Trivializing violence against women

[url=http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20090127/nunavut_min... Here [/url] is another example trivializing violence against women, from today's news. Thankfully, the Nunavut justice minister has been stripped of his ministerial duties, however his message is clear "don't argue with your man - if you do he may get violent and it will be your fault":

Quote:

IQALUIT, Nunavut -- Nunavut's premier has stripped the territory's justice minister of his duties over a remark that suggests women are partly to blame when they are assaulted during domestic disputes.

Eva Aariak said she has taken over the department from Louis Tapardjuk, who made the comment last week in an email.

"Often, in cases of domestic disputes, both parties share the blame but, according to the Criminal Code, the person who gets physical is charged, even though the other party initiated the conflict," Tapardjuk wrote.

"Often, the male is charged even though the conflict may have been initiated by the female partner."

It was not clear who the email was sent to or how widely it was distributed.

The premier said no victim of violence should ever be faulted for initiating a conflict and nothing can ever justify violence by a person in an intimate relationship.

I know...it feeds right into the "she deserved it" line of thinking.

Same with the story in the OP. As if this violent idiot was leaving her alone until she went and changed her facebook status.

"...decided to go and see her as she was not responding to his (text) messages"

I think that, beside the "changing Facebook status pretext", this use of "as" by the Crown Prosecuting Service is clearly blaming the victim. Will U.K. women now be expected to answer harassing messages to save their life?

It seems to me more than thought processes - indeed, it's the reverse - when mechanical causal relationships are presented as fact. I think this does implicitly excuse the murderer, as in "I couldn't stop because my brake lines had been cut."

I imagine that we are terrified at the thought that men could actually CHOOSE murder if they do not get their way - what a blow against heterosexual romanticism! - so we give credence to these mechanistic explanations, despite abundant evidence of choice on the part of the killers.

I agree with Lagatta - sloppy (or possibly, deliberately sensationalist )journalism.  I don't think the article is excusing or explaining his behaviour away necessarily.  They're explaining what the accused did and thought, presumably based on their investigation.  There may not be evidence that there was a pattern of abuse.  The victim is dead.  The accused is unlikely to confess to it.  If the woman was being abused, it's possible none of here friends or family knew.  If they'd been apart for a month, any bruises might have gone away. 

He's been given Life with a minimum 18 years in prison.  Clearly, the judge didn't buy the crime of passion defence (if there was one.)  Here's the rest of the quote from the police (my emphasis)

Quote:

""She had decided that her marriage to Edward Richardson was over but this was clearly something he could not accept.

"The consequence was that Sarah lost her life in a brutal attack at her husband's hands in her family home.

"The verdict cannot bring Sarah back but we hope that it gives her family some form of comfort."

Is that blaming the victim?  Link:  http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/life-for-wifekiller-enraged-by-facebook-change-1514002.html

Yes, he was saying that the husband's reasoning for going there in person is because she was not responding to text messages.  That was one of the things that enraged the husband.  That doesn't mean that he's claiming that it's the wife's fault for not responding.  That doesn't mean he's saying that it's the wife's fault that the husband got enraged.  He's just stating that the wife changed her facebook status, the husband got enraged, he tried to text message her, she didn't respond to the text messages, and when he didn't get a response from her that way, then he went over in person and killed her.  Summer posted the rest of the quote where it was really quite clear that the police officer giving the statement did not blame the victim. 

In other news: swinging out dictionary definitions when discussing feminism, anti-racism, or any other "ism" maybe makes you feel better, but it's really kind of pointless when people are actually trying to have a real discussion about what people mean when they say stuff.

I agree that's what as means Martin.  But I think it is from the subjective point of view of the murderer, as explained to the public by the Police. 

The OP is about the article and its slant.  Another question is what the police meant.  I expect the judgment would explain whether it was pre-meditated or not.  If it was, then you're right the explanation should be  "decided to go and kill her as/because he was angry she was not returning his messages [and ignoring him and had severed the relationship]"

But if it was not pre-meditated which is likely the case, then that is why he decided to go see her at that particular moment (the straw that broke the camel's back, as it were).  They're not suggesting he had not choice, that she somehow forced him to by her actions.  He decided.  His choice.  Not hers. 

You have nailed it, Summer: "the subjective point of view of the murderer". Why is it that news organizations and even prosecutors feel compelled to couch women's life-death issues in these terms? And to embellish/distort that reality by excluding the element of men's choice, as I pointed out?

A film is about to be released in Quebec called "Polytechnique" and ALL the advance material being poured on us by the media is about the POV of Marc Lépine, the main actor explaining how he and the (also male) filmmaker went out of their way to try an instil depth and complexity in the assassin's character, which comes off on screen as a lot of pouting moodiness in a Harry-Potter look-alike!

I'd been thinking of the Polytechnique film since this topic started - and indeed thought the choice of actor was very strange. Not that one needs someone who looks just like Lépine, but the actor looked much more "appealing" than the geeky antisocial Lépine.

I have NO intention of seeing that film. First of all, I was on campus that night, and don't see how a film could add to the utter numbness and horror when we returned to campus the next day and tried to carry on with our exams. I had been to Polytechnique earlier that week, though I never had any classes there - I was looking for a technical term in the library - back then everything wasn't on line (though primitive Internet did exist, and I had an account with a lot of numbers in it).

You're right.  I mixed up the two quotes.  The one about him not accpting the marriage being over was the police.  The one about the text messages was the prosecutor. 

Regardless, my point from post #16, stands. Stop stretching, you're liable to break in half pretty soon.  The prosecutor is allowed to tell the media what happened during the trial.  I don't know what "criminal agency" means and how she denied it.  The prosecutors got him life in prison.  He was found guilty. 

How do you know the comment was speculation?  There was a trial.  Prosecutors are allowed to summarize evidence from the trial. 

 "Tottering bases"! pfft.  give me a break.  Life in prison.  Min. sentence 18 yrs.  What's the problem?  you question their quality?  What more would you like? the death penalty?

Maysie, I am curious at to why you write: "The truth is we *don't* always hear about murder from the murderer's perspective. If the victim is considered "innocent" we hear no end of the victim's perspective, alive or dead."

As you know, I monitor murders of women by men and I was under the contrary impression, i.e. that news stories tended to dismiss the victim as that of a "tragedy", limiting discourse about her to "sadness", "her family's grief', etc., whereas they took up the murderer's POV, throwing up loss of employment, possible depression, financial straits, general moodiness or even the victim's illnesses as possible explanations for the act. They sometimes omit the obligatory flourish that "these do not constitute justifications, of course." Which to me indicates, that yes, they function as such.

There is also the matter of statements that could be called defamation and that are omitted from media discussions of assaulters' dynamics. When it comes to statements hostile to someone who is still alive, the media are reluctant to publish elements that demonstrate premeditation, agency, misogyny or other elements that could be targeted as defaming the suspect. For instance, a rape victim's perspective on her assaulter emphatically does make it past editorial desks.

Si, I am eager to read how you see it.

OK, yes, I totally agree. Victims of what is unfairly deemed racial violence are framed as innocent to accentuate the suspects' guilt - and justify our society's general racism. But what is aired is not the victim's POV, only that stereotype of inoccence.

About this "gang" trope, it is telling that most Montrealers have been led to believe that the latest victim of a police killing in Montreal, Fredy Villanueva, was part of "those Montreal-Nord Black street gangs we need to get tougher with", when that unarmed 17-yr old, shot for playing dice in a park and resisting his brother's arrest, was Latino. His family is so incensed about the way it has been treated by investigators since the killing that they are threatening to pull out of the official "inquiry" into his murder.

Thanks for posting that Michelle.  I was thinking pretty much the same thing! 

I think there is a difference between explaining behaviour and justifying/excusing/explaining away behaviour. 

Bottom line: men who abuse women do so because they are misogynists.  But what makes them misogynists?  Why does one person who sees a Facebook status change in his relationship go over to his ex's in a rage and kill her?  What does a man who has a bad day at work go home and punch his wife?  What causes him to do that?  It's something internal in him but there are external influences that affect the person he is.  (unless you believe that these men are evil monsters that are born to turn into abusers- and there's nothing that can be done - but that is dismissing the problem, IMO)

Well, that's great.  And I agree that they do it "because they can".  But that really doesn't explain the motivation behind what they're doing, does it, or what causes them to make that decision when most people don't. 

I mean, just leaving it at that is basically just another way of saying "evil monster", isn't it?  

"because they can".  If that's the reason men abuse women, why don't you hit women Martin?   Can't you?

I don't believe that all men are monsters where the ones who hit women do so because they can and the rest would like to but don't because they're afraid of jail or whatever. 

You don't hit women because you don't hate women.  You don't hit women because you respect women.  Maybe you don't hit women because you're able to fight with words instead of fists.  Maybe  you don't hit men for the same reason.  Whatever it is, you don't hit women because you "can't".  You don't hit women because you choose not to.

Summer: "You don't hit women because you choose not to".

Yes. And the corollary is also true. Men who hit women choose to. Because it gets them what they want. Which is where I think we can intervene. By making that choice less beneficial.

I have said that they hit because it gets them what they want (control, power over, silence, submission, a "feel good" moment, sometimes sex, sometimes the privilege not to share money, food, speaking time, whatever). My point is that their choice is self-interested - they go on and on about these reasons in counseling - not driven by some mechanism ticking, not even by outside forces or personal pathology.

Does that make them "monsters"? Not any more than Canadians who kill Afghan citizens because it is in Canada's interest to invade and control that country. Or than Southern Whites who used to lynch Afro-Americans because it kept them in line.

I don't understand why Summer writes: " "Because they can" = he's a monster.  Please link to where VAW has said that's the reason men abuse women." No, VAW activists do not say that, and neither have I (I thought I had clearly challenged the 'batterers = evil monsters' perspective when I said there was at least another).

I can't speak for VAW activists any more than I did by quoting the "Because they can" line (more recently from Jalna Hanmer) but personally, I find it ineffectual to label wife batterers or other sexist criminals as monsters or even misogynists as if this explained their behaviour. Isn't practically everyone de facto a misogynist in a woman-hating society like ours? The point of men acting out sexist violence is accruing benefits for themselves and other men: women's submission for rapists and batterers, money for child support thieves or pay equity scuttlers like Mr. Harper, etc.

At one point, we switched from the "Why does he do it (batter)?" question to "Why don't all men do it then?" I don't have an answer. I know that for a few men to do it is enough to instil submission in women for all men's benefit. I know that the research disputes the notion that men who do it are somehow different. I know that even if I don't do it, I can do it - because I too am self-interested and I know society would most probably give me a pass. The fact that someone doesn't exercise privilege doesn't mean that he doesn't have it and that it isn't the reason other men exercise it, does it?

Does this help? I certainly don't have many answers. I learned the little I know from feminist and pro-feminist counselors and activists such as Rose Garrity. Also, here is a good Myths&Facts info sheet put out by other women fighting VAW.

ETA: On the way to their daycare centre, an Australian father threw his 4-yr old daughter off a 50-metre bridge in Melbourne this morning, then drove his two remaining children to a downtown courthouse. An Acting Detective expressed "concerns that he is suicidal and could self harm". Victoria State's Prime Minister's response was to wonder "the father... what are the cirumstances that could have brought this about...".

The thing I really hate in this kind of newspaper coverage is the journalist letting the police get away with a statement like "this was clearly something he could not accept.""

Excuse me but how does he know? Because Richardson killed her? Women leave every day and 99,999% of men do accept it. That cop and that newspaper are implicitly saying that whenever a man kills, it's because he can't accept it. Not won't, can't. Instant alibi.

"So to be clear, it's a woman's fault when she stays, and it's a woman's fault when she leaves. "

And it's never a man's fault if he hits or kills a woman who asserts her independance because, hey, for sure he COULDN'T take it.

BTW, I am not ready to deduce from the facts that the relation was abusive beforehand. I have seen cases where men who had not been formerly abusive - or had not been reported to be - whipped themselves into an entitlement fury when a woman left them or turned them down and killed her. The murder is abuse enough that we need not buttress it with speculation as to former abuse. (Back-edited for clarity:)This argument could even lead some to question a woman's right to leave or her claims for protection if a man hasn't been abusive.

No kidding.  That's pretty awful, and even when it's not taken to such extremes, some pretty awful psychological damage can be done to kids through alienation as a way of revenge.  It's the ultimate nightmare of people who leave emotionally and/or physically abusive spouses, that they'll get revenge through the children.  And so often, they do.  And so often, the system lets them get away with it. 

Devoted fathers do not throw their children off of bridges.

The stupid fucking misogynist lawyer is really stating "no harm done it was only a FEMALE child."

Say nothing of how he has damaged those boys mentally. Which again is something DEVOTED fathers do not do.

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"watching the tide roll away"

Ghislaine wrote:

Obviously that is not "why" he killed her.  I don't think it is being overly picky to have problems with that wording. It implies that she would still be alive if only she had left her damn facebook status alone. This line of thinking leads to "well, you should stay with him as he may kill you".

 I think we all know that she probably would have been dead either way.

If not because of the Facebook thing, something else probably would have come up that got him angry enough to attack her - abusive guys are like time bombs that way. The only reason I can think of for the Facebook aspect being noteworthy is that it makes something that's usually private into something immediately public and it could be what this guy really couldn't stand was the embarrassment of getting dumped in front of everyone.  Being a murderer should be even more embarrassing, but who said killers were rational?

Well you just attempted to - basing sexist abuse on a mechanist view (that "time bomb" ticking away, some "thing" getting him angry enough to attack her) and on a rational justification, the abuser's alleged embarassment at a woman's freedom.