stupid, lurid,...really, just everything you can't ignore

I suppose there are several reasonably rational explanations for the durability of this pathetic love-sick astronaut story. Is there really something new in this news?

• Juxtaposition of the modernity of space flight with the primitive passions, the seamy familiarity of domestic violence shot against the exotic backdrop of an orbiting space shuttle.
• Juxtaposition of the image of uber-competent, quick thinking, steel nerved astronauts with the tale of an unthinking astronut unhinged by affections any high school kid could summon with little help
• The surprise on the part of some readers that a jilted woman would single-handedly take physical and potentially violent action to bandage her love-wounds...isn't it always the jealous ex-boyfriend or ex-husband that does mayhem when the prop of love is pulled out from under them?

The first two stand on their own merits as observations but in the third, is a small trap. For a twosome in trouble, yes, the stats tell us the male hurts or kills his own partner in the majority of cases. For any one incident, violence by a male is generally far more damaging. The exact ratio, in 2001, was 85 female victims to 15 male victims in every 100 domestic violence cases according to Bureau of Justice Statistics. My speculations on why that is so will not interest anyone but I can't resist pointing out that if you cannot see that your own behavior is the root of a bad relationship, it doesn't matter how much you escalate your attempts to control the other party to the relationship. There is an intriguing omission in this data because it specifies the gender of the victim but not of the perpetrator: if same sex domestic violence data are buried in these figures, you would not know it.

But our soured astronaut was/is in a love triangle. For that more specific motivation, which I will characterize as trying to heal a self inflicted wound by smashing the knife, the statistics tilt slightly toward gender parity. The FBI keeps a separate line for that in its Uniform Crime Report statistics. You have to cross check three different tables in this FBI report to find the info. It may work to hit this link to the cached page where "Romantic triangle" is highlighted. Roughly speaking, the story told is this:

• The victim is far more likely to be the rival than the significant other of the aggrieved lover [table 2.11]
• In order of preference: guns, knives and in distant third, blunt instruments [table 2.12, our astronaut packed all three...these astronaut types are well versed in the value of back-up systems]
• 78 female to 22 male victims out of 100 [table 2.14, for the latest year, less than 100 victims total]

Keep in mind too that the FBI stats report murders. By leaving out non-fatal violence I muddy the comparability of the gender themes and do so in the direction of under-reporting aggressive responses of female partners due to the fact that male violence is generally more often lethal.

Conclusion: This violently jealous astronaut is not so unusual after all.

Advice: If you are fooling around, don't get stupid with your email.

Afterthought: I feel sorry for the woman. The signs are that she feels she has lost everything and is desperate. But really, she should think more deeply: of exactly what is she the victim? Of exactly what is she in control?

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Note: since posting, I discover via Pandagon that March 8th is blog-against-sexism day. Amanda tells us where she's coming from [Alpine TX;] and in the comment thread there, many are confessing the roots of their feminism, such as it may be. Here is a bit more of my perspective.