Well, I can’t believe I’m about to write these words but apparently Mike Tyson is doling out advice regarding domestic violence. Feel free to take a moment to let that sink in.
And maybe I’m being overcritical, but there’s something about how he calls women “them” during an interview with MTV that doesn’t sit well with me. Who ever knew a pronoun could sound offensive?
“You can’t abuse them,” he tells MTV. “It’s really sick what you [can] do. She has a space in your heart and you believe you care about her more than anybody in the world.
“Do I think it’s right to beat up a woman? No — hell no,” he adds. “Have I hit a woman before? Hell yeah. Was I wrong? Hell yeah. I’m a product of that environment. Do I regret ever doing that? Hell yeah. Would I do it again? Never.”
He shared his opinion on the Chris Brown/Rihanna debacle as well:
It’s none of my business, but you know what I say about that? I understand the situation. I understand passion with young kids,” Tyson, 42, tells MTV News.
“My personal opinion about that is, he’s just a baby,” adds the former heavyweight champ, who is the subject of a new documentary, Tyson, out Friday. “He’s just a little baby that don’t know how to handle his emotions when it comes to a woman. And he probably hears this and thinks, ‘I know how to handle my emotions’; we all think we do.
“But the fact [is],” Tyson continues, “you look at this person and you might be crazy in love, but we don’t know how to handle those feelings.”
What could have led Brown to beat Rihanna, 21? Tyson blames a “pimp mentality” that is prevalent among young people. “Now you’re a fly guy and a cool guy [you think] … you have to be hard like that,” he says.
Listen, I’m happy anytime a celeb takes a stand against domestic violence. In some ways, it’s even more meaningful coming out of Mike Tyson’s mouth since he’s had a penchant in the past for punching women in the mouth and has a rap sheet the length of my inseam to prove it. But why the excuses? Why does it have to be about “pimp mentality” and youth? Why can’t it just be totally effing unacceptable?
Even totally effing unacceptable things have explanations. Explaining a thing is not the same as excusing it. That’s why.
Agreed.
God I hope no one is ever so “crazy in love” with me that they end up beating the shit out of me….
He DID say it was totally unacceptable, I think he’s just trying to speak to why Chris Brown did something so unacceptable.
So to be fly and cool you have to violently attack someone who you claim to love and who is much smaller and weaker than you? Too sick for words.
I agree with you, Wendie, that beating a woman has very little to do with the “pimp” mentality…men have used violence against women since the beginning of time. That said, I detest the misogyny that runs rampant through hip-hop’s lyrics and feel it reinforces the partiarchical mindset that is still prevalent today. If we are to effectively address domestic violence we have to get to the root of the “woman as object” mentality and commit to a change. Not an easy task when you look back and realize that even St. Paul’s writings were emphatically anti-female (anti-Eve).