A woman may go to prison for a murder her boyfriend committed, because apparently men can't possibly control their jealous rages

Given the amount of time judges spend deliberating how hard it is for men to know what we mean by the word 'no', how is it that women become master manipulators in cases such as this?

I’d like to think that it is not the responsibility of women to keep men from murdering people (PA Wire/PA Images)

“Women can be just as violent as men” is the common call of the Men’s Rights Activist. While statistics don’t bear this out – there are male perpetrators for 81 per cent of all violent crime and 99 per cent of all sexual violence – it doesn’t deter MRAs from making this claim. Women might not be the ones landing the final blows, but somehow they’re equally guilty.

If it’s not their violent tongues causing men to lash out, then it’s women’s unbridled sexuality, prompting feelings of jealousy that men can’t control. Or else it could be their womanly wiles, that particularly female taste for manipulation and cunning. Or maybe, as in the case of Sarah Bramley, it’s all of those things at once.

Yesterday Bramley pleaded guilty to incitement to cause common assault, having sent her ex-boyfriend, David Saunders, an intimate photograph of herself with another man. She then followed up the photograph with “goading” texts.

Saunders went on to kill the other man, one Michael Lawson. Sentencing Saunders for Lawson’s murder, Judge Stephen Ashurst ruled that Bramley’s actions had “tipped [Saunders] over the edge” and thus had “a very important bearing” on the latter’s state of mind.

Personally, I’d like to think that it is not the responsibility of women to keep men from toppling over whatever invisible “edge” marks the border between normal behaviour and murderous rage. Alas, it appears I’m wrong. In a curious man-to-man talk delivered by Ashurst to Saunders, the former declared himself “absolutely certain” that Bramley’s behaviour was intended to “wind up” her former boyfriend: “Jealousy was very much at the heart of your behaviour. Ultimately a life was needlessly lost because of a loss of control.”

While such a viewpoint has not saved Saunders from a life sentence, it still positions him as something of a victim himself. How could he stop himself, once the red mist had descended? And whose fault was that?

While I’m not about to suggest that Bramley had good intentions when she sent her texts, I wonder at the narrative being created here. She wanted to rile her ex, yes. She wanted to make him feel small and sexually inferior, and given the fragile state of masculinity, that’s not a difficult thing to do.

She even appeared to encourage Saunders to attack Lawson, urging him to “smack the c***”. But does that make her a criminal? Given the amount of time judges and juries spend deliberating just how hard it is for men to know what women really mean by the word “no”, how is it that women become master manipulators in cases such as this?

There seems to be a very old story playing out here. Cunning woman, hapless man led into temptation. As though, using the right words and images, women can wield male bodies as weapons, controlling male minds with a flash of tit and some carefully placed taut. As though male jealousy – the presumption of men such as Saunders that women such as Bramley belong to them – ultimately works in women’s favour. As though the potential for aggression of men is natural, while the female propensity for manipulation needs to be reined in.

One thing stands out for me in the case against Bramley and that is the fact that she knew her ex was a dangerous man. According to Ashurst, Bramley “knew Saunders had a reputation for violence and that he carried weapons”.

Women who are in relationships with violent men do not always behave as we might predict. The most dangerous time for them can be during or after a break-up. To assume, therefore, that these women might harness such violence to their own advantage seems to me something of a leap. Did Bramley herself have “edges” over which she might have been driven? No one seems particularly interested in that.

Male jealousy is real and it does put lives at risk. Yet it is a thing for men to control. Once we start seeing it as something women choose to switch on and off, we write off the possibility of men being in charge of their own responses.

Men’s Rights Activists might be trying to make the trial of Sarah Bramley into a cause celebre, but for anyone who truly believes in male agency, it is anything but.

The death of Michael Lawson was a tragedy that could have been prevented, but the only person who could have done that was David Saunders.