I know the Super Bowl is long past. But we must take our opportunities to celebrate where we can, and this is one of them.
Friends, we have successfully passed another Super Bowl Sunday without a massive spike in domestic violence, by testosterone-poisoned men against their wives and girlfriends. Indeed, it seems that the peddlers of that particular myth seem disinclined to continue hawking it to a public that’s not buying. To learn about the birth, short life and timely death of the Super Bowl DV myth, click here.
I’d like to say that it joins a long line of other myths about male perfidy that have been disproved and discarded. But in fact it only joins a long line of myths about male perfidy that have merely been disproved. Most are still clung to regardless of facts, logic or common sense.
To cite but a few, only 2% of rape claims are false, men perpetrate 90% of DV, the wage gap is caused by sex discrimination, 24% of women will be the victims of rape or attempted rape during their four college years, divorce makes men wealthier and women poorer, and on and on from nine million women burned as witches in the Middle Ages to contemporary nonsense about Venutians and Martians, the myths hang doggedly on.
They do so because they corroborate the preconceived notions of a lot of people whose worldviews seem to depend on them, and so can’t stop preaching the ‘men bad/women good’ gospel to the rest of us.
So whether you were backing the Cardinals or the Steelers, give a cheer for the death of one of the sillier myths of recent times.