It’s a relief to see that Futrelle is back on my case again. I was feeling a bit neglected lately, and wondered whether I still had it in me to stir up his cat lady audience. That question has been answered in the affirmative.

So, since it’s been such a long time, I thought I’d look through his comments for some more self-validation. I found that and then some ridiculousness on top of it. My post on Ray Rice that argued that women who stay in abusive relationships are partly responsible for subsequent violence, in the same way that alligator wrestlers and snake handlers are partly responsible when they are bitten, had some of the ladies fanning themselves and making exclamations of horror.

But most informative were the lengths some would go to in trying to explain why women’s choices have absolutely nothing to do with anything nasty that might befall them, and are always valid and rational in any event.

One commenter, aptly named “Policy of Madness” came out with some real doozies:

Here’s a perspective, for whoever wants it and for whatever it’s worth. There is a concept in economics that says that people always do what is in their own best interests, to the best of their knowledge. In other words, you always do the best thing, for you, at the time when you do it.

I want to repeat that: If you stayed in a bad and abusive relationship for any number of days or months or years, you did the best thing, for you, at the time.

That may seem counterintuitive, and you may regret staying as long as you did, for any number of reasons. You may think you should have left sooner. That’s a legit feeling, but the only way your actions could have changed would be for your circumstances to have changed. You could have had more/different information and reached a different decision, for instance. But, factually, at the time, your circumstances were what they were, and your information was what it was, and based on the situation at hand you made a rational decision, and that decision was the correct decision based on the information you possessed.

So, why did Janay Rice marry that dude after what he did to her? I don’t know, but I know this: the decision she made was the correct one, the best and most rational option available to her. If it doesn’t seem that way to me, that’s because I don’t have the same set of information that she does.

Why, that almost sounds like my argument. Janay Rice stayed with Ray Rice for a reason; a reason that most men have little if anything to do with. However, where I depart is the notion that these reasons are always rational.

The idea that when some women return again and again to dangerous men they are always acting in their best interests is, quite plainly, a stupid one. But at least Policy of Madness correctly places the responsibility for Janay’s decision to marry Ray Rice where it belongs: on Janay’s shoulders.

Another stellar quote from PoM:

…dude sometimes I will be judgmental. Many people will prioritize the wellbeing of their pets over themselves. How many people do you know who will take their pet to the vet whenever the animal seems unwell, but when they are themselves sick they just handwave it and won’t see a doctor? I know lots of these folks. Then there are the ones who prioritize their pets at the bottom rung, and don’t seem to comprehend that animals can feel pain and they think that another case of beer is worth more than a vet visit.

I will judge the hell out of those people. They are acting correctly according to their priorities. Their priorities are immoral. I’m not obligated to stand by when someone is acting on immoral priorities and say nothing.

Now, the priorities that put people into abusive relationships and cause them to stay are not immoral. In fact, abusers frequently prey on our best instincts, our instincts to care about people besides ourselves, and our instincts for self-preservation. That doesn’t mean that a person in abusive relationship cannot, or should not, reorganize the priority list. It just means that you can’t do that reorganization on another person’s behalf. And that’s the source of the frustration.

So let me get this straight: it’s OK to judge people who have dysfunctional relationships with their pets, but not those who have dysfunctional relationships with other people? So, say your daughter lets her cat scratch your grandkids and piss all over the house and lets her psycho boyfriend beat the crap out of her. Then, as a caring parent (and grandparent), what you should do is stage an intervention over the furry, ten-pound feline, and tell her it’s unacceptable, but keep your damn mouth shut about the violent, 200 lb. biped in her house. Hmmm, sounds reasonable to me…

I have to say, Mr. Futrelle, that encouraging this attitude is not at all socially responsible. Here I am, excoriated for telling women how it is, and how they’ve got to take some responsibility for their relationship choices for their own well-being (applies to men, too, of course), and on an anti-anti-feminist site we have women making any excuse they can pull out of their nether regions to justify the shitty sexual choices that get women AND CHILDREN killed.

That’s a point I’d like to see these feminists explain away. It’s too bad Janay got knocked out, but if she let her choices put a child in danger I’d lose any sympathy for her I might have had in the first place.