Another Game of Switch the Sexes

What would you do if a man confided in you that his girlfriend was violent, to the point of regularly injuring him? Would you tell him to fight back? Keep living with her? If you're sane, you'd tell him to get out of that relationship and do everything to avoid her.

In a Los Angeles-area paper The Daily Breeze, Denise Nix reports on a case I found interesting.

A woman who stabbed and killed her boyfriend during a dispute in Gardena was sentenced Tuesday to probation and ordered to attend domestic violence counseling, according to prosecutors.

Lloya Williams, 24, was originally charged with murder for the death of Antoine Benbo, 27, on April 11.

However, the charge was reduced to voluntary manslaughter after an expert testified at a preliminary hearing that Williams' actions were consistent with battered women's syndrome, according to Deputy District Attorney Lana Kim.

We're not living in the 60s or 70s. This didn't take place in the middle of nowhere. If someone attacks you for the first time and you kill them in self defense, then I can understand that. If someone attacks you and you stay with them, then I don't care what you call it, but you're putting yourself in the situation. Yes, assault is wrong. But were Williams' fatal actions really justified? I guess we'll have to take the expert's word for it.

At the time of his death, Benbo was on probation for a domestic violence conviction against Williams, Kim added.

So she knew he was violent and would be violent towards her. Yet...

Williams stabbed Benbo in the chest with a kitchen knife during an argument at their trailer park home in the 13800 block of South Vermont Avenue.

Their home? She was still living with him?

Again, I don't defend the Benbo's actions. He sounds like an evil guy. But what if the sexes were reversed? Are only women excused by hormones and syndromes when it comes to violence between the sexes?

I certainly hope she gets better at picking men, though it would be very risky to date her, so perhaps any man who agrees to date her would be, by definition, not the right man.

And guys - any woman crazy enough to stay with a guy who beats her is certainly crazy enough to kill him as payback. Beating each other is not okay. It is not "just the way relationships are". It is the way sick relationships are. Get help.