A question was proposed on another thread regarding Elliot Rodger‘s murder spree: “Or should we just acknowledge that this was a case of a severe mental illness and leave it at that?”  I would say to that: “No.”   The reason is that even those who are severely mentally ill do not exist in a vacuum.  In most cases, they lived a life without the mental illness.  And even while the illness or syndrome or disorder (or whatever term one wishes to use) is active still are in most cases part of some cultural setting.  

When I worked in mental health field primarily with schizophrenics, who were functional enough not to be in a state hospital, but not ready to be living independently, I noticed that for just about all of them, the majority of the voices in their head were members of their family or those who were or had  been very close to them.  

We may not want to face the fact that those who exist on the extreme edges of what we deem sanity are even there a reflection of us, they are.  They are not non-human or, as I have blogged before, monsters.  

Which brings me to another incident of murder, one that happened on the other side of the globe.  This victim in this case was a pregnant 25 year old Pakistani woman who was murdered by her family in what is deemed by some as “an honor killing.”

A father or brother or uncle who stones (with bricks or whatever) his daughter (pregnant or not) to death is not considered insane according to our Western psychological viewpoint because he is acting within the bounds of his cultural values and paradigms.  As I was once taught, believing a tree can talk to you is not insane if your culture tells you trees can talk to you.

One of the best articles I read on the matter was Broken Consciousness: The Pakistani Woman by Asad Rahim Khan for The Express Tribune which is done with the International New York Times.  He is lawyer based in Lahore, Pakistan.

He writes:

It’s not stoning to death. Not exactly, if we’re to follow the police’s line. A woman wasn’t stoned to death in broad daylight, by a mob of blood relations. She was beaten to death with bricks.

In a sick society, the means of mutilation is all that’s in dispute. There are 10 different versions of this story, but what’s common in all of them is that a pregnant woman was murdered in the daytime, and a crowd gathered to watch.

This is what falling apart at the seams sounds like.

And later makes these remarks:

And the inevitable editorials asking ‘how could this happen?’, or alternatively ‘what happened to us?’

Nothing, if we were to concern ourselves with the truth. Soul-searching tends to fall by the wayside when one considers the relevant police officer’s answer: ‘It is a routine murder case like other murder cases, and has to be seen in the context of Pakistani society.’ In the context of Pakistani society, he said.

The truth is, he’s absolutely right. If society is a set of norms, this set of norms is bent on breaking its women, then debasing them after the fact.
 

But that doesn’t begin to touch on the justice system, which is why we’re here in the first place. Those numbed by Farzana Parveen’s public execution were once as stunned by the case of Safia Bibi, a blind girl raped by her employer and his son, bearing a child that would die in hospital. She was still in physical shock when the police lodged a case of fornication against her.

A judge called Chaudhry Muhammad Aslam held Safia’s testimony inadmissible. He sentenced a blind 20-year-old girl to three years in prison and 15 lashes on the grounds that there wasn’t evidence she complained early enough. Horror followed, and the Federal Shariat Court dove in to acquit Safia. Her rapists walk free today.

This should have been the watershed; when even the Pakistani male would realise this country was becoming no place for the girls he was raising. He didn’t, and we now desperately look to Farzana Parveen as the possible turning point.

....

And yet neither the law nor the state is the tragedy in all this. We are. Because it was already clear that the social health and betterment of Pakistan’s women — this country’s one lifeline — isn’t on the agenda. But what’s clearer is how averse this land is becoming to such an agenda if it ever were.

Pakistan’s founding was led by a woman, a polity that elected a woman as prime minister twice, and a society driven more by its mothers than its sons. Yet that same society, through years and years of tolerating what was done to its women, has brought us to this: a place that creates a Farzana Parveen every day.

....

But though we see nothing, we speak the opposite: acid victims are prostitutes. Rape victims are black marks. Murdering your child is killing for honour. Even burying your daughter alive can pass for ‘centuries-old tradition’, according to Israrullah Zehri, a man who makes our laws.

What’s frustrating is that solutions are everywhere: remaking murder a crime against the state, reforming the evidence collection system that allowed Mukhtaran Mai’s assailants to go free, repealing a host of malicious laws, and perhaps actually telling our children that generations are judged by the way they treat their women.

The key part for me is when he clearly points the finger: "We are" the tragedy.  This is not meant take the responsibility off of someone like Rodger for his or her actions.  But it wasn't too long ago when in our own courts allowed how a woman was dressed to be considered relevant as to whether she was actually raped or was merely "asking for it." 

Recently, I was watching ESPN in a bar when they played the video of Ravens football player Ray Rice pulling his then-fiancée (they are now married) unconscious body out of an elevator after he had punched  her in the head.  One of the two guys in front of me response: "She probably deserved it."  His friend agreed.