Hate crime disappears into the memory hole
One of the bodies is brought out of the L.A. Fitness Center in Bridgeville, PA, early Wednesday Aug. 5, 2009. (AP Photo/Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Michael Henninger)
I didn’t hear about the Pennsylvania misogyny massacre until late last night, when I was too tired to write about it. I figured I’d post on it today, by which time I expected there would be more articles about the story on the Google News front page and perhaps some political commentary on Memeorandum.
But there’s nothing. Nothing.
It’s no longer on Google’s front page; in fact, there’s nothing about it even on Google’s U.S. News page. And on Memeorandum? Zilch.
I know Memeorandum aggregates political news, but we’ve just finished watching the political media spend two weeks on the Gates arrest. Apparently racial profiling is political, but hate crimes against women are just how things are. Birds sing, the grass grows, misogynist freakazoids gun down women in public: welcome to life on planet Earth.
In my alternative reality — the one where women’s lives matter — today would be full of stories and analysis on the Pennsylvania shooting. Being the nerd that I am, I would probably restrict my own commentary to my annoyance at seeing reporters turn to David Gilmore for an explanation of misogyny. Yes, I know he wrote a book about it; he even titled it “Misogyny,” which is apparently all it takes to get reporters to consider him an expert on the subject. Actually, Gilmore is a rather anti-feminist twit whose understanding of anthropology is about 40 years out of date. And his pseudo-Freudian take on misogyny is, well, Freudian, with all the limitations that implies. (I recommend this delightful review by Jenny Diski, though I would add that Gilmore’s book is even more inaccurate and wrong-headed than Diski realizes.)
Heidi Overmier, 46, one of the victims in the PA shooting.
But all that seems rather beside the point now.
If I want to read about the Pennsylvania shooting, I have to search for it. This evening I typed “George Sodini” (the murderer’s name) into the Google News search box. The stories that came up told me that Sodini was lonely; that he felt rejected by women; that he led a sad, bitter life; that he hadn’t had sex in years; that he longed for women to notice him. Well, isn’t that special.
I looked for the words “hate crime,” but only Ms. Magazine is referring to it that way. Good for them. (Except their article is mostly just a compilation of wire reports, including the quotes from David Fricking Gilmore.)
But Ms. Magazine appears to be alone in its assessment. I can’t find any other media outlets calling the massacre a hate crime. If spraying bullets into a group of female strangers because you hate women isn’t a hate crime, what is?
To answer that question, I typed “hate crime” into the Google News search box. First result: “3 white men accused of hate crime in attack on black ice cream vendor.” Did they kill him? No, thank god; they just beat him up, while yelling what the Dallas News calls “racial epithets.”
So:
- White men beating up a black guy while calling him racist names: hate crime.
- White man murdering three random women because of his burning hatred of females: not a hate crime.
The obvious reason for this disparity is that America takes racism seriously (or at least pretends to), but considers sexism either a myth or a joke or both. But there’s a deeper reason at work: people understand racism as the result of historical processes and social conditioning, which it is. Sexism, on the other hand, along with its gun-toting twin, misogyny, is vaguely thought to be something natural and universal. But that’s bullshit: decades of research have shown that patriarchy is not universal, and that attitudes towards women are profoundly linked to how much power women have in a given society.
And that’s why it exasperates me to see David Gilmore quoted. Gilmore believes, as did Freud, that all men everywhere have always despised women, and that this is an unavoidable result of the fact that women are mommies and men need to get laid. He rejects feminist analysis as politically-motivated and irrational, and is blissfully unaware of the last half-century of anthropology. Don’t get me wrong: it is certainly possible that there’s something intrinsic to the male psyche that helps explain the widespread incidence of misogyny and male supremacism in human culture, and it would be interesting to inquire into what that might be. But Gilmore goes about it all wrong. He starts with the assumption that misogyny is universal and ahistorical and can’t be explained by social analysis (certainly not by feminism), and then uses a set of incomplete and obsolete data points to buttress that assumption. The result is that he ends up diagnosing misogyny as some kind of native psychosis that can perhaps be ameliorated, but never eliminated.
There’s another word for something that is universal, ahistorical, inexplicable by social analysis, and can never be eliminated: natural.
Huh. It seems I’ve written a post about David Gilmore after all.
I just checked Google News one more time to see if I missed anything. Sotomayor…John Hughes…Clinton…health care…Obama…Fannie Mae…cash for clunkers…Meryl Streep…Aerosmith…swine flu…Twitter…NASA…Tonga ferry…Afghan war…the Yankees.
Nope, nothing about the murder of three women who were killed simply because they were women. Not a word. I guess it’s just natural.
61 Responses to “Hate crime disappears into the memory hole”
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Sameol says:
http://mobile.boston.com/sites....._a_madman/
am I right to be as appalled by this editorial as I am, or am I being oversensitive? I can’t tell anymore.
August 6th, 2009 at 11:25 pm EST -
Violet says:
I’m appalled.
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bluelyon says:
Count me appalled as well.
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janicen says:
I did read the story this morning and I got it off of my google front page. They had a link to a pdf file of his journal. It was chilling, especially the number of different days, over a period of months, that he intended to commit this crime and then changed his mind for one reason or another. Of course, they did not call it a hate crime. You make an excellent point; if this crime targeted any other group in our society, it would dominate the news for much longer. I’m sure it got bumped by more important news. After all, Paula Abdul might be leaving Idol.
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janicen says:
Now that I have read the above link, I am appalled too. I read his diary entries. The only mention about was that one mention in the link. All of the rest, page after page, was about his contempt for women.
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janicen says:
Sorry, I meant to say the only mention of Obama.
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lalala says:
Thank you for mentioning this hate crime. Most of what I heard about this on television is that the murderer hadn’t gotten laid in nearly 20 years. No mention that this is in fact a hate crime against women. Most of the time is spent on the murderer with his books on how older men can date younger women and that he’s only had sex a few times in his entire life. I was appalled when I heard a male tv host say this fact in an almost unbelievable tone as if he felt bad for the guy or that not getting laid for 20 years validates a man taking out his inadequacies on innocent women. I feel like men use similar excuses to rape women from their own wives to strangers on the street. It’s always the woman’s fault. Either she’s not pleasing her husband, or she was asking for it because her skirt was too short, or in this case all the women of the world were at fault for not sleeping with this guy and giving him what he needed to not kill women. The reporting was a complete joke. There was no anger or plea for a national discussion on violence against women. The reporters seemed amused by this freakzoid’s sex life and focused less time on the female victims or the other women who had to witness this horrible crime. I don’t know what it will take for the media and the nation to focus on hate crimes against women the same way the nation was focused on the Gates arrest.
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jackyt says:
So Misogyny is universal and normal… and health care isn’t. Now that’s a sick society!
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Toonces says:
Thank you, Violet.
(I keep writing a longer comment but it all comes out in incoherent rage-speak)
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Hammer of the Dyke says:
Males and females learn to be impersonators in whatever sexual role they are consigned. Men like Gilmore do not want to admit this; after all, it would remove from them an excuse for their behavior, i.e., what you learn can be un-learned. I hate to say it, but given the steady stream of unremitting hatred for women expressed in every medium and in nearly every social situation, I’m surprised this sort of thing doesn’t happen more often.
Oddly, men are taught to deny the female within rather than recognize that it is the basis of our biology as a species. The most insulting thing you can say to a male is to imply that he is womanish. “Pussy,” I believe, is the usual “insult.” And it starts very early, even before a boy is laughed at because he “throws like a girl;” it starts with, mostly Daddy, enforcing those sex roles – the hyper-vigilance when Johnny seems to cry too much or when he wants to dress in the “wrong” clothing or shows interest in the wrong things. Some Daddies won’t show it with more than a frown of disapproval and a tense discussion, but you know that inside they are screaming, “Abomination!” What will the neighbors think if your son is not appropriately male, showing contempt for all that is termed female? Indeed, such deviation could be costly, considering that the nature of male bonding rituals is to show disdain and disgust for women.
It is the typical male response to anything. From “It’s natural so I’m not to blame,” or “She gave it to me,” to “The bitches had it coming, ” is not a far distance.
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Here and There, Health Care and Hate Crimes « Blue Lyon says:
[...] Violet writes: I didn’t hear about the Pennsylvania misogyny massacre until late last night, when I was too tired to write about it. I figured I’d post on it today, by which time I expected there would be more articles about the story on the Google News front page and perhaps some political commentary on Memeorandum. [...]
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tinfoil hattie says:
So … a murderous rampage by a vile misogynist who killed women because they wouldn’t fuck him is, according to the Boston Globe, all because … Barack Obama is black, and the murderer is a bigot?
“appalled” indeed.
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cellocat says:
Apparently all roads lead to Obama, even those paved with women’s blood and bones. I keep wanting to wake up from the nightmare, but it’s hard to see it ever getting better.
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seattlegal says:
Thanks for pointing this out, Dr Socks. I’ll spread the word around.
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rhoda says:
Thank you for this post. I’m speechless right now, but thank you.
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Anna Belle says:
My sentiments exactly, Hattie. My first thought after reading the editorial was it’s all about Barack! Grrrr.
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janicen says:
I can’t help but ask myself, “Why isn’t this a ‘teachable moment’ for the nation?”
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Esther says:
I remember reading a comment elsewhere saying that to this guy, as to others (though not all), women existed as a “form of consumption”. They aren’t real people with their own dreams, interests, strengths and flaws, hobbies and jobs, families and friends… they exist to “be consumed by men”.
This murderer apparently had standards of his own – he wanted to enjoy one of what he deemed the 30 million “desirable women” in the US. He didn’t get what he wanted. Women, bitches as they are, have standards of their own, and what they consider to be a “desirable man”. Apparently his being a psychotic misogynist just wasn’t good enough for them. So in his eyes they were a defective product. They should have accepted any of his passes, submitted to his attentions with appropriate enthusiasm, yet here they were, year after year, probably creeped out by him and avoiding him.
What he did showed an extreme form of a lack of empathy seen a lot. It’s ok for men to be selective and ignore and overlook what they see as less than perfect women… but if a woman ignores them or turns them down – what a bitch! How dare she! Who does she think she is? After all women don’t exist with their own wants, desires and dreams… aren’t they just supposed to be the flesh and blood equivalent of blow-up dolls?
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TeresaINPa says:
janicen, it is not a teachable moment because “bros before Hos”.
I am so freaking pissed off about this article and they have no link to send a comment. Women are murdered and it is about racism and Obama.
Face it women, you do not matter to men in the scheme of things powerful and political. If you continue voting for men over women because they pretend to care about abortion rights…well then you deserve what continues to come. -
Monchichipox says:
I can’t tell you how many comments that I’ve read on new sites and other blogs in the dude universe that basically play out as “I can’s support what he did” but “can understand it” boiling down to dude couldn’t get laid who can blame him?
UGH.
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Gayle says:
TeresaINPa: From the Globe’s website:
To submit a letter to the editor
e-mail letter@globe.com or use our form.Letters may be sent by regular mail to this address:
Letters to the Editor
The Boston Globe
P.O. Box 55819
Boston, MA 02205-5819Or by fax to (617) 929-2098
Please include your full name, address, and a telephone number for confirmation purposes. Letters should be 200 words or less and are subject to condensation.
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yttik says:
All the public sympathy is herded and directed to rally around this man, much like those who murder their wives and children. “He lost his job, he was suffering financially, his co-workers were mean to him, etc, etc, etc.” Whenever men commit senseless crimes against innocent women and children, the culture steps in to give them the benefit of the doubt, to create excuses and explanations. This is one reason battered women stay trapped in abusive relationships, they’ve been taught from day one to make excuses for his behavior, to blame themselves and our society reinforces that message over and over again.
This man committed a hate crime, no doubt about it, but women are not covered by hate crime laws. Hating women is not against the law, it’s a national pastime. It’s what we do for entertainment.
Can you imagine if the press coverage of Casey Anthony began with “well, she was suffering financially, she couldn’t get a job, she hadn’t had a decent date in 3 yrs….” Of course not, but that’s exactly what we do when men commit atrocities in this country.
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octogalore says:
What Tinfoil Hattie and Anna Belle said. Clearly, the hatred of women was so ho-hum not to merit an editorial, so the author had to search for something actually noteworthy.
Why it isn’t a teachable moment? When the government is run by a dude who said his wife wasn’t going to speak but just “sit there and look pretty,” and people applauded his gallantry, the question should be: why would we expect it to be?
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Kali says:
On ABC they were actually showing a neighbouring woman who was tearfully saying that she should have invited him over more often and maybe prevented his loneliness and this tragedy. This was followed by a statement about what lessons *we* can learn from this tragedy. I almost threw my cereal bowl at the TV. Yeah, it’s all the wimmiz’s fault for not giving him enough hugsies and kissies.
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donna darko says:
It’s not just the Boston Globe. Markos Moulitsas said it was about Obama today.
Women who kill their children freak everyone out. Men who kill their families in a “crime of passion” are coddled. “What made him behave that way?
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Alice Paul says:
Recently not far from where I live there was an “Honor Killing” of four women. It barely stayed in the news a day and even then it wasn’t a news day priority. This is more of the same.
No alarm bells about a deep seeded hate that needs addressing, no protesters. Nothing.
No Keith Olberman’s who puts on a rant and rave. It’s telling. Perhaps if the news really paid attention to what is underlying these crimes they’d have to pay attention to their part in the belief system that promotes them. We can’t have that in this culture now can we?
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thistle says:
I can’t believe how much worse it has gotten in the media ever since misogyny was encouraged in the campaign primaries.
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Toonces says:
In the few posts I’ve seen about this on other blogs, there is mention of the Montreal Massacre and also what happened at that Amish school. I find it strange no one has mentioned what happened in Germany this year. Did that really not register as a hate crime, even for feminist-minded people?
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Level Best says:
Am I right in thinking hate-crime law does not include crimes based against a person on the ground of sex? If so, why the hell not???
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angienc says:
I was sickened when I read the story about this lunatic who killed these women but now feel bewildered after reading the link to the Boston Globe. Lets hope that if some man kills me he didn’t vote for Obama so that people can pay attention. It is just breathtaking. Breathtaking.
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SKM says:
Wow, Toonces, how sad is it that I feel like the Telegraph is at least way ahead of American media by daring to use the word “misogyny” in the article you linked? Ditto for the Calgary Herald coverage of the honor killings that Alice Paul mentioned (Alice mentioned the killings, not the specific article). That article actually uses the word “patriarchy” (gasp!)
http://www.calgaryherald.com/n.....story.html
Meanwhile, in the US of A, coverage of the Collier mass killings refers to Sodini as “a man desperate to meet women, yet deeply frustrated by more than two decades of rejection.”
Poor guy.
We’re still pretending that misogyny and patriarchy don’t exist.
I wish I had a link for that ABC coverage Kali described. I’m collecting this crap. I had a basic thread about the case on Wednesday at Shakesville, and I’m going to be writing more about it.
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Swannie says:
Yep, someone should have at minimum paid for a hooker for this poor guy ….before he killed…
Quick someone .. F*ck him before he kills again?
I cannot approximate coherency after reading that article …
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Monchichipox says:
Violence against women. Wouldn’t that be a great cause for First Lady Michelle Obama? Or is she still busy in the garden with the shovel? I haven’t heard her utter a word in weeks. Not since date night.
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quixote says:
A bunch of tangential flippant thoughts is all I can do right now.
Couldn’t get a date in twenty years? Proof that women are the engine of human evolution. 100% of the XX’ers could figure out this guy was bad news, no exceptions.
Meanwhile, he couldn’t even figure out how to use his hands?
Wow.
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octogalore says:
Monchichipox, I agree — and what about Valerie Jarrett’s Council on Women and Girls? I wonder, will they be stirring on this?
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Kali says:
Couldn’t get a date in twenty years? Proof that women are the engine of human evolution.
Exactly. Meanwhile, the misogynists (like this psycho’s dating guru) keep pushing the meme that women make men evolve to be abusive and violent by choosing abusers over nice guys. How many sociopathic, violent men like this guy are out there going around laboring under the delusion that women don’t like them because they are “nice guys”?
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donna darko says:
I can’t believe how much worse it has gotten in the media ever since misogyny was encouraged in the campaign primaries.
It’s not just in the media but in real life.
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gxm17 says:
At first I was stunned by the “coverage” of this hate crime but then I was floored by the blog reaction (or lack of). It did my heart much good to come here and read the excellent commentary. Thanks Violet, you’re the one blogger I knew would condemn this vicious act of misogynistic hate.
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Lynnerkat says:
If a guy had shot some of the cats in the neighborhood because his cat ran away, he would be all over the news- “a psycho” for sure. Women, not so much, animal abuse trumps the abuse of women – just like racism.
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tinfoil hattie says:
No one can know what, specifically, caused Sodini to veer from frustration to anger to a murderous rampage.
“No one”? Wrong. Everyone here knows EXACTLY what caused him to murder these women.
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Unree says:
Level Best says:
Am I right in thinking hate-crime law does not include crimes based against a person on the ground of sex? If so, why the hell not???
Federal law restricts “hate crimes” to offenses related to the victim’s race, ethnicity, or national origin. There’s talk in D.C. about expanding the category to include gender, sexual orientation, and disability, but no action as yet. Some states include gender in the hate crimes on their books; others don’t.
Yeah, I agree, very telling … and sickening.
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djmm says:
Thank you for this commentary, Violet. At least Bob Herbert for the NY Times gets it:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08.....t.html?hpw
djmm
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Femmostroppo Reader – August 9, 2009 — Hoyden About Town says:
[...] Hate crime disappears into the memory hole [...]
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jz says:
I read his diary and video. Soldini felt the opposite of “entitled” to women’s sexuality. His complaint was that in his mind and according to how he was raised, he had done everything necessary to have some woman want him. In other words, he thought guys needed to earn love, not just show up and claim it.
Look at his youtube home tour video. He practically says out loud, “Look at how much I have tried to be worthy of a woman’s love.” That is not feeling like sex is owed or that women are only good for that
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Violet says:
He practically says out loud, “Look at how much I have tried to be worthy of a woman’s love.”
And since the bitches won’t put out, they need to die.
Of course he felt entitled, the same way I feel entitled to take home a bottle of Mexican Mudslide if I hand over the correct amount of cash. My money’s good, goddamnit, so give me the bottle.
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jz says:
@violet,
have you read the diary and seen the video? He seems to feel that he’s strived to earn a good income, own a home and a car. Thus, in the way he understands, he has earned a wife. I didn’t see any evidence of a thought disorder (psychosis) nor any personality disorder. He just seems terribly depressed and creepy. -
Violet says:
Thus, in the way he understands, he has earned a wife.
That’s exactly what I said. He, and men like him, think a wife is something you earn. Check off the right boxes, hand over the bride price, and you get yourself a woman. It’s his due.
And when he’s foiled by the women who refuse to behave like inanimate commodities, he kills them.
He just seems terribly depressed and creepy.
If he had just been filled with self-loathing and despair, he would have simply committed suicide.
Instead, he walked into a room full of strange women and fired something like 50 rounds of ammunition. He killed three women, wounded nine more.
Or are the dead women as invisible to you as they are to all the other dudes?
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Quote of the day: misogynist hate crimes « Anti-Porn Feminists says:
[...] by antiplondon in Radical Feminism, quote of the day, violence against women. trackback From Reclusive Leftist: The obvious reason for this disparity [not recognising the Pennsylvania massacre as a hate crime [...]
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gxm17 says:
Of course it’s not a thought disorder to feel entitled to female attention and to go on a murderous rampage, selecting your victims based on gender. This is the mindset our culture creates, that a misogynistic killer was just very depressed. Poor guy. (sigh)
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Toonces says:
It’s horrifying/frightening/shocking how many guys see this as so natural and how hard it is for them to get that they are not entitled to people.
If they wanted to befriend some guy at the local bar but he didn’t “put out” or respond in the way they wanted, they wouldn’t decide he was a “bitch” (let alone that he needed to die) because they don’t feel entitled to male attention because they understand that men are people with their own thoughts, feelings, needs, wants, preferences, issues, etc.
In other words, get some fucking help, jz.
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Toonces says:
How would these entitled sickos react if women 20, 30, 40 years their senior decided that since they worked out and had jobs they had “earned” sex with younger men (or any man they desired), whether these men were attracted to older women (or women at all, or these hypothetical women) or not?
Sodini didn’t do everything “right” to “earn” a woman, obviously, because he couldn’t get one, because he was a raging misogynist. Nowhere in the constitution does it state that women are required to be attracted to certain traits in men (or men in general). Personally, I stay away from men who seem to show off their money or are overly preoccupied with it, because they are quite often shallow assholes. But of course the interwebz have decided that evopsych is gospel and all women want is a man with money, therefore any man who owns a house deserves a fuck-doll.
And they don’t see anything sick or wrong with their self-pitying, woman-hating, shared-psychosis internet cabal because they don’t see women as anything close to human… and around and around we go.
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madamab says:
Poor misunderstood man. If only some woman had had sex with him, he wouldn’t have been forced to kill a bunch of women he didn’t know!
Is that jz’s argument?
It’s all the women’s fault, apparently.
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Philosimphy says:
Better than the comparison of what if women did this to men… what if gay men decided that sex with any man they wanted was their “due” – whether the chosen recipient consented or not, and the penalty for non-consent is death?
In my experience, these men just don’t really see a problem with the abstract of women demanding sex from men. Does. Not. Compute.
Frame it in terms of their own torn orifices and rotting corpses and they may begin to see the light.
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SKM says:
It is absolutely chilling to see folks like jz show up to defend Sodini. Their logic is basically, “he didn’t feel entitled to women, he just felt he’d earned them!”, and see no problem with that.
This is made all the worse for me by the fact that Sodini’s massacre was just a few miles from my house (I live in Pittsburgh). I know, it can and does happen anywhere, but I’m still feeling extra-shaken.
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Carmonn says:
I’m just wonderng what we’re supposed to find in his diaries that show his lack of entitlement. The part where he finds out that teenagers are having regular sex and angrily rails against the 16 year old “hoe” because she’s had more sex than he’s had in his life? The part where he sizes up a total stranger who’s half his age, takes inventory of her body parts, leers about what a good time his neighbor must have had with her and calls her a “slut”? The part where he wants to give Black men payback for Black women being raped by white men during slavery? The part where he tells us why he’s planning to murder women?
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Carmonn says:
shows
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Kiuku says:
Carmonn right. The guy was deranged. And he was deranged because of Patriarchal brainwashing. Most men have a degree of this psychosis going on in their heads right now. It turns out the 16 year old girl who he would like to fuck, and he was raging jealous over his neighbor for fucking her, turned out to be his neighbor’s daughter. But he doesn’t see daughter. The thought doesn’t cross his mind. Woman leaving house=fuck toy, one he deserved to have so he goes to creepy cheesy, sleazy, misogynist, pick up lessons to learn how “trick” women into sleeping with you.
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Hammer of the Dyke says:
Remember what I said about most of my colleagues being seriously impaired? I rest my case. Thanks, jz.
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donna darko says:
You’re linked at Sociological Images which makes an excellent point:
“I should point out that the main focus of the Globe’s editorial on Sodini is his racist blog posts against Obama. A lot of other media have also made this the focus of the story, making racist blog posts against Obama equal in significance to mass murder of females. Because, you know, the Obama angle is more interesting and, let’s face it, more important.
The coverage of this case is, across the board, sickening. Here are a few headlines:
And the list goes on. In each case, we see that Sodini is the victim. Nowhere do we see a headline like this: Misogynist Commits Mass Murder or Three Women Murdered in Hate Crime. The articles are clear that Sodini hated women, which of course he did, but for the media, if Sodini hated women, then there must be a reason for it. A good reason. If George Sodini, a proven racist, had murdered African-Americans simply because of their race, would we be asking why George Sodini hated African-Americans? No, because what possible legitimate reason could he have? There isn’t one.”
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Guest Post: Dead Girls » Sociological Images says:
[...] Reclusive Leftist wonders why George Sodini’s mass murder of women in an aerobics class in Pennsylvania last week [...]
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donna darko says:
A Sociological Images commenter said this is like the Montreal Massacre in which 14 women were killed. It’s very similar to the Montreal Massacre:
Jody Billingsley, 37 deceased
Elizabeth “Betsy” Gannon, 49 deceased
Heidi Overmier, 46 deceased
Mary Primis, shot once in each shoulder
Lisa Fleeher, 27 critically injured
Ashley Ferragonio, 23 seriously injured
Jackquilyne Gallagher, 25 seriously injured
Srimeenakish Sankar, 31 seriously injured
Gretchen Louis, 26 critically injured
Melina Williams, 22 seriously injured, released
Heather Sherba, 22 seriously injured
Stephanie Latusick, 33 treated and released
