Women have it tough here.
When a woman gets raped and murdered, even commenters at Feministe break out this kind of language:
I don’t know about the whole race thing you’re getting at, but I agree that the coverage seems to be trying to force her into the victim role. It’s tragic what happened, but Jennifer made a number of really stupid decisions that are not terribly sympathetic (to me, at least).
Though the phrase “force her into the victim role” gives me the shudders when we’re talking about someone assaulted and killed, I understand that the commenter isn’t excusing the crime. Still, there’s much blaming and shaming going on here, and it seems ingrained in our culture. Despite Jennifer Moore putting herself in a position many people trip into at some point in their lives — lost and alone late at night — somehow she was asking for it. Yeesh.
But at least in America you _can_ be a little promiscuous and generally live to tell the tale. In Iran, it gets you stoned (and not in the good way):
Reportedly, Kolhari had an affair after her request for a divorce from her husband was denied. According to Iran Focus, she was sentenced on two charges: she received 15 years imprisonment for participating in the murder of her husband and death by stoning for having extra-marital sex.
I imagine you’d make a lot of trouble for yourself by filing for divorce in Iran, so I take it this woman was _really_ unhappy, enough to kill him when the state nixed her plea. Improbably, she only got 15 years for the murder. The affair with another guy? That’s what gets her stoned.
When a woman gets in bigger trouble for fucking a guy than killing one, your country’s priorities are extremely screwed up.
While it’s better in America, I wonder how many fundies, in a circle of their own, would admit to favoring slut-stonings. I’d wager the number would not be insignificant. Given the amount of political pull these zealots continue to amass, is it really inconceivable that we would someday slip even farther into a theocratic mindset and begin to emulate the countries we supposedly hate so much?
American fundamentalists are already going that direction. They obsess over eliminating a woman’s choices, just like in Iran.
This woman tried to get a divorce and was refused. She tried to take a legal route to obtain her autonomy and was rejected. She was told she could not decide what to do with her life by her government. And with her back against the wall, facing a life she clearly didn’t want, she made a bad choice and committed murder.
Fundamentalists assume that if we outlaw divorce or abortion that people will be forced to live in marital and familial bliss. But this woman’s case clearly demonstrates what happens when you restrict people’s opportunities to control their own lives; they’ll often take drastic measures to get the freedom they believe they deserve. I will never condone murder (though some wingnut will surely misread this as a defense of it), but none of us are as removed from being capable of committing criminal acts as we might wish, especially if we believe we’re trapped in a life we can’t take. If it isn’t murder, the ‘choice’ will often be suicide. Only the coldest, most anti-Christian demon would prefer this world to ours.
If Iran recognized a woman’s right to make her own life choices, there would’ve been no murder. Some conservatives will throw up their arms and say that “free choice for all” is akin to lawlessness, but I am hardly arguing for anarchy here. Many laws are welcome. But any woman should have the right to choose their partner and whether or not to be a mother. Both of those choices dramatically impact the rest of a woman’s life — if she is shackled to a husband she doesn’t want forever, she may well decide to take the same risk for freedom as Ms. Kolhari in Iran. If she is shackled to a child she doesn’t want, similar scary prospects emerge.
Again, these actions are not defensible, but they are an inevitable byproduct of a society in which people are not given access to basic legal autonomy.
I know the fundamentalists don’t and won’t see it that way, but empirically, humans go to extremes to resist enslavement. Cases like the one in Iran show what we’re capable of when we feel like caged animals. So how about we do away with the cage?
If you’re keeping a tally of fundies who’d advocate stoning for adultery, let me kick things off with three, these being certain relations of mine who attend megachurch and seem to think Leviticus is spot on when it comes to homosexuals, yet not to be taken taken seriously when the same punishment for anal sex is to be meted out to those who like a ham and swiss sandwich or lobster thermidor.
Marc, I want to talk about Rebecca’s attitude, I didn’t read the whole thread over there, it triggered upset and I’m not gonna subject myself tonight. She called women stupid twice without backing down, these women who put themselves in risky situations are so stupid they should be wearing “rape me kill me throw me in the dumpster” signs because they’re so stupid it makes Rebecca angry.
I lived a self-destructive life til I was in my thirties, and put myself in dangerous situations on a regular basis, and I know a handful of other women like that too. Some survived others didn’t. Stupid? Rebecca isn’t fit to pick the corn out of these women’s turds. Where do they get that, goddamn ignorant sensible yuppie liberals without a fucking shred of insight, because a woman putting herself in dangerous situations is using poor judgment, it’s just common sense! They’re so stooooooopid, it never occurs to these girls that they’re putting themselves in harms way! Such stupidity makes bright, clear-headed girls like Rebecca so damn angry!
Do junkies make her angry? Crack-whores, women who cut themselves, what the fuck is this if not absolute moralizing, scapegoating, and abdicating her responsibility to get a clue before condemning women who surpass her in every way but sheltered privilege?
My God but I’m sick of ingorance concerning motivation.
Because women who live dangerously are stupid you know.
There is no motivation, only senselessness.
I checked her blog, this woman graduated with honors from the College of Social Studies at Wesleyan University.
I could vomit, I believe I will vomit.
Or, to drive the point home: the social worker is not your friend. If she were, things might turn out different for the women they scorn.
I dunno if it’s just because I was kind of a nerd when I was younger, but I dn’t think “Being an easy target” is a particularly heinous crime.
“I wonder how many fundies, in a circle of their own, would admit to favoring slut-stonings”
In the case of Christian Reconstructionists, pretty much all of them. This is an excuse for me to quote a brilliant article:
‘Epitomizing the Reconstructionist idea of Biblical “warfare” is the centrality of capital punishment under Biblical Law. Doctrinal leaders (notably Rushdoony, North, and Bahnsen) call for the death penalty for a wide range of crimes in addition to such contemporary capital crimes as rape, kidnapping, and murder. Death is also the punishment for apostasy (abandonment of the faith), heresy, blasphemy, witchcraft, astrology, adultery, “sodomy or homosexuality,” incest, striking a parent, incorrigible juvenile delinquency, and, in the case of women, “unchastity before marriage.”[...]
The Biblically approved methods of execution include burning (at the stake for example), stoning, hanging, and “the sword.” Gary North, the self-described economist of Reconstructionism, prefers stoning because, among other things, stones are cheap, plentiful, and convenient.”‘
That last line is pure gold.
Full article is at http://www.publiceye.org/magazine/v08n1/chrisre1.html