The Punishment For Cheating Should Never, Ever Be This Horrifying Situation
Violence is never okay.
Bricolage / Shutterstock Have you heard the horrific story of Scott Humphrey, the man who murdered his friend over, of all things, some good old-fashioned Facebook poking.
It was one of those stories that made you condemn not just social media, but society as a whole for being just that awful.
So in keeping with the theme that love makes people do completely, ridiculous, evil, and violent things, we have a case of physical abuse out of China, where a woman was attacked, in public for having sex with another woman's husband. Love… isn't grand?
So this is how it all went down.
The punishment for cheating should never, ever be this:
In 2014, a 38-year-old woman, by the name of Lin Yao Li, made a not-so-wise decision to sleep with a married man.
Whether or not she knew he was married is unclear, because, let's be honest, some people are very forthcoming about the specifics of their marriage if it means getting a lil' something on the side. However, when the woman found out that her husband had cheated, she decided it was his mistress, not the cheating husband mind you, who had to pay.
The scorned wife (as she should be), with three of her friends, tracked down Li, while she was running some errands. From there, an unbelievably horrifying event happened as the four women began to beat Li, ripping her clothes from her body, all the while paying special attention to kicking her breasts and genitals.
What’s even more disturbing is that this took place in public, and not a single soul helped during the attack. In fact, one of the onlookers commented that it was not appropriate to disturb, "an argument of the heart."
Once the mob dispersed, a man came to help Lin, explaining to the media, "public humiliation is a common punishment for infidelity," adding, "Angry wives and girlfriends get their revenge on their cheating men by attacking the other woman. People don't tend to get involved." Lovely.
As a woman who dated someone who cheated on me, I understand the pain, embarrassment, broken trust, and humiliation that come with that type of betrayal.
I'd be a liar if I said I didn't hope the worst possible scenarios would befall both he and the woman (yes, women; as in plural), who had caused me such devastation. But, aside from emails in which I sounded exactly like the crazy woman to which he had pushed me to be, I never, at least not seriously, considered being violent about it.
I mean, yes, it sucks, it hurts like hell, but isn't the best revenge to walk away and live your life happily, while your ex is forced to realize, eventually, that he gave up something great when he cheated on you and let you go? Granted, you're the one who dumped his a** after the cheating, but he's the one who instigated the demise of the relationship with his infidelity.
That right there is suitable revenge. Taking to the streets to humiliate the mistress, a woman who may not have even known the man she was seeing is married, is the type of thing that would have gone down in archaic times when the human race had yet to hone their thinking and communication skills.
I really hope what happened in China, although it's not the first time, will definitely not become a trend.
As Ms. Norbury pointed out in Mean Girls, girl-on-girl crime isn't cool and needs to be expressed in a healthier way. Last I checked Mean Girls is pretty much the bible of girl code, and nowhere in girl code does it say that beating up and stripping a woman, even if she did bang your man, is in no way appropriate behavior. Ever.
Amanda Chatel is a writer who divides her time between NYC and Paris. She's a regular contributor to Bustle and Glamour, with bylines at Harper's Bazaar, The Atlantic, Forbes, Livingly, Mic, The Bolde, Huffington Post, and others.