Florida this week executed serial killer Aileen Wuornos. Wuornos was a prostitute living in Florida who murdered 7 of her clients. Originally Wuronos claimed that in all seven cases she was acting in self-defense. As Cathy Young notes in an article on on Wuornos in Reason, Wuornos later changed her story, saying she killed the seven men because she hated them and wanted to rob them.

Of course it almost goes without saying that Wuornos because a feminist celebrity and cause. A typical defense of Wuornos is offered by Phyllis Chesler who, in a 1993 article about Wuornos complained that women were held to a different standard when it comes to violent crime than men,

Women are held to higher and different standards than men. People expect men to be violent; they are also carefully taught to deny or minimize male violence (“I don’t believe any father would rape his own child”) and to forgive violent men (“He’s been under a lot of pressure”; “He’s willing to go into therapy”). On the other hand, people continue to blame women for male violence (“She must have liked rough sex if she stayed married to him”; “She provoked him into beating her”).

Also, people do not expect women to be violent, not even in self-defense. In fact, most people consistently confuse female self-defense with female aggression. In addition, people demand that women, but not men, walk a very narrow tightrope of acceptable behaviors. Most people are psychologically primed to distrust/dislike any woman who, in addition to failing to embody ideal behavior, dares to commit other morally questionable acts, such as having sex or children, for money, outside of marriage. Few women are deemed perfect enough to be seen as credible, or to merit serious compassion.

These psychological double standards of perceived violence result in a double standard of punishment. Studies document that women are often punished more severely for lesser, primarily “female” crimes, such as prostitution, than men are for the more violent “male” crimes of femicide and homicide. When women commit “male” crimes such as spouse or stranger murder after being raped, and in self-defense, or when they protectively kidnap a child, they are usually punished more harshly than their male so-called counterparts.

Of course Chesler had it all wrong. As Young points out, women committ about 10 percent of all murders in the United States, but they only receive 2 percent of capital sentences and only account for 1 percent of people on death row. Moreover, as Young points out, “while women commit nearly 30 percent of spousal murders (excluding homicides ruled to be in self-defense), they account for 15 percent of prisoners sentenced to death for killing a spouse. ”

Women are held to a different standard when it comes to violent crimes, but those standards are lower than those applied to men.

Sources:

Sexual Violence Against Women and a Woman’s Right to Self-Defense: The Case of Aileen Carol Wuornos. Phyllis Chesler, Criminal Practice Law Report Vol. 1, No. 9, October 1993.

Lethal Injection Gender Gap
Why aren’t women clamoring for the right to be killed by the state? Cathy Young, Reason, October 8, 2002.

The current issue of Australian Feminist Studies includes an interesting review of Joan Dunayer’s book, Animal Equality: Language and Liberation. It is interesting largely because reviewer Anona Taylor offers a very positive review of a book whose main thesis is that the killing of a woman as a result of domestic violence and the killing of a chicken for food are morally equivalent and should be discussed using identical language. In fact, Dunayer argues, the killing of the chicken may be even more tragic than the murder of the woman.

The idea that we should use the same language to discuss the killing of both humans and non-humans was too much to bear even for animal rights philosopher Peter Singer, who in a review of Dunayer’s book noted that it was absurd to use language that put something like the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the same moral plane as the slaughter of broiler chickens. The former was clearly a tragedy of much greater magnitude than the latter, Singer argued, even from an animal rights point of view.

In a reply to Singer, Dunayer vehemently disagreed with this contention,

“It is not speciesist” to consider the murder of several thousand humans “a greater tragedy than the killing of several million chickens,” Singer contends. It certainly is. . . . Also, Singer’s disrespect for chickens is inconsistent with his espoused philosophy, which values benign individuals more than those who, on balance, cause harm. By that measure, chickens are worthier than most humans, who needlessly cause much suffering and death (for example, by eating or wearing animal-derived products).

Not surprisingly, reviewer Taylor’s is concerned that Dunayer’s view clearly undermines feminist theories of the self that permit abortion. But she is apparently unconcerned about Dunayer’s larger argument that we should have no more compassion for Ted Bundy’s victims than we do for the animals killed to make a chicken salad sandwich. Taylor writes,

Dunayer argues that, like sexism or racism, speciesism survives through lies. Conventional English pronoun use terms nonhuman animals “it”, erasing their gender and grouping them with inanimate objects. Euphemism and doublespeak disguise humans’ massive exploitation and maltreatment of nonhuman beings. Dunayer shows that these (and other) linguistic ploys serve to keep nonhuman victims absent from discussion, helping us disregard and deny our mistreatment of them.

And here I thought it was just pornography and violent movies that dehumanized women.

Source:

Animal Equality Book Review. Anona Taylor, Australian Feminist Studies, vol. 17, no. 38.

Last week many news outlets reported on a study by the World Health Organization that blondes were becoming extinct — that turned out to be a hoax. No such study existed. But now WHO seems to be using a genuine report to distort the rate of homicides by intimate partners.

The New York Times summarizes the WHO report on intimate murder this way,

The study found that violence against women by their male partners occurs in all countries, regardless of economic class and religion. Data from Australia, the United States, Canada, Israel and South Africa show that 40 to 70 percent of female murder victims were killed by their husbands or boyfriends.

But the situation is not the same for male murder victims. In the United States, for instance, only 4 percent of men murdered from 1976 to 1996 were killed by their wives, ex-wives or girlfriends.

The problem with this statistic is that it makes it appear that the odds of a man being murdered by a girlfriend, wife or ex-wife is far lower than the risk that a woman will be killed by a boyfriend, husband or ex-husband.

But in the United States, the actual annual figures break out to something like 1,300 women killed by male intimates compared to about 600 men killed by female intimates. In most years, about 1/3rd of all murders by intimate partners are committed by women.

But at the same time, it is correct that only 4 percent of men who are murdered are killed by women they have an intimate relationship with. But this is because men are so much more likely to be murdered than are women. As WHO notes, men constitute approximately 3/4 of all homicide victims (in the United States, about 80 percent of murder victims are men).

Sources:

First ever Global Report on Violence and Health released. World Health Organization, Press Release, October 3, 2002.

War, Murder and Suicide: A Year’s Toll Is 1.6 Million. Sheryl Gay Stroberg, New York Times, October 3, 2003.

The Michigan Senate held hearings in September on proposed legislation that would allow men to stop paying child support if they DNA tests show they are not the father of the child in question. In Michigan, as in other states, cases are cropping up of men who are forced to pay support for children whom they did not father. The Michigan House has already approved four bills related to this and the Senate takes it up next.

A Detroit Free Press story featured some interesting quotes from John Ruff, a Michigan man who is forced to pay child support even though DNA tests show he is not the father. Ruff’s comments highlight one of the main problems with the current law — it is designed to encourage fathers to admit paternity, but in light of DNA testing the best option is now to deny paternity until it is proven by a DNA test. Ruff told the Free Press,

I hate to say it, but the whole part where I went wrong was the part where I tried to stand up and be a man and take responsibility for what I thought was my daughter. I should have been a jerk and tried to protest what she was saying.

When my second child was born a couple weeks ago, I happened to overhear a couple nurses in the hall who were rather disgusted that a man whose girlfriend had just given birth had chosen to not admit paternity. But in Michigan, admitting paternity after the birth of a child essentially waives any future right to dispute paternity. So the choice is either to go ahead and admit paternity once and for all or, as Ruff puts it, “be a jerk” and demand a DNA test.

Ultimately, I suspect the only adequate long-term solution to this problem will be to require DNA tests of men listed on birth certificates to prove paternity.

Source:

Not the dad? Pay anyway Wendy Wendland-Bowyer, The Detroit Free Press, September 16, 2002.

On April 1, 2002, model/actress/whatever Tawney Kitaen attacked her husband, then-Cleveland Indians pitcher Chuck Finley, while the couple were driving home from a dinner. In September, Kitaen entered a plea agreement in which she didn’t admit guilt but entered a spousal battery counseling program.

After she successfully finishes the counseling program, the case will be dropped. Kitaen also must not have any contact with her husband and must make a $500 contribution to a battered-women’s shelter (hmmm . . . would a battered woman’s shelter have provide Finley with help after the April 1 attack by his wife?)

Of course one of the more interesting thing about the case is how little media attention it has received. Not that the case hasn’t been reported in newspapers and television — it has. But certainly not to the extent that it would have been if Finley had assaulted Kitaen.

In that case, we would have been treated to at least 2 or 3 in-depth looks at domestic assault cases by sports stars, replete with domestic violence activists repeating bogus statistics and expressing concern that society doesn’t take domestic violence seriously enough.

But since the perpetrator here was a woman and the victim a man (and a sports star at that), there was nothing like that.

Source:

Tawney Kitaen Agrees to Plea Bargain. Associated Press, September, 19, 2002.