"I just lost control. I didn't really mean what I said!" Another weapon sexist men use in arguments (paid subscriber bonus)
How abusive men escape accountability by claiming they've "lost control."
“He was a great dad and a loving father. And then one day, he was pushed to the brink. He lost control.”
It’s how every story about a man who killed his entire family begins. Women, meanwhile, are depicted as unfathomable monsters. We see this in less extreme circumstances, too.
Your husband calls you a bitch or a cunt. Or he breaks something or screams at your child. And then later, he tells you he just lost control. He didn’t really mean it! How can you still be upset and hurt when he so obviously didn’t mean what he said?! God, you’re so unreasonable, and by the way, you really need to talk about all the things you did wrong to cause him to lose control.
It’s the perfect cover: An abusive man gets to abuse his partner, saying all the things he really thinks (or at least, all the things he wants her to believe he thinks). And then he gets to escape accountability by insisting that he didn’t really mean those things. As if abusive words only matter, only hurt, if a person really means them.
This is a ploy to keep the focus on whether a woman “deserves” to feel upset, on whether she’s being excessively emotional, rather than on the abuse. It’s a great distraction.
This is part of a bonus series for paid subscribers on the tools abusive, sexist, low-quality men use in arguments. Some examples of previous pieces in this series include:
The weapons sexist men use in fights: “We just have different standards!”
The weapons sexist men use in fights: Blaming women for their reactions to bad behavior
The weapons men use in fights: “You’re never satisfied with anything!”
The arguments sexist men use in fights—and what they really mean
The most important tool men use to maintain household labor inequality
You can read the entire series here.
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access to this article, as well as the entire series of weapons sexist men use
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at least one extra article per week
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Today’s subscriber bonus is a day early because it’s Independence Day tomorrow in the U.S. The bonuses usually arrive on Tuesdays.