Why Men Kill Women Is Not A Mystery

[Novara]

Why Men Kill Women Is Not A Mystery

Houston, TX bore witness to a horrific mass murder over the weekend: Valerie Jackson, her six children, and her husband, Dwayne Jackson, were shot to death in their home. Police have arrested David Conley, who is Valerie Jackson's ex-boyfriend and presumed to be the father of her eldest son and one of the victims, Nathaniel Conley, 13. After negotiating with the hostage team for hours, David Conley finally surrendered and has been charged with murder. Conley had been previously charged with domestic violence for attacking Jackson in the home she shared with her husband.

“We do not and cannot understand the motivations of an individual who would take the lives of so many people, including children," Chief Deputy Tim W. Cannon said in a news conference about the murders on Sunday. The urge to write off this level of horror as incomprehensible—as a form of unfathomable evil—is understandable.

But the blunt fact is that we can understand the motivations of someone who would do this. Domestic homicide is committed almost entirely by men who feel off-the-charts levels of male entitlement—men who feel so entitled to control a woman just because they've dated or married her that they resort to violence to reassert control.

Indeed, the 2015 Pulitzer for Public Service went to the Charleston Post and Courier for their chillling but through examination of South Carolina's domestic homicide problem. For anyone under the illusion that domestic homicide is mysterious—for anyone who cares about preventing violence at all, really—the seven-part series, titled "Till Death Do Us Part", is a must-read.

One of their interviewees was Therese D’Encarnacao, who survived her husband shooting her in the head after she told him she was leaving. "If I can’t have you, nobody can," he told her right before he pulled the trigger.

“Some of this is rooted in this notion of women as property," state Rep. Gilda Cobb-Hunter told the Post and Courier. That notion persists in prominent ways. Just look at the recent dust-up between singer Ciara and her rapper ex-boyfriend Future. As Lonnae O'Neal of the Washington Post pointed out last week, when Ciara posted Instagram pictures of their son cuddling her new boyfriend, Future melted down, and sadly, a lot of people on social media—along with New York radio host Ebro Darden—defended Future's tantrum. It's another way of corroborating the idea that a man gains ownership over a woman simply by having a relationship with her.

And if a man feels entitled to control a woman, it's not a huge leap for him to resort to violence to get his way. Domestic violence, even when it ends in tragedy as horrifying as the Texas murders, is probably the least mysterious form of violence there is.


Read more: http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2015/08/10/eight_people_dead_in_houston_domestic_homicide_it_s_a_tragedy_but_not_a.html

[bettyellen]

1. Wow- that deputy should look at crime stats of women murdered. Because DERP!

[Thinkingabout]

2. Another reason when there is a charge of domestic violence the person inflicting the violence should

Not be able to purchase guns. Being with someone is nor ownership and it should not be one ruling over the other. It does not turn out well.

[Skittles]

3. to all you who say, "WHY DOESN'T SHE JUST LEAVE HIM?"

very often, THIS is why

[Triana]

7. BINGO!

Thank you.

[nomorenomore08]

9. +1000

The most dangerous moment in a domestic abuse victim's life, is when she/he decides to leave.

[nomorenomore08]

4. Unfortunately, we humans can be as territorial as any other mammal, maybe even more so at times.

And when one includes other human beings under the category of what is "theirs" - and fiercely guards their "property" to the point of violence and even mass murder - you get horrific tragedies like this one.

Sure, we have a greater ability to use reason and logic than the so-called lower animals, but that doesn't mean we all make use of it.

[SfromCanada]

6. This isn't humans being "territorial."

This is men murdering women because they believe they "own" them. This is patriarchy.

[Triana]

8. +1 n/t

[nomorenomore08]

10. That too. The two aren't mutually exclusive by any means.

I didn't mean to imply that it was simply a matter of animal instincts - it's also centuries, millennia, of ingrained ideas RE: male "ownership" of women. The sort of thing that probably won't disappear completely for hundreds/thousands more years, if ever.

[msongs]

5. adam and eve - inferior eve made from adam's rib. it's all in the book nt

[demigoddess]

11. there used to be this saying--

"If I can't have her, nobody can have her". Looks like it is alive and well decades later.

[zazen]

12. APA: three women/day are murdered by intimate partners in the US

Novara, we exchanged posts on this on another thread, and thanks for posting this story.

As I've expressed elsewhere, I'm stunned that there seems to be little outrage these days that more women are killed each year by intimate partners than people by police. I think it's because the murder of women (of all races) by intimate partners is somehow seen as natural or the woman is believed to be complicitous.

And as we talked about, women of color have additional challenges in escaping batterers because men of color do indeed face profound racism in the criminal justice system--plus there's a lot of pressure to stay silent on these issues within the community because of the racial injustices that African American face in the non-domestic sphere. And they tend to have less of a safety net.

I'm being reminded all over again that women's lives don't seem to matter either, unless they're murdered by strangers. They certainly don't seem to matter to the people bashing progressive candidates for "failing to put racial injustice at the center of their platform." What, does gender justice mean nothing?

Lundy Bancroft is the best writer on battering today. Highly recommend his first work, "Why Does He Do That." He worked with batterers groups for years and advanced the analysis and strategies (and advocacy) for battered women so much. He's saved a lot of lives.

[retrowire]

13. feminism for all

end male toxicity now and forever!

[MisterP]

14. mmm, like half the time this line of reasoning is used to blame the criminal's mother

[chervilant]

15. Relationship violence occurs far more frequently than the GP is willling to acknowledge.

And, half of all women killed by their intimate partners are killed AFTER they leave the relationship.

Research has shown that women cite four "reasons" they choose to stay with their abuser. Fear and LOVE are cited almost equally, followed by children and money.

Lenore Walker's Cycle of Violence resonates for most survivors, and they can easily describe the "knight in shining armor" with whom they fell in love--who bears absolutely no resemblance to the abuser they must escape.

Almost every Judeo-Christian religion promotes the meme of men "having dominion over" women, and women being subservient to men:

22) Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord. 23) For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. 24) Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything. (Ephesians 5:22-24)

I've done advocacy for survivors of relationship violence for more than 30 years. Many, many survivors described how their abusers use the bible to justify abuse. Many, many survivors observe that jealousy and possessiveness drive their abusers to pummel, choke, punch, threaten, push, kick, bite, belittle, and rape--and these are the survivors who are "lucky" enough to escape being murdered by their abusers.

[Recursion]

16. A British criminologist identified four archetypes of male family annihilators

(Female family annihilators exist -- they're about 40% of the cases studied -- but do not fit these archetypes, and almost never kill their partners, only their children.)

1. "Self-righteous". This man holds his victim responsible for a perceived breakdown in the family.

2. "Disappointed". This is generally "honor killing", so-called.

3. "Anomic". The killer kills his family to hide his failures from them.

4. "Paranoid". The killer kills his family to "protect" them.

All four types are an extension of some aspect of the patriarchy: the family is seen as an extension only of the father's persona, particularly wives and daughters (sons are the most likely child not to be killed in all cases). The self-righteous and disappointed killers consider their judgment of their families more important than their families' lives. The anomic killer is in some ways the most horrifying, to me; they apparently rationalize the act to themselves as "well, they wouldn't be able to live with themselves if they knew I had these debts" (or whatever). And the anomic killers are the least likely to commit suicide in the process.

[Heidi]

17. Kick, kick, kick!