with fists, money or love. Some people will fight back if they are physically harmed, but the damage that is done by something like an affair can wound much deeper and be harder both to defend against or heal.

[darkstar3]

18. The willful destruction of trust is still worse than the accidental violation of said trust. n/t

[dschis]

13. That's right

The person who is responsible for creating mayhem by non violent means is just guilty as the person doing the actual deed.

All character flaws have a way showing themselves. But everyone has the capacity to change and be forgiven

[Deep13]

21. affairs =/= violence

Violence against ones spouse or children is a severe act of betrayal. Those who one has the most duty to love and protect become captive victims and are often helpless to resist. So affairs and petty violence generally does not necessarily make someone a bad person. Wife-beating always does.

[GliderGuider]

22. Have you ever been cheated on?

I can assure you, betrayal of that sort (especially if it's long term and involves a lot of deception) can be way more psycho-spiritually damaging than physical assault.

[Deep13]

23. Take that feeling and add the constant anxiety caused by the ever-present...

...threat of violence against you or your children.

[GliderGuider]

14. "can good deeds ... outweigh bad deeds?

It depends on who is doing the weighing. I think Gandhi's wife might have a different answer than one of his political devotees.

Personally, I think that there is no such thing as a good or bad deed, or even such a thing as a "good" or "bad" person. There are simply deeds and people. We all carry within ourselves the shadows of Stalin and Hitler as well as the shade of the Buddha. We are simply people.

[ZombieHorde]

15. Does option 7 fit your view? "Ethics are an illusion, so people can not really be good or bad." nt

[GliderGuider]

16. That's a good question.

I do have ethics that I apply to my own behaviour. However, when I find I've violated my ethics I try to have compassion for myself rather than judging myself. I do the same for other. So it's less a question of ethics being an illusion, than how I respond to ethical violations.

I would say that harming others is usually an ethical violation, but if I harmed someone I wouldn't think I was a bad person. I would think I was human and had made a very human mistake.

[ZombieHorde]

19. If you were to design a poll option for this poll which matches your view best, how would the poll

option be worded?

[GliderGuider]

20. I've been thinking about this

In a sense ethics are an illusion. They are human mental models and tend to be so situationally dependent that there is no way to call a particular rule absolute. I see no way to say that following any particular ethical rule would always be right and breaking it is always wrong.

That’s separable from my belief that there are no good or bad people or actions. While the fact that ethics give no grounds for absolute moral judgement may be true, it would be entirely possible to judge people as good or bad anyway if they violated a situational ethic that was clearly in play. I believe that sort of dualistic judgement is unhelpful and invalid whether or not the ethics used to justify it are absolute or situational.

So perhaps my construction would be something like, “Ethics are an illusion, as are the ideas of good and bad.” I suspect that would only get one vote, however (mine) so it would be interesting to include in a poll only on the off chance that it would make a reader say, “Hmmmm….”

[ChadwickHenryWard]

25. To me, the two do not affect one another.

His good deeds are good. His bad deeds are bad. His wife-beating has nothing to do with his liberation of India. I don't classify people into "good people" and "bad people." I don't find it's a useful distinction. I think that most people do both in their lifetime. I also think it's dangerous. Imagine a "bad person" commits a minor crime. Is he more likely to be convicted, and if convicted, more likely to receive a harsh sentence, than a "good person" who is accused of the same crime? Think back to World War II. No Allies were tried for crimes against humanity in that war, though plenty were committed. Americans were not tried because we were "the good guys." A crime is a crime regardless of who commits it.

A more interesting question, I think, is whether or not a good act with bad motives is still a good act. In eight years, George Bush had one positive accomplishment - he gave more aid to Africa than any other President before him. This money has done real good, as acknowledged by people who work for Africa's benefit. Georgie, of course, is hardly known as a bleeding heart. This philanthropy does not fit into Georgie's pattern of just not caring about his job. As F. Scott Fitzgerald put it, "...{He} smashed up things and people, and then {he} retreated into {his} vast money {and his} vast carelessness...." W's real motivation, of course, was to reward donors to the Republican Party. Among them were contractors who built infrastructure and distributed aid to the beleaguered continent (Halliburton, Bechtel, etc.) So how are we to judge these actions?

[ZombieHorde]

26. "is whether or not a good act with bad motives is still a good act"

Great question, I love it!

[dmallind]

37. I am a utilitarian so easy answer for me

"yes".

The question is actually more intriguing in the reverse. At the risk of invoking Godwin we can assume that Hitler honestly thought he was doing the good and right thing for Germany. Few would be bold enough to argue that his motives made his acts good and right. Why then should the same conclusion not be reached about benefit created from bad motivations?

[DU GrovelBot]

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[Naturyl]

35. Strange how many are voting no.

"Let he who has not sinned cast the first stone."

Replace "wife-beating" with any number of other evil acts and eventually, not one person qualifies as "good."

So we have 30 people (as of this posting) who either do not realize they are disqualifying themselves as good, or don't consider themselves good.

For the record, option 3 makes the most sense.

[TCJ70]

38. You missed an option: People Change.

For me, it's not an issue of people doing good deeds to cancel their bad deeds. It's just an issue of people realizing they have done terrible things and changing the way they live.

[omega minimo]

39. In Choice #4, did he leave the seat up?