Prudence's new Dictatorship

The French parliament has written into law a broad, unenforceable piece of legislation rigged up entirely for gal-Queda type feminists specifically outlawing mental abuse in marriage (interspecies or otherwise) in the same way that ‘hate crimes’ work – wherein one kind of murder victim is somehow more special than some other kind of murder victim on grounds of some sort of ‘social justice’ status.

There have long been laws against physical abuse of spouses, but France has gone a significant step further and criminalized “psychological violence” between men and women.

The law, which will apply to couples both married and unmarried who cohabit, was promulgated to coincide with the United Nations’ 10th International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women and will take effect within six months.

The irony is that this announcement stuff, and shove a law through stuff is seen domestically as a way of practicing über-skilled Machiavellian foreign policy, even if the whole worldly, caring-looking “behold my poop stinks not” thing is internationally forgotten by next 10:27 tomorrow morning. It’s a euro win-win when there are even minutes of that touchy-feely satisfaction that comes with passing a new social measure, followed by decades of joy taken in circumventing it later.

Surely making the entire law subjective is the recently publish finding by French psychologist Maryse Vaillant who is pandering to the complex of calling the rest of humanity prudish under some rationalization or another.

At their wedding in 1983, when the mayor began reciting the vows of "fidelity, aid and support", she said Mr Besson commented: "Fidelity, no."

Miss Brunel, although "humiliated", convinced the shocked mayor it was a joke. He was, she claims, unfaithful for five years before their marriage and 25 years afterwards, adding: "I can't say I wasn't warned."

Mr Besson has been dubbed "the Traitor" by the opposition Socialists whom he deserted to join President Nicolas Sarkozy's cabinet. He left his wife soon after for a woman "almost as young as our eldest daughter" and who "oozed narcissism from every pore of her pretty skin", according to his ex-wife.

Mr Besson described her book as "shameless". She hit back, saying: "What's shameless is the way you've treated me for 30 years."

Years. Abuse. She’s got a case there under the new law, I would say. Nonetheless in the vacuum of “gee that sounds nice for this week’s afticle”, some ‘sex guru’ quack writer has called the acceptance of philandering ‘pragmatic’.

Elsewhere, NPR’s America audience, which often seems to be made up what seems entirely of family therapist types of one kind or another, likely see in it another meal ticket.

If Psychological Abuse In Couples Is Criminalized, Treatment Will Be Key

Don’t worry, folks – if the history of lefty nanny state measures is anything to go by, the definition of ‘abuse’ will be expanded to make this whole thing into another legal or financial instrument, fashioning the whole thing into a venal burden on the former family’s earnings and savings, and surely infantilize another couple of million citizens.

Success is easier to achieve in counseling for psychological abuse, Stosny says, than in cases of physical abuse. With physical abuse, he says, there's often "traumatic bonding" between the parties.

Sometimes, with some life-experience, and the taking of ones’ own life seriously, the bonding isn’t traumatic. Can you write up a law to cover that?

In a report from the appropriately named Eleanor Beardsley, it’s all, as always about those special isolated cases, and never, ever, open to a future of the kind of abuse that will actually make people stop taking abuse seriously. In the land of pretend-bombast where men often pretend to be given to abusiveness as a way of exerting their adulthood (something ‘Anglo-Saxons’ are much less prone to,) how many days will it take to hear a bunch of these guys saying “well then keep it physical!”

Billard rejects critics who say the new law would allow couples to be hauled in for having an argument. She says it must be proved that the abuse is repeated and done with the intention of destroying the victim's dignity.

Which also brings to mind the ‘therapeutic stance’ of accepting that BDSM is okay if can intimidate your partner into consent? It is, after all, all about metal abuse and conditioning. Or is it prudish to otherwise believe that THAT kind of abuse must, for reasons of being socially non-judgmental, be held aside as a special, edgy and hip legal class? I mean, just when was it that the all-knowing therapeutic do-gooder left dragged us back to the Victorian age where the population had social strictures that a social elite could avoid?