So, a little while ago I had yet another epic argument with my least-favorite type of debate opponent: the kind who, while polite and well-spoken on the surface, nevertheless will do or say literally anything to avoid ever conceding a point. But as much as people like this irritate my entrails, they're useful. In my futile attempts to drill reason into their steel-sealed minds, sometimes I make unexpected connections within my own ideas.

They'd just sent me yet another reply that was so big it broke Reddit's comment character limit and had to be posted in two parts. They were on that old familiar tactic of trying to make me believe that women are unique victims of a culture of gendered violence, using all the points I've heard and debunked ten kltpzyllion times. I was lying in bed the following day, my brain keeping me awake by hyperactively going over everything I could possibly reply to them with, and I had an insight. I was thinking about how many of my opponent's premises hinged upon looking only at women's victimization, then concluding that women are primarily victimized. Any evidence which might suggest men are equally or more often victimized by the same circumstance is ignored. And I realized I couldn't really get angry at my opponent over that, because that's normal. Humans in general focus their sympathy on women over men in almost any situation. It has a lot to do with how traditional gender roles infantilize women: we see them as helpless children, more in need of aid than the big, strong man who can take care of himself. That's what led to my insight.

I'm not arrogant enough to think that no one else has ever had this thought before, but I'm damn well happily arrogant enough to name it after myself.

Reynard's Law: The presence of a female victim will automatically render any number of other male victims invisible.

If anyone doesn't believe me, I would encourage you to take a look at the coverage of the Egyptian police beating "the woman in the blue bra". This incident happened back in 2012 during the massive protests in Egypt and became international news. I saw innumerable television and online news sources reporting on it. But interestingly enough, in every article I read, they all consistently described the video as if the woman was the only victim in it. There is never a mention of the man being beaten and stomped on just a few feet away from her. It is as if the reporters literally cannot see him. As if he is invisible. As if her presence renders him (and all the other men shown being beaten in the full video) invisible. Judge for yourself. I Googled "woman in the blue bra" just now and looked through a full dozen of the top results. I could not find any mention of the male victim, even when the article embedded the video. No one identifies him. No one even asks who he might be.

I think this might be a fundamental operating principle of human behavior. It's as if we're stuck in binary mode, only able to process one type of victim at a time. If a woman is a victim, a man cannot be one simultaneously; she takes the top spot by default. We are so used to black and white morality, we cannot process situations more complex than that. It explains so much. Like how it doesn't matter that unbiased research is starting to discover that there's a hell of a lot more male victims of domestic violence and rape than we've ever acknowledged; we are so used to viewing these crimes as "women's issues", we reflexively reject the possibility that they are actually human issues. It doesn't matter that there is virtually zero DV shelter space for men; any discussion on shelter funding is about giving more money to women's shelters that have never helped men and will never help men. It doesn't matter that men are the huge majority of victims of homicide, suicide, assault, false accusation, execution, lynching, shooting by police, or other types of violence; the term "gendered violence" is almost exclusively used to mean violence against women. And it doesn't matter how much violence happens to men, there will always be people who care only about "ending violence against women" (which, I suppose, means that if we ever reach 100% male victimization, that will be victory).

We are so used to thinking in terms of 'male=violent' and 'female=victim', we dismiss situations where the opposite may be true, and we sure as hell cannot deal with the idea that either gender could ever be simultaneously violent AND victim. When I pointed out to my debate opponent that men are a majority of the victims of violent crime, their argument was one I've seen repeated innumerable times: "Most likely to be victims of other men". As if that makes it okay. As if men are a hivemind creature, and one man killing another is no different than someone punching themselves in the face.

And of course, the flipside to this is that we are so blind to women's violence that there is no psychological help available to abusive women. Or gays and lesbians in abusive relationships. Our narrow focus on single-abuser, single-victim narratives to every crime means there are endless victims of both genders we will throw in the garbage because we render ourselves unable to empathize with them.