Thursday, May 29, 2014

Women make just as good killers as men

While the militaries around the world are finally putting women in combat situations, here in the US rants about misogyny would have people believe that women can only be victims.
Anything a man can do a woman can do, whether it is run a country, or kill. And this is not something that only became true in this century or at the end of the 20th.
The latest killings in Isla Vista, adjacent to Santa Barbara, was followed by one of the biggest Tweeting bonanzas ever. The point was that killer Elliot Rodger hated women, and his slayings were a prime time example of misogyny. The fact that he killed more men than women was ignored, as well as the medical fact that Rodger may have feared women more than hate them.
As is often the case in the American media, supporters of the misogyny argument followed it like lemmings, right out of the window.
One of the nation’s leading “editorial engineers,” Adam Mordecai, has claimed he can generate millions of headlines on any subject, no matter how absurd. “I make your stuff go viral every once in awhile.”
He succeeded this week with a story about how 70 of 71 mass murders in the past 33 years were committed by men.
The beauty of the ancient expression reductio ad absurdum is that it can be used to show that something absurd is not true either because it is denied or because it is accepted. A win-win situation for those who have an agenda that will not withstand scrutiny.
The Internet trend to make news interesting by getting people to interact with it means “Surfing idiots are tough to beat…,” as the New York Times pointed out.
The notion that virtually only men commit mass murders is the perfect notion for such dogma.
Even though proving women have committed many mass murders, the idea will stay alive because to deny it is to prove it.
In fact, the idea put forward by Adam Mordecai in “Upworthy.com,” uses figures that are absurdly low.
FBI records analyzed by USA Today found there were "146 mass shootings since 2006 that matched the FBI definition of mass shooting, where four or more people were killed."
For those who want to know what role, if any, women played in this violence there are numerous Websites available.
Before starting the search, however, make sure that the inquiry is not limited to shootings. Often, women commit murders other ways. Drowning children is one of the least endearing.

More than one woman mass murderer has used a gun.
Some of what is being said is attributed to an American myth about "female virtue.”
Patricia Pearson hypothesizes in her book, “When She Was Bad: How and Why Women Get Away With Murder,” said women killers are studied less than males.
Pearson wrote: “the capacity of women to use masculine violence emerges very clearly in those societies that sanction its expression.” America isn’t one of them.
How many people have ever heard the word “misandry,” let alone used it.
Also, do not believe that men only kill with guns. Rodger stabbed three men to death, and he didn’t even have a Special Forces knife or Navy Seal training.
It is hard for anyone, even a man, to top the record of Elizabeth Bathory, “the Blood Countess.” The countess who had help from four collaborators “was accused of torturing and killing hundreds of girls – one witness attributed 650 victims, but the conviction sat at only 80 – although Elizabeth was never tried or convicted in the true sense. She did end up imprisoned in Csejte Castle now in Slovakia in 1610, and died four years later.”
Sources:
Female Mass Murders in Recent History
New York Times
USA Today

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