Here is an article on an instance of domestic violence:

Dawn Montesdeoca, 50, of  Chicago, used an usually sweet weapon when she assaulted her husband, Arturo Montesdeoca, 56, with cupcakes during an argument that got progressively sticky and ended with a charge of domestic battery.

The fight began as a verbal disagreement around 7:30 p.m. Saturday but soon escalated to a physical altercation. “The woman struck the husband about the head with her hands and then commenced to hit him with cupcakes,”  the Chicago Police Department said in a statement.

When police arrived, they found Arturo Monesdeoca with icing smeared on his head and clothes. Police arrested his wife for misdemeanor domestic battery. . . Arturo Montesdeoca reportedly told police that his wife had been verbally aggressive, and that he feared for his safety when he called police.

And here is a reaction to it:

This wife got in an argument with her husband. She began striking him, and then the argument deteriorated. She began pelting him with cupcakes! He called the cops on her. She has been released on $10,000 bond. Just how much damage can a battery of cupcakes do? I think she needs to be hospitalized and checked out for emotional illness, not arrested for assault. What a crazy article.

If you Google the story, you will find dozens of articles where the perpetrator is referred to as “cupcake-tossing wife.” Not “beating-a-person-on-the-head wife”, mind you. Not “verbally abusive wife.” Cupcake-tossing. Because that’s what makes the story interesting: cupcakes.  And arresting a person who beats a human being over the head? Oh, that’s just crazy.

I really don’t want this post to turn into “If the victim were a woman, the reaction would have been different.” No, it wouldn’t. No matter who the victim is, people who are battered at home are routinely dismissed. Domestic violence is an issue people love to dismiss. By ridiculing victims of domestic abuse we create an emotional distance from them. It is as if we said to ourselves, “This is not something that could happen to me. I’m nothing like these crazy, cupcake-hurling folks.”

While we are hiding from the horrible realities of domestic violence behind these inventive strategies, the true causes of it and the very real damage it creates remain unaddressed.