Legal resolution has come in the strange and shocking case of Amber Cummings, the Belfast woman who shot and killed her husband after he allegedly planned to kill himself, his wife and their daughter in a plot to cause mass deaths at President Obama’s inauguration. That Ms. Cummings will not serve time in prison for the manslaughter charge she pleaded guilty to seems like justice well served. Yet there remains a nagging counterargument — would the same result have come if the genders of victim and perpetrator were reversed?
The answer is plainly no. If James Cummings had shot his wife and been able to credibly claim that he suffered the same horrors at her hand, he likely would be serving time in prison. But that abstraction — reversing the genders — is not realistic.
At the heart of the debate over the resolution in this matter is the indisputable fact that men and women are profoundly different in temperament, motivation, physical prowess and how they behave in relationships.
It has been some 40 years since the women’s movement began to change our world, and we must not allow any regression in the opportunities afforded women and girls. But at the same time, we should acknowledge that in the effort to guarantee equality, a fine point has been lost — women and men are as different as apples and oranges.
Men are statistically more likely to physically abuse women. Men are, generally speaking, physically stronger than women.
It is typically a man who preaches an ideology to his family and demands adherence to it. While women have political passions, they do not usually attach life-and-death importance to them. Women tend not to take their politics to radical extremes. They tend not to isolate themselves and their families with those views. David Koresh of the Branch Davidians and Jim Jones of the infamous Jonestown, Guyana, cult have few female counterparts.
Women — generally speaking — have more of their identity wrapped up in child rearing. As can be seen in the animal world, mothers readily throw themselves between their offspring and harm. And what ultimately prompted Amber Cummings to take the extraordinary measures she took may have been her belief that her young daughter’s life was at imminent risk.
None of this is to bash men, or to suggest that they must somehow unlearn these inherent traits. When balanced by morality, reason and sensitivity, that maleness serves humankind well.
We are, in a sense, sentenced to certain fates when we are born one gender or the other. Gender does not excuse bad behavior or doom anyone to it. But those differences must be acknowledged, and they explain the sentencing in this case.