I do not watch television, nor do I communicate often with other human beings (allow me to direct your attention to the name of the blog), so I am frequently unaware of whatever particular maelstrom is currently roiling the collective consciousness. For example, until recently I believed that Paris Hilton was the Hilton hotel in Paris. At any rate, that’s why I’ve just now discovered that the entire space-time continuum is aflame with the story of Jessie Davis, Dead Woman. I only know this from skimming other feminist blogs, namely Feministe and Pandagon, both of which have highlighted the bizarre wingnut reaction to the case.
At first I could not understand what was so gripping about the Jessie Davis story. A pregnant woman has been murdered by her boyfriend, the father of her children. This sort of thing happens all the time. In fact, I did a quick search on Google news and came up with these results just from the past week and a half:
June 28 — Wrestler strangled wife, suffocated son before hanging self
June 27 — Toronto man kills wife, mother-in-law
June 25 — Man kills wife, her daughter, then self
June 25 — Man kills ex-girlfriend (she was also the mother of his child)
June 22 — New Jersey man kills 2 daughters and himself
June 21 — Drunken standoff ends after man kills young son, himself
June 19 — Berkeley man, distraught over finances, kills his wife, two daughters, self
June 19 — Delco man kills wife, himself
June 19 — South Carolina man shoots wife in sheriff’s parking lot, kills self
That’s just in North America in the past 10 days. I ignored all the results from the rest of the world.
So what’s so special about the Jessie Davis story? Men are always killing their wives and girlfriends and children. It’s like falling off a log, for chrissake; apparently it just comes naturally, like buttoning your shirt to the right. Just a guy thing.
I imagine that to the non-wingnut segment of the public, this particular case is interesting because of the added pathos of the victim’s pregnancy, or because her killer — apparently also the father of the fetus — is a police officer. It’s like an episode of Law and Order.
But the wingnuts have a different issue. They have decided that the real import of this case is that Jessie Davis was a Bad Woman. The reason she got murdered was because she was an unwed mother, an immoral slut who had sex and babies outside of marriage. The implied corollary is that if women have sex and babies only with the men they’re married to, said men will not kill them.
In case you’re just now joining us from another galaxy, I invite you to give another quick glance at that list of crimes from the past 10 days. Marriage is clearly no impediment when it comes to the traditional manly sport of slaying the little woman. In fact, marriage and wife-murder are a classic duo, like ham and eggs, or bananas and peanut butter. I realize that wingnuts are very, very stupid, and that their already turbid thought processes become even further occluded whenever the misogyny synapse lights up, but even they must know that men kill their wives — their wives, their legal, lawfully-wedded, officially-sanctioned, non-living-in-sin wives — all the goddamn time. It’s in the news every fucking week. Remember Scott Peterson? Jesus Christ, even I know about the Peterson case, and I thought Paris Hilton was a hotel.
Nevertheless, wingnuts insist that if only Jessie Davis had chosen a different “lifestyle,” she wouldn’t be dead. In a sense they’re right, of course, since if she had organized her life so that she would be spared any contact whatsoever with male humans — if, perhaps, she’d donned a HAZMAT suit and gone to live permanently in a hermetically sealed underground cave, or perhaps built herself a spaceship and escaped planet Earth — her chances of being murdered would have been less. This, I note, is true for us all. But I don’t think that’s what the wingnuts mean.
The consensus on the feminist blogs seems to be that what’s really winding up the nuts is the fact that Jessie Davis was white and her killer, the father of her children and therefore a man with whom she had probably had sex, was black. The unspoken (or semi-unspoken, or spoken-into-one’s-hand-while-making-a-coughing-noise) premise is that killing your wife or girlfriend is something only black men do to white women, and since Jessie should have known this, the conclusion again is that it’s her fault she’s dead.
I hardly need point out that the racist thing suffers from the same logical infelicity as the living-in-sin argument, namely that it’s horseshit. Again, I refer you to the list of murders just from the past 10 days. And I could be wrong, but I don’t think Scott Peterson is secretly black. But obviously, making sense is not a big priority with wingnuts. Blaming women for whatever happens to them (getting themselves raped, getting themselves murdered) is one of their favorite pastimes, right up there with musing over the general horribleness of black people. Any Two Minute Hate that manages to combine both is bound to be doubly thrilling. Who needs logic?
It occurs to me that the pressure inside the braincases of these people must be absolutely immense. Years and years of accumulated cognitive dissonance has probably built up a level of pressure that would, I don’t know, turn oxygen into metal or something. Why don’t their heads explode? I bet if we made tiny little holes in their skulls, they would start spewing like champagne bottles. If you did it right you could probably make them fly up and spin around in the air like bottle rockets. Could be fun for Fourth of July.
Posted by Violet under Gender Issues, Recommended on June 27, 2007, 10:38 pm EST
17 Comments »
Artist’s reconstruction of life at the Palace of Knossos, circa 1500 B.C.
Click here for the full image.
Posted by Violet under Various and Sundry on June 26, 2007, 4:21 pm EST
9 Comments »
A Qiang woman. Jeebus wants to turn that smile upside down!
The goose-stepping Christofascists are still at it. In a world where women are struggling for basic human rights, in a world where the few remaining matrilineal societies are fighting a rearguard action to maintain their values, what are the Christian missionaries doing? You guessed it: sending their minions abroad to stamp out every vestige of female empowerment they can find.
Check this glint-eyed page from the Joshua Project about one of the heathen groups they want to “help,” the Qiang in China. The Qiang are an ancient matrilineal, matrifocal ethnic group with a powerful tradition of sexual freedom for women. And so naturally the Christians can’t wait to smash the bitches into the mud:
Ties between Chiang men and women are weak. Romantic love is considered important, and sexual freedom is prevalent. The Chiang men need to move into their God-ordained roles as heads of the families.
Ties based on love and equality are always weak, you see; the only tie that binds is the one in the husband’s whip hand. That romantic love is “considered important” is apparently a bad thing to these freaks, and sexual freedom is described like a disease, or a crime, which of course is exactly what they think it is — for women.
Savor this phrase: God-ordained roles as heads of the families. Yeah, we sure the fuck need more of that in the world.
Coincidentally, I was recently reading about the Khasi, one of the traditionally matrilineal groups in India. The Khasi have been the target of Christian missionaries for 150 years now, with the result being that most Khasi have converted and the status of women in their society is appallingly degraded. (Increasing contact with the Khasi’s über-patriarchal neighbors down in the plains is also a factor.) The family home is still passed down mother to daughter, and some Khasi men still go to live with the wife’s family, but these formal expressions of matriliny are just a shell. Sociologists in India have long recognized that all real power is in the hands of Khasi men. They own all the cash and movable property, they make the decisions, they exert sole political power (Khasi women don’t have the right to vote or even debate village affairs), they have the education and the jobs, and on top of all that they don’t even owe the women financial support. The women are expected to obey their husbands in everything, from minor purchases to family planning. All the women have left is their official ownership of the family home, although even there the men have effectively taken over, since actual control is in the hands of the women’s brothers. Still, the Khasi women cling to their matrilineal form of inheritance. Besides being the link with their ancient sense that women are entitled to something, in purely practical terms it’s the only refuge they have against complete poverty. If a Khasi man leaves his wife (frequently after subjecting her to years of domestic violence), the only thing keeping her from the streets is the fact that the family home belongs to her clan and she and her children have a permanent right to live there.
And now the Khasi men want to get rid of that little inconvenience as well. After all, they’re already in charge of everything else; it’s infuriating that those stupid woman-shaped pieces of meat still have official title to the land. The Khasi dudes want to sweep away that nonsense and take their rightful places as “real men.” Just like the guys in the Bible. De facto power is fine, but there’s nothing to swell a man’s dick quite like the formal, official, god-given patriarchy of ancient holy books written in camel shit.
And so they’ve launched a propaganda campaign to persuade the public and the national government to their side. The interesting thing is the tack they’ve chosen. What they want, they say, is “equality.” Huh? Equality? But they’re already superior! Not according to what the Khasi men are telling any reporter who will listen. In Khasi society, goes the spiel, the men are “oppressed.” Women have “all the power” and the poor men “have to obey” the big bad evil women. It’s an astounding fiction that has absolutely nothing to do with real life, but everything to do with the popular myth that matriliny equals matriarchy. “We’re being horribly oppressed,” the Khasi men whine. All they want, they say with big doe eyes as a chorus of We Shall Overcome swells in the background, is to be “equal.” Occasionally one of the younger men slips up and accidentally tells a journalist what he’s really thinking: that women are morons and Khasi men are fed to the teeth with having to screw around with this matrilineal inheritance bullshit; the Christian God says men have the right and the duty to rule absolutely, and that’s exactly what the Khasi men are going to do. But most of the guys are cagier than that. They stick to the script. “We just want equality,” they say.
This is absolutely appalling to activists and sociologists who actually know the score with the Khasi. Feminists in India say that Khasi women actually have lower status than women in many other parts of the country. But journalists are not sociologists, and so they eagerly and uncritically report the Khasi men’s propaganda. It’s so titillating, doncha know — a society where women are in charge! Ooh, sex-ay!
What intrigues me about the Khasi men’s campaign is that it’s so similar to reactionary politics here in the U.S.: white supremacists who say they want “white rights,” male supremacists who say they want “men’s rights,” Christian supremacists who claim that anything short of a Christian theocracy means they’re being oppressed. It’s enough to make me wonder if western missionaries are involved with the current Khasi campaign to destroy matriliny.
There’s no doubt that there is a huge Christian missionary presence in the hills of northeast India, where the Khasi live. Those Khasi who still cling to the pre-Christian ways are in constant conflict with the missionaries, who flood money into the region and actively discriminate against non-Christians. You want a scholarship to go to college? Fine: convert to Christianity. You want money to build a house? Fine: convert to Christianity. And a big part of the Christian message for the past 150 years has been that Khasi men need to…what is the phrase? Ah, yes: “move into their God-ordained roles as heads of the families.”
So I was curious to see what the Joshua Project would say about the Khasi. The Joshua Project is positively obsessed with India, having somehow determined that annihilating Hinduism is key to their global “harvest of souls” (a phrase which always makes me think of the human-battery pods in The Matrix). And lo and behold if the Joshua people aren’t perfectly in tune with the Khasi men’s propaganda campaign for “equality.” Remember how on the Qiang page they came right out and said that men were supposed to be in charge? But they don’t say that on the Khasi page. That would be giving away the game. Instead, they regurgitate the myth that matrilineal Khasi women are rolling in clover, and then follow that with a request that we pray for “social equality in matters concerning the genders.” Social equality between the genders! As if Christofascist pinheads believed in such a thing! They don’t believe in equality; they believe in male supremacy, or what they like to call — excuse me for a moment while I hack up this furball — “headship.” But the official line in Khasi land is that the men just want “equal rights,” and the Joshua folks are playing right along. Don’t mention the headship thing! We’re supposed to call it equality!
To all 37 good-hearted sincere progressive genuinely loving Christians in the world, I say again what I’ve said to you a hundred times: give it up. Just give it up. For two thousand years your religion has been in the hands of sick greedy men who breathe, eat, and shit pure hate. You’re not getting it back. Really, folks: time to punt. It’s the same with Islam — whatever tiny molecule speck of good is in there, it’s surrounded by a bolus of batshit bloody horror the size of Jupiter. Give it up. If you want a good, loving, progressive religion, start a new one. And stop giving these freaks cover for their evil.
Posted by Violet under Godbags on June 24, 2007, 7:02 pm EST
13 Comments »
Fuck it. Just fuck it. Every time I crawl reluctantly back from one of my cave retreats and decide to check the news, hoping to see maybe something good in the world, maybe a picture of a fucking flower or something, I get gobsmacked. Top story today: Duke terrorists are now actually being rewarded with an undisclosed sum — millions of dollars? Who the fuck knows? The message is clear: You can terrorize some woman all you want, call her a nigger and threaten to shove a broomstick up her and knock her around and probably rape her, and here’s what you win:
- Adoring national media attention
- The fervid devotion of millions of moist-palmed dudes who totally sympathize with how unfair it is to get nailed just for terrorizing some stupid bitch
- The profound satisfaction of seeing the woman you terrorized dragged through the mud, publicly hounded, and even threatened with legal action for committing the GINORMOUS crime of actually reporting her assault
- Millions of dollars in prize money from your university to make you feel better about the terrible ordeal you’ve been through
Any questions about why every single athletic team in this country now has carte blanche to rape and torture any woman they get their nasty goddamn hands on?
Throw up, throw up, throw up. Just fuck it.
Posted by Violet under Rape on June 18, 2007, 5:22 pm EST
14 Comments »
I know, I know — you’ll see this and think, “A post from Violet! Finally!” And you’ll think it’s going to be something substantive, since I’ve been away the past week (week? no, almost two weeks). But it’s not, because I’m still sulking over the Iraq thing, the gang rape thing, the abortion thing, the toxic swells of anti-feminism throughout the world, the general horror of existence, and the fact that entirely too many people in the feminist blogosphere have points on their heads. Also I’m busy. So instead of substance, I give you fluff: a fashion picture with a caption that is so unintentionally hilarious I had to crank up the blog just to share it with you.
Here’s the picture:
Actual totally serious non-ironic caption that I swear I didn’t make up: “Comfortable and easy describe designer Giorgio Armani’s approach to dress, whether for day or evening.”
If you don’t think that’s funny, you probably don’t have boobs.*
*Or maybe you do. Myself, I don’t think that a garment that buttons on the nipple would be comfortable, nor am I up for whatever possible triple-layer cloth-flesh-cloth safety pin arrangement may be indicated there. But god forbid I should speak for anyone but myself.
Posted by Violet under Various and Sundry on June 9, 2007, 10:12 pm EST
8 Comments »
