"Unnatural Born Killer - Katha Pollitt on femicide

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Sun, 2009-05-17 11:25

martin dufresne

The Nation - May 13, 2009

On May 6 Johanna Justin-Jinich, a Wesleyan University student, was gunned down in the school's bookstore, almost certainly by 29-year-old Stephen Morgan. My daughter is a senior at Wesleyan, and so I got to see part of the aftermath close up: young people stunned, scared, in tears, confined to their rooms because Morgan was still loose. News accounts make Justin-Jinich seem outstanding in many ways: altruistic, brilliant, full of life, much loved. But in one way, she was far from unusual. She was a woman killed by a man because she was a woman.

We are so used to violence against women we don't even notice how used to it we are. When we're not persuading ourselves that women are just as violent toward men as vice versa if you forget about who ends up seriously injured or dead, or pointing out that most murders are of men by men, we persuade ourselves that violence against women just comes up out of nowhere. Murder is serious, especially if the victim is young, white, middle-class, pretty; harassment, abuse, domestic violence, even rape, not so much. After all, as I'm writing, I read that Houston, taking a leaf from Sarah Palin's Wasilla, is requiring rape victims to pay for the processing of their rape kits. Los Angeles has a backlog of 12,669 unprocessed rape kits, some so old the crimes have exceeded the statute of limitations. It's controversial to even use terms like "misogyny" and "male privilege" to explain the prevalence of these crimes and the shameful inadequacy of our social and legal response to them. And if you really want to be branded a square and a prude, try talking about the hatred and contempt for, and objectification of, women that permeates pop culture.

Before Morgan allegedly murdered Justin-Jinich, he stalked her. (...)

Sun, 2009-05-17 12:17

jas

Interesting article, but is it accurate to say, in this case, "She was a woman killed by a man because she was a woman" ? It seems he has harassed men at some point, too, and was generally weird and hateful towards many others.

She makes a good point about the many opportunities encounters with him would have raised to refer him to therapy. However, who's to say nobody had suggested it before? I'm sure everyone has come across a disturbed imbalanced person in our lives who concerns us. I'm not sure that telling someone "you need therapy" would be all that effective. First of all, because saying that is often intended, and taken, as an insult. Secondly, for the simple fact that you can't force anybody into therapy.

Also, when someone is disturbed and imbalanced and deeply unhappy, the words "therapy" and "psychiatric help" don't immediately ring to me as being genuine avenues for addressing what could be more emotional issues. The word "psychiatry" immediately conjures an image of a "mental" problem and focus on mental issues when, I believe, many of these severe disturbances are emotional problems.

Sun, 2009-05-17 12:20

remind

You know, I have actually read/heard comments from people/men that say women are by far the biggest mass murders around and if a few get killed by men wanting justified retribution, for the evils that women do, so what.

It is my firm belief that patriarchy wants all women dispossessed completely.

Sun, 2009-05-17 12:41

G. Muffin

jas, I don't understand the distinction between "mental" and "emotional."

remind, are these people talking about abortion? I don't get it.

Sun, 2009-05-17 12:49

remind

Yep, and all other of our sinful ways like trapping men into marriage, refusing to be a "good wife", and leaving men who are abusive assholes.

Sun, 2009-05-17 12:55

jas

G. Pie wrote:

jas, I don't understand the distinction between "mental" and "emotional."

Personally, I believe a lot of what we call "mental" problems are actually emotional problems. But I also believe in brain chemistry and genetic predisposition toward chemical imbalance, but I don't like the over-focus you find often in psychiatry on "chemical imbalance" that can be "fixed" by pharmaceutical chemicals. (I know I'm sounding like Tom Cruise right now). I believe, in most cases, there is always some factor -an event, an environment, a chronic state of social or familial factors- that trigger the imbalance.

I also believe that a lot of male violence is borne of an inability or neglect to deal with emotional problems.

Sun, 2009-05-17 13:13

jas

Notwithstanding, of course, actual physical problems with the brain, like tumours or some other thing, that can cause very pronounced, and very strange perceptual effects and can significantly alter behaviour in those affected, as the writings of Oliver Sacks extensively illustrate.

Sun, 2009-05-17 16:09

martin dufresne

jas: "Personally, I believe a lot of what we call "mental" problems are actually emotional problems."

A Quebec writer took the time to interview people in long-term psychiatric hospitals twenty years ago in Quebec - before most of them were shut down and replaced by chemical straightjackets and "home care". His findings mirror your hunch. Most of his respondents deemed mentally ill had actually experienced a crisis and fallen out of a social support network, then acting out to the extent that they were institutionalized, but their problems were basically of an emotional nature... This is not to say that it is incumbent on us to help people that stalk, harass or assault others. I agree with remind that most men who do so are exercising entitlement to dispossessing women of agency. The notion that they are in disstress or need of support simply reinforces their unaccountability and feeling of entitlement to have "her" make sure they don't have such problems.

jas: "I also believe that a lot of male violence is borne of an inability or neglect to deal with emotional problems."

Yes, neglect, but also the foisting of that task on others, women, racialized, impoverished folks, as in prostitution.

Sun, 2009-05-17 16:22

martin dufresne

jas: "is it accurate to say, in this case, "She was a woman killed by a man because she was a woman" ? It seems he has harassed men at some point, too, and was generally weird and hateful towards many others."

The suspect, Morgan, is on record as having harassed one man, but given up as soon as that man changed his number.

In the case of Justin-Jinich, Morgan stalked her for 2 years and then shot and killed. A sentence such as "You're going to have a lot more problems down the road if you can't take any [expletive] criticism, Johanna" is the kind of things men feel entitled to tell a woman and move on from there to implementing their threat. So, yes, I do think, she was killed because she was a woman (in a patriarchy) and that such killings will go on as long as their sexist dynamic is not acknowledged, but rather dissolved in the killer's emotional, anger issues or in his attitudes toward other people.