Today in Misogyny

[Trigger warning for violence.]

Bobby Maurice Tillman was an 18-year-old young man who died this weekend after Damon Coleman, 19, Emanuel Benjamin Boykins, 18, Quantez Devonta Mallory, 18, and Tracen Franklin, 19, who are now facing felony murder charges, attacked him and stomped on him, breaking his rib which then punctured his heart.

What does this story have to do with misogyny?

Tillman was oblivious to the circumstances that led to his death following an unprovoked attack at a rowdy house party Saturday night on Independence Drive in Douglasville, witnesses say. A fight broke out between two girls outside the home, one of whom struck a male partygoer, Douglas County Sheriff Phil Miller said. He refused to strike a female but vowed to inflict payback on the next male who walked by.

It is not clear from reports whether the woman hit him deliberately, accidentally, or defensively.

Shaker Amber emails (which I am publishing with her permission):

Somewhere along the line, someone taught this guy that it's wrong to hit girls, and he absorbed that lesson to the letter. What he did not learn was not to hurt women, not to threaten or intimidate them in order to control their behavior. So, instead of hitting her, he chose a random bystander to hurt, letting her know that this was her fault. He was seeking her anguish, her anger, her shame.

Now a young man is dead, and a young girl has to live the rest of her life feeling like his death was her fault. That's some fucked up shit right there.

More here, where Amber also notes that men who learn not to hit girls "don't always learn not to use verbal abuse, or financial abuse, or threats of suicide, or other means of controlling" women. To which I'll add: And don't learn how to process anger appropriately so that it never gets expressed in an unhealthy way in the first place.

"Boys don't cry" (because that's something girls do) is the first message male children tend to get about expressing emotion. That is, don't express it. Especially negative emotion. And when negative emotion is bottled, and bottled, and bottled, instead of processed, one day it explodes.

RIP Bobby Tillman. My sincerest condolences to his family and friends.