The Bishop and the Butterfly: Murder, Politics, and the End of the Jazz Age
    jollyroger's picture

    The patriarchy strikes back; it is bestial, it is brutal. It is Moloch, and it is consuming its daughters.

    By jollyroger on Fri, 03/08/2013 - 4:43am |

    From the PBS Newshour, a story so frightful that it will shake your humanity to the core, in horror that your species includes amongst it the sort who would perpetrate the foul crime described.

    Briefly, in a spasm of rage mimicked (it is estimated) 5000 times each year, a family of rich Pakistanis stalked and murdered its daughter and grandchildren.  Her crime--she married a poor man.

    We have already become inured, perhaps, to the bizarre and murderous tribal excrescences grotesquely denominated "honor killings", the motivation for which is usually described as the refusal of a daughter (never a son...) to conform to the tribal norms surrounding sex and marriage.

    Sometimes the murdered girl refused to be sold in marriage to a man three times her age. Sometimes the victim is described as fleeing one designated husband to be with another whom she loved.

    Sometimes the couple sought legal sanction for their love, sometimes not.

    The universal element: Daring to ally herself with some man of whom her male family members disapproved.

    The linked story is fraught with extra horror, with the homicidal revenge extending to the two tiny children of the despised union.

    The bottom line--we are doomed to interact with these cultural cretins, and to have the stench of their diseased souls pollute the very air we breath.

    As such, we cannot ignore, and thus cannot permit, this oppression. Let us, at the very least, be conductors on a modern underground railway, and emulate those who helped in the slaves' desperate dash to escape.

    Just as the abolitionists in the northern states could not abide that slavery should continue to prosper and flourish in our country, so we must be as resolute and unforgiving as John Brown before the slavery of our sisters.

    One planet, one rule: Freedom. 

    Comments

    Can we not at least use boycott, divestiture, and sanction to pressure jurisdictions (like Rawalpindi) that we can identify as tolerating a culture of impunity for perpetrators?


    by jollyroger on Fri, 03/08/2013 - 5:36am

    Patriarchal prerogative is not a sufficient explanation, I think. It's part of the story, of course, but there have been many rigid hierarchical cultures that never exhibited such filicidal tendencies. I don't pretend to understand it, and I don't think anyone who grew up in the West can either. To kill your own daughter? It's not oppressive. It's psychopathic.

    In any case, I agree that the U.S. needs a straightforward, accessible asylum track for women at risk of honor killings and appreciate you pressing for it.


    by Michael Wolraich on Fri, 03/08/2013 - 6:27pm

    The problem seems to be that any woman in one of these tribal societies may at any time be at risk of murder, either motivated by familial strictures, or intra societal stresses (Malala, the heroic teen ager whose attempted assasination prompted my original call for blanket asylum) or, more broadly, any woman who stands forth demanding sexual autonomy.

     

    Hence, blanket asylum.  You don't have to prove anything beyond your gender.


    by jollyroger on Sat, 03/09/2013 - 3:07am

    Then how would you keep millions of women who are not at risk of violence from taking advantage of the blanket asylum?


    by Michael Wolraich on Sat, 03/09/2013 - 2:49pm

    Considering that all it takes to put oneself at risk of violence is to be female and ride a bus to school, I am prepared to call the close ones in favor of pre-emptive asylum. If they are not in mortal danger today, they well may be tomorrow.

     

    Moreover, the truncated lives to which we will be dooming them after causing their hopes to rise and luring them out of their confinement is enough of a gender based oppression to merit asylum in my book.  It really is not necessary that death be on offer.

     

    To be frank, those Pashtun pricks do not deserve to have any women at all.

     

    More to the point, I have travelled in Pashtun territory, and their women are smokin'.  

     

    We can't go wrong.

     

    Also, it would give me great personal satisfaction to rub it in the Pashtun's faces.  They are bound to get the message when they wake up and all the pussy is gone.


    by jollyroger on Sat, 03/09/2013 - 3:16pm

    I agree and also appreciate your efforts here.  These stories are horrendous and your idea about giving sanctuary to all of those women simply by reason of gender is excellent.  I go along with all of that wholeheartedly.

    But (here it comes) couldn't you just once keep a conversation going--especially one like this--without going to "smokin;" and "pussy"?  Really?  That's it?  That's all these women are?


    by Ramona on Mon, 03/11/2013 - 10:10am

    to quote David Sedaris: "Me talk pretty one day". Just not THIS day. I lapsed into the"male vernacular " advisedly. I profoundly abhor the way Pashtun men ( or non-Pashtun men, for that matter, of similar ilk) poison relations between men and women. Hence I adopted a terminology tilted towards vindicating my position that these cretins don't deserve the company of women. Perhaps my stated desire to " rub their faces" in their bestial nature was imperfectly communicated- I was talking to/ for them.

    by jollyroger on Mon, 03/11/2013 - 9:20pm

    I refer you back to the linked title occasioned by Malala's story, where a hypothetical rejoinder from Obama includes" we're taking your women...how ya like us now?". It's a " man thing"

    by jollyroger on Mon, 03/11/2013 - 9:32pm

    surely you will remember The New Minglewood Blues, where the estimable Pigpen gloated that "my number one occupation is stealing women from their men" vnd.youtube:DDItxobbd0c?vndapp=youtube_mobile&vndclient=mv-google&vndel=watch http://www.dead.net/song/new-minglewood-blues that's more or less the tenor of my remarks.

    by jollyroger on Mon, 03/11/2013 - 9:44pm

    You might recall we had a discussion once about your use of the word "pussy," where I was trying to explain how it is still offensive to many feminists (hence the attempt at co-option of it by women like "Pussy Riot," just the the use of the N-word in rap) as well as to women of certain manners. I myself understand your use of it knowing olden-time sex-industry and culture (circa 1970's-1980's) and lesbian culture as not derogative, but I was trying to say "beware, this term still has a very negative sting to many when used by a man."

    Anyhew, what comes to mind here is one of all-time favorite comments evah on an internet forum, such a favorite that I have it saved on my hard drive. I think the writer was trying to say exactly what you're trying to say here. But I think he said it ever so much more successfully in a way that would please all feminists of all persuasions rather than turn some off. You might consider stealing from it.

    First the context. The comment was on this news thread from May 2006 titled Saudi King Calls For Female Picture Ban (don't know how long that link will be good.) Here's the comment:

    THE HE-MAN WOMAN HATERS CLUB

    Maybe they should just ship out all the women in their country to some place else that would tolerate their evil and seductive presence.

    Then it could just be a country of MEN... MANLY MEN who enjoy the company of other MANLY MEN! They could then bask in each other's MANLY MANLINESS without having to perpetually guard themselves from the temptations of wanton and cunning women. It must take quite a heavy toll on these MANLY MEN to have to constantly put up with the existence of women, so let's help these poor MANLY MEN out by offering to take all their women off their MANLY hands!

    TimeWave 0, May 17, 2006 - 11:23am


    by artappraiser on Mon, 03/11/2013 - 10:34pm

    P.S. To fully savor that comment, one has to know about this which influenced it:  He-Man Women Haters Club Meeting


    by artappraiser on Mon, 03/11/2013 - 10:37pm

    I didn't need the YouTube...saw it in the *original ( the horror, the horror...)and recognized the reference immediately . *I believe I can recall one "Darla" on whom I had an irretrievable crush...

    by jollyroger on Mon, 03/11/2013 - 11:04pm

    " Even a fish could stay out of trouble if he kept his mouth shut"..

    by jollyroger on Mon, 03/11/2013 - 11:10pm

    To step in with a "manly" viewpoint -

    I don't think the term "pussy" is terribly potent in 2013 when referring to a vagina - have to call it something, and "va-va" sounds 2-years-old, while the British-favored c*** is harsher, "snatch" feels dismissive, perhaps "twat" works.... Think we have "The Vagina Monologues" to help us round the bend on acknowledging women's sexual parts as something less than naughty or single-function, move past "that which shall not be named".

    But "find all the pussy gone" is a rather gross American male view - feels a bit 70's, Hef mansion kinda thing - not Pakistani, where visualizing female naughty bits en masse would probably drive them over the edge.


    by Anonymous PP (not verified) on Tue, 03/12/2013 - 2:54am

    I think the term "pussy" is terribly potent when it's used it in an otherwise sensitive piece about the horrific treatment of women in the Middle East.  The conversation loses all power when it has to resort to "smokin'" and "pussy" in order to show. . .what? 

    What was that again?

    And now the conversation centers on women's sexual parts, the Vagina Monologues, fagodsake.  (And, of course, c*** has to be in there somewhere.  Always)  So the original thesis takes a back seat to the fun of talking naughty. 

    Seriously?


    by Ramona on Tue, 03/12/2013 - 9:02am

    I was trying to note that by "pussy" he wasn't simply talking a woman's anatomy, a simple common term for a vagina, but what Romney might refer to as a collective "folders full of snatch".

    And I didn't consider the Vagina Monologues or my comment as "the fun of talking naughty". It referred to the closeting of women's anatomy and sexuality, in this case relevant both in the US/West and in conservative Islamic circles, though to different extremes as these honor killings show.

     


    by PeraclesPlease on Tue, 03/12/2013 - 9:51am

    Oh, please.  Stop.


    by Ramona on Tue, 03/12/2013 - 9:55am

    Oh blather, yes, I'll stop.

    Sorry I didn't live up to your standards. Hasta.


    by PeraclesPlease on Tue, 03/12/2013 - 10:02am

    No. PP, you're not living up to your standards.  You started with a pure, significant post  about the protection of women.  It was great.  I wish you could have stuck with your premise without veering off toward slang offensive to women (okay, me).  You didn't.  So be it.


    by Ramona on Tue, 03/12/2013 - 10:30am

    Hey! Mona! PP didn't start with no post! U R confused.

    by jollyroger on Tue, 03/12/2013 - 9:02pm

    You're right.  Scratch that first sentence then.  The rest you can keep.


    by Ramona on Tue, 03/12/2013 - 11:41pm

    It's time for a full discussion of hidden estrus and how women invented recreational sex, then bred men who could get with the program. Post to come

    by jollyroger on Wed, 03/13/2013 - 12:19am

    Read this first.


    by Verified Atheist on Wed, 03/13/2013 - 8:45am

    interesting. I'll have to track down more of his work. the primary mystery remains the mechanism. via which human females, alone among mammals ( bonobos possibly excluded) evolved to cloak the external indications that a propitious time for fertilization was at hand. ,

    by jollyroger on Wed, 03/13/2013 - 9:20am

    Bonobos do not, in fact, have concealed ovulation. However, vervet monkeys do. See also this paper, which points out that (for humans, at least), ovulation is concealed not just from potential mates, but also from the females themselves.


    by Verified Atheist on Wed, 03/13/2013 - 9:47am

    Cry "havoc" and let loose the hounds of meta ...my usage was in the nature of a synecdoche, as your " folders, etc." intuited. I think we may, without being reductionist, trace the Pashtun pathology to the fear of an unbridled and uncontrolled female sexuality that Freud warned us of( if obliquely ). Hidden estrus and the resultant male cuckold anxiety underlies more craziness than is casually understood, cf. the chastity belt, which ( not coincidentally ) locked that p---y down.

    by jollyroger on Tue, 03/12/2013 - 8:34pm

    A search of two english language newspapers in Rawalpindi returns no indication of attention to this atrocity, heightening the rationale for boycotting their exports.  Nothing concentrates the mind (to mangle Samuel Johnson)like the prospect of losing money.


    by jollyroger on Sat, 03/09/2013 - 7:54am

    Sisters on the streets:

    http://dawn.com/2013/03/09/iwd-hear-me-roar/

    Pick one of the groups, look them up on the net and make them one of your charities.

    All that it takes for triumph of evil here is for wimmim not to speak up. Tiz why Malala is such a heroine....you can't change the culture if no one complains about it and the complaints aren't popularized. Pop culture has the power to change here, generationally.

    As to the specific story you cite, this one, it goes beyond feminism/patriarchy issues, methinks. Strikes me as a case kind of specific to extra specially sick societies like Pakistan or Saudi. The mother-in-law was involved in the "partriarchy" there, and it's clearly a relatively well-to-do family. But they have a culture like DNA is treasure to be hoarded and traded for monetary value, affects both men and women.

    Too many elites of Pakistan are sick to their bones, instead of leading into the future, they perpetuate and trade on the miseries of the past. It's in India too, though there I have hopes, somehow they don't seem to resist change as "well".


    by artappraiser on Sun, 03/10/2013 - 3:23pm

    some of the patriarchy's most vicious collaborators are female. As witness the enthusiasm for jailing of sex workers, not infrequently at its most virulent amongst women!

    by jollyroger on Sun, 03/10/2013 - 7:22pm

    They printed that picture, or was it online only. women with exposed faces? ( I know, I know, the full.burka is more of a north of Durand thing.)

    by jollyroger on Sun, 03/10/2013 - 7:26pm

    speaking of " exposed faces" and not to trivialize in any way the issues raised by the article, I offer the lady on the right as exhibit one in to support my " smokin'" characterization above...

    by jollyroger on Sun, 03/10/2013 - 8:03pm

    A new horror as if there were not already too much...


    by jollyroger on Tue, 03/12/2013 - 9:33am