Violence against women is legal. We just pretend otherwise.

In a culture where the law fails more often than it succeeds, violence against women is legal, and abuse is a male human right.

In a world where male perpetrators abuse women with impunity, and even the most extreme forms of violence against women go unpunished, it doesn’t matter what laws are on the books.

Violence against women is legal, and many men see it as a basic right.

Two days after her divorce was finalized, Marjorie Krystal Mallory’s ex-husband allegedly shot her to death outside of a courthouse. She was there finalizing paperwork for her divorce, and seeking protection from her ex.

According to Marjorie’s daughter, the judge in the case issued a warrant against her ex-husband. Rather than arresting him in court, the judge told him he could turn himself in a few days later. She also reported that her mother had called the sheriff seeking help, including an escort from the courthouse. She received no help.

Sheriff Darrell Dix admitted in a Facebook post that the sheriff’s office had been to the couple’s house many times, but implied the violence was mutual. In a Facebook post, he defended his office, demeaned and insulted Ms. Mallory and her daughter, and refused any accountability for failing to protect her. Even in death, authorities may continue to dismiss abuse victims as irrational and violent rather than human beings in need of protection.

Mallory’s case is far from an outlier. Women must routinely fight tooth and nail to get protection from obviously violent men.

Audrey Peterson’s ex shot her earlier this year as she fled to a neighbor’s house for help. Pinellas-Pasco Circuit Judge Doneene Loarhad just denied her access to a protective order, in spite of evidence that her ex had guns and had threatened her, claiming that there was insufficient evidence of danger. The same judge has a history of denying protective orders, including to a U.S. congressional candidate who was being stalked. Despite calls for the judge to resign, she was instead honored by the Bar Association a week after a murder she might have prevented.

Becky Bliefnick repeatedly sought protection from her emotionally abusive ex-husband. Friends say he became progressively more controlling during the marriage, and didn’t do any household labor. When she left him, he became threatening, causing Becky to tell friends and family she feared he would kill her. A judge denied her a protective order in spite of ongoing threats and the man’s access to guns. He shot her 14 times, leaving the mother of his children to slowly bleed to death.

Amber Rodriguez was initially denied a protective order against her violent ex, a former police officer. She persisted, hiring a new attorney, and a judge finally gave her the protective order. But it wasn’t enough. The man was also accused of sexually assaulting a child. Rather than denying him bond in the sexual assault case, the court released him, allowing him to kill both Amber and the teenager he sexually abused.

Judge Polly Hall initially gave a New Hampshire woman a protective order, but revoked the order citing a lack of evidence. Her ex shot her, provoking an investigation of the family law system in the state. The investigation found that roughly half of protective orders are denied, even when the victim has serious injuries or there is an ongoing criminal investigation.

Even when a woman is successfully able to lobby for a protective order, she can’t count on the system to protect her. Christopher Prichard repeatedly violated a restraining order protecting Angela Marie Prichard from his post-separation abuse.

Prichard was also arrested on additional criminal charges, but the police did not oppose his release on bond, giving him free rein to continue terrorizing Angela. She called the police 13 separate times, seeking help she never received. They did nothing. Her ex finally shot and killed her—something that correct police action could have prevented.

For every high profile story you hear about abusers who eventually kill their victims, there are dozens more that don’t make the news. I know, because I work with victims every day. Their stories are bone-chilling. They seem newsworthy, but you’ll never hear them. Because it’s the norm for men to get away with violence against women.

If you’re new to the criminal justice system, or to victim advocacy, you probably don’t believe me. Maybe you think the stories I’ve shared are extreme outliers, or that the victims must have done something to cause their own abuse. We don’t want to believe victims, because victim blaming creates the illusion of a just world. But a world where women find no protection against violent men is the norm, not the exception. It’s patriarchy working as intended.

Because of my victim advocacy, desperate women often contact me for help. This month, I’ve counseled a handful of women seeking protective orders: the woman whose ex used an AirTag to stalk her for a year, who has a large stockpile of weapons, and who has repeatedly threatened violence; the woman whose husband assaulted her and her children and who refused to leave the marital home; the woman whose husband choked her and repeatedly raped her; the woman whose husband has repeatedly pretended to decapitate her, who has guns and a history of criminal violence; the woman whose husband has assaulted her for years, often while telling her he would kill her.

These victims share two things in common: They were each denied a protective order. They are also all now each forced to take their children to their ex for visitation. All of their exes are seeking joint or primary custody.

Even in the rare event where a court acknowledges the abuse a woman has experienced, it almost never removes child custody. We thrust children into the arms of violent perpetrators who see them only as property, as a means to control their mothers. We pretend this isn’t happening, and that the real crisis is women seeking child support, or a non-existent bias against men in family courts.

In a misogynistic society, asking a man to give anything up is unfair, unreasonable, and extreme. Women can sacrifice indefinitely—giving up their freedom, their children, their time, their hopes for the future—but men must be protected from the consequences of their actions at all costs.

A protective order does not meaningfully constrain its target’s behavior. It doesn’t deprive them of resources or put them in jail. Its sole purpose is to prevent them from contacting a single person. This is an extremely small limitation on a person’s behavior, yet the standards to achieve such a limit are extraordinarily high.

It should come as no surprise, then, that men who brutalize their intimate partners almost never serve any time in jail. A 2019 survey of 517 domestic violence cases found that less than 2% of perpetrators served any time in jail. Fewer than 6% of rapes lead to an arrest, and only about 1% of rapists ever serve any time.

So for the overwhelming majority of male perpetrators, abusing women is completely legal—and often affords them significant benefits and resources. Mothers who allege domestic violence are significantly more likely to lose custody of their children—even when the abuse is extreme and proven in a court of law.

We have decided, collectively, that it is better to risk the death and ongoing abuse of untold numbers of women than it is to even marginally constrain the behavior of abusive men.

We continue to treat the abuse of women and children as small and inconsequential because that’s how we view women and children: small, inconsequential, the property of men. Better to endanger these beings who don’t really matter than to ever infringe on a man’s right to access and harass his human property.

But domestic violence is almost never just limited to the family. It has far-reaching consequences. It is the point from which many, perhaps even most, other forms of violence grow.

60% of mass shootings begin with an act of domestic violence, and 70% involve a perpetrator with a history of domestic violence.

Domestic violence is the single biggest predictor of killing a current or former partner.

Exposure to domestic violence as a child is itself an act of child abuse, and greatly increases the risk of the child becoming violent in adulthood.

Notably absent from many news stories about murdered women is the name of the judge who denied the protective order, or the police officers who visited the house and did nothing. Our failure to hold men accountable also extends to the people—mostly men—who force women to continue to endure life-threatening abuse.

Things will only change when people in power face the consequences of their inaction—when men’s rights attorneys have to put up with protests and sit-ins at their law firms; when judges are met with protests and public backlash; when police are finally tasked with protecting and serving rather than brutalizing and abusing the public.

Until then?

Abuse of women is only illegal in the most technical sense. The millions of men who have gotten away with it—most of whom don’t even see their abuse as abuse, most of whom see their violence as deserved by the victim, as something they have a right to inflict—know that male violence is legal.

In a patriarchy, violence against women is a male human right.

Today is the last day of my October new subscriber promotion. All new paid subscribers will get free Liberating Motherhood merch. Simply sign up, then email me your mailing address at zawn@zawn.net.