The Shocking Ingratitude for Good Men
The narrative that all men are a threat has deadly consequences
On a recent podcast, I spilled my little secret that I, like most women, spent my early 20s in a state of liberal feminism. Nothing as extreme as you see today, of course, but the classic narratives were all there: Men were violent, women were victims. Men were mean, women were reactive. This was the unassailable mental model I had of inter-gender relations. It was how I was raised, how I was taught, and frankly, what I saw with my own eyes.
I was lucky enough to find the one awesome guy with a rockin bod before the other girls snatched him up. “I got the only good one, ladies! Pack it up!”
Silly, I know. Much of my ideological shift away from feminist nonsense came slowly, over many years. But my first and biggest step came shortly after I got married.
My new husband’s coworker was murdered by his wife.
Joe Stutzman was not good friends with my husband. Actually, they didn’t get along AT ALL. But when Joe’s wife asked several teen boys to stab him to death in his own damn house, it hit both of us hard.
Hubs felt guilty about his last words with Joe being in anger. I felt guilty because the first thought I had when I found out was, “I guess he was abusive.”
Men as Villains
It wasn’t long after Joe was stabbed to death in his home that the truth came out. After all, they always look at the wife first. And Brandy hadn’t done a very good job of covering her tracks.
She had loud, outrageous parties at the house whenever Joe was deployed (usually 4 months at a time). Parties with men.
She did not work and but spent Joe’s money like a coke-addled sailor.
Joe had been talking about divorcing her with some regularity prior to his most recent deployment.
There WAS abuse in the Stutzman house. Brandy was the abuser.
None of these facts would ever have occurred to me in a million years, even at the advanced age of 28. Even though I had been cruelly bullied by girls in school (never boys). Even though I had my ass handed to me in the Marines by some girl from Baltimore (for no reason).
The only time I’ve ever had my belongings stolen was also another girl.
I knew damn well how mean girls could be, how spiteful and vengeful. But those bad girls were always viewed as the exception.
While bad men were the rule.
Men were the problem. And if wives were violent or mean or lazy, the men were at fault. Always.
Until…
The Red Flags Men See, But Accept
Many years later, the whole ugly story would be featured on an episode of Snapped. By then, I was watching true crime shows religiously. Seeing such a familiar face pop up on my screen was jarring, shocking. But not nearly as shocking as how much more I found out about Brandy thanks to the show. How wrong I had been about her…
Deadly Women had already been airing for 5 years at the time of Joe’s murder and Snapped had been on for 6. At that time, I hadn’t seen either of them. Both shows were dedicated solely to female murderers. And there are just SO MANY of them. Far from my assumption that female murderers like Susan Smith (child murderer) and Brynn Hartman (actor Phil Hartman’s murderer wife) were rare one-offs, I could see now that they were common as dandelions.
And no, actually. It wasn’t their victims’ fault. They didn’t deserve what they got.
Gambling addiction was a common reason for women murdering their husbands. The women stole from their family or their family’s business and, when they were caught (or about to be) they killed their husbands.
Another one was entitlement. “I deserve more than this! Give me more! (or I’ll kill you and spend your life insurance on the life I DESERVE).
Brandy’s was pure mercenary greed. “I’ll give you sex (at first) and a child. In return, I’ll spend all your money, do whatever I want with whoever I want, and treat you like crap. Sound good? It doesn’t? Okay, well here’s three teen boys to break into your house. And then your life insurance will pay for my continued partying.”
It should be noted that Brandy was a juggalo, which I didn’t know until Snapped told me. But Joe did. Living like that is the reddest of flags. Yet Joe chose her and stayed with her longer than was wise. Why?
Even without knowing her lifestyle, I admit to being baffled by their relationship. She isn’t even cute. Why would Joe put up with her?
Seeing an average guy with a big-titty smoke wagon who ends up killing him, you kinda get it. He felt lucky to have her and put up with abusive and outrageous behavior. But this cow? This pug-faced tomato-bodied deviant? Bro, why?
I’m not a psychiatrist and I won’t pretend to be some kind of man whisperer. But given my own husband’s life matched Joe’s pretty closely, I can speculate.
A man goes to a war zone and uses his aircraft expertise, making gobs of money. What does he want when he comes home? Stability, comfort. A woman to welcome him, to show him affection and appreciation, a healthy child who looks up to Daddy for his hard work and bravery. He wants something to make the hardship worth it.
So she’s having trouble leaving her old life behind… we’ll work through it.
So she still has a poverty mindset and isn’t responsible with the budget… we can work through that.
Better to work at the relationship than start from scratch, right? Especially with being deployed half the year. Especially with the threat of alimony and child support and hardly ever seeing your child hanging over your head.
The saddest realization is that Joe lost his life specifically because he was a good man.
I spend a lot of time suppressing the urge to drag younger Red Pill boys to the sink and wash their mouth out with liquid Dial (the most disgusting of soaps). But I can’t argue with their anger at how the deck is stacked against them.
Girls have been getting away with egregious ass shit and it’s right and good that young men are now being taught to look out for their own interests.
Because if you don’t, if you accept the feminist stance that “Men will take what they’re given and be grateful” you may find out that picking wrong can have deadly consequences for men too.
ICYMI
You can watch my free-ranging talk with The Shagsworth here 👇🏻
Ive been around the DoD for a long time now, over 20 years. Worked with every branch, every level of the chain of command. I can say with certainty that for every 1 horrible divorce I witnessed that was due to the husband being trash, I would see 5 or 6 more that was because it was the wife. Ive seen and heard so many stories of men coming home from deployment to find an abandoned home with a foreclosure notice after the wife took the kids and disappeared it boggles the mind. I used to think that it was a military thing, that we were unique, but these days I realize that it's just a slightly more extreme version of the same problems between the genders and marriage throughout the country. All I can do is sit back and SMDH
I blame premarital sex. I have chosen to wait for my husband, and have had some fascinating conversations with men about premarital sex and relationships. One man wanted to tell me his sob stories of his multiple long term relationships with deranged and irresponsible women. I asked him if he would have had a relationship with any of them if he could only have sex thru the gates of marriage. After a pause and some thought he said no. His marriage filter would have filtered all those women out if he had known that he was looking for a wife.