No, nothing logical about her response. It was a purely emotional response.
Guy was being quite inconsiderate to her. The fact that he got stabbed doesn't mean he was being any less of a jackass.
Printable View
You've actually looked up the definition of the word, right? :smallconfused:
:smalltongue:
Because I did to make sure I was using it right and it has nothing to do with intent:
andQuote:
"a person who kills another "
Quote:
"a killing of one human being by another "
Nothing about intent.
So yes, her actions are, by definition of the word in the common sense (probably not the legal), attempted homicide.
Edit:
Quote:
Guy was being quite inconsiderate to her. The fact that he got stabbed doesn't mean he was being any less of a jackass.
And she wasn't exactly the best or most considerate girlfriend either. But only one of them almost killed the other with their actions.
I've seen some really engaging thread topics with one or two replies and then there are these.....
I'm not so sure about self defense, but I agree with what he did, too.
I do not know that it is 'basically nothing' though, which was the thrust of my statement. Lanky does just a good enough job of painting himself as having done nothing wrong, but there's a lot of implicit stuff in "I thought we had discussed this, and it worked, but instead she bottled up her rage until it boiled". That... Usually means the 'discussion' was "hey, i have a problem with this behavior...' "What? Naw, c'moooon, it's fine! It's agame and you are being silly. Stop being silly."Quote:
We can hem and haw about intent or her mindset after that burst of violence was, but the point is that she committed a crime of violence over basically nothing. She had some serious issues going on if she felt that the proper course of action in an argument with another person was to inflict bodily harm on them.
Truth.Quote:
In fact, a rational person wouldn't have left the kitchen with a knife in hand.
My concern is that people equate larger wrong with "other side is in the right". If you do a bunch of bad things, and someone one-ups you and does something worse, that doens't retroactively make your bad actions less bad.Quote:
I cannot agree with any mindset that condones or apologizes for the girlfriend's behavior. She was in the larger wrong and she committed a potentially serious crime. She could have killed Lanky and that's what the courts would have probably taken into account. Whether she got prison time or therapy or what have you, we don't know. But I really hope she got put somewhere away from the general populace for both her sake and their sake until she can be rehabilitated into being a stable person.
I'm not saying she was in the right, I'm saying that everyone there had messed up. There was no "right", and there wasn't even a "more right than the rest". It was all bananas.
Well, duh~!
Okay, I know this is the internet so things get technical before conversational, so hear me out.
I bet, every time in thread so far, someone said "He had it coming" or similar, that actually breaks down to "He had a history which could be easily seen as leading to problems. He had conversations in the past about his behavior being bad. Most likely, they kept escalating. He kept ignoring them, and pressing his luck. Something had to give, and there was a long enough build up, he couldn't have possibly ignored it. He should have seen something coming, and while being stabbed is pretty severe, its less like being struck by lightning and more like crossing the freeway and being surprised you're hit by a speeding car. He had every reason to see it coming".
Do you have to agree? No. But conflating "he had it coming" or "he should have seen it coming" with being glad or ambivalent to him getting stabbed is straw man stuff. Flanderizing the opinion and then getting mad at the speaker for something they didn't actually say. Y'know?
I think people are conflating "She isn't the only bad guy here" with dilluting the blame, and or trying to get her off the hook, myself. But yeah, stabbing someone is pretty bad.Quote:
Yes. Yes it is. Surprisingly few people seem willing to though.
:smallannoyed:Quote:
My guess is that it's hard for people to picture a woman actually hurting a man, to the point that a man's insult becomes equal to or worse than a woman's enraged knife-play. "Sexism Hurts Men Too" sort of thing.
Yeah. It's not months of abuse and flagrant disrespect, the kind of thing that gives people mental breakdowns and leads to depression, suicide, and occasionally homicide. Nah, it's just a "man's insult".
I agree. I just think that 'deadly violence' and 'enraged knife-play' paint an entirely different picture than the story itself does.Quote:
But seriously, when one person is rude and another responds with deadly violence, that is a cut and dry case. If she had dumped him, had cursed him out, had upended the table, maybe even slapped him I would be on her side. But stabbing, no matter how "lightly" or "unintentionally" is an automatic one-way ticket to being the bad guy in the situation.
Are they? I've tried to be very clear that I am villifying everyone.
Seriously.
But it very much was a shoving match.
Lanky with woman#1 was an insult.
Her trying to talk to him was harsh words.
His dismissal of the problem as a problem was a shout.
Her continued arguing about it was a countershout.
His getting a new lapwoman was a louder scream.
Her trying to kick a problem woman out of her house was a stand up.
His utter dismissal of her feelings as having value* was a shove back witha chuckle.
Her punching him in the gut with a knife was her punching him in the gut with a knife.
And immediately upon recognizing that she went too far, she acknowledged it, started to panic, and then got laid out.
* Which, while both techincally and situationally callous, could have been only situationally. I suspect Lanky intended those words with the purest sincerity and love, and just didn't recognise how far gone things were. He may have even meant 'get back in the kitchen' as an in-joke to share with her later. It is very unfortunate.
I certainly agree, actually. The only thing that could truly make that shaky is if she dropped the knife first, and even then he could have been mid-flight. If anything, I admire Friend's reflexes as much as I dislike Lanky's flippancy about it all.Quote:
As for the friend's reaction, it is just that...reaction. He saw someone react in a way to both protect his wounded friend, and make sure she won't do something else. You said yourself, she was about halfway through "Oh God, sorry," which says to me he reacted pretty damn quickly too. A concession; yes, the roundhouse was likely excessive, however THIS is a case where clouded judgment is justified, NOT "Honey, go back into the kitchen."
I've rewritten this several times. I keep getting too tangential.
As far as is relevant to the conversation, Lanky's actions - having another woman in his lap all the time, having a woman rub on him like a cat, inviting in a second other woman and engaging in emotional connections of an intimate sort - would constitute infidelity, not flirting, in most of the relationships I know of.
I'm a flirt, too. I'm touchy-feely and don't mean anything by it. But I still try to keep in mind that while it's nothing to me, it means a lot to my filly.
Sarcasm is supposed to be blue, I thought? :smallwink: :smalltongue:
See above, luv.
*shrug* engagement is perhaps relative? It's much easier to read something that you find, at first blush, both wrong and also offensive, and to correct it, than it is to say something vaguely supportive but noncommital.
Response to SiuiS below, spoilered for the benefit of people who just want to talk about wacky lasagna-related D&D anecdotes.
SpoilerSee, I get that you don't mean to say he should have been stabbed, but the problem is that there's this weird false equivalency being drawn here between his rude behavior and her stabbing.
This is a great example;
Coming out of the kitchen holding a knife, yelling at Lanky to kick "that bitch" out of his house is transformed into "stand[ing] up."
Asking her to calm down and leave the room, by contrast, apparently constitutes a "shove back with a chuckle," a more serious escalation.
Of course the stabbing itself is now a "punch... with a knife." Rather than a potentially deadly attack which sent a grown man to the hospital, just the sort of thing you walk off with an ice pack.
And the whole thing ends with her coming out of a haze like Bruce Freaking Banner and going 'woe is me' before getting "laid out" by a punch-happy goon.
This is a problem. By downplaying the threats and legitimate physical danger posed by this woman and reinterpreting Lanky's disrespectful behavior as "abuse" which is then explicitly compared to physical violence, you are comparing them as if they are equivalent. Or worse, because honestly your version gives Lanky's Ex a great deal more sympathy than him and makes her look almost justified!
This and previous comments, like the "fidelity is more important than a flesh wound" thing, really make it difficult to see what your point is. That he was being such a jerk that she just had to stab him? That anyone would do the same thing in her situation? That while Lanky needs to be called out for "abuse" and "infidelity," saying she acted in an unstable dangerous way and needs psychiatric help is just going too far?
That's why I said this was getting silly before; there really is no comparison between an assault with a deadly weapon and flirting with women who aren't your girlfriend. Hell, even if he had been boning her and Tammy right there on the gaming table, it still wouldn't come close. Saying otherwise is bizarre and, at least to me, completely unaccountable.
On a less serious note, I really liked Lanky's first two stories; they were very entertaining in themselves and very well-told. If nothing else, I hope Lanky comes back under a different name so we can hear some less dire tales. I'm sure he has them, and I for one would love to hear more.
Water_Bear, I think the detail by detail go-through is clouding things.
First, you're gettif the symbolism backwards. Symbolism is where a symbol stands in for a thing. You are equating a thing to its symbol, however. The false equivalency only comes about if you read backwards.
I am saying that crime does not justify crime. Trying to win by who's sin was most egregious misses entirely that there is more than one sinner. I've been discussing the details of this through catechism; nothing more. Well, that and occasionally refuting words put in my mouth or correcting erroneous facts.
My problem is that, as I pointed out above, the "symbolism" you are using here draws a false parallel between words and deadly violence, and thus equates the two.
You are saying crime doesn't justify crime. There was only one crime, and you are calling the victim a criminal and a sinner! That is the problem.
Ah, but I wasn't responding to a post that said he had it coming, or even that he shared in the blame (both of which are uncomfortably close to victim blaming for me anyways, regardless of intent.) I was specifically responding to a post that said that he ad no one to blame other than himself, IE, the stabber did not share in any of the blame.
Homicide doesn't require intent. However, attempt does--both legally and "common-sensically." So, whether or not her actions constituted attempted murder (or, more doubtfully, attempted voluntary manslaughter*) depends on whether she intended to kill him.
More likely, she was charged with some assault/battery charge--simply because a jury would have problems finding, beyond a reasonable doubt, that she intended to kill him.
*I doubt this would be attempted voluntary manslaughter because her provocation wasn't one that would provoke an average person.
Great Modthulhu: Locking for review.