"The facts on 'femicide'" - from the Guardian

[bloom]

(Esp. for anyone living in da Nile.)

The murder of the Amish schoolgirls is not the first time, by any means, that women or girls have been singled out for death. In 1989, when misogynist Marc Lepine stormed into a college in Montreal, Canada, and shot 14 young women dead, feminists began to demand that police categorise such killings as "femicide", for the same reason that racially motivated murders are named as such. Since then, hundreds of thousands more women and girls have been murdered by men around the world. Different circumstances, different methods, but all for the same reason: hatred of females, and a desire to exercise power over them.

In the 14th and 15th centuries, tens of thousands of women were drowned, stoned and hanged by men in Britain and Europe for being unmarried, or deviating from their prescribed gender role. Every year in Britain, an average of 100 women are killed by a current or former partner. This constitutes 42% of all female victims of homicide. The Council of Europe recently stated that domestic violence is the biggest cause of death and disability for all women under the age of 44. Girls are not exempt: young women aged between 15 and 24 have the highest risk of being killed by male partners... <snip..."retaliation murders", prostitutes murdered, etc.>

Globally, more than 5,000 girls and women are killed every year by male family members in so-called "honour killings", according to the UN. Their "crimes" include marrying out of their faith or culture, being raped, or something as trivial as talking to a man without a chaperone.

In Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, there have been at least 370 murders of girls and young women since 1993. Bodies have been found in streets, ditches, rivers and buried in marshland. Police have variously attributed the murders to serial killers, drug cartels and domestic violence. Many of the victims were poor working mothers employed in factories. Most of the murders - committed by strangulation or stabbing - are thought to have been sexually motivated.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/usguns/Story/0,,1887005,00.html

[Captain Hilts]

1. Good article, but it's hatred of 'women' not 'females'. nt

[bloom]

2. and girls.

as the article says.

I think the writer just used the word "females" to avoid saying "women and girls" again. :shrug:

[bloom]

3. kick

[bloom]

4. kick

[Chomp]

5. I have a horrible feeling

that male violence/hatred towards women is part and parcel of the biological imperative of being male (I mean for a proportion of men, not all of them).

All that testosterone coupled with our big brains? Trouble. Too much capacity for abstract thought and thus hatred.

I am male, for the record.

[donsu]

6. "Too much capacity for abstract thought" LOL at such nonsense

it's the men's war against women

[Marnieworld]

8. He wasn't denying it

Just trying to explore an explanation or motivation. If you don't understand what causes something how can you eradicate it? A biological component would not be an excuse but an aspect of the problem that can be explored.

[donsu]

9. well, I'm laughing at his exploration of an explanation or motivation

combination of testosterone and big brains

[Marnieworld]

12. So what do you think causes it?

Or is a combination of things? Cultures have evolved so it's not inate. What fixes it? Not trying to start a hostile thing. Just curious.

[donsu]

303. hatred of women is learned

nt

[elehhhhna]

21. as am I

[SmokingJacket]

27. Read "The Murderer Next Door" by David Buss.

He makes a good case for murder being a natural, though rare, human behavior: basically, men who kill off their rivals or the children of their rivals, or kill women whom they feel are unfaithful to them, actually succeed at passing on their genes. Not as well as men who are kind, good-looking, and are good providers -- but men who aren't alpha males need other means to keep their genes in their gene pool.

Heck, if violence *didn't* have a role in the survival of the species, it would have evolved out thousands of years ago... hopefully, societies are making violence less prevalent (I mean, in the long view) and so maybe, one far off day, it *will* die out.

(His idea is that women are less violent than men because they *know* who their children are -- and they pass on their genes most efficiently by caring for their children and making sure they survive to reproduce too. Hey, now that DNA testing is so prevalent, maybe men will become less violent too, in the long run.)

[madmusic]

74. What about this?

According to a recent study in New Hampshire, as many as 30 percent of those paying child support are not the biological fathers of the children being supported. California is also expected to release results from a similar study later this year.

"Paternity fraud is a growing concern for men and children everywhere," the New Hampshire report concluded. "It can spawn considerable grief for the men who may or may not be emotionally attached to a child they later discover was fathered by another; and possibly unsettling for children who may discover the false nature of their paternity."

http://www.law.com/jsp/article.jsp?id=1144414531354

[Scout]

153. start a separate thread on it. PHMT is not the topic of this one. n/t

[madmusic]

206. It is relevant...

Because women too have this means to pass on their genes. The greater the variety of genes, the better the chances her genes will survive.

[kiahzero]

20. Using that terminology detracts from solving the problem

The problem is not intrinsic to biology, it's intrinsic to attitudes. Fundamentally, the attitude that women have less rights than men, and that, in terms of gender, masculinity is preferable to femininity. This manifests itself not only in heinous crimes against women such as so-called "honor killings," but is also the root cause of negative feelings towards gender non-conformity (which is, itself, the root of homophobia).

By terming it "The Men's War Against Women," you have done several things. First, you move towards an irrelevant distinction that misrepresents the situation, to the detriment of solving it. Conservative women who've internalized the attitude above are a huge part of the problem, but you wouldn't know it from talking about "The Men's War Against Women." Second, you alienate a large part of the population, who we need to get on our side if we want to ever solve the problem. If you walk up to a man and tell him that he's "warring against women," do you think his reaction will be "I'd never realized! Thank you for opening my eyes!"? Of course not. He'll likely get defensive (and rightly so, as most people would when told that they're soldiers in a war they weren't even aware of, or fighting for the side that they believed they were opposing, as is the case here on DU), which means that he'll react to you with scorn and distaste (which should hardly be a surprise to you, given the reaction a few days ago). Ultimately, you end up working against the cause you're supporting.

[Chomp]

212. Probably the best post in the thread kia

[kiahzero]

218. Certainly my only good one. (n/t)

[BoneDaddy]

277. Excellent Post

No matter what you say, how you act and what you think, there is an element on this message board who have a driving "need" to see all men in this light. In doing so, they alienate the very men they need to make this world a better place. If they think just "they" can do it, they are sadly mistaken.

The level of vitriol, hatred and propaganda to demonize men by some of the women on these boards is reprehensible and women who love men should speak up and join the men on this board who find the militant women (I can't even call them feminists because they are not) way off base and who need to be confronted.

You see for those women who do hate men, they have some serious psychological issues, usually rooted in being a victim at some point in their lives. This militant female phenomenon is easy to explain. When one views themselves, or the group they belong to, as perennial victims, then they do not have to be accountable or responsible for what they do or say, because ultimately, in their eyes, all blame falls on men's shoulders. Typical black/white, good/bad, overly simplistic and ignorant thinking. It is the same type of childish thinking that the fundamentalists subscribe to.

[VelmaD]

284. And once again here's a man...

to tell us who is and is not really a feminist. And to call women who disagree with him names.

If we're going to talk about driving "needs" we could get into why you have the need to say such nasty things abuot women who disagree with you.

[BoneDaddy]

287. ONce again

you don't take responsibility for yourselves and push the blame onto men. Pathetic.

[CTyankee]

281. More men should do what my husband does

He actively supports agencies locally and statewide that protect women's rights, their physical safety and health and the prospects for girls. Almost every one of his charitable dollars goes to such organizations. He pledges every year, gives through United Way and on his own. Each year, when he gives to the Women and Girls Fund of our local community foundation, he names a woman in whose honor he is making the gift. He started this when his mother died several years back. Since then he has honored me, his nieces, his daughter and his sister.

He is not rich. He is a city worker here in New Haven. If more men who are rich followed his example we would have made a huge step in helping, protecting and promoting women in our society.

[omega minimo]

17. goes back to eradication of goddess culture, women as evil, patriarchal

sky god culture.

[AngryAmish]

31. When was the goddess culture wiped out?

[riderinthestorm]

32. Read Chalice and the Blade by Riane Eisler

One of the best ones out there on this topic. It's much too large a topic for DU and it's been a while since I've read it so I'm not going to summarize it effectively enough (maybe someone else can?) but it's a great start.

[kiahzero]

34. I thought anthropologists thrashed that notion a while ago.

I could be mistaken, but I remember reading things to that effect.

[omega minimo]

81. It's history, including in the Bible (!)

see...........? :think:

"I thought anthropologists thrashed that notion a while ago."

What? Any references? They may have thrashed about it, but "that notion" is our shared history.

[kiahzero]

94. The Bible is hardly a good source of history

No, I'm afraid I don't have references on hand. The impression stems from discussions of modern reconstructions of pagan religions that were based around the belief in the aforementioned "goddess culture," though. The general consensus that I got was that such things were discredited, and at this point in time mainly the province of fluff-bunnies.

[VelmaD]

109. while the re-created religions...

may be discredited...the evidence of worship of the feminine has not been.

[kiahzero]

112. That may be the source of my confusion

Irony: After decrying generalizing a problem subset to a larger population, I inadvertantly do so myself.

>.<

[Irreverend IX]

304. Ancient religions were a lot more complex...

Than "goddess culture" implies. Pagan pseudoscholars seem to think that many pre-Christian peoples worshipped some vague, overarching concept of "the goddess," and some imply that this belief helped cultivate a peaceful society. But the little information that remains on the pagan religions shows that their theology and cosmology was much more complex, usually involving large numbers of god-forms, and no "tranquil goddess cultures" have ever been identified. The presence of feminine deities in a religion has never precluded violence within the associated society.

[bloom]

322. I don't know what

"Pagan pseudoscholars" you are referring to.

I've read a few books on the subject and the main thing that is crystal clear is that the dominant culture that we have now has done an excellent job of repressing and excluding any other world views/other religions (esp. non-patriarchal ones) from people awareness. So much so that 99.99999% of the public are really quite clueless about what religions the Judeo-Christian-Muslim religions replaced in the Canaan/Middle East area.

[Irreverend IX]

323. I dunno...

Wiccans who claim their religion is 10,000 years old (it's actually coed Freemasonry with a new coat of paint)? Those beliefs originated when Margaret Murray wrote "The Witch-Cult in Western Europe," and it's pure revisionist history. No kidding that the church did an effective job of wiping out all knowledge of pre-Christian European religions, but what is known about the ones that came before suggests that they weren't a whole lot less patriarchal than Christianity. The Norse and Greek myth-cycles glorified male characters above females, as did the associated cultures. The sexual mores of the Catholic Church actually originated in pre-Christian Rome, where it was believed that a man's power resided in his semen and men were thus encouraged to abstain from sex in order to preserve their strength.

If you're focusing on the Middle East, the most prominent ancient religion was that of Marduk, and it centered around male gods and was practiced in a strongly patriarchal society. It's possible that matriarchal cultures were prominent thousands of years before, when agrarian society and cities didn't yet exist, but it's intellectually dishonest to claim the emergence of Christianity caused a mass movement toward patriarchy and oppression, when Christian oppression was simply the continuation of social forces that pre-dated the Roman Church.

Indeed, when Christianity was taking root in the Roman Empire it was more popular with women than men. Do take note that I'm an atheist with little affection for Christianity, so don't think I'm trying to defend it. I just get annoyed by the severely dumbed-down notions of history propagated by modern New Age scholars.

[bloom]

325. I suppose it's easy enough to find people you disagree with....

It's not "dumbing down" when people like Riane Eisler and Elaine Pagels, Merlin Stone and others write about things that have barely been written about. A lot of it is about evidence that contrdicts conventional wisdom.


Deconstruction has to start somewhere.

New thread:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=214x90846

[omega minimo]

138. You might learn more

if you read the replies with an open mind and didn't piss on them.


"The Bible is hardly a good source of history"

[Greyhound]

255. You really should read it and decide for yourself. You seem like an

open minded person that can analyze the facts as they are, and I assume from thing's you've said that you have some background in the sciences.

One example that I can give you from early on in the book, is the assumption that the victorian era "anthropologists" made upon the discovery of one of the prehistoric sites (it's been a while since I read it and it is not my specific field so forgive me if the details are a bit off), was that the culture in question engaged in human sacrifice because they failed to recognize a birthing table for what it was. They saw the rake, channels, and drain and simply assumed it to be some kind of sacrificial alter, it never even occurred to them that it could be anything else, since they "knew" that the people that lived then were some sort of blood-thirsty savages. This error was adhered to by the "general consensus" for many years until a woman made the suggestion that it served a very practical purpose and was not any kind of alter at all.

Ms. Eisler's theory is quite compelling and, to my mind anyway, passes the test of Occam's razor admirably. Check it out. :hi:

[and-justice-for-all]

330. Of couse its not a history source...

...But its literature is very anti-women, its a cold and calouces book of hatered and bloodshed.

[Dora]

18. Let's talk about that biological imperative?

For dialogue's sake, let's say that you're right. Some men can't help it, just can't stop themselves from hating women (and acting on that hatred) because they are biologically driven to it.

What then? How is society supposed to cope with a segment of its male population that is admittedly unwilling or unable to control their feelings of aggression towards women?

(I also don't understand how capacity for abstract thought correlates with hatred, if you'd care to address that too.)

[The2ndWheel]

23. If it's biological

or driven by biology(can't find a mate/traits not desirable to the female with which to reproduce, which is the #1 goal of any species) then you either wait for evolution to do what it does, or wait until we can find whatever it is that does that, take it out in a lab, and genetically engineer men. Putting them in jail doesn't do the trick. I'm not saying wait as in lay back and take it. Let me make the as clear as I can.

I do think it's biological. But I don't think it's hatred. We label it hatred. I'm not a scientist of any kind, but to me it's the competition for reproduction. The female has always controlled the process of reproduction. The male of a species has always done something to try and reproduce. If the female doesn't find anything about the male attractive, nature can get ugly.

I'm NOT blaming women. That's NOT and in NOT blaming women. Just for future reference, that's NOT blaming women. In case anyone forgets, that's NOT blaming women.

I just think that we(humans) see ourselves as somehow "further" advanced or evolved than other forms of life. People tend to equate progress and evolution.

[smirkymonkey]

26. Does it ever occur to men that what women don't find attractive

about them is their sexist attitudes? It's always when we stand up for ourselves or step out of the role of submissive, always compliant female that we get in trouble.

Also does it every occur to men that female anger is a REACTION to the behavior of men?

[The2ndWheel]

30. I wasn't talking about sexist attitudes

I was trying to talk about nature, evolution over millions of years.

Maybe "rape" is strictly a human thing. I don't know enough about other species to say if they have that as well. They have competition. Two males will fight and the winner gets to reproduce with the female. Or they can even be turned down by a female because it isn't time to reproduce.

Whatever the answer is, it's quite complicated. I think it's fundamentally about biology. Although in today's day and age, it's impossible not to say our attempt at controlling our environments(in the many ways we do) doesn't play a part.

[tblue37]

223. Actually, other species rape, too.

In fact, our cute little favorites, porpoises and dolphins, are famous for gang raping unwilling females.

[Scout]

234. I've heard of that too. Saw it on Discovery Channel (or similar)

the males get together and round up a female and "cut her from the group" of other females and young....

then they take her off and have their way with her. not sure if just one of them or several...

[FormerDem06]

39. But in general, in my experience women don't live this out....

In college I was the "friendly guy" and I can tell you that as the "friendly guy" I stood by and watched normally level-headed attractive girls go for the alpha male with aggressive behavoir and the "I don't care about you" attitude time and time again.

So the message that a lot of guy gets growing up reinforces that women want us to have that sexist attitude or at the very least the inattentive and mean one. Granted I don't and never did, thus why I am going on 10 years of being happily married I guess.

[kiahzero]

40. "The Friend Zone"

Bane of nice guys the world over.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

101. And sometimes self-described "nice guys" are really

passive-aggressive or are transparently "nice" only when they're trying to get into someone's pants or are boring as hell.

The rest of the self-described "nice guys" are chasing after the alleged "hot" women, the very ones guaranteed to break their hearts, while the "nice gals" sit home on Saturday night.

[raccoon]

289. Exactly, Lydia, as is said below, from Usenet.

...many of the guys arguing for the "women don't date nice guys" are not interested in dating any ole "nice girl." They want to date a hot babe. Now, the hot babe who has got herself all together really *can* land the guy who is "all that, and a bag of chips." (i.e., a hot guy who has it all together--mazel tov, you beautiful and together couple!) So, for the guy who is merely "all that" but not "the bag of chips" (or the "bag of chips," but not really "all that"), the best shot at getting a hot babe is to go for the hot-but-messed-up babe. Messed up women *do* often date jerks (that I will definitely conceed). So, in a nutshell, why do these guys get their undies all in a wad about the messed up women who date jerks? Because maybe their only chance with a hot babe is with such types of "damaged goods."


http://groups.google.com/group/alt.support.marriage/browse_frm/thread/aacf8cf51f8faef6/d19767f6c329b15b?lnk=st&q=women+nice+guys+mazel+tov&rnum=1#d19767f6c329b15b

[FormerDem06]

292. That is definately an interesting hypothesis...

I dated a girl all the way through college and married her, so this was just an observation of our mutual friends.

I think there is some truth to what you've said coupled with some instances in my experience that defy that logic. I really didn't hang around with a lot of "hot" girls I guess (besides my wife). And my guy friends, a few of them did chase the babe but a few others went after the smart girl, who was trying to get with some guy who wasn't really interested in them personally at all. the thrill of the chase I guess.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

293. That's exactly it!

When I was a college professor, I saw so many relationships where "nice guys" gravitated toward precisely the heartless Heathers who would leave them for some jerk, while there were one or more "nice girls" who were literally pining for them,

[femrap]

46. Maybe the young women have been

conditioned to go for the Alpha Male...why? He is the one who could protect them, get the most power/money, provide security against other males. That's my theory.

These women who go for the Alphas seem to distrust their own power...maybe they have witnessed (in their families) how women are treated and are doing what they have learned to survive?

[donsu]

305. maybe some women go for the alpha male because they are more

exciting and fun. doesn't mean they want to spend the rest of their lives living with them.

and, like bad boys can be an interesting diversion if you are in the mood for a diversion.

[Marie26]

205. And meanwhile,

women are wondering why guys go for the shallow, petty fashion model over the PhD!

[Greyhound]

256. Unfortunately, this is all too true. I learned pretty early that women say

they want a nice guy that will treat them well, but nearly always go off to fuck the biggest asshole in the room. I believe that this is a cultural phenomenon (I hope), but it is undeniable.

The corollary is also true that guys will pass up the brilliant but plain woman to take a shot at the airhead with the big tits.

**Disclaimer** the preceding is a broad generalization, individual cases are likely to contradict it, and I think it sucks too.*******

[Lydia Leftcoast]

95. Very true--no woman with an ounce of sense will stay with

an anger junkie.

This makes him even angrier and even less attractive.

[Dora]

29. But that's a failure to address the issue.

For example, as a result of biology, a segment of the female population experiences PMS. This is an undeniable fact. Symptoms of pre-menstrual syndrome range from mild to incapacitating, and women who have it cope in myriad ways. Doctors address it with medication (birth control pills, anti-depressants, etc) and advice about diet and exercise. Herbalists, naturopaths, and other alt medicine practicioners have their remedies and treatments for coping with the symptoms.

When I was in my early 20s I realized that three days before my cycle started, I turned into a shrieking harpy who wasn't capable of making a decision off a menu in less than fifteen minutes. Once my cycle began, I was (thank goodness) sweetness and light again, with nary a complaint in the world. I knew I had to cope with this. My emotional erraticism was making my personal life difficult. The inability to make decisions quickly was effecting my job performance. I had to cope with how biology was effecting me. And I did. I read up on diet factors, on exercise, on nutritional supplements. I put some things into practice, and sometimes I was good at coping with it, and sometimes not so much.

But I dealt with it.

We cannot dismiss men's violence towards women by saying that it's their biological imperative. For pete's sake - doing that just further disempowers men from taking control of their own masculinity.

Is that what guys want?

[The2ndWheel]

38. Coping with it

Men do cope with being turned down or rejected, some much better than others.

Did you do away with PMS? Does anyone? You're only coping with the issue. Other women aren't as successful as you were sometimes, other times not so much(your own words, not my male ego :) )

Empower men to do what? Overcome millions of years of evolution? Even pills don't last forever.

PMS hasn't evolved out of the female portion of the population, that's why it's still here, no matter what medicine you take.

Biology is a very powerful force, and I don't think we can conquer it. I'm not saying all violence against women is only because of biology. No question that some of that is specifically as a result of the social system we live in. But that social structure was created so that men could have more say and power. Again, I think that does go back to our basic drive, which is reproduction. One more time, I'm NOT blaming women for that. That's just existence. That's the male wanting to pass on genes. Males kill males for the same reason. That's why we have to build something bigger and better than the last guy, or whatever example you could come up with. I'm not blaming men, I'm certainly not blaming women. That's just evolution up to October 5th, 2006. Maybe that changes, maybe it doesn't. Maybe we can medicate that out of existence. I don't know.

[Dora]

41. How do men cope with their "biological" proclivity for violence?

(I am not a fan of evolutionary psychology. I told someone on DU recently that I think it's a crock of shit. Just so you know where I stand.)

The matter I was asking about "coping" with is men's "biological" (as you assert) proclivity to violence.

Men's violence towards women makes life difficult - for the victim and the victimizer, their families, the judicial system... So, what can/do we do to address (or cope with) men's violence towards women so that we (humankind) do not have to continue to suffer the consequences of misogyny?

I'm talking about not making excuses, or saying it's unstoppable and throwing our hands up. I'm talking about action.

[VelmaD]

42. Totally agree with you on...

"evolutionary psychology" being "crap".

I have the first action we can take in dealing with men's proclivity toward violence...stop letting them get away with claiming that it's biological and they can't do anything about it. It's a bullshit, cop-out excuse.

[QuestionAll...]

91. it is a bullshit cop-out.

"Hey, whaddya expect, I'm a man - mother nature, that bitch, made me like this. "

I've heard too many excuses like this over my lifetime of bad sexist behaviour - includes women as well - but they're not the ones raping and pillaging and throwing their blood soaked missiles all over the place.

[The2ndWheel]

146. Well that's where many people go wrong

Sexist behavior is a result of civilization, not nature.

[The2ndWheel]

144. Genetically engineer it out of us

Do away with the mechanism that gives men the idea that they have a say in the process of reproducing the species, civilization.

That's just my thinking anyway. One of those two could do it. And I'm being completely serious.

To me, men created civilization for the purpose of having more power in terms of the primal goal of any species, reproduction. I may be wrong, but that's just the conclusion I've come to as your average everyday guy.

We've tried prison, it hasn't gone away. We've tried education, it's still here. We attempt to medicate every issue we have, and yet that violence is still going on.

No bullshit excuses. No throwing up of the hands. Either find the sequence of genes that make men violent and yank it out of our DNA, or get rid of the vehicle which has allowed men to completely dominate women for thousands of years. You can't fight for rights within the system that was used to oppress you. It won't work. Do away with that artifical system, or get men in a lab and genetically alter us. I honestly do not know what else to say. It's not every man that falls to the violent side, but no woman can know for sure. If we must not continue with it, then change it. Other than those two options, I seriously don't know what else to do.

I'm coming from the biological point of view, you aren't, so maybe you have something else that could work.

[Scout]

236. Margaret Atwood had a solution in Oryx and Crake

ever read it? I'm not saying I actually advocate it, but it is quite interesting to think about.

[raccoon]

290. Yes, I read it and remember that solution.

It certainly seemed worth consideration, although in a way it made the Children of Crake more animal and less human.

[BoneDaddy]

278. Male on male violence

dwarfs male violence towards women.

[VelmaD]

283. Then maybe y'all should DO something about it

The point here is that the vast majority of violence against women is perpetrated by males and we're trying to do something about that. Maybe men need to get off their asses and do something about the fact that they also perpetrate the vast majority of the violence against men. Just saying.

[Name removed]

286. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[VelmaD]

291. Talk about projection

You know nothing about me and you cast similar aspersions on my character.

Quite simply the reason I have the negative opinion I have of you is based on the words you use. The things you call women (especially women who disagree with you) make it hard to believe you care much for my gender.

[BoneDaddy]

294. Projection?

I have NEVER EVER made an all or none statement about women. I am very very specific to what group of ideologues, who just happen to be militant women, I have a problem with.

My criticisms have never been global. If you paid attention you would have noticed that.

Time and time again, I have confronted the global statements that you and others have made about MEN.

[VelmaD]

295. I am going to try to use small words...

to explain this one more time and then I am done with you. The words you use to describe women who do not agree with you say a lot about how you view women.

[Name removed]

296. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[BoneDaddy]

300. NP

I was done with you the minute you opened up your mouth.

[Scout]

310. you say you were done "the minute [Velma] opened her mouth"

yet here you were post after post after post responding to her....

very interesting...

[BoneDaddy]

319. I was done

taking her seriously ...She blew that the second she started behaving like a fundamentalist, but instead of religion, it was gender.
Are you her self appointed guardian, or just interested in continuing the match?

[femrap]

44. I don't believe it is biological...

I believe misogyny is TAUGHT. It is taught by religions. And the Media loves to show women as nothing but objects for sexual pleasure.

No, it's taught.

[LostinVA]

107. MIsogyny is taught -- like racism, homophobia, etc.

[tomreedtoon]

272. If misogyny is taught, who is the teacher?

And "self taught" is not an option unless the person is dysfunctionally nuts. Which I would argue the current case isn't.

I'm not trying to blame his rage on a specific woman without knowing his history. If this incident occurred twenty years ago, when he was young, it sounds like a mother, older relative or possibly girls his age.

It also might have been a misogynist father or father figure.

The one thing I don't want to see is people blaming "society at large" for those murders. There are a lot of problems with society, but I'd argue that sexism has been vastly reduced over the last few decades. And I'd rather not have one of those pointless PSA campaigns and more censorship of the media about "Please Don't Kill Your Sister" or whatever stupidity the educators come up with.

I just want to find out why this guy did it. And sadly, that will take a lot of investigation and work by a crime reporter, and that book will be about three to five years away.

[Name removed]

321. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Marie26]

324. Excuse me,

why was MY post deleted? So - it's OK for a poster to blame the murders of children on "cruel Amish girls," it's OK to label all girls as "cruel" and responsible for any violence that a man inflicts on them, yet it's not OK to remember that somebody posted that? What is going on here?

[tomreedtoon]

326. I never read your post,but I think I know why.

I'm proposing the logical reasons why a man would be moved to this sort of thing. That includes the possibility that a woman tortured him.

You probably flew off the handle at the thought that a woman would do anything so evil.

Guess what. Women do. All the time. So do men. Equality, remember?

As Sherlock Holmes approximately said, once you eliminate the impossible, the possible - however unlikely - must contain the truth.

[Marie26]

328. Except it wasn't true,

at all. As we know, those Amish girls did NOTHING to justify such a heinous crime. Girls, or women, did NOTHING to justify that crime. It was the sick delusions of a person full of hatred & anger. I thought the attempts to blame the girls a for crime like this was disgusting, and I still do. Calling all girls "cruel" & saying girls' cruelty probably inspired the violence is troubling. Saying, in all seriousness, that girls who reject a man are the "real culprits" of a shooting spree is beyond disturbing. That is classic, twisted misogyny. My post said the same thing this one does, and I suspect it was deleted because we're apparantly not supposed to remember that you were tombstoned a week ago for that thread. I am mostly curious as to why you are able to continue posting at all now; it really shows DU's priorities, IMO.

[tomreedtoon]

329. I'll break this down into simple sentences even you can understand.

Now pay attention, because you apparently haven't been. I will break it up into simple sentences in the admittedly futile help that you might understand the discussion.

Something made this man go nuts. He was psychologically hurt.

It was very unlikely that the girls he killed were guilty of causing him that hurt.

SOMEBODY did.

He undoubtedly wanted to hurt the people who hurt him. This is the point where you are diverging from the whole logic thing. Perhaps you are a masochist who likes getting hurt, who believes that you should never try to stop someone from hurting you. Maybe not. But this is a possible point of departure for you.

Most people believe it is entirely fair to stop someone from hurting you.

NOW, take a deep breath. This is going to make your head spin.

IN THIS MAN'S MIND, he assumed that a certain group of women WHO HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH HIS PAIN were causing it. He attacked them to stop his pain.

Still with us? Okay.

You may not believe that taking such vengeance is right. Okay, good for you. I believe that if someone hurts you, you hurt them back. I do NOT believe that emotional hurt deserves the death penalty. If I did believe that, a vast number of people would be dead right now. But they're not. I am not the monster you presume me to be (maybe you presume all men are monsters, what-EVER, been there, done that).

But THIS guy apparently believed that these murders would balance the scales and stop his pain.

The point of this exercise? Explaining to you that, no matter what you might think, this murderer had WHAT HE CONSIDERED rightful reasons to kill those girls.

You don't believe those reasons were valid. I don't believe it either. But we don't matter, because we weren't this man. We weren't in his shoes. We didn't suffer his pain, and we didn't have the lack of available outlets or the closed minds surrounding us that might have shown him a different way.

This is brain-busting for you, I know. You seem to believe that there is only one proper way to think. Kind of like people in religions, in cults, or in the Republican Party.

But there are ALL kinds of ways of thinking. You may not like them, but they exist.

And my proposition is, if you refuse to see that there are people who can perform monstrous acts and see them as perfectly reasonable, you will never be able to stop those acts. Because you will never understand or be able to approach the root causes.

All that can happen, with your closed-mind approach, is blow 'em away on sight or lock 'em in jail forever. And that, I argue, is a very stupid approach.

Got it yet?

[OzarkDem]

263. Agree

There's nothing biological about it.

[donsu]

7. evidence of men's war against women and girls

nt

[tomreedtoon]

327. Come on! People are at war with People.

The sex of the aggressor has nothing to do with it. Men may have something of an edge in physical aggression, but women have mental and psychological aggression on their side. (Or haven't you watched "Desperate Housewives"?)

As was said in a tortuous videogame from one of the James Bond movies, "The eternal struggle for control of the world continues."

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

10. Hmm.

According to crime statistics, 70% of murder victims are men.

[kiahzero]

11. Apparently, men are at war with ourselves too.

I've captured myself as a prisoner of war. Is it legal for me to waterboard myself now?

[Marnieworld]

13. It depends

What color is your skin? What do you call your God? Where do you live? These are clearly details that determine human rights.

[kiahzero]

15. White, lots of names, Virginia

Two out of three say no, but the fact that the prisoner in question isn't Christian would seem to indicate that waterboarding is OK. By the 1% doctrine, if it's even 1% likely, we have to treat it as a certainty. Therefore, I have to waterboard myself. Crap.

[elehhhhna]

22. bring this, it'll help;

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

14. I've declared myself an uniformed enemy combatant.

But I've agreed to a cease-fire with myself.

[kiahzero]

16. Good call.

Negotiations for the release of myself from my custody to my custody have begun, but I'm not a very good negotiating partner for myself.

[smirkymonkey]

24. Way to miss the point completely.

I'm surprised the rest of the posse isn't here to hijack the thread and turn it into another whiny tirade about how white men have is soooooooo hard in this world.

The point isn't about murder statistics, the point is about murders that are committed simply because the victim is female and that is it. Most men aren't killed because murderers are out looking to kill men specifically.

[kiahzero]

25. There hasn't been such a tirade

I'm not quite sure how "All men aren't warring on women. Stop saying they are." equates to or logically implies "White men have it so hard." Could you please explain that to me?

[smirkymonkey]

28. If a OP brought up an article and discussion regarding violence

toward Muslims or any other ethnic group, you wouldn't trivialize the issue by making light of it or by joking about it. Your condescending posts are just one of many ways in how men oppress women every day, everywhere.

What makes me sick is that a bunch of men who call themselves liberals actually have this attitude.

[kiahzero]

33. I was trivalizing the responses to the thread.

"The Men's War on Women" is still dumb. It still merits ridicule.

[smirkymonkey]

35. Thank you for illustrating my point.

[kiahzero]

36. You think a phrase attacking people who agree with you is a good idea?

Really?

Edit: Interesting that you get upset over my jocular response, but don't even comment on my substantive response.

[LostinVA]

100. Agree n/t

[LostinVA]

99. Forget my post on another thread about how Progressive

people in CVille are.

Boy. Thanks for scotching my point.

You can say this after the serial rapist? After Lizzie's murder this past weekend? After the rapes and assaults on young women by predators that happen every week in Cville?

Oi.

Thank the gods for idea. What a horrible thing to fucking joke about.

[kiahzero]

116. Since when are people here progressive?

I haven't noticed that, though I am new here, so my perceptions are largely surface level.

I don't think I'm any less progressive for saying that attacking a whole group of people based on the actions of a few is something worthy of ridicule.

[LostinVA]

96. Oh, it'll happen...

[BoneDaddy]

279. Whiny?

Since when is it whiny to confront absolutist, hypocritical thinking?

[verse18]

43. What % of these murder victims

were killed by other men?

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

50. Why does that matter?

[L A Woman]

83. but how many are killed BECAUSE they are men...

that is the point.

[Cerridwen]

19. How about if we call it a "war" against "the feminine"?

Any and all things seen as "feminine"; things and people frequently identified as weak, emotional, capable of creation rather than "just" destruction, etc., while celebrating all things defined as "masculine"; for example, "might makes right", unemotional, destructive, etc.

It makes more sense in that light. Homosexuality is frequently viewed (in sick minds) as "less than" "masculine". Gay men are perceived (by the same sick minds) as not fitting a hyper-masculine stereotype and face ridicule and sometimes, violence.

Women and girls are "naturally" equated with "the feminine" except those who are gay and lesbian and who are then subsequently punished for not being "feminine" enough. Inversion of the same idea; stay within your narrowly defined role or suffer the consequences.

Children are even "weaker" and we do have an unconscionable amount of child abuse and pedophilia in this country (around the world?). "Women and children" are frequently forced into the same category.

Our pets are weaker still. Too many in prison for violent crime, also perpetrated violence on family pets.

Hell, even pages on The Hill...vulnerable due to their lower status.

Mix in a bit of insanity about sex...lots of sex scandals, lots of people vulnerable to sexual predators, etc.

This is a bit disjointed but perhaps you get my drift.

[bloom]

77. To some extent

I agree with you.

But I can't think of any instances of men going around lining up heterosexual male poets/other creative, introspective men or boys to shoot - mostly they are ignored (in school - those are often the ones who are bullied, though). There are certainly the gay men who are targets - for not following the macho script or whatever.

It's odd how this culture disdains most creative/artistic people except for (macho) "rock stars". Misogyny seems to get some of the men bonus points with music that expresses a hatred of women - like hiphop (not all hip or rock is macho/misogynist, of course). It amounts to using music as a form of propaganda/control. And even when individual men do not have much access to control - that doesn't keep them from contributing to a culture of male control.

People who are creative when it comes to making money, amassing power get a lot of adulation.

As far as the culture being against emotions - It seems that more all the time that the culture does not even promote love - but promotes detached self-preservation. And yet we are all supposed to act happy and enthusiastic whether we are or not. Some people make a living out of teaching people how to do that.

Of course you have women who embrace the abuse of power meme - who try to benefit from it as if it's a positive thing (what with the culture teaching people that and all). But even then - you don't hear about women lining up unknown men - or boys - so they can shoot them. The attitude (embrace the abuse of power) may contribute to more abuse, of boys by teachers and that sort of thing.

I think abuse of power sums up a lot of it. And those who deny that they are part of a group with power to abuse just sound clueless.

Most people can admit that the USA is abusing it's power. It is not my choice that my country does that - nor can I control it - but I certainly don't deny that it's happening.

[kiahzero]

87. What if someone attacked you for being an American?

It is not my choice that my country does that - nor can I control it - but I certainly don't deny that it's happening.

There's a difference between denying that something's happening and denying culpability. I don't think any people here bear any culpability for the actions of the Bush Administration, given that we've been fighting it every step of the way. So wouldn't you find it hurtful if your Canadian friend told you that it's your fault that the U.S. is abusing it's power?

It's emotionally draining for me to do my best to solve the problem, then be told that I'm morally tainted by virtue of something that I had no control over or even a say in.

[Greyhound]

177. Interesting take but we are to blame for the crimes that have been

committed in our names. It may not be fair, but it is so. We (the sheeple) bear responsibility for what is done in our names just as we are responsible for who occupies the Whitehouse, and we have not fought it every step of the way, we've capitulated every step of the way.

[kiahzero]

179. I disagree.

You can't be morally responsible for something you had no control over, something that happened despite your best efforts.

[Greyhound]

180. It's like being the captain of a ship, or CEO of a corporation.

Supposedly We the Sheeple are in charge of this country. I see, and sympathize with your position, but the rest of the world just doesn't give a shit. They see "our" leaders going along with, and even supporting, "their" offenses and will look at us differently for a very long time.

[Greyhound]

265. Forget my other reply, it is beside the point and I withdraw it. What you

wrote here about being held responsible for something that you have absolutely no control over is exactly what women are faced with for their entire lives.

"look at how she was dressed, she was asking for it." "I spent $200 bucks on dinner tonight and now you think I'm going home alone?" "I was drunk and I couldn't help myself." "She fucked my roommate, that slut deserved what she got." and on and on and on and on and...

[TheWraith]

37. What a ghoulish thing to do.

Taking a mass-murder by a mentally ill man and trying to spin it into something about targeted killings? That's just twisted, sick, and grossly disrespectful of the young girls who died, to use them like some cheap propaganda tool. The author of this article should be ashamed of themselves, and not just for exploiting a tragedy, but also for the blatant intellectual dishonesty they exhibit in the article itself. To read it, you'd think that no one ever got murdered anywhere except for women being murdered by evil hateful men. I'm the first person on the list for being ready to nuke Waziristan, but this kind of thing does nothing but perpetuate the classic image of the man-hating feminist who thinks that all men are evil.

[Dora]

47. Isn't it possible...

For a man who hates women to be mentally ill as well as a misogynist?

Mental illness does not dilute the fact that a man killed innocent girls as a result of some deluded fantastical guilt from an event that (by all reports) never happened.

I fail to see how the Guardian article exploits anything.

[femrap]

51. Whoa, are you taking this a tad too personally?

Women are murdered for being women/girls all the time. It's misogyny. This milkman wanted to kill girls...he sent all the boys out of schoolhouse.

And our culture of 'Macho' is going to end up killing the entire planet. The * Regime plays to the Angry White Male constantly...our culture has become more and more disrespectful of the Feminine. Go watch TV...looks like women are here just for sexual pleasure and nothing else.

And let's look at WAR...who suffers the most? Over 70% of the people killed in WARS are women and children. They're unarmed and easy to kill. Ever been to war? Ever talk to someone who was in Vietnam? Even the GIs coming back from Iraq are beginning to talk about the innocent women and children they killed. A GI was just on Democracy Now! earlier this week talking about this...he now refuses to go back to Iraq and turned himself in to Ft. Knox to face trial.

Face the FACTS. Do some research. If you ain't part of the solution, you're part of the problem.

[kiahzero]

52. What if we're trying to be part of the solution and are attacked anyway?

It gets a little grating.

[VelmaD]

53. Then maybe you should take a step back...

and look at what you said or did prior to the "attack".

[kiahzero]

54. Given that it was an OP, absolutely nothing

"Men's War on Women" came out of nowhere.

[VelmaD]

57. Get it straight...

the OP did not attack you personally. It is not all about you.

[kiahzero]

60. Well

I'm a man. She said that "the world of men" was warring against women. I don't think feeling attacked is unjustified in that instance, just like I don't think it's unjustified for Muslims to feel attacked when all Muslims are lumped in with terrorists, when Christians feel attacked when all of them are lumped in with fundamentalists, or when white people feel attacked when all of them are lumped in with racists.

[VelmaD]

62. I find two of the three groups...

you chose to consider "attacked" quite interesting.

[kiahzero]

69. How so?

Do you deny that sometimes righteous outrage towards Islamic terrorists spills over into unrighteous outrage against Muslims at large? That sometimes righteous outrage towards Christian fundamentalists sometimes degrades into attacks on all Christians? That sometimes righteous outrage towards white racists sometimes turns into a belief that all whites are racist?

Those are just three examples of the phenomena (poor generalizations) that I'm decrying. Yes, three out of four of the groups mentioned (including men as a class) have a power advantage here in the U.S. That doesn't mean that attacking all members of a given class for the sins of a small subset of that class is appropriate.

[VelmaD]

72. I just don't think you do yourself any favors...

that's all. When you're talking about broadbrush smears against large groups of people...well, it isn't white, christian men who are most often the victims of those.

[kiahzero]

80. No, it's not.

My point was more specific than that, though. There isn't much, as I put it, "righteous outrage" against minority groups. The specific phenomenon that I was refering to (moving from a fair characterization of a subset of a population to an unfair characterization of that population at large) generally only happens when you have a small subset of a large population doing something heinous to a smaller population. Given that we are all Democrats here (and therefore almost certainly progressive), most of these complaints are going to be against the people with the power. Therefore, the phenomenon I'm talking about would be more likely to appear when discussing "majority groups."

I'm trying to think of examples I've seen in the past where the group being generalized over was, itself, a minority. A minor example would be pagans and "fluff-bunnies." A small subset of the population ("fluff-bunnies") are legitimately attacked for lacking any real rigor or seriousness regarding their religion. Then, others might generalize that all pagans are that way, even though they may mean to only discuss the subset of the population. This example is somewhat lacking, though, because it's not outrage and frustration so much as derision, which significantly changes the feelings involved. There's an example from Dan Savage (of Savage Love, not Michael Savage the nutcase) that might work better. In some cases I recall reading his column where he attacked promiscuous gay men who had contracted STDs and continued to have unsafe sex with partners (often without telling them of their status) for not taking their sexual partner's health seriously. It would be fair to be outraged with that particular subset for their recklessness. However, if one generalized to other gay men, including gay men who were in fact working to eliminate that behavior, they would be justified in feeling attacked and responding in kind.

I chose the three groups I did because I thought it expressed the concept I was trying to express (the two paragraphs above) in three sentences. However, brevity is sometimes the enemy of clarity.

[VelmaD]

85. I have to disagree with you...

I think we increasingly live in a society where those in power feel comfortable bringing back out the tired old stereotypes and applying them to large groups of people. I still hear plenty of broadbrush statements about women all the time in my daily life...how we're flighty or too emotional or talk too much. Or from the truly anti-woman crowd about how feminists are all man-hating harpies. I think it's the groups without power who are more often targeted with broadbrush smears...maybe not on DU, but in the real world where there are a lot of people out there who are something less than progressive and tolerant.

[kiahzero]

98. I wasn't saying it was more common

I was just describing a specific type of generalization which is itself most often found applied to groups with power. I agree that in the world at large, it's the groups without power that are more often targetted.

[mongo]

185. And you wonder why these issues can't be discussed on DU

I still hear plenty of broadbrush statements about women all the time in my daily life...how we're flighty or too emotional or talk too much.

How do you think it feels to hear all the BS bradbrush statements about men in these threads?

And there have been several replies in this thread by men, whose words were then twisted and or ridiculed.

There is a group of women here at DU that is NOT looking for a discussion. They are just re-feuling their own biases.

[Marie26]

204. And that goes both ways. nt

[LostinVA]

103. Me too... why do the responses on threads like these continue to

surprise me?

[femrap]

71. When you are discussing misogyny, I think males need to

listen more than speak. Or at least pose questions about our culture of patriarchy.

It's annoying to have a male tell a female what she is experiencing.

[VelmaD]

73. Totally agree and I would add...

that men should not tell women what is and is not "real" sexism. Happens here all the time.

[femrap]

194. I agree! nt

[LostinVA]

92. I've never seen a woman on DU or IRL attack a man

for trying to be part of solution. I have seen, over and over and over again, discussions on this topic and similar ones get turned around into : "well, men get hurt by women, husbands get beaten by wives, men are raped, men are murdered, well... women kill their kids." Ugh. That is not working for a solution, it's faux upmanship.

[kiahzero]

110. Which is exactly why I was attacking the "men at war with women" rhetoric

The turn-around is because of people getting defensive, because they feel like they're under attack from someone who seems to be asserting moral superiority by virtue of gender. So they either mock the statement (my choice) or make a bid to re-establish moral parity (the choice that leads to the "faux upmanship").

[OPERATIONMINDCRIME]

45. What An Absolutely Silly And Misguided Premise.

Jesus, talk about using isolated stories as alarmism for an epidemic that simply doesn't exist. This premise is just quite simply seriously twisted and wreaks of personal agenda intent to propogate a theory with no factual basis.

Here's some facts for you. 75% of all murder victims are male. Malicide is 3 times of a larger problem. Maybe you should advocate for ways of protecting the men in our society from such brutal crimes huh?

For anyone interested, pretty good numbers site below.

http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/homicide/gender.htm

[Dora]

48. So, what can be done to address the issue?

We all want to know how to stop men from killing each other and women and children too. Yeah, women and children kill as well, but your statistics show that by and large, it's adult males who kill the most.

So, what do we do about it?

[OPERATIONMINDCRIME]

56. You're Asking How To Erradicate The Act Of Murder?

Ever see Minority Report or Demolition Man? Short of that, I don't know what to tell ya.

[Dora]

63. Haven't seen either. Please do tell.

Seriously - what do they say about the matter?

By looking at those statistics, it's obvious that it's a problem that must be addressed. Do we wimmins need to get all Lysistrata on y'all?

I make light, but seriously, why is men killing men/women/children just seen as a fact of life, rather than what it is - a fact of death?

[OPERATIONMINDCRIME]

66. Well,

In minority report the basic premise was that three drug induced mentally connected gifted psychic type children could predict every single murder before it happened. Then the police would show up and arrest the perp before any crime even took place. I won't give away why it did or didn't work, however, in case you choose to see it someday. Great movie though, in my opinion.

Demolition man was a bit more tacky. Murder had gone away there merely because of a 1984 type mentality of not being allowed to do a damn thing, and having video cameras about every 10 feet.

Unfortunately, to erradicate something like murder, those types of extremes would have to be employed, but we also know that's just simply not realistic.

We deal with it as a fact of life because it simply is. We can always bolster law enforcement, get gangs off our streets, decrease instances of poverty, offer more family assistance and make strides in domestic violence education, acknowledgement and resolution, but even those things are only going to get you so far.

[Dora]

70. Thanks for the synopses.

I'll put Minority Report on my to-rent list. It sounds really creepy, and totally unfair. And I think a friend of mine did costumes for Demo Man... that was years ago. I should probably rent that one too, just for the camp factor (it was Stallone and Snipes, wasn't it?).

"We can always bolster law enforcement, get gangs off our streets, decrease instances of poverty, offer more family assistance and make strides in domestic violence education, acknowledgement and resolution, but even those things are only going to get you so far."

I know that we will never eradicate murder, whether it's done by a mother, a quiet bachelor, or a child. But I would be thrilled to see how far we could get if we could have some of those things.

[Tansy_Gold]

229. Unless I'm mistaken, these are movies, right?

They weren't made to, like, explore legitimate means of, like, social change, were they?


Look, I used to write romance novels for a living, but I always knew the difference between "happily ever after" and real life. . .. .



Tansy Gold

[OPERATIONMINDCRIME]

231. Whoa. Talk About Misreading Context ROFLMAO!

It was made clear they were movies. It was also made clear that these dramatic solutions in the movies were just that, with no real basis in reality. It was an example to show that short of some fantastical ain't gonna happen extreme solution as in those movies, murder is simply going to not go away any time soon.

Sorry you failed to see the glaringly obvious context. :hi:

[VelmaD]

49. some interesting stats in there

Like how women are much more likely to be murdered by an intimate. And how men commit more infanticide that women do (contrary to what some posters on this board were asserting yesterday).

[femrap]

55. And what's the percentage of

males raped? And have you looked at the # of rapists who spend time in jail?

I don't think you've ever thought about this subject on a serious level. Maybe you will take the time and research the violence against women and misogyny in our culture and in the world...not too many males take the time to expand their consciousness on the topic.

But those that do, well, they are changed by the knowledge.

[OPERATIONMINDCRIME]

58. Don't Change The Subject Just Cause The Original One Was Obliterated.

I didn't say anything about rape nor was this thread's premise about rape. This thread was about some ridiculously false notion that there is some epidemic that exists of femicide.

[kiahzero]

59. It's not "ridiculously false"

"Men's War Against Women" is ridiculously false. The discussion of "honor killings" isn't ridiculously false. The discussion of women being targets of serial killers and sexual predators isn't ridiculously false.

Ironically, your response seems to be exactly what I discussed in post #20.

[VelmaD]

61. the problem with breaking it down...

into individual components like "honor killings" and "women as targets of serial killers" and every other individual little piece of the puzzle you can think of...is that you fail to see the bigger picture. And that's exactly what those in power in the patriarchy want. If we all pretend like each individual problem women face is seperate from every other problem...then we'll never have to address the larger problem of sexism generally. And until we do that, any effort we take to address the individual issues is pointless. Even if we appear to manage to end one manifestation of sexism...it'll go underground or another one will pop up to take it's place.

It's no different from people arguing that sexism and racism and homophobia (and other biases)are all different. It's a way of keeping us from seeing how it's all inter-related. It's a way of keeping us seperated from each other to keep us down.

[kiahzero]

65. I think you're missing my point.

My point was that there are serious underlying issues (disagreeing with OMC), but the problem is not a "Men's War on Women" (disagreeing with Donsu). We need to get at the heart of the problem (agreeing with you), which in this case is patriarchal heteronormativity (agreeing with people-not-appearing-in-this-thread).

I'd be curious to see how you see all biases as inter-related. They do tend to cluster, but the conceptual underpinnings of sexism and homophobia (strict gender roles) don't seem to be related to racism much at all, and don't even really seem close to other types of bias, like religion or age. Where's the connection?

[VelmaD]

68. SO you agree there are underlying issues...

if the underlying issue is not sexism by men against women...what is it?

I see all biases as inter-related from my own personal experience with bigots. Scratch a homophone and you usually find a racist and a sexist and someone who is biased against pretty much everyone who isn't the white male norm. It's all very much tied into an us vs. them mentality with only a select few getting to be "us".

[kiahzero]

162. The underlying issue is partiarchal heteronormativity

The strange thing is that it's not entirely men against women. There are also men v. men aspects, women v. women aspects, and somewhat more rarely, women v. men aspects. Both sexes are expected to confine themselves to their appropriate gender expressions, and gender non-conformists are attacked by members of both sexes. This is the underlying attitude of misogyny, which is itself the underlying attitude of the violence against women that is under discussion.

[mongo]

189. And maybe that tendency for violence against non-conformity

is human nature. (to bring the evolutionary psychology angle back in again).

[OPERATIONMINDCRIME]

64. Hey, You're Entitled To Your Opinion. I Find The Premise To Absolutely Be

ridiculously false.

Over 75% of all murder victims are male. Overall, a large majority of ALL violent crimes are done against males. Civilized society within itself even biases crime against males as opposed to women. It is almost socially ok when a man is the victim of murder (not ok in that sense, I mean in a shock sense), but when the victim is a woman the reaction is far more appalling. Most criminals, with exception to only the most heinous, will absolutely feel more comfortable attacking a man than a woman, and if there are several each in a room, during a bank robbery for example, you could bet your bottom dollar the man is at far more risk of being killed than the woman. That concept applies for just about all forms of violent crime with exception to rape/sexual assault. That is ingrained in our perception of life, that only cowards hurt women etc, but that violence against males is almost expected. I'm not even saying I disagree with that concept. But I'll be damned if I give the slightest bit of validity to the absurd notion that there is some epidemic against targeting solely women. It is plainly obvious in our culture that men are by far more at risk of receiving violence than women are. It's the whole 'male macho' thing combined with the second nature mentality of sparing the women, go for the men. Now granted, this concept is not an absolute. But overall when given the choice between shooting or harming the man or the woman, the odds are overwhelmingly on the side that the man's the one that's gonna get it.

[Name removed]

193. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[OPERATIONMINDCRIME]

197. Do You See The Moderator's Message Below? Please Read It.

And please refrain from further unwarranted attack.

If you disagree with my statement that's fine, but don't attack me personally. Furthermore, I'd ask you to defend your disagreement. Please provide facts, figures or statistics that provide evidence that 'femicide' is a significant and frequent issue in our society, and not something that is simply by exception.

[Tansy_Gold]

67. Get beyond the statistics

The point made in the OP and in several books that deal specifically with the crime of "femicide" is that very often women are killed simply because they are women. They are specifically targeted because they are women.

Cases like Aileen Wournos, who killed men because they were men, are much more rare.

So when you look at the stats and see that men make up 70% of the murder victims, you have to go beyond that overarching stat and start looking at the particulars.

Start by reading what is probably the definitive collection of essays on femicide, the appropriately titled Femicide: The Politics of Woman Killing edited by Jill Radford and Diana E. H. Russell (New York: Twayne, 1990).

Ignoring the fact that gender-based violence is very, very real, both historically and in contemporary society, is not the way to solve the problem. This is not to say that non-gender-based violence is to be ignored, but there are very deep cultural roots to the specific type of violence that is aimed at women (and by extension, children as well).

Riane Eisler's The Chalice and the Blade mentioned earlier in this thread is a popular introduction to the history of goddess-religion and how it was morphed into male-god monotheism, but a couple of other very interesting volumes are Leonard Shlain's The Alphabet vs. the Goddess: The Conflict between Word and Image and The Myth of the Goddess: Evolution of an Image by Anne Baring and Jules Cashford, (London: Penguin/Arkana, 1991). Both of these latter two books go much further in explaining how the shift from woman-centered (but not woman dominated) religion affected social attitudes toward women, toward life, toward violence, toward property.

There are lots of other books, but I find that these four are fairly easy to find and by far the most easily understood for the person without a strong social theory background.

Of course, those who prefer to believe that it's all random and can't be controlled or it's a problem with biology (and can't be controlled), well, believe whatever you want.

Tansy Gold

[OPERATIONMINDCRIME]

75. Far More Men Are Specifically Targeted For Violent Crime Based On Their

gender alone. See my reply above for a bit more input on that.

When I see you start advocating and passionately trying to address the idea in our culture that it's more appropriate to harm men then it is women, which is far more of an epidemic then women being targets, then I'll even begin to give pause to what you wrote above. But as long as you want to treat this as an issue that is far more of a female epidemic that eclipses the importance of the male aspect of this epidemic, then I will consider your rationale to be narrow minded due to sexist bias against men.

Because I can readily admit that at times women are absolutely targeted based on their gender. But to put forth a premise that this occurs at such frequency to be considered more of a problem than its male counterpart or other aspects of violent crime, or intentionally failing to mention those other sides of the equation, is just plain misleading and narrow.

[VelmaD]

76. Ok...so let me see if I've got this straight...

Some men attack women becauase they are women. Some men also attack men because they are men. What the fuck is wrong with some members of the male gender? And what do we do about it?

BTW, I don't necessarily agree with you that men are targeted because they are men. But for the sake of debate let's go with it. What is it that makes some men hate women? Makes some men hate other men? And makes some men just hate everyone?

[OPERATIONMINDCRIME]

86. Same Reasons Why Some Women Hate Women, Hate Other Men, And

why some women hate everyone. The hundredth of a percent of male population that take it to murder simply took the hate farther in some instances based on chemical, genetic and natural makeup. Males in most species are naturally more aggressive. That increased natural tendency to be aggressive is probably the number one reason why though both sexes feel hatred at equal levels, one sex has a greater tendency to have that rage lead to murder.

But let's hear it for the 99.99% of men that do not resort to such things!

Here's to you non murderous men who make up 99.99% of the male population! :toast:

[VelmaD]

90. I hope your estimate...

of 99.99% is accurate. I don't think it is...but I hope. I want people to be decent.

And I'll buy you the drink for that toast if you'd just get around to actually answering the big questions posed in this thread and by women in several threads over the last couple of days. We percieve the level of violence directed at us by men to be unacceptable. The level of violence men perpetrate against other men is even higher. What do we DO to reduce the number of victims of any gender?

[OPERATIONMINDCRIME]

105. About 16,700 Murders A Year, 88% By Men, Male US Population 140,000,000.

Do the math.

[VelmaD]

111. to do the math would require...

that I know the number of men involved in committing those murders

I do math and stats for a living. (So much for that gender stereotype.) :)

[OPERATIONMINDCRIME]

119. Ummmm, That's Right There In The Header.

(16,700*.88)/140,000,000 = .0001

[VelmaD]

122. that's assuming one perpetrator...

per victim and conversely one victim per perpetrator. But let's not get pedantic or anything. :)

[OPERATIONMINDCRIME]

129. From A Mathematical Standpoint And Margin Of Error, It Would Still Come

out to be 1 hundreth of a percent. To make it to the next threshold of a percent or drop to less than half of a hundredth, you'd have to have an average of 2 murderers for every murder committed or an average of 3 victims per one murderer. I think it's safe to say the numbers simply are not going to swing that much either way.

.01% it is.

[VelmaD]

132. the next step is to account for it being...

about .01% per year. We need to extrapolate out and figure out the percentage of men who will commit a murder during their lifetime.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

78. But let's get beyond the statistics.

Let's look at the truthiness of the situation.

[omega minimo]

84. The OP already said it:

""The facts on 'femicide'" - from the Guardian
(Esp. for anyone living in da Nile.)"

[OPERATIONMINDCRIME]

89. And I Think It's Been Shown That Malicide Is Far More Prevalent.

If you care so much about crimes against gender, how bout taking up the cause for males since they are far more likely to be victims of violent crime then women. I mean, you wouldn't be a hypocrite, would you?

[L A Woman]

97. You don't seem to be comprehending the point

When are men or boys ever murdered just because they are men or boys? I'm sure it has happened, but it's much more common for women and girls to be murdered for that reason alone. To argue this is to embarrass yourself.

It's so funny to me that some males actually argue that women are just as violent. They really must be joking.

Felony Murder - Offenders: MALE 93.3% FEMALE 6.7%

[OPERATIONMINDCRIME]

Actually, Oddly Enough, It Appears You Have Failed To Comprehend The Point

Have you not read my below reply to you at all yet?

[QuestionAll...]

125. good grief.

yes, let's fix it all up with men first
(women and kids can stay 2 steps behind and wait. as always)
because men are the ones who are suffering mostly from violence
(while they beat their chests and act like they're territorial lion kings of the world).

If men are killed by violence more, perhaps it's their hair trigger and inability to cope with their emotions? How many bar brawls that end up real nasty are started by women rather than men.
A lot of male violence is about proud rooster shit looking for trouble.

[OPERATIONMINDCRIME]

130. Stay Focused.

The topic was not on who was committing the crimes, but rather on who were the victims of them.

[VelmaD]

135. actually the focus was on both...

that women are victims of violence at the hands of men...but thanks for yet again deciding for us what should be important.

[OPERATIONMINDCRIME]

154. Wrong.

The whole premise of this thread was that there was some epidemic called femicide that dictates that there is a significant problem of women being killed solely based on the fact that they happen to be women.

[VelmaD]

155. way to conveniently ignore...

that part where it's women being killed BY MEN simply because they are women. What. Ever. I think I'm done with you...as soon as you posted demanding proof of an assertion you have already decreed to be false, I kind figured talking to you is like talking to a rock.

[OPERATIONMINDCRIME]

161. Stop The Semantics.

I think it's already been addressed quite openly that it's by men. I figured you wise enough to draw that assumption in my statement without having me re-specify it every damn time.

And I consider it to be fact that the theory put forth in the OP is a false notion. You are trying to say it isn't. Since I can't prove that stats DON'T exist to bolster the theory, it would then be up to you or others to provide proof that such stats DO exist. If they DON'T exist, then isn't the premise of this OP unsubstantiated and therefore ridiculous to ask others to accept as conclusive?

That's not me being a rock, it's me being logical. I think presenting the issue of 'femicide' as one that is prevalent enough and frequent enough in american culture to be considered a real problem, is simply unsubstantiated and without merit. You and others obviously disagree. The onus would then be on you to provide any sorts of facts or statistics that bolster your case. Can you do so? If you can't, then maybe it is not me playing the role of a rock.

[omega minimo]

168. yEAH! sTOP tHE sEMENTICS!!

:hi:

[OPERATIONMINDCRIME]

171. Mind Providing Anything Of Substance Omega?

How about providing any stats, figures or facts that provide evidence that a significant problem of 'femicide' actually even exists and isn't just some alarmist fallacy? That would be a good start.


Oh, And what's a sementic?

[HardRocker05]

133. what % of men were killed by women? forchristssake, cop to it already, why

why don't you. You aren't possibly trying to say that the women murdering men rate is anywhere near the men murdering women rate are you? This is not about man-bashing but what gets me is when some guys just will not admit the undeniable wrt to men and violent crime; it's as if they're more concerned with deflecting the charge than with addressing it and solving it. (Foley, anybody?) Certainly women are responsible for every bit of violence that they commit, and i don't think that anybody is saying otherwise.

[OPERATIONMINDCRIME]

137. Uhhhh, Maybe You Should Read. My Arguments Have Had Nothing To

do with that and I've already attested to, as well as provided the numbers for, the incidents of men committing murder and am obviously aware of that fact. But that had nothing to do with this discussion.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

143. I don't like facts.

They're not truthy enough.

[omega minimo]

166. Life is like a box of Truthiness

You just never know what you're going to get :hi:

[OPERATIONMINDCRIME]

167. Well At Least The Poster Knows What He's Gettin Here.

Maybe we don't know what we're gettin in life, but at least the poster realized he ain't gettin truth in this thread.

[omega minimo]

230. Why does it seem to be your mission to march in and dominate

and destroy a thread like this? If you can't relate to the topic, why not leave it alone, go elsewhere, let the interested parties discuss and not try to make trouble or shut it down?

Why is this subject so threatening to you? What are you so afraid of?

You asked in one post about "something substantive." IMHO, the article referred to by the OP would be a start. Why are CERTAIN DUers not afforded the right and the RESPECT to discuss a topic of interest without attacks and attempts to end ALL discussion?

:shrug:

[VelmaD]

238. there's always some interesting psychology...

that gets exhibited publicly in this kind of thread ;)

[OPERATIONMINDCRIME]

240. You Mean Like The Psychology Of Seeking Truth?

Wink all ya want. But ya might have more of an affect on those reading this thread if you were actually able to provide any facts, data, statistics or otherwise that bolster the theory that 'femicide' truly exists as a significant problem in this country, rather than offering thinly veiled insults.

[VelmaD]

243. It's not thinly veiled at all...

Any woman who has ever tried to have a serious discussion of women's issues in a group that includes men has run into someone exactly like you.

[OPERATIONMINDCRIME]

247. Here, I'll Correct That Statement For You:

Any extremist who has chosen to propagate falsity for sake of attempting to make a problem appear far larger than it is so that they can push their extremist agenda has run into people like me who will call them out on it and demand supporting truth.

Not my problem if they get all angry and offended because they simply can't provide it.

[VelmaD]

250. Thank you for proving my point...

yet again. You are always right. You denigrate anyone who disagrees with you. You call people liars (though you do it just subtly enough not to break the rules). And then when you get called on it you project all that onto whoever has the gall to disagree with you. You have all the truth (and in capital letters no less). Issues much?

on edit: The more I think about it the more I think you and I just shouldn't speak to one another at all. And I'm ending that for this thread. So feel free to get in the last word.

[OPERATIONMINDCRIME]

253. How Could I Prove A Point You Didn't Have?

You are the one that has set out to attack me merely because I disagreed with the notion that 'femicide' is a significant problem in our country. You and several others have taken massive offense to my doing so yet NOT ONE OF YOU has provided ANYTHING ADDITIONAL to support the ridiculous assertion of the OP.

So think yourself having had points proven all you want. The fact remains that the concept I put forth is simple, and is as of yet completely unanswered.

Q: What are the facts that support a concept of 'femicide' being a significant and real problem in our country.

A: ***Crickets***

Until the answer is a better one than that, I will consider the theory put forth by the OP to be completely unsubstantiated and without merit, and therefore my initial reaction of it being ridiculous to be in fact valid.

Goodnight.

[OPERATIONMINDCRIME]

239. Because The Premise Was Completely Faulty.

On a message board, I'd say I have the right to challenge the validity of a premise that appeared to be unsubstantiated. Sorry that critical thinking, objectivity and independent thought within threads bothers you so much, or so your post above seems to imply.

The OP seemed to want to indicate that some concept called 'femicide' was a real and significant problem bolstered by the murders in recent days. I think when we take obscure examples and turn them into some alarmist type issue that doesn't really exist, just for sake of wanting the issue to appear to have validity, we undermine issues that are real.

I have clearly issued a challenge against 'femicide' being a significant issue in our country, the presence of which is responsible for the recent murders. I have every right to challenge such concepts and will continue to think for myself while applying logic and objective reasoning. It is not up to you to dictate for me that I did not have such right or violated some non-existent message board principle in some way. Fact is, many here simply don't like being challenged to provide factual statements. But that's not my problem. We should all strive for truth and turn our backs to that which is deceitful or propagandic in nature. I have made it clear that I do not support or respect concepts forged from falseness, and will always strive to inject some truth into such things as I come across them.

I have asked from several posters for facts that contribute in any way to what I consider to be the false premise that 'femicide' is a real, prevalent, and significant enough problem in our country as to warrant immediate or direct attention. I have received no such supporting data whatsoever. All I've seen is passionate opinion forged from nothing, attacks on me for merely asking for truth, or changing of topics to avoid the challenge altogether.

And no, I don't consider the article to have offered anything substantive either. It was all over the place and only used what would be considered exception type examples. I think the clipped article itself was a mess and did absolutely NADA to bolster the theory. Neither has any single poster in this thread for that matter.

So can you do any better? Do you have any facts to provide? Any numbers? Data? Statistics? Anything that would give the reader further reason to believe that a phenomena of 'femicide' even truly exists in this country?

Thanks. :hi:

[VelmaD]

242. The simple fact is...

that people have provided you with links to data below and every time you have blown their links off. You believe only that data that agrees with your preconceived idea.

[OPERATIONMINDCRIME]

245. Show Me Any Link Below That Contains Data On 'Femicide' Please.

Show me any link that shows the number of women per year murdered solely because the murder went out specifically seeking a woman to kill, as we've seen in the school shootings recently. So. Which link was that one?

[omega minimo]

269. No Actually What I Aksed Was

Why is this subject so threatening to you? What are you so afraid of?





If you feel that "The Premise Was Completely Faulty" If you can't relate to the topic, why not leave it alone, go elsewhere, let the interested parties discuss and not try to make trouble or shut it down?

Why does it seem to be your mission to march in and dominate and destroy a thread like this?

Again.

[mongo]

262. And you've added soooo much to this discussion

You might want to hit the restroom -- there's something in your eye...

[omega minimo]

270. Wow can't believe BOTH you and mindcrime are here at the same time

i thought you were the same person

:shrug:

[LostinVA]

273. hohoho

[Tansy_Gold]

118. Men are rarely targeted because of their gender

While it is true that more men are murdered than are women, the percentage of men who are killed for reasons directly related to their gender is far smaller than the percentage of women who are murdered for reasons directly related to theirs.

We know that many men, especially young men and even more especially young Black men, are murdered in situations involving gang violence. This is a particularly significant segment of murders and murder victims, whether it is direct gang warfare or indirect killings such as gang initiations, etc. Knowing this, we as a society can direct crime-prevention resources toward resolving the problems that create gangs and then create gang violence. Only when we understand that many women are killed for the simple reason that they are women -- in other words, a man in the same position or engaging in the same activity would NOT be targeted -- only then can we do anything about preventing murders of this kind.

We know that many women are killed because they try to leave their abusive intimate male partners. The single most dangerous period for a woman in an abusive intimate relationship is when she decides to try to leave: she is far more likely to be killed then than during the relationship or after she gets out. Furthermore, we know that the incidence of intimate partner murder is overwhelmingly male-kills-female. Additionally, we know that there is a high percentage of female-kills-male intimate partner murders that are the result of the female attempting to defend herself against violence instigated by the male.

Men kill women for a variety of reasons that are directly related to the woman's gender, which pretty much means that the same rationales do not apply when the circumstances are reversed. Are boys often killed because they have sex before marriage and decrease their marriage value? No, but girls and women are. Are men often killed because they tell their female partner they are going to leave the relationship and the female exerts an "ownership" privilege of "If I can't have you, no one will!"? No, it's very rare; most women (not all, but most) who are faced with a deteriorating relationship simply let it fall apart. They only rarely resort to violence, especially lethal violence, against the departing partner. Yes, they do sometimes; I'm not going to try to deny that. But again, overwhelmingly the statistics show that men kill women over break-ups much more often than the other way 'round.

Both the Colorado and Pennsylvania school killers specifically selected the girls as victims. So did Mark LePine, the Montreal killer, who screamed that he was killing the bitches who deprived him of his spot in the engineering school. He did not go after the men students who got places; he went after the women students who he believed had taken what was rightfully his: a place in an academic discipline traditionally reserved for men.

In our culture, which is based on the patriarchal model defined in the Hebrew and Greek scriptures/myths collectively known as "The Bible," the first woman, Eve, is set forth as the bringer of sin and misery and all things bad into the world. (I won't try to encapsulate all of Shlain and Eisler and Baring here; if you're interested at all, find the books and read them.) Several major religious sects, including orthodox Judaism, Roman Catholicism, Southern Baptists, contain explicit tenets that place women at an inherently lower level than men. Women are unclean because of their menstrual cycles, which is seen as part of the omnipotent god's punishment on women for Eve's disobedience. Women can never be Roman Catholic priests because only men are male like Jesus. Baptist women are still ordered to submit to their husbands, and if you think this doesn't provide protection for a lot of physical, sexual, and emotional abuse on the part of Baptist husbands, do some googling.

There are still many proponents of the theory that the only reason a man abuses a woman is because a.) she deserved it and he has a right to punish her or b.) she likes it or c.) if she would just love him more and be a better wife, he wouldn't do it. In other words, it's her fault that he's beating her. When the tables are turned and it's the woman who abuses the man, it's also her fault. That's called a double standard. And it's so thoroughly ingrained in our culture that men who actually kill their wives/intimate partners get much lighter sentences (if they even get convicted!) than the women who kill their partners. Even if the male victim was abusing his female killer, she is more likely to go to prison and go for a much longer period than the man who kills a wife/intimate partner even without provocation.

Men are killed more often than women, but men are also killed for a wider variety of reasons and those reasons rarely are related to gender. Women are much more often killed for reasons directly related to their gender, and that is why those particular murders are called "femicides."

And I cannot imagine why anyone would "start advocating and passionately trying to address the idea in our culture that it's more appropriate to harm men then it is women." It's not "appropriate" at all, at least not in terms of the legal system or even the culture. In fact, as I just explained regarding prison sentences for intimate partner murderers, it is LESS acceptable for women to kill men, hence the longer sentences. (I should point out, however, that there is also a cultural bias against women who kill. There is still a remnant of the Victorian "angel in the house" attitude that women as a gender are naturally sweet and gentle and nurturing, and that one who violates this norm by killing, regardless who the victim is, is so depraved and so non-human, that she must be treated accordingly. Violence is still seen as more "natural" for men, and they can then be somewhat excused for displaying violent tendencies. There are vestiges of this being posted on DU right now.)

The reasons that lie behind the majority of murder victims being male have little to do with the "appropriateness" of violence against men but rather with issues of access to weapons, engagement in activities that can lead to violent death, and social pressures. (More men engage in work-place mass murders -- i.e. "go postal" -- because they have lost a job than do women because a man's earning ability is still one of the prime measures of his success as a man.)

Again, it is not the raw, basic statistics that tell the story but the analysis of patterns within those stats.

And while I'm sure there are posters who will continue to argue with me and simply dismiss what I've posted, I do understand that not everyone who reads DU posts here.


Tansy Gold, who is cutting this short (ha ha!) because of an impending thunderstorm

[mongo]

196. Most excellent post Tansy

And lots of good points.

I tend to bristle slightly at the statement "Men are rarely targeted because of their gender".

In Iraq our military has been targeting men 18-40 -- and systematically eliminating them. If that's not "malecide" I don't know what is.

[Tansy_Gold]

217. A good point, Mongo, one that is brought up in a most

excellent book: Blood Rites:Origins and History of the Passions of War by barbara Ehrenreich.

However, recruiting and training people (men as well as women) for what is euphemistically termed "national defense" is not quite the same as targeting them for individual murder. And the other side of the same coin is that while war costs the lives of many of those trained to fight it, it costs the lives of many more civilians who are not trained.

One of the initial class discussions in the class I've mentioned before, "Sociology of Murder," was instigated by the professor asking the students if it is ever all right -- morally or legally or ethically -- to kill. There was a kind of collective gasp at the audacity of such a question, but of course the discussion soon produced a rather chilling array of reasons and situations when it is indeed "all right" for one human being to kill another.


Tansy Gold

[mongo]

220. But I'm not talking about soldiers killing soldiers

I'm talking about soldiers going from village to village, rounding up the men (leaving the women and children), taking them to camps and executing them.

That was the ethnic cleansing we went into Kosuvo to fix.

It was the systematic murder of innocent men.

But to add that does nothing to diminish the points you made earlier.

[VelmaD]

237. If you will recall in Kosovo...

the women did not get off scot free. Many of them were rounded up and either killed or raped and sent back home in disgrace. In Kosovo the killings were about ethnicity.

[Tansy_Gold]

241. Yes, it is targetted murder, but not because of their gender

And I know it seems like splitting hairs, but it is a valid point.

And I'm playing a bit of devil's advocate here, because I am certainly ot attempting to justify any kind of systematic slaughter.

The Iraqi men are targetted because they are seen as being the most likely "terrorists," based on a (thoroughly corrupt) kind of sociological analysis. In a society where women are not commonly politically active, a society even more rigidly patriarchal than the U.S., the men are seen as more likely to be terrorists. In other words, their gender is incidental to the reason for their being targetted.

In "femicide," the woman's gender is integral to the reason for her killing. The only way I can think to make that distinction clear -- for you, Mongo, as well as any other posters or lurkers -- is to provide some examples.

IF -- and this is a really big IF because I don't think there's anything to support it -- but IF the U.S. military were targetting Iraqi males specifically to eliminate them from the society, from the gene pool, to keep them from reproducing or so the U.S. soldiers could have free access to the women, then yes, that would be "malicide," though that's really not a great choice of word. But that's not the purpose. As much as I dislike the U.S. military's actions right now, I have to give them some credit for not being quite that evil.

(There is a good argument to be made that colonial powers have often done exactly that, including the internal colonialism of U.S. slavery, where males were treated as non-men -- the epithet "Boy!" being part of it -- and women were considered always available for sexual use. But that's a whole other discussion.)

A woman who is killed because she's a convenience store clerk caught in a robbery is not a femicide. Although an individual killer may (or may not) kill her because she is female, it is the robbery that precipitates her killing.

A woman who is killed in a road rage incident because she turned without using a turn signal is not a femicide, even if the killer is heard to scream "GODDAMNBITCH!" just before he pulls the trigger. She's killed because of what she did, not because of her gender.

A woman who is killed because she has threatened to leave her abusive husband IS a femicide, because it is the gendered nature of the relationship that precipitates the killing. And it's those killings, and the non-lethal abuse that accompanies and/or precedes them, that's the target for social change as suggested in the OP article.

That's why it is the stats showing the preponderance of intimate partner murder in the man-killing-woman segment that define the "epidemic" of femicide.

I'm quite sure I'm not making a whole lot of sense at this point. I've pulled a dozen books off my bookshelves and dredged out four or five papers written while I was in grad school. I can't regurgitate everything and include it in a couple of DU posts, no matter how long they are!

Some people don't want to see it that way. Whether from ignorance, inexperience, lack of advanced education, or whatever cause, they just don't see the subtle but rampant sexism in some of these crime statistics. They like to cherry-pick the evidence, much as certain politicians cherry-picked WMD evidence, in support of their claims.

No one has said the murder stats showing men as the majority of victims are wrong, and no one has said that there are more murders of women than of men. Quite the opposite is obviously true.

What some of us ARE saying, however, is that in the United States -- and it's actually worse in other places -- there is a disturbing trend of male-on-female lethal violence that appears to have at its core a hatred/fear/loathing of the female as a concept, if not as the specific victim. We've had two horrendous mass murders in the past few weeks, we've had the Marc LePine example, we can point all the way back to Jack the Ripper and Richard Speck. As I stated in an earlier post, the rates of male-on-female intimate partner murder are much, much higher than the other way around, and studies have shown repeatedly that when women do kill their intimate partners, very often the reason is self-defense after abuse.

But some people don't want to hear/read that, and it's not my mission in life to persuade them. They can sit at their keyboards and snicker in their perceived victory, and they can even have the last word, if that's what gets them their jollies. I long ago outgrew that nonsense, as indeed most sensible people do.


Peace,


Tansy Gold

[mongo]

260. Look at these two examples

The Iraqi men are targetted because they are seen as being the most likely "terrorists," based on a (thoroughly corrupt) kind of sociological analysis. In a society where women are not commonly politically active, a society even more rigidly patriarchal than the U.S., the men are seen as more likely to be terrorists. In other words, their gender is incidental to the reason for their being targetted.

OK, men were systematically killed because of their gender role in society, but their gender is incidental?

A woman who is killed because she has threatened to leave her abusive husband IS a femicide, because it is the gendered nature of the relationship that precipitates the killing.

But an individual killing another individual because of a relationship gone bad is femicide? Is being abused part of women's normal gender role? Or an aboration? It is not sytematic violence against women as a class. It is a rash of individual violence against one woman by one man. That really doesn't merit the -cide suffix. To add it is hyperbole.

What some of us ARE saying, however, is that in the United States -- and it's actually worse in other places -- there is a disturbing trend of male-on-female lethal violence that appears to have at its core a hatred/fear/loathing of the female as a concept, if not as the specific victim. We've had two horrendous mass murders in the past few weeks, we've had the Marc LePine example, we can point all the way back to Jack the Ripper and Richard Speck. As I stated in an earlier post, the rates of male-on-female intimate partner murder are much, much higher than the other way around, and studies have shown repeatedly that when women do kill their intimate partners, very often the reason is self-defense after abuse.

I agree with the inimate violence aspect of this argument. Yes, women are more likley to be killed by their male partner.

But overall in our society, men are most likely to die at the hand of violence -- Black men in particular. If you call being killed by your intimate partner femicide because of the gender role of the participants, then you would have to call black on black gang violence genocide because of the societal role they are playing out. Actually, neither makes much sense, so I don't think the -cide suffix goes on the end of either scenario.

Some people don't want to see it that way. Whether from ignorance, inexperience, lack of advanced education, or whatever cause, they just don't see the subtle but rampant sexism in some of these crime statistics.

No. Some of us see things differently. That was a pretty elitist and dismissive statement.

What some of us ARE saying, however, is that in the United States -- and it's actually worse in other places -- there is a disturbing trend of male-on-female lethal violence that appears to have at its core a hatred/fear/loathing of the female as a concept, if not as the specific victim. We've had two horrendous mass murders in the past few weeks, we've had the Marc LePine example, we can point all the way back to Jack the Ripper and Richard Speck. As I stated in an earlier post, the rates of male-on-female intimate partner murder are much, much higher than the other way around, and studies have shown repeatedly that when women do kill their intimate partners, very often the reason is self-defense after abuse.

Here I agree with you 100%. Funny thing is, whenever someone tried to answer "why" in this thread, they were shot down quick. I don't think looking at the role that evoluntionary phsychology (or human nature as us unedumacted people call it) is an excuse. Looking at where we've been is an important part of moving forward. But the thing about the gender wars on DU, is that it is never about looking at the problem, on either side. It's about unholding stereotypes and biases on both sides. Which is why the "femicide" term for intimate partner violence is wrong.

It's been nice discussing this with you Tansy. Peace back at ya. Time for me to count out my cash drawer and head home.

mongo

[lukasahero]

297. Brillian post, Tansy. Thank you for being here. eom

[madmusic]

308. Richard Speck

Richard Speck - His Childhood Years: Speck was born December 6, 1941, in Kirkland, Illinois. When he was six his father died. His mother remarried and the family moved to Dallas, Tx. Prior to marrying her new husband she raised the family under strict religious rules including the abstinence of alcohol. After her marriage her attitude changed. Her new husband had violent drunken episodes, often making young Richard the victim of his abuse. Speck grew up to become a poor student and juvenile delinquent prone to violent behavior.

Beyond the Grave: In May 1996, a videotape sent to news anchor Bill Curtis, showed Speck with female-like breasts having sex with a fellow prisoner. He could be seen doing what appeared to be cocaine and in an interview-like discussion he answered questions about the murders of the nurses. Speck said he felt nothing about murdering them and that it "was just not their night." His old bragging habits returned as he described prison life and added, "If they only knew how much fun I was having, they'd turn me loose."

[madmusic]

309. Please explain the contradiction.

Your arguments seems to imply men hate women "for their bodies," which is a direct contradiction to the valid slogan that we should love them for more "than their bodies."

Framing the argument thusly, as a gender/body issue, implies it is only what makes a female female, their bodies, that is the only dynamic at work, as if they can't speak or have any politics or any power whatsoever. As if there are NO dynamics at work other than their bodies.

I'm having trouble understanding this apparent contradiction. It implies women are more or less deaf and dumb and there is absolutely no power exchange before violence erupts. The point is this: there are social dynamics at work before ANY violence erupts. Limiting the debate to gender implies it is only the woman's body that is at issue. In any other feminist context, that very concept would be degrading to women.

There are indeed horrific incidents where a the woman's gender is the dominant issue, random rape, for example, but even then there are social issue back-stories can could shed more light on the solution if not limited to the woman's body.

One argument might be that the violence erupts because the woman tries to assert some independence, so then the debate moves beyond gender and mere bodies. But what does it evolve into? A power struggle, and power struggles are not limited by gender. Perhaps a potential explanation for the reaction against the term "femicide" is that it ignores the power struggle, some of which will spill over in male v. female struggles. While women focusing on women's issues makes sense because they are better equipped to understand those issues, it is also possible that limiting the debate thusly is counterproductive because it is too narrow. Another danger is that it likely to ignore the danger of violence in any power struggle, which is usually men against men. Maybe the feminist goal is to eradicate the violence factor out of the power struggle, but is that possible? And do women themselves who commit the ultimate powerful act - murder - practice that ideal? Which leads to another point. Your stats are not certain:

After putting out the story Murder Will Out I received a spate of e-mails from women with exaggerated claims of how rarely women kill their domestic partners.

The best data I have found for intimate homicides by gender of victim is summarized in a graph by the Bureau of Justice that can be found at http://www.dvmen.org/dv-101.htm#pgfId-1072935

The graph shows homicides by both men and women at near parity in 1976 at a rate of about 1500 each when they began collecting the data. Since then women have been killing their male partners at a steadily decreasing rate, and the rate stood at about 450 men killed per year in 1997, for which one might thank, in part, the current DV laws.

That is an unanticipated consequence of laws intended to protect women.

However, men killing their female partners remained at about the same rate of 1500 per year until 1993 when that rate began to decrease as well, standing at about 1250 per year in 1997. That decrease continues so that the present best estimate is that roughly two intimate female partners are killed by men for every man killed by a female intimate partner.

But, as Dr. Warren Farrell has pointed out in his Twelve Female Only Defenses, since historical times women have used poison as their favored weapon. As was the point with the Murder Will Out story, poison often goes undetected, and death is ascribed to other causes. Also, women commonly use a boyfriend or a third-party to do their killing for them. Such killings are not tabulated by the Justice Department as intimate partner homicides. Thus, for these and other reasons Dr. Farrell refers to as The Six Blinders: "It is impossible to know the degree to which the sexes kill each other. The only thing we know for certain is that both sexes kill more men than they kill women."

http://www.fathersforlife.org/fv/murder1.htm

Who knows what the actual stats are, but I'm arguing that anyone who really cares about solutions would not think the stats significant because of the potential of narrowing the debate. Again, neither gender is perfect and separating the issue by gender might all in all be counterproductive in itself.

Somehow, our Founders, part of the patriarchal society, managed to quell violence a great deal with our Constitution. One can only imagine how many more assassinations and revolts this country might have suffered if not for our political process. They understood well they dynamics of power and the danger in the power struggle. Their system of checks and balances on the whole put a check on that. Even if they did repress women then, the system they devised was flexible enough that women could gain the power they have today. The key word, I think, is "flexible," since that is, all in all, what the balance of powers are. No one branch of government can become rigid enough to conquer the other two.

Not yet, anyway, but much is becoming far more rigid.

And I still think it most interesting that my PDF link to the potential for prevention was ignored, which is enough to cause wonder at the real intent of the OP and subsequent arguments.

[bloom]

222. That's a great post

that sums up a lot of points.


Another good book to read is Elaine Pagel's, "Adam, Eve, and the Serpent". She goes into the whole business about Augustine making the (ridiculous) argument about Eve and "original sin". I think that that idea is ingrained into people's thinking whether they are aware of it or not.


I also recently finished Merlin Stone's "When God was a Woman". That was good too. More details about how snakes were made to be thought of as "evil" when they had previously been thought to represent "wisdom" - associated with women. This is still news to a lot of people.

[L A Woman]

88. Did you actually look at those stats?

I didn't see ANY hate crime stats on there that state the percentage of men killed because they are men and I have certainly never heard of such a thing. Need more info, please.

This stat is interesting, though.

Felony Murder. Offenders: Male 93.3% Female 6.7%

[OPERATIONMINDCRIME]

93. Oh Don't Act So Naive.

Simple question for ya. Try and answer it honestly. If a man and woman are walking down a dark alley, and they are approached by somebody with a gun with intent to rob, if it turns out that one of the victims was shot and killed, just who do you think would've been the one far more likely to have died, the man or the woman?

Fact is, criminals will all the time target their violent behavior towards men because of the cultural concept that to cause harm to females is cowardly. The overwhelming majority of violent criminals when confronted with a choice of harming the man as opposed to the woman would almost instinctually choose the man. To deny this simple cultural concept is naivety at its finest.

[kiahzero]

102. I'd say the woman

The criminal would think she'd be less likely to put up a fight, and therefore target her.

[L A Woman]

104. But that man in your story was not murdered because he was a man...

You're still missing the point. He was murdered because the robber wanted his money. We are talking here about deep hatred of another human being BECAUSE OF THEIR GENDER.

It might be impossible for a male to even comprehend this discussion on even the most basic level.

[Tansy_Gold]

187. Only impossible for SOME males

Not all males. :evilgrin:

Just making sure you were understood correctly.

:hi:

[kiahzero]

188. *Sigh*

I really don't think it's that absurd of a distinction to make that it merits ridicule. :(

[VelmaD]

106. If it's a cultural norm to believe...

that to harm females is cowardly...explain the number of women who get knocked around by their partners.

If anything it's a cultural norm to believe that it's ok to beat women...hell, it's biblicly sanctioned and wasn't even against the law that long ago to beat your wife.

[OPERATIONMINDCRIME]

115. You Couldn't Be More Wrong On That Issue Either.

Another fact is that men are more often the victims of domestic violence then women are, though they report it far less often.

It is far more likely for a woman or even people in general to condone a woman knocking around man than a man knocking around a woman. To claim the cultural norm is the reverse is just plain ridiculous.

[VelmaD]

120. What dream-world do you live on...

and can you give me the co-ordinates so I can move there?

It has never been the actual law in the US that a woman could beat her husband. It was the law that men could do it to their wives.

And frankly, women and girls are still given the message loud and clear that it is not acceptable for us to hit anyone. Why do you think the expression "hit like a girl" is still in the language? Because we are not taught to fight and are discouraged from doing so. Good girls don't hit.

[OPERATIONMINDCRIME]

124. Ummmm, It's Called The World Of Today. Not The World At Some Point In

distant history when some laws were on the books.

Stay on focus. We're talking about right now. And right now, men are more likely to be the victims of domestic violence then women. Society is more apt to not respond with horror or disgust when hearing that a woman struck a man, but will almost certainly react with horror when hearing the opposite. If you want to deny that concept go for it, but then it would not be me living in some dream world.

[VelmaD]

128. I will paraphrase you...

show me the statistics...and from a reputable source...that men are victims of domestic violence more than women.

And it wasn't that far in the distant past...but you wouldn't know that since women's history is so lacking in our schools.

[kiahzero]

140. It's shocking, really

We were discussing the Model Penal Code in my Criminal Law class, and we touched on rape. In the MPC, which was written by the American Legal Institute in 1962 (44 years ago), it is not considered rape if you forcibly have sex with your wife. My immediate reaction was a astonished "What the fuck?" Somehow I had believed that our laws had gotten past that point sooner than they did.

[Tansy_Gold]

173. Marital rape is now a "crime" in all 50 states, but it wasn't

until the 1970s, as a result of the well-publicized trial of John Rideout, accused by his wife Greta of raping her, that the laws began to be changed, state by state. I don't have the data at my fingertips, but I believe the last few states to implement marital rape laws didn't do so until the late 80s or early 90s.

Until then, it was perfectly legal not only for a man to demand to have sex with his wife at any time he wished, but ILLEGAL for her to refuse.

The reverse was not true, of course. Had a wife actually taken her husband to court and charged him with failure to grant her her "conjugal rights," the whole thing would have been laughed out of court. First of all, it was inconceivable that a man would refuse a willing woman; second, women weren't expected to "demand" sexual congress.


Tansy Gold

[noamnety]

182. There are still marital rape exemptions in 30 states

Marital rape is technically "illegal" in all states, but that's a bit misleading. 30 states have exemptions for married couples, meaning that they've made it illegal, but have modified the definition of rape in cases where the rapist and victim are married.

So if I am unconcious, a boyfriend who has sex with me has raped me, but a spouse who has sex with me under the same circumstances isn't guilty of rape - even if consent wasn't given, or even implied.

[L A Woman]

126. I think he lives in OppositeLand n/t

[smirkymonkey]

131. Men are far more the VICTIMS of Domestic Violence than women?

Are you drunk? Can we see a link backing that up please?

You're just making stuff up? Aren't you?

[OPERATIONMINDCRIME]

152. Not Making Anything Up. Here's A Good Place For You To Start:

http://www.witnessjustice.org/news/stats.cfm

Though they admit some of the stats are contradictory, there are many sources that show my statement to be factual.

[Tansy_Gold]

192. Um, actually, no.

I went to the site. I read the data.

Almost every single statement purporting that men's rate of victimization at the hands of female perpetrators is the same or greater than women's rate of victimization by men comes from one single source: American Psychological Association, Inc., Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, Gender Differences in Partner Violence in a Birth Cohort of 21-Year-Olds: Bridging the Gap between Clinical and Epidemiological Approaches — 1997, Vol. 65, No. 1, 68-78.

A single study of a group of 21-year-olds -- born in the mid-1970s and raised during a period of extraordinary feminist-led awareness of gender issues -- who have not even had sufficient time to experience "adult" domestic violence or even experience life as an adult man or woman -- seems to me to be grossly insufficient evidence.

But my field is sociology, not psychology.


Tansy Gold

[OPERATIONMINDCRIME]

199. Ohhhhhhh, Ya Want More? Here's Plenty.

Happy reading!

http://www.csulb.edu/~mfiebert/assault.htm

[L A Woman]

207. aren't you embarrassed yet?

Seriously! Is the next argument you are going to make, "I Know for a FACT that the sky isn't Blue?"

You can back up any argument on the internet, no matter how ridiculous it is. And believe me, this is ridiculous.

[OPERATIONMINDCRIME]

208. Why Would I Be? I've Provided Data. Have You Provided Any Femicide Data?

I'm still waiting for ANYBODY to substantiate with facts the faulty premise of this thread. In my opinion everybody's failure to do so, so far, is what is truly embarrassing for this topic.

[L A Woman]

213. Data...

It would take years to list all the "data." The names of women and girls whose genitals have been sewn together, whose lives were taken because they simply existed....let me take you to the Middle East, where I lived for three years, and where women are beaten and killed simply for showing their faces at the "wrong" time to the "wrong" people or for stating an opinion. Or let's go to China, where infant girls have been slaughtered simply for not being little boys. And now let's come back to America, where mommy took away Johnny's rubber ducky when he was 2, so now he hates all women and decides to kill as many as he can.

When are men ever murdered just for being men? Maybe you can google another paper written by another woman-hating college student for your "proof."

[OPERATIONMINDCRIME]

214. How Bout You List Any.

And in doing so, how bout making it current data. Furthermore, I'm most interested in data pertaining to murders in America. This topic was inspired by the recent murders, and I'm more concerned about the insinuation that this is a common problem in our country, this 'femicide'.

[U4ikLefty]

268. Bullshit OMC. It was/is YOUR job to provide one of those sources

from that bibliography & defend it as a reputable scientific study on which to base you loudly-voiced objections.

A list of sources does NOT provide us with factual support. It is your job to read & give us some real facts.

[LostinVA]

226. Oh, this old meme again... *sigh*

It always comes up in these threads.

[OPERATIONMINDCRIME]

228. Here Ya Go.

http://www.csulb.edu/~mfiebert/assault.htm

[Marie26]

225. Um

I work with victims of domestic violence. The statistics show that the overwhelming majority of domestic violence victims are women. It is true that men are less likely to report, but women are also very reluctant to report this violence, which is why it is called a silent epidemic. Women are more than 10 times more likely to be assaulted or killed by an intimate partner. In terms of homicide, intimate partners were responsible for over 30% of murders against women, compared to 3% of male homicides. And the statistics actually are getting worse in that area. One in five high school girls have been physically or sexually abused by a dating partner.

Finally, for thousands of years, the "cultural norm" has been that women were property, whom society gave husbands the right to "discipline" w/physical violence. And this is still true in most countries around the world - where societies condone or ignore violence against women. Even today, society may frown on hitting a woman in public, but mostly looks away when it is done in private. I know that in many segments of society, it is almost expected that a husband or boyfriend will be abusive. Women who are poor, or uneducated, or immigrants, are most likely to experience domestic violence, but it is prevelent among all levels of society. We, as a society, must first recognize the problem, and then search for the solution. I think the US has begun to recognize the problem, but we are still very far from a solution.


Domestic Violence Statistics - http://www.silentwitness.net/sub/violences.htm#risk

Amnesty Int., Violence Against Women - http://web.amnesty.org/actforwomen/index-eng

Prevelence of Domestic Violence: The Facts - http://www.endabuse.org/resources/facts/

[OPERATIONMINDCRIME]

227. Um

http://www.csulb.edu/~mfiebert/assault.htm

[Marie26]

233. How does that dispute anything I've written?

I gave you many statistics, facts, and a fairly long analysis of the problem. You're going to have to do better than "Um" & a link. It helps to be honest about the facts here - for you to say that men are more often the victims of domestic violence is flat-out wrong, as I suspect you knew at the time. Women are far more likely to be assaulted or murdered by their domestic partner. Now, men can be victim of domestic violence as well, but it is less common & men are less likely to suffer serious injury or death as a result. Historically, men have been ashamed to admit being victims, because domestic violence carries an even greater stigma for them. Even though it is less common, men can also be victims, & must also be encouraged to come forward. That's why a greater focus on domestic violence benefits both men & women - by removing the stigma that often prevents victims from pressing charges. Also, as we recognize the problem, we can begin to find alternative ways of preventing domestic violence before it happens - through education, counseling and social services.

[OPERATIONMINDCRIME]

244. Wow. I Mean, For Real? You Really Don't Know? Did You Not Even Read Any

of it?

Click on the link. Read through all of it. There's plenty in there for you to munch on ok?

[VelmaD]

246. This is exactly what I was talking about...

only stats that agree with you count. You asked for stats. Someone gave them to you. You blow them off. Why bother with you?

[OPERATIONMINDCRIME]

249. Where? What Stats? Where Are They?

I asked for stats that bolster a theory of 'femicide' being a prevalent and significant problem in our country. Where are they?

Furthermore, there's like DOZENS and DOZENS of stats in that link. I'd say it makes a pretty strong case.

But we can have different opinions on that angle of things. One thing that would be responsible for both of us to conclude is that both Men AND Women are frequent victims of domestic abuse to almost equal levels of one side or another. So domestic abuse itself should be stopped and never tolerated, regardless of gender. It doesn't really matter if one gender is a little more than the other, though I think it's one and you think it's the other. The point is that when a position is given on domestic abuse that it is mainly a problem affecting women, it is dead friggin wrong. Both men and women are frequent victims of domestic abuse and both are frequently enough to warrant both being included in declarations against domestic abuse.

But that's off topic in this whole thread anyway, and I wish I hadn't allowed myself to be brought so far off track.

The focus is on 'femicide'. Is it truly a significant and real problem in our country? I say no, no it simply isn't. I'd still like to see some facts that would show anything otherwise.

[Marie26]

312. Uh-huh

Well, that's rather lame. Aren't you going to even attempt to explain for yourself why the statistics, analysis, & first-hand experience I've posted is wrong? What happened here is that you got this BS bibliography from one of the numerous "men's right" websites floating around the internet & are clinging to it for dear life. The "author" of the list, Fiebert, is not a doctor at all, or a scientist, or a statistician, or an expert in domestic violence. He is simply a psychologist who has a definite agenda. He's compiled this selectively cherry-picked list & assigned conclusions to support his own preordained beliefs. This "bibliography" has been endlessly printed & reprinted on many "men's rights" sites - which you probably copied it from. Was this from "angryharry.com", "backlash.com", or "menweb.com"?

In every debate, people can find one Source to support what they want to believe. And that single source will be printed & re-printed in a vast echo chamber of web-sites w/a similar agenda. Anti-semitic people will post a real list of Jewish quotes about world domination,posted over & over again on various websites, when it actually originated at Stormfront. Anti-immigrants will have their Source too, about how the immigrants really want to annex the south to Mexico, that actually came from the Minutemen. And so on. You'll always be able to find some off-the wall site to support your biases if you want to. That's why it's important to not believe everything you read on the Internet, but learn what sources are reliable & unbiased. I've posted the actual Dept. of Justice statistics, the actual rates of injury & death, and the actual reported rates of domestic violence - and you have not disputed those facts. Game, set, match.

[OPERATIONMINDCRIME]

318. Three Things.

First, I always get a kick out of how those that extremely defend these types of issues are so hypocritical and quick to dismiss information coming out from the other side, like anything that isn't perfectly aligned with their argument or reasoning is automatically false. So impossible to argue with people like that. According to you, any website that has a purpose of providing information for men in relation to male abuse is slanted, biased and nothing can be trusted. That's pretty damn closed minded and sexist if ya ask me.

Secondly, I don't care a thing about who Fiebert is or what his background is. I don't care whether he knows a thing about statistics or not. I've never heard of him prior to last night. But what I DO care about, is dozens and dozens of resources provided that have NOTHING to do with him whatsoever but that do in fact show my point to be valid. Let me guess, all 100 studies done by different people with real questions are ALL biased and ALL false and not a single one of them should be paid attention to huh? ALL of them? How convenient that the only information that's useful or accurate is the stuff that you provide or that only shows the stuff you want to see.

Thirdly, you said you've posted the actual reported rates of domestic violence. You have. You said I didn't dispute them. I didn't. I don't disagree with them. But if you want to sit here and actually pretend for a second that the ones that are reported are an accurate breakdown of reality, or that men would report with the same level of frequency as women, or that people regardless of gender report in large percentages, then I truly feel for you. Fact is, a miniscule percentage of men report the domestic violence. Not even close to enough women report DV either. That's why the most accurate numbers would come from accurate statistical sampling that simply asked the question on whether they have or haven't been victims or have or haven't abused somebody. There were 100 different poll results I saw that bolstered my point. Can you provide 100, or even 20, polls asking the same questions that would prove my theory wrong?

As far as game, set and match goes, you are obviously completely misunderstood about what the rules for victory would be. Nor is this a game. DV is a serious issue affecting both men and women and it should be regarded as a genderless issue, but more about anger management, impulse control and warning signs. There's no need to have to be narrow minded to it merely out of blind hatred towards some males.

That's it for me on this topic, since it has absolutely nothing to do with the original one anyway.

Bye.

[Tansy_Gold]

264. Fiebert

Dr. Fiebert is apparently the darling of the men's rights' movement. His annotated bibliography is praised by Phylis Schlafly.

I suppose one can be a Democrat and even a self-proclaimed liberal and find common ground with Ms. "Let's kill the ERA" Schlafly, but I think it would tend to make others kind of be suspicious.

Fiebert only lists studies that support his pre-determined hypothesis, and he doesn't appear to offer any analysis that might reconcile these studies with others that show women being the overwhelming victims of domestic violence, such as that 85% of the DV victims who require hospitalization for injuries are women.

I have a call in to a friend who runs a DV prevention program in New York to get her take on Fiebert.


Tansy Gold

[Lars39]

108. You changed the subject with 'intent to rob'.

The OP is referring to females being murdered for no other reason than that they are female.

[OPERATIONMINDCRIME]

117. It Is A False Epidemic. Show Me These Current Factual Stats Of Women

who were killed for no other reason than that they are female.

This whole discussion in this thread is based on exception type circumstances though being put forth as if it's some largely significant epidemic in america. I'd like to see some numbers to validate this false notion, please.

[VelmaD]

123. Why should anyone show you anything...

when you've already made up your mind (in capital letters no less) that it's all false?

[LostinVA]

274. A serious query for you, Velma, and Tansy

Why the HELL are you interacting with this poster??? One of their purposes in life is ripping apart women and women's issues on DU. I've had them on Ignore ever since the Duke rape threads -- the filth and hate in those threads by some posters toward women was frightening. And, it continues in threads like these. Ugh.

Do NOT engage them. It's what they want. It's what they get off one.

Disengage, and save your words and passion for discussion with the REAL men on these threads.

[OPERATIONMINDCRIME]

311. Nice Set Of Slanderous Lies You've Got There.

One of my purposes in life is ripping apart women and women's issues? What a crock of lying shit that is. I support women and women's issues 100% and have never nor would ever rip women apart. To declare such is disgraceful, unsubstantianted and a blatant lie.

You said you ignored me after the Duke rape threads, then implied I spewed filth and hate in that thread? Mind if I challenge you to provide ANYTHING that even begins to support that further lie? As far as I can remember, I barely even touched the Duke rape threads.

And how dare you throw such slander, lies and accusations out at me for simply questioning the validity of the OP. As of yet not you, not anybody, has given the slightest bit of additional information WHATSOEVER to lend credence to the concept in the OP. To get all angry and offended while casting blatantly false slander at me because I simply expect theories to contain at least some level of truth, is beyond distasteful in my opinion.

I have attacked noone and have done nothing more than give my opinion on the topic and request of those heartily disagreeing with me to provide anything of substance to give me reason to believe they are right. Since no one has done so, I am simply left with my original impression that the premise of the OP is quite simply unsubstantiated.

Now you can twist my intentions, attack my character and deflect from the reality all you want, but it won't change the fact that my only intention as usual is a check on truth. Until someone can provide anything substantial to support the premise in the OP, then regardless of the attacks thrown out at me it would appear I'd be the one on the right side of the fence. All I care about is accuracy and truth. If someone's going to post a hateful premise that serves to ignite gender wars on DU, the least they or the others condoning such behavior can do is provide even the slightest bit of evidence that the hateful premise in question carries any validity. Like I've said, I don't believe anyone has done so. Therefore, I am well within my rights to call 'bullshit' on the premise, and challenge it as being a false notion that is completely unsubstantiated.

Republicans don't care about facts. Republicans don't care about truth. Republicans expect everyone to fall in line and not challenge the talking points. Well I can't stand republicans for that. I'll be damned if on my favorite Democratic website, I'm going to tolerate a request that I engage in that same type of thinking.

This has nothing to do with me attacking women or women's rights. It has all to do with me seeing a premise in the OP that can serve to inspire hatred, while not being supported by facts and reality. I consider it the honorable and liberal thing for ALL of us to do to call out such nonsense when we see it, and always demand accuracy and truth. That's why I'm a liberal: I thrive on truth and integrity.

So attack away. Until someone can show anything substantial to bolster the premise in the OP and give reason for a reader to believe it to be true, then my statements calling it a ridiculous notion were NOT an attack, but would then be simply FACT.

But no matter what you want to believe, I still think it to be pretty shameful to slander, attack, lie about and smear a fellow DU'er for simply asking questions and challenging a premise. I would ask that you refrain from such tactics in the future.

[VelmaD]

314. one need only look at your first post in this thread...

to know you came into it with your mind made up. Silly, misguided, alarmist, twisted...any of those ring a bell? That doesn't sound like demanding truth to me...sounds more like once again dropping a stinking load into any thread about women's issues. Sounds like someone who is trying to pick a fight.

People gave you links and you blew them off. People have pointed out the bias in the links you provided and yet you cling to them like a limpet.

[OPERATIONMINDCRIME]

317. Prove The Opinion Wrong.

People have given me no links whatsoever that are related to the premise of the OP and that support the notion that 'femicide' is a substantial and frequent problem requiring attention in our country.

I implore you, to please point out these so-called links.

As far as my links go, I couldn't care less what the person who listed the links is like or if he's biased or not. You and others are trying to twist that link into being HIS numbers or HIS polls or HIS conclusion. There are dozens and dozens and dozens of references in that link, and not one are from him. But I'm always amazed at how some of you refuse to acknowledge wrongs against men as well. Like I said earlier, regardless of me agreeing with my link and you agreeing with yours, we should both be able to admit that domestic violence is a significant problem for both genders and needs not be discussed in the vacuum of only one sex or the other. As hard as it is for you to want to believe, men are absolutely victims of DV as much as women are. But I'll readily admit that the female victims are generally far more likely to be injured or harmed seriously. But that wasn't my point. My point was that DV is as frequent a problem for men as it is for women, regardless of the extent of injury. DV shouldn't be acceptable against anybody, period.

But aside from that, since it is completely off topic of the premise of this thread, I have seen no additional information provided that gives a logical or even remotely conclusive substantiation to the OP itself. Because of that, I am in full rights to still consider the premise to be silly, alarmist, misguided and twisted. If it wasn't, and was honest and real, it would make sense that it would've been far easier to provide supporting evidence of that.

[Lars39]

127. You'd like to see stats that validate a 'false notion'. lol

[OPERATIONMINDCRIME]

134. Nope. It Is The Absence And Inability To Produce Them That Validate The

notion.

[Lars39]

139. That's not even one of your better tries, OMC.

I expect better of you.

[OPERATIONMINDCRIME]

156. It Was A Pretty Concise, Direct And Factual Statement Dear Lars.

Please provide any stats that lend support to the notion that 'femicide' is a significantly evident problem that needs to be dealt with in the U.S.

I'd like to see some numbers, if you don't mind. If there is no supporting evidence or readily available statistics to back up this 'theory' put forth in the OP, then it is unsubstantiated and borderline ridiculous to conclude it is accurate then is it not?

[Lars39]

164. I don't think you're educable on anything to do with women.

[OPERATIONMINDCRIME]

165. Stop The Nonsense Attacks And Provide Some Facts.

Like I said, your inability to do so is what proves my premise to be correct to begin with.

[Lars39]

181. I just don't feel like feeding you right now, OMC.

:shrug:

[OPERATIONMINDCRIME]

183. But You Did, Until You Were Required To Provide Facts. Yeah, Facts.Them.

You can cover your inability to provide those facts under the guise of "I just simply don't want to talk to you anymore" as much as you want. But I'm of the opinion that it is the concept of having to provide facts in order to continue that you are running away from, rather than running away from me.

[Lars39]

186. Actually, I corresponded until I ran out of energy.

Not all of us have the stamina or health of the average 'keyboard warrior'.

[OPERATIONMINDCRIME]

191. Well, When You Regain Your Energy, Some Facts Would Still Be Appreciated.

Goodnight.

[mongo]

202. Don't you know....

"you just don't get it"

:sarcasm:

[OPERATIONMINDCRIME]

209. LOL

[U4ikLefty]

266. Uh, what is the percent-gender of those whom COMMIT murder???

Perhaps you should use your stats in a realistic sense.

Gotta omit murders of abusive spouses/lover (still, mostly male) from that category.

Peace
U4ikLefty memnber #101-Pirhana Possee (peace-out!)

[TAPat]

282. Guess you checked out that site after all.

on edit:

And only took a couple of days, too. Impressive how you can take one set of statistics and completely misrepresent them. Remember, I am the one who posted that site in the first place - I looked it over very carefully before I did knowing that *someone* *might* try to twist those stats at some time in the future...

Nice try.

[Triana]

79. Women have PMS and post-partum depression...

and that (supposedly) is to blame for their violent, murderous behavior - so what's Mens' excuse?

Eh?

[Dora]

82. Yes, and there are networks of support for these issues, too.

We've been looking at and coping with these issues in the women's community.

How do men help themselves?

[LostinVA]

114. Women with PPD don't murder anyone, nor those with PMS

Women with PP Psychosis have killed (not murdered) people before... specifically their children.

[kiahzero]

121. If I may... how is that not murder?

Maybe it's manslaughter in a legal sense, but in the more common definition meaning "unlawful killing of a human being," how is that not murder?

[Lydia Leftcoast]

113. All I have to say to you men who are SO indignant about this article is

if the shoe fits, wear it. Otherwise, it's not about you personally, so chill.

[smirkymonkey]

136. Thank YOU!

:applause::applause:

[omega minimo]

141. Way to boil it down, LL

:toast:

[kiahzero]

145. So what about when we're told that all men are waging a war on women?

Are we allowed to be at all upset about that?

Am I the only one who sees a direct correlation between what's going on in this thread and what goes on in threads related to Christian fundamentalists once they get heated up enough?

[VelmaD]

147. Well, at least some of the fundamentalists will admit...

that they are waging a war against the unbelievers. I can't seem to find to many men who will even admit that SOME men might possibly be waging a war against women. (God forbid that they admit they might actually benefit from that war even if they themselves don't actively support it.) But sometimes it sure as hell feels like one from here.

[kiahzero]

149. I figured it was clear that I signed on to the notion that SOME men were.

My problem has been, and continues to be, the generalization from that subset of the male population to the population at large.

[VelmaD]

151. I'm going to try to be honest with you...

without being mean. There's a reason sometimes all men get lumped together on this issue. It's because ALL women are impacted by it. There isn't a woman in this society, no matter how rich or pretty or republican-voting, who doesn't have the boundaries of her life hemmed in by the patriarchy. Being demure and subservient and a "good girl" will not save you. And since all women are effected whether they want to be or not...individual men are also not allowed to opt out. You don't get to go "I don't support the patriarchy" and all of a sudden not get the unearned advantages that come with being born male.

I'm sorry. I'm sorry that you feel like you're getting painted with a broad brush. But considering how many centuries women have had to put up with being painted as a group with the most unflattering stereotypes...learn to cope.

[The2ndWheel]

160. Then why the hell are we still doing this civilization thing?

Why do women want to be part of the system that has beaten them down for thousands of years? Why fight for the same rights as men in the system which men created for their power? Take it the fuck down. Take it the fuck down now. Civilization is about the control of life. Get rid of it. Come on. We're being honest here. No more bullshit excuses, from anyone. No centralized power. No patriarchy, no matriarchy, nothing.

It's either that, or nothing changes. I'm down for some fun. I'm game. Lets do it.

[VelmaD]

163. That was and is kinda the whole point...

of the feminist movement. To create something different from the current system that beats down all but a few super-powerful elite. But the fact is that to bring it down requires that men get on board too...me and you by ourselves aren't enough to do it. And as long as some people think they benefit from teh current system...they won't get off their asses and help in the numbers we need to make it happen.

How do we get people to realize what they're doing to themselves?

[The2ndWheel]

170. Unfortunately we won't get people to realize anything

Not voluntarily at least.

As long as people enjoy living until they're artifically 80, 85, 90, and probably beyond the further we go into the future, nothing will change. As long as people like having health care, nothing will change. As long as people enjoy the ever growing scale of civilization in communications and travel, nothing will change. As long as human beings dislike evolution, especially the more scientific of us(who actively attempt to stop evolution), nothing will change. We don't like chance. We equate progress and evolution, as if something can be "more evolved" than somethng else. That's not evolution. As long as we have the concept of time, nothing will change. As long as people enjoy the products of mass production, nothing will change. As long as people willingly specialize themselves into life long careers(and working longer as we increase our life span), nothing will change. As long as agriculture exists, class, racism, sexism, and every other ism will never go away.

We've subjugated more and more of life for our comforts. We're completely out of balance with the rest of existence. If there were supposed to be 6.5+ billion of us, it would happened naturally. If we were supposed to live, on average, until we were 75ish, it would happen naturally. Unless we change everything, I agree, this will be the system we all live under, and it will only get worse for everybody as we turn more and more of life into death.

[VelmaD]

174. OK...I'm really fucking depressed now

I'm out. Finally free from my own personal day of drudgery. At least until I have to do it all over again tomorrow. Ya know, I really really don't want to do this fucking job until I'm 70. *sigh*

[mongo]

203. I'll admit

that fundamentalists (men & women) are waging a war against women.

They're waging a war against me too.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

148. The article doesn't say that

:shrug:

You've chosen to interpret it that way.

My personal opinion is that macho culture (the cultural identity of insecure males who can feel good about themselves only if they have someone to dump on) is extremely misogynistic.

Real men know the difference between masculine and macho.

[kiahzero]

157. You're right - the article doesn't

Posters have, and it's hurtful that they feel the need to argue that I'm morally inferior for possessing a trait that I didn't want, didn't ask for, and didn't have any control over, despite the fact that I'm the same side of the fight.

I switched from computing programming to law, largely to fight these kind of fights (my primary interest is sexuality and gender issues). However, that will never be enough for some of my allies in the fight. I'm not saying it's the worst thing in the world or anything, it's just emotionally hurtful and gets to be draining after a while, to be told that no matter what I do, it will never be sufficient.

[VelmaD]

159. welcome to the world of women...

where nothing we do is ever enough to make up for the fact that we weren't lucky enough to be born with a penis

[kiahzero]

172. It's not all it's cracked up to be

Then again, I'm gender-queer, so my perspective is somewhat different from most men's. :shrug:

[L A Woman]

150. That's not what you are being told

All men? Nobody said that. The point is that there is a problem - women and girls being targeted because of their gender. Obviously the perpetrators are males, but if you aren't one of them, why would you become so defensive? No one said ALL MALES are doing anything.

[kiahzero]

158. Not in this thread

It kicked off in a thread yesterday about how "the world of men" was warring against women.

[Tansy_Gold]

184. Yeah, well, that was ANOTHER THREAD

The OP here never said anything about "all men." So, as someone else said, chill.

And as was also said up-thread, the generalizations of "men" and "women" -- rather than "some men" and "some women" -- are used to indicate that these are socio-cultural phenomena that apply to gendered-men and gendered-women in general.


To be female is to walk the world in fear.
Wherever they are, women are always
afraid of being, as rapists say,
"any woman" in the wrong place
at the wrong time.

Marilyn French
The War Against Women
1992


If a woman dresses "inappropriately" and is raped, it's her fault; the man can't control himself.

If the woman drinks too much, even if the man encouraged or even forced her, it's her fault; the man can't control himself.

If the woman says yes to ANY sexual activity and then says no to more, it's her fault if the man doesn't pay any attention to her no; the man can't control himself.

Most of us who are thinking, rational, intelligent, liberal peope know that the above statements are not only wrong, they are offensive to both men and women. And yet these statements are believed by many people and are used frequently to excuse the crime of rape, putting the blame on the victim rather than the perpetrator.

And that's why Marilyn French titled her book "The War Against Women." While it isn't a declared war, and it isn't waged by ALL men against ALL women, it is a socio-cultural phenomenon in the U.S. that women are more likely to be the victims of domestic violence and intimate partner murder (regardless what some posters here would like to believe). It is also true that the courts, the laws, the lawyers, the media, and virtually every other traditional cultural institution has had for a long time, and in some cases still has, a gender bias.

(Here's an example, totally out of the realm of murder, but I think most of you will understand that gender bias still exists: Could a grossly over-weight, slobby-looking, 60+-year-old woman get elected to the U.S. House of Representatives? Of course not! Everyone from her family to her party would discourage her, because her looks would become an issue for the campaign. Let's face it, there isn't a single woman in the U.S. Congress who looks anything like the dishonorable and disgusting J. Dennis Hastert. It simply would never happen. There's still a double standard, and it's based on GENDER. Slobby looking men can get elected and promoted to positions of power; slobby looking women can't.)

I had a very dear friend who was murdered about 15 years ago. She was a kind and intelligent woman, a public librarian who loved introducing children to the world of books. She had no clue that for several weeks she was "stalked" by a convicted, paroled child molestor, a man who had been so severely abused by his own father that he suffered brain damage and, in his mid-30s, had the mental capacity of a ten-year-old. He waited until one afternoon, just before school let out, and there was no one in the library but himself and the librarian. He locked the doors, raped and savagely murdered her. Before going to the library, the killer had told his brother, "I'm needin' a woman, and I know where I can get one." The brother thought he was talking about finding someone at one of the local bars; he had no idea the victim would be a petite, soft-voiced, elegant woman who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

As far as I know, her murderer still sits on death row here in Arizona. Her death is NOT considered "femicide" by some because she wasn't killed because of her gender, but others do consider murder while in the commission of rape a form of "femicide." And I cite this to illustrate that even within those who do advocate the distinction of femicide, the definition is not without its problems.

While I was actually taking a course titled "Sociology of Murder" a few years ago, one of the students in the class was devastated by the murder of her brother, a night-shift convenience store clerk who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time when someone came in to rob the place.

"Femicide" means that the motive for the murder lies in gender issues. A woman who is shot by a drive-by gang-banger is not a "femicide" victim, though I'm sure the distinction makes little or no difference to her family. A man who is killed by a jealous husband because the victim is having an affair with the killer's wife IS a victim of "malicide," because he's killed for reasons directly related to his gender.

And there is much more "femicide" in this country than "malicide," and that's the point of the OP and all this subsequent discussion. Both of these subsets of murder are valid, but the point being made in the OP is that femicide is not only a much larger percentage of all murders of women than "malicide" is a percentage of all murders of men, but that even though more men are killed in general than women, more women numerically are victims of gender-based femicide than are men victims of gender-based "malicide."

(BTW, "malicide," which would probably be more appropriately be applied to murders involving malice, is an artifial construction. "Homicide," the general term for murder, simply means "man-killing," with "man" being the gender-neutral term for "human being." "Femicide," in contrast, denotes a not only "woman-killing," but specifically the killing of a woman BECAUSE she is a woman.)

While I am quite sure most of what I write is completely lost on certain individuals (they have made it quite clear to me and to others that they have little understanding or even desire to understand the facts presented by me and others) again I am writing also for those who lurk.


Tansy Gold

[bloom]

219. Thanks for trying to bring light to the subject.

I would say that that men who kill other men - even if it is for something like the example you gave...

"A man who is killed by a jealous husband because the victim is having an affair with the killer's wife IS a victim of "malicide," because he's killed for reasons directly related to his gender."

...is NOT "malicide" - because it is not done because of a hatred of men. While the murder involved gender - if anything (IMO) such murders are done because of the "ownership" and control they feel that they should have over their wives that they do not have. Not because they are angry at men as a group.

I don't know that I would really buy the idea of men committing "malicide" any more than I would buy the idea of a women committing "femicide". I don't think that people generally sufficiently hate their own gender in the sort of way that they would attack someone who is of their own gender (for being that gender) - unless the person just did not identify with their own gender at all.

I think that part of the thing is hating the "other" - that which is different - and that group which perhaps the person feels powerless over - when the person expects to be able to exert power - what with entitlement fantasies and all.

[Tansy_Gold]

267. I guess I have to plead guilty, bloom,

to trying to figure out a way that "malicide" would fit into the same plane as "femicide." But you're right, it just doesn't in the cas eof the jealous husband, because that gendered hierarchical inequality isn't present.

And maybe that's the key to it all: There's still a patriarchal conception of the male as superior to the female, so that inherent in femicide is an aspect of "power-over," a kind of ultimate one-upsmanship. the male killer is essentially establishing -- or re-establishing -- his power over the subordinate female.

I know that most people, including most people here on DU probably, are more comfortable with the idea that murderers are just nutcases, but I really do find it fascinating to examine the possibility that there are causes for unnecessary violence that can be identified and "treated" to make us a stronger, happier, safer community.


Tansy Gold

[Hell Hath No Fury]

175. There it is!

"If the shoe fits..."

Some men get so damned indignant when certain facts about violence against women are brought up.

As I have said here before:

Every woman I have known who has been raped has been raped by a man.
Every woman I have known who has been sexually abused has been abused by a man.
Every woman I have known who has been battered has been battered by a man.

Sadly, I know a lot of woman who have been in these positions. Thank the gods I have never experienced any of that, but I have been sexually harrassed repeatedly over the years, and it has been a man who has done it 100% of the time. Not a woman, not a lesbian, but a man.

Some guys just don't like hearing that reality about their bretheran. I have known (and dated) plenty of amazing men who wouldn't dream of doing things like that against a woman, but I will not pretend or soft pedal the fact that there is violence against women for being a woman by men.

And if some guys don't like that, tough titties. :P

[OPERATIONMINDCRIME]

176. Wrong Topic.

The OP wasn't really addressing rapes and domestic violence now was it. It was addressing a supposed notion that many murders committed themselves to murdering, then set out purposefully to do so to a woman, merely because she's a woman. Now that would be what is meant by 'femicide' no?

You said: "Some men get so damned indignant when certain facts about violence against women are brought up."

For that to be true in this thread's context there would had to have been some facts presented to begin with right? Where are they? Can you provide facts, statisitics or any other supporting figures to show that men explicitly setting out to kill a woman specifically on the criteria that she's a woman is so prevalent as to warrant it some significant problem?

[ismnotwasm]

198. I could

And so could you. In fact I think it would be instructive and imformative to do your own research on the topic. Just saying.

[OPERATIONMINDCRIME]

201. I Have. My Conclusion Is That The Premise Is Completely False.

At least the premise being that it occurs with such frequency that it is a serious problem in our society.

So if you disagree with that conclusion, then do your own research and provide some numbers and facts that prove otherwise.

Not one person in this thread has done that yet. This entire thread is based on a premise that as of yet has been completely unsubstantiated. In my opinion, that makes the passionate convictions in this thread really silly.

Either the premise is real, and there is data to support it, or it is false and the data cannot be provided.

[Kire]

142. Question?

What are racially motivated murders called?

[lukasahero]

299. Systematic racially motivated murders are called genocide

Genocide:

–noun the deliberate and systematic extermination of a national, racial, political, or cultural group.

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/genocide

:shrug:

[madmusic]

169. Misogamy or sexism? Does it matter?

We KNOW what to do, but the neocons hijacked the feminist movement though the victim's rights movement, and transformed it into the ultimate patriarchy, the police state, and from there toward BushCo's fascism.

The PDF article the neocons do not want you to read: http://jiv.sagepub.com/cgi/reprint/20/1/132.pdf">Preventing Violence and Trauma in the Next Generation. Remember how they ridiculed Hilary's It Takes a Village?

In short, liberalism rather than the neocon's politics of fear is the more workable solution. The problem with this article is that it at once fuels the politics of fear while at the same time arguing a feminist view. The neocons will smash feminism the first chance they get but will use whatever they can of it if it gives them more power in the mean time.

[pinto]

178. Hi all. Just a reminder about DU civility guidelines:

Thanks. :hi:

"The administrators of Democratic Underground are working to provide a place where progressives can share ideas and debate in an atmosphere of mutual respect. Despite our best efforts, some of our members often stray from this ideal and cheapen the quality of discourse for everyone else. Unfortunately, it is simply impossible to write a comprehensive set of rules forbidding every type of antisocial behavior. The fact that the rules do not forbid a certain type of post does not automatically make an uncivil post appropriate, nor does it imply that the administrators approve of disrespectful behavior. Every member of this community has a responsibility to participate in a respectful manner, and to help foster an atmosphere of thoughtful discussion. In this regard, we strongly advise that our members exercise a little common decency, rather than trying to parse the message board rules to figure out what type of antisocial behavior is not forbidden.

Do not post personal attacks or engage in name-calling against other individual members of this discussion board. Even very mild personal attacks are forbidden."

http://www.democraticunderground.com/forums/rules_detailed.html

[Jamastiene]

190. I've been pointing out for years that men target women all too often

for violence. It annoys me to say the least. What's worse is when horrendously violent crimes happen against women and the offender's mothers come on television and say the same damn thing every other offender's mother says, "He was a good boy."

When it comes to raising boys, the "boys will be boys" mentality, I think, plays a role in the violence. Boys get by with far too much and get a pass on violent actions when they are small. Plus, a lot of men blame women for everything. I'm not saying all men do that, but too many do that. It infuriates me. And when they have that mentality, their wives, mothers, sisters, and girlfriends just buy whatever load of crap the guy feeds them. Meanwhile, he goes off talking to his buddies about women and talks about women like women are below crap. :mad:

[Marie26]

195. What a lovely thread!

Going to the actual article, women have been subject to violence & hatred, stretching back thousands of years. It's interesting to me that so many cultural myths blame women for all the evil in the world - from Pandora's box to Eve's apple. Historically, women were even considered at fault for crimes against them. That article lays out a long, sad history of persecution. But it isn't something that's inevitable, or something that can't change. As our society has modernized, women have gained more and more rights. And in societies where women have more freedom & rights, they are less often the targets and victims of these types of crimes.

We now have the power to change society, not merely be ruled by it. In the US, women are in law school, medical school, business leaders, scientists. For the first time in over a million years, women have an equal opportunity to learn and succeed in our society. And where women have an equal opportunity, they can & have kicked ass. Women now get a majority of higher academic degrees. But changes in the balance of power can be threatening, especially to a group that has traditionally had power - that's always true. And so, I think as women become more prominent in society, there's a corresponding backlash against them. But that backlash hasn't managed to repeal the changes so far, and IMO it won't happen in the future. Because women are now in positions of real power, and can truly act to preserve our own rights, and the rights of women in the future. If we can only recognize our own power.

[madmusic]

211. Silly me!

How dumb could I be to offer a solution because some said they wanted potential solutions.

Back to your regularly scheduled power grab.

[Marie26]

316. Power to the People! nt

[bloom]

216. Good points

Some men must be very threatened by any power that women have (and most of us recognize the right-wingers being esp. threatened). Good for those men who aren't.

[Marie26]

221. Exactly

And that's what I think at least some of this is about. It's human nature - whites didn't like it when minorities gained power, Democrats didn't like it when Republicans gained power, and men didn't like it when women gained power. And I think some of this backlash is about taking that power back, back to the good old days when men ran the country & women knitted blankets & stayed quiet. And I don't think it's even a conscious effort, but more an instinctive lashing out at a new order.

IMO, Hillary Clinton is pretty much the embodiment of this phenomenon. If you mention "Hillary," many conservative men's eyes will glaze over as they unleash a torrent of hate - she's a feminazi, a dictator, an ice queen, a man-hater, a Communist, a bitch, etc. "Hillary" is the ultimate monster, the ultimate embodiment of the new woman. I used to be puzzled at why she inspired so much hate among the Freepers, until I considered who she came after - Barbara Bush. Barbara's image (at the time) was of the kindly grandmother who baked cookies, raised her children, supported her husband, stuck to safe feminine pastimes, & didn't participate in the modern life. She was a comforting throw-back to the "traditional woman." Then comes Hillary, who won't bake cookies, who is a career woman, an intellectual equal, a feminist, & an active participant in the political world. It must have been a shock. The transition WAS a shock, and people assigned to Hillary all their fears & hatred about women's changing role in society. THAT's what the Hillary hate was about. And IMO THAT's what the hate & fear is about here, as well. The key is to not allow it to make women silent, and not allow it to compromise our beliefs or our goals. Women do have the power & ability to change society, we just need to believe it, voice it, and have the courage & unity to act upon it.

[Tansy_Gold]

248. The difference is in the kind of power

And really, folks, I am too tired and too far behind in my real life work to spend much more time on this issue, but there really is a difference between the "power" generally spoken of when feminists refer to "female power" and the "power" usually understood from a patriarchal context.

Not all, but most feminists speak of a "power-to" which is shared, not hoarded, and that enables each and every individual to achieve all he or she can be. (with apologies to the U.S. military, of course). It's not the traditional "power-over" that is embodied in traditional patriarchal cultures.

So it's really wrong to speak of a "power grab" in this sense, although I suppose that the members of the "powerful" strata look upon it as such because some of their "power-over" is being taken away and turned into "power-to" for everyone. But what the elites (and in our particular brand of patriarchy, that's the white heterosexual males; sorry, guys) fear from the possibility of a "matriarchal" coup is really unlikely. Matriarchy is not -- by feminist definition -- a patriarchy with vaginas. It's a whole different concept of power.

But of course the current white hetero male hegemony doesn't want anyone to know that, so they keep throwing out words like "power-grab" to keep their legionnaires in line. And since feminists -- of all genders -- don't have access to the same distribution of knowledge, the "power-to" folks don't get heard.

Or, sometimes, they just don't get listened to.


Tansy Gold

[bloom]

258. power to - power over

I heard a right-winger actually argue that social services needed to be limited to keep women dependent, submissive, etc.

I agree that it's one thing to have the power to have basic rights and opportunities. And that that is nothing like a power "grab".

I think that some men might see it as a power grab (basic rights and opportunities). Things like just having women more represented in the history books - to some men that is seen as power taken away from men - if it means that some men are left out that would have been in (or talked about less, etc.).

While it's getting to be less of a problem - it has been a problem for some men having a women as their boss.

Or if women are no longer seen as the root of all evil - to some men that would be too much of a "power gain" - women gaining power that they have not had (as far as those men are concerned). Some men don't even want to think that it is possible that people ever worshiped a "Goddess" as the most powerful deity - as if that would reduce their idea of men's power.

There was also the case of the Sunday school teacher being "fired" because the church said they didn't want women teaching men (after she had done so for 50 years :crazy: ).

So there are lots of aspects to that.

I agree with the poster who mentioned that it is a real hangup for some men - the Hillary factor - the idea of a feminist (or any) women having political power.

It can be that the "power to" vs. "power over" is just a matter of perspective (or one could say it's a matter of whether someone is sexist or not).

[Marie26]

320. Thank you

for expressing that so eloquently. I'd never considered it from that perspective before. Maybe we are speaking fundamentally different languages. When I talk about "power", I'm talking about women's ability to control their own bodies & their own destinies, and change society to make it more equal for everybody - power as liberation. But I can see how, within the prism of a patriarchical society, power is something that can only be used over another - power as domination. That's the image of power that is instilled in us, and especially in men, from an early age. So when a feminist talks about women's power, men could see that as a desire for domination & power over men; when it's really about having the internal power of self-determination. It is not a zero-sum game, in which power is "won" by one group only, but a cooperative effort in which power is "shared." But seeing that requires a fundamental shift in the paradigms that shapes our perspectives & interpretations of power. And in a patriarchical society, how can that shift ever truly take place? How can "power-to" stop being interpreted as "power-over."?

[mongo]

200. The OP has taken a bunch of isolated incidents and labeled

it "femicide".

What about Kosuvo? Men were rounded up and taken to camps and murdered. The same thing has happened through out history and is happening in Iraq today.

If you want to talk about numbers, men are far more likley to be murdered, and far more likely to be murdered systematically.

[L A Woman]

210. Oh. My. God.

Is there some kind of IQ test we could require before posting on DU?

Men were rounded up in Kosovo and murdered BECAUSE THEY WERE MEN? I don't think so.

Men are more likely to be murdered BECAUSE THEY ARE MEN???? Umm, no.

Jesus Christ, if this were my first time visiting DU, I would think Democratic men had all been lobotomized!

[mongo]

215. So innocent men being rounded up and executed in war

isn't because they are men? Wow.

If this were my first time visiting DU, I would think Democractic women were surley *'s.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

224. They were rounded up because they were potential fighters on the

side of the "wrong" ethnic group.

They weren't slaughtered up in terms of, "Oh, here are some men. We hate men. Let's kill them."

May I remind you that the various sides also raped the women of the "wrong" ethnic groups and kept them as sex slaves.

[mongo]

232. Ah, but you can't have it both ways

You can't point to these isolated incidents of women being murdered by insane men, and the underlying causes - like that women (usually) control sexual access etc.

And then ignore the SYSTEMATIC killing of men because of some aspect of their role in society.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

235. And, as I later added, keeping the women of these ethnic groups

as sex slaves.

And, as I said in my post above, if the shoe fits, wear it. Otherwise, it's pretty annoying to have a bunch of DU men get upset by the FACT that there are far more male serial killers and mass murderers targeting women or men than there are female serial killers and mass murderers targeting women or men.

[mongo]

251. Most of the women were released

not "kept" as sex slaves. Yes, some women were raped and brutalized in the process. But not systematically murdered as is common in war.

it's pretty annoying to have a bunch of DU men get upset by the FACT that there are far more male serial killers and mass murderers targeting women or men than there are female serial killers and mass murderers targeting women or men.

It's not the facts that are annoying. It's the mischaracterization and (dare I say) hysteria that *some* women have regarding men in general -- and the way these threads are used to only fuel the fire of male-hatred.

99.99% of us don't want to kill you -- honest.

[VelmaD]

252. gee...color me stunned...

we got called hysterical. Can't y'all come up with any new and improved names to call us? :eyes:

[Lydia Leftcoast]

254. I'm trying to think of an incident in which women captured a bunch of

men at gunpoint and kept them as sex slaves in the context of war... :eyes:

And yes, some of the women in Bosnia WERE kept as sex slaves, held prisoner and raped repeatedly over days or weeks.

I never said that ALL men want to kill or harm women, but there's something seriously wrong with the macho variety of male culture, when it makes excuses for rape and other forms of violence.

[mongo]

302. Changing the subject again

I really like an explanation of why the intimate partner murder of a woman is "femicide" but the systematic killing of non-combatant men is not "malicide.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=364&topic_id=2314633&mesg_id=2329184

[Marie26]

257. Not true at all

It helps to do some basic research before making these kinds of claims. Bosnian women were the victims of systematic rape, murder & sexual enslavement during the civil war.

BBC -
Bosnian rape camp trial opens

"Three Bosnian Serbs commanders accused of forcing Muslim women into sexual slavery have gone on trial at the International War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague. Radomir Kovac, Dragoljub Kunarac and Zoran Vukovic are accused of detaining Bosnian Muslim women in a school, a sports hall and other locations in Foca in southeast Bosnia. Soldiers and paramilitaries sexually assaulted the women nightly.

The trial opened on Monday with a prosecutor linking the organised sexual assault to the Serb leadership's ethnic cleansing campaign in the 1992-95 war. "What happened to the Muslim women of Foca occurred because of their ethnicity and religion and also because they were women," prosecutor Dirk Ryneveld said.

Some of the victims were as young as 12. "They were brutalised and dehumanised and sexually assaulted by their captors, including the three men who sit before you," Mr Ryneveld said.

There were reports of rape by all sides in dozens of camps across Bosnia in the 1992-95 war. In 1993, a European Community commission estimated 20,000 rape victims in the conflict. The Bosnian Government put the figure at 50,000.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/683846.stm

Rape: weapon of war - The traditional human-rights image is of a male prisoner of conscience. Yet the Serbian rape camps in Bosnia show that it’s often women who suffer most.

"No-one will ever know the exact number of women and girls raped during the conflict in former Yugoslavia. But Herak’s accounts of his forced participation in rapes of Bosnian Muslim women – his commander had told him it was ‘good for morale’ – accord with evidence recounted to human-rights observers and journalists throughout the region. Though all figures must be treated with caution in a war so plagued by propaganda, these witnesses tell of the organized and systematic rape of at least 20,000 women and girls by the Serbian military and the murder of many of the victims. Muslim and Croatian – as well as some Serbian – women are being raped in their homes, in schools, police stations and camps all over the country."

http://www.newint.org/issue244/rape.htm

Bosnian 'Rape Camp' Survivors Testify in The Hague -

"THE HAGUE, Netherlands--FWS-87 was in seventh grade and a virgin when it began. In court, she couldn't remember how many times she was assaulted during eight months of torture, gang rape and enslavement. ... FWS-95 wept so loudly in court that her sobs were audible through the prosecutor's microphone across the room. But she refused to let the proceedings be adjourned.

The women, identified only by codes, were among the 16 survivors who testified for the prosecution in the Foca rape trial, named after the southeast Bosnian city overrun by Serb forces at the outset of the ethnic war that lasted from 1992 to 1995. An estimated 50,000 girls and women were raped during the conflict. The proceedings have been going on since March at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, an ad hoc court set up by the United Nations, down the street from the International Court of Justice in this seaside Dutch city of The Hague.

Almost every night in the summer and fall of 1992, Serb soldiers would enter the detention centers and select their victims from among the female prisoners lying on gym mats, the witnesses testified. The women were taken to classrooms and private apartments where they were sexually assaulted, forced to dance nude and then compelled to perform degrading domestic chores. Some were kept as personal sex slaves by former neighbors--much older men whose wives and families they knew. Foca's women's prisons have come to be known at the war crimes tribunal as the "rape camps" or "rape factories" of the Balkan conflict."
http://www.womensenews.org/article.cfm?aid=204&context=archive

Bosnian war crimes: Some women were herded into camps - http://eudoxus.usc.edu/fahmad/pub/Stuff/Serbs1.html

Rape Camps - Evidence Serb leaders in Bosnia OKd attacks - http://www.haverford.edu/relg/sells/rape2.html

[bloom]

259. There was also the role of NATO and DynCorp with that.

Nato force 'feeds Kosovo sex trade'

Ian Traynor in Zagreb
Friday May 7, 2004
The Guardian

Western troops, policemen, and civilians are largely to blame for the rapid growth of the sex slavery industry in Kosovo over the past five years, a mushrooming trade in which hundreds of women, many of them under-age girls, are tortured, raped, abused and then criminalised, Amnesty International said yesterday.

In a report on the rapid growth of sex-trafficking and forced prostitution rackets since Nato troops and UN administrators took over the Balkan province in 1999, Amnesty said Nato soldiers, UN police, and western aid workers operated with near impunity in exploiting the victims of the sex traffickers....

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Kosovo/Story/0,2763,1211248,00.html

______________

...On March 11th 2005, McKinney grilled Secretary Rumsfeld and General Myers on the Dyncorp scandal.

"Mr. Secretary, I watched President Bush deliver a moving speech at the United Nations in September 2003, in which he mentioned the crisis of the sex trade. The President called for the punishment of those involved in this horrible business. But at the very moment of that speech, DynCorp was exposed for having been involved in the buying and selling of young women and children. While all of this was going on, DynCorp kept the Pentagon contract to administer the smallpox and anthrax vaccines, and is now working on a plague vaccine through the Joint Vaccine Acquisition Program. Mr. Secretary, is it (the) policy of the U.S. Government to reward companies that traffic in women and little girls?"...

http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/january2006/010106sexslavescandal.htm

[mongo]

301. Changing the subject again

We were talking about "femicide" not rape.

I am just trying to make some sense of the idea that's being floated by several posters that an intimate partner murder of a woman is "femicide", but the systematic killing of men is not "malicide"

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=364&topic_id=2314633&mesg_id=2329184

[Marie26]

313. The subject of the post:

"Most of the women were released, not "kept" as sex slaves... they were not systematically murdered as is common in war."

I posted that women in Bosnia were kept as sex slaves, were not released, and were in fact sytematically murdered. How is it "changing the subject" to respond to the subject of your post?

[bleedingheart]

288. they were murdered because they were the perceived "enemy"

of the Serbians.

The Serbs murdered muslim men and they also raped and murdered muslim women. Rape was used against women particularly because the Serbs knew that it would shame them.

The Serbs didn't target men because they were men, they targeted a whole subset of the Kosovo population because they were Muslims and because their nationalistic "craziness" required that they right a wrong that had occurred some 600 years before...that is how nuts Milosevic and his cronies were...

edit: to add a link about the original Battle of Kosovo..

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Kosovo

"Both armies sustained heavy casualties and both armies withdrew from the battlefield, but the toll on Serbia was catastrophic as much of its political elite was wiped out; Prince Lazar and most of Serbia's knights. More than 150 died in this one battle such as Pavle Orlović, Rade Oblačić, Ivan Kosančić, Milan Toplica, etc."

"The Battle of Kosovo is often glorified in the annals of Serbian history and it is the subject of Serbian medieval epic poetry, some of that poetry being composed soon after the battle, in the court of Lazar's widow, Milica, and clearly hastening Lazar's pathway to canonization."

[Greyhound]

261. But, the issue is not about numbers, nor is it about who is rounded

up and executed in a war. However, in your example of Kosovo, the women were systematically rounded up and repeatedly raped in an effort to destroy a race, so I don't think it is fair to use execution as the only measure. But this is beside the point too.

Think of it this way, in how many cultures on this dirtball are men required to cover themselves from head to toe so as to not "arouse" the women? In how many cultures is it permissible to beat, torture, and kill men simply for being? In how many cultures is it acceptable to sell their sons into slavery so that the family can improve their lot?

There is a valid point here and I am at a loss to understand why so many supposedly enlightened men just refuse to even look at it.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

271. And in what culture

did they routinely practice male infanticide so that the mother could quickly get pregnant and produce the longed-for daughter?

In what culture are all male children cut so that they will never be able to enjoy sex?

In what culture are sons who flirt with the opposite sex killed for destroying the "honor" of the family?

In what culture were widowers thrown alive onto the flaming funeral pyres of their wives?

In what city are there entire neighborhoods of brothels where young boys have been sold to satisfy the sexual desires of rich older women?

How often have you heard of sons being denied an education and forced to work to put their sisters through college?

Did you ever work in a workplace where all the women were paid more for the same work than the men were?

Is there a pattern here?

[Sparkly]

315. Amen!!! nt

[LostinVA]

276. That was targeted ethnicity, not gender

The men were murdered, the women raped and raped and raped and raped and raped and raped... including little, teeny girls and grandmothers. Many were then murdered, Many were also let to "live" -- mentally and physically destroyed. And many killed themselves after their torure... They targeting was because of ethnicity, the "punishment" was determined by gender.
MOngo, not the same thing at all. And, I know you know this, because you aren't stupid.

You know the OP is right.

I had you off of Ignore for a while, but I see it's time to change that. This type of thinking deserves neither my attention nor my emotions.

on edit: and please, while you're at it, why don't you explain who kills so many men. Women? No. That's not even a good strawman. It's barely a pile of straw.

[smirkymonkey]

280. No, that was called "genocide"

different term, but the sentiment is similar.

[rman]

285. so you take another isolated incident to make your point.

interesting logic.

[BoneDaddy]

275. Ah the Perennial Male conspiracy to kill women nut jobs

are at it again.

[VelmaD]

298. Some final thoughts on this subject...

and then I'm going to go do my actual job and get away from this place for a bit. I think it has been quite informative to see how some people in this thread view the women who disagree with them. Angry. Strident. In need of counseling. *snort* I believe even our traditional favorite, hysterical, made an appearance. It would be funny if it wasn't so sad.

More than anything I'm tired of "angry" being thrown at women as an insult. Look at the last few thousand years of our history and tell me we shouldn't be angry. That you wouldn't be angry if it was you. What is the problem so many people seem to have with angry women? Why does it cause them such distress to think we might have a legitimate right to be angry and express that anger? Sometime soon I'm going to start a thread on that. It'll degenerate into yet another flamewar, no doubt, but hopefully we can manage to have some sort of discussion about it before that happens.

Anyway, peace out.

[bloom]

306. Yes - How dare women be angry

that some men participate in rape, murder, infanticide, genital mutilation, "honor killings" and all the rest - specifically targeting girls and women. I suppose we are supposed to smile and keep our mouths shut. :eyes:

Or that male murderers, rapists, and child molesters become national heroes with holidays that we are all supposed to celebrate. (Good segment on that on Democracy Now! today - what with Columbus Day coming up). I might have to make a thread about it. :hi:

[omega minimo]

307. Well it may be annoying

to have any attempts at a discussion automatically attacked and hijacked (again)