provoke

his word is used as a "reason" for beating, raping, and even killing women. A man in a family violence program explains, "I know I shouldn't hit her, but I can't seem to stop. The bitch really asks for it, you know? She really provokes me." When Carol S. Irons, the first female judge in Kent County, Michigan, was shot to death in her chambers by her estranged husband, the jury convicted him of a lesser crime (voluntary manslaughter instead of the first-degree murder charge) because, as one juror put it, "Everybody felt he was provoked by his wife to do this." A judge ruled that a five-year-old girl was a "temptress" in "provoking" a sexual encounter with a 20-year-old man (Nijole V. Benokraitis and Joe R. Feagin, Modern Sexism). After Linda Simmons's husband, a hospital pathologist, killed her as she was walking out the door with their two young children, he told police, "She just wouldn't quit bugging me"—presumably about his long-standing alcoholism. A man who strangled his woman friend after they had argued about Christmas toys said, "I did it, I did it.... I can't believe I killed her, I did it, I can't believe she made me that mad." See also: she asked for it.