Double standards

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I read Drew's post, and I respect that his observations may be different from my own. But from everything I have read, observed, and experienced, I can say without a shadow of a doubt that women have a ***** pass. Heinous crimes and acts of violence perpetrated by women are often 'played down', and blame shifted back onto the man.

I'm sorry that you find my observations and opinions offensive. I don't go out of my way to be offensive, but I'm not going to alter and sugar coat what I have to say. I'm not attacking anyone on this forum, I'm just pointing out what I perceive to be a gross sexist double-standard in society.

 

Mordea, the problem isn't that your observations and opinions are offensive, nor is it that that you state them with all the subtlety of a thunderclap on a clear day. Lots of undeniable facts are offensive, so that aint it. The problem, Mordea, is that you couldn't be bothered to back up your assertion with any facts. Without factual support, your post looks like just another sexist rant coming from someone I wouldn't want to meet in a dark alley. If that isn't how you want to appear, there is an easy solution -- back up your arguments.

It also wouldn't hurt to express your ideas without the unnecessary provocativity. If you were to replace your "***** pass" with a less emotionally charged term like "societal double standard," you'll find that your posts are received a little more warmly. A little sensitivity goes a long way.

 

And I don't intend to, either. As I clearly stated in another thread, I'm not here to convince you, but to simply express my god to honest opinions. These opinions have been formulated from observation, research, and experience. I've made my mind up, and I know that I'm right, and you're wrong. It's that simple. I know that some may find this offensive, and that's not a surprise! They are wrong after all. By all rights, they should hang their head in shame and just covertly leave the thread.

I feel no compulsion whatsoever to waste my time hunting for sources to convince people who are wrong of my legitimacy, especially when no one on this thread has supported their assertions. Furthermore, I feel no need to spew out long posts full of rhetoric, snide remarks, quote by quote responses, and links to partisan blogs to 'prove' my point. I realise how disempowering that it must be control freaks, to not be able to get someone who disagree with you to play by their own preconceived rules, but that's just tough. I'm not breaking any rules by simply expressing an opinion, and you know it. Baiting me via the reputation system won't change that.

But don't trouble yourself too much. Now that I've expressed my opinion, I don't intend on arguing anything any further. Ya see, I know I'm right, and you're wrong. And why should I give a **** about listening to people who are wrong, they are probably too dim-witted to come around anyway.

Now excuse me, I have to go express an opinion on another new issue.

 

Mordea, I hold every opinion I hold for a reason. You don't? Any time I'm asked, I can tell a person why I think what I think. I don't need to do research to tell someone why I think what I think. I may not be right, my justification may be weak, my argument may be poorly formed, but I can tell you exactly why I hold my opinion. If you've truly come to your conclusions through "observation, research, and experience," then you would be able to do that, too. Since you fail to do so, the only conclusion that a reasonable person can draw is that your conclusions are in fact not based on observation research, or experience. In other words, you're just another angry and ignorant misogynist who refuses to examine his own thinking....or another troll.

Regarding the rep comment, that wasn't baiting. I meant what I said. Every word.

 

I see your point Drew, but I'd like to bring up a couple of issues. First, it is true that in many states, you cannot be sentenced to death for a single murder if there are not additional charges to go along with it. My home state of MD is such a state. However, in those cases, a single murder is NOT a capital crime, as being executed is not a possibility. Furthermore the people who get plea deals are much more likely to be ones where there is only a single murder, and some mitigating factors are involved.

While I agree with your point in general, the statistics we need are not available to us without quite a bit of research. We don't know, as you rightly point out, whether or not 10% of murders for which the death sentence is a possibility are committed by women. That said, on the surface, we have a difference of an order of magnitude (10% vs. 1%). I strongly suspect that such a difference is large enough, that even if we accounted for other factors, that women would be executed at a lesser rate than men.

 

I feel that premeditated murder should be a capital crime, regardless if it was poison used or a framing hammer. There was some mention, IIRC, that women tend to use less violent methods when committing murder, and that somehow makes it less serious an offense. If equality is truly what we are looking for, then the law needs to apply to all citizens based on the crime itself, not based on the gender of the offender (or victim) or minor nuances of method.

And people wonder at my mysogynistic tendencies.*

*There's no doubt I'm angry andI may be a mysogynist, but I am not an ignorant one -- I look at all sorts of facts and try to keep an open mind. But I just see too much slack being given to women just because they are . . . women. No other truly valid reason.

 

Not pointing the finger at you specifcally LKD, but (let's stir the pot!) I've seen very few men who hold those views whose opinion isn't informed in large part by negative (and oftentimes traumatic) personal experience. I think it's difficult to remain unbiased when you've been run through the meat-grinder a few times.

 

Interesting case: Now this is just nauseating. I'm pretty sure that if a guy were in a similar situation, he'd also get off thanks to our lax legal code (oh, he's dead, no cross examination possible, let him go free!) so this isn't so much a double standard thing, but the fact that this woman has piled up two dead babies somehow and hasn't been punished for her obviously disgusting actions makes me sick. There exists the possibility that her pimp also had some responsibility, so I am glad to say that he is dead. Were he alive, I'd want him punished too.

Gaear, you are right on the money. I have had plenty of personal experience and seen firsthand how women get a free pass in Western society. It's totally passe to hold them accountable for their actions. Yet we have no problem nailing men to the wall.

My solution is not to stone women for the crimes committed against them or go to the extreme of some other countries wherein men get the free pass and women get killed. My proposed solution is equality. Not too much to ask, I would hope!

 

Do you have evidence of that? I would be curious to see the details. Otherwise, you are just making assumptions, which are the only things supporting a good deal of your rant. I agree with the premise of this thread, that women are treated differently in these specific cases, but now it has gone to, "WOMEN GET A FREE PASS IN WESTERN SOCIETY!"

Sorry, but that statement doesn't make any sense. Nevertheless, this thread has developed in a very poor manner. Rather than focusing on women in the legal system, it has turned into a big anti-women rant, which is meaningless. I believe this specific issue is far more complex and I suspect that there are connections to religion in some of these cases, which are worth exploring.

For instance, Mordea pointed out that men sometimes get the blame, even when it is the woman who commits the crime. The Yates case is an interesting study. Rusty Yates was under as much scrutiny as the killer was in this case, (he wan't even home at the time) and he was blamed by some in the media as having caused his wife to kill her own children. Because of his religious values he supposedly refused his wife birth control options. But the interesting thing is that the Yates woman got off. So did the woman in Maryland who was supposedly under the influence of the "cult." Within these instances, and I'm not applying this to every instance, this "shifting of blame" is placed within a religious context. I just think those aspects are worth exploring. Just my

 

Edit: Actually, scratch that, it's dragging the thread away from the issue.

 

I was referring to this quote from Drew, Chandos. IMHO, the relative brutality of a murder is irrelevant. If someone kills my father via a slow acting poison or with a lead pipe in the kitchen, it makes no real difference to me -- I want the killer dead, because any way that you cut it, my father is dead. Gone, I won't be talking to him again.

I also don't fricking care if the perpetrator was a war refugee from Whateveristan, or a disadvantaged woman, or a man who was not hugged enough by his mommy as a child. I seriously don't care about any of that crap. The killer killed an innocent citizen and should therefore die. End of story. It's not that I hate women and want them punished more severely than a man, it's that a killer is a killer regardless of skin color, plumbing, or poor socialization.

What I see in those stats, though, is that women do get off lightly. No matter how you cut it or rationalize it, it's wrong.

 

Right. And I agree with that, LKD. I'm just trying to look at reasons why that's the case, other than, "they are just women, so of course they get off." They obviously do get off easier, but I think many of the cases are more complicated than just that they are just women.

 

I would agree that we can turn it into something more complex than "they are women." For true understanding we might have to, though I honestly do not believe any of us have enough insight into this topic to offer an adequate explanation for any set statistic (whether or not that statistic is accurate is another question).

However, the nuances behind the topic aside, the reason that women are treated differently in these cases is that they are women. I am not claiming any knowledge above and beyond you all and I would liken myself to a state of Socratic ignorance on this topic.

Yet I can hypothesize that this stems from cultural images of women, despite the desire for equality, women are viewed as the fairer sex: needing protection, being sensitive, being emotional, not being able to control their emotions, dealing with difficult biological facts every day [periods, childbirth, menopause] and so on. Debating whether any of this is true or false has no bearing on the topic. Many people, both men and women, view females in this fashion; which therefore leads to the desire to protect and shelter.

Women can be evil, men can be evil; we all acknowledge this. That leads to the most likely situation that jurors do not find women less deserving of punishment than their male counterparts; they simply don't think the punishment should be of equal levels. Perhaps they have issue with sentencing a woman to death, perhaps they think most women are less likely to murder again in prison, perhaps they think women are weak, perhaps they think The All Mighty Thor looks down upon executing a woman, perhaps every Juror on every case has a different reason. But they all have one uniting factor: women are more deserving of leniency than men.

That is truly all we can assess. Trying to conclude anything more is always going to derail into "Neither of us can back up what we're saying with actual evidence because neither of us know the reason behind the majority of lenient sentences on women in murder trials. Since neither of us have a concrete reason, we're going to insult each other and claim we are correct by simply stating we are!"

 

What are little girls made of? What about little boys?

Our sexist society loves to portray men as evil, vulgar, violent, stupid monsters, and women as innocent, pure, refined, angels. When a woman kills, that's such a shock that *obviously* there were mitigating circumstances. What's that, she shot her husband in the back while he was sleeping? Oh, well, he abused her! We don't really have any concrete evidence, and he can't speak in his defense (being dead and all), but he was a man. So I'm sure there was *some* abuse. Recently there was a case where a woman stabbed her husband with scissors, and automatically many people started claiming she was likely abused, when there was no evidence suggesting so. Huh? How come when men kill their wives, abuse is never considered prima facie?

Women *do* commit violent murders, and they get off lightly for it. They shoot their husbands (or carve them into cubes and feed them to their children, no joke), and claim 'abuse'. They kill their children and claim things were too 'tough' (obviously the man didn't 'support' them enough, so he's mostly to blame). When a woman cheats, well, I'm sure the man was a jerk. If a woman gets pregnant, the man *made* her pregnant, obviously the poor innocent woman didn't have a choice to allow a penis to enter her. If both sexual partners are drunk, *obviously* the man took advantage of the woman. Evidence suggests that women may engage in as much non-reciprocal domestic violence as men.

And even when society does somehow manage to blame the woman for her own actions, some of the blame is still pushed back onto men. Sadly, society treats women like innocent children. It is perceived that they rarely can do wrong, and when they do do wrong, the patriarchy made them do it.

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http://www.canadiancrc.com/Newspaper_Articles/AAP_Husband_cooker_loses_plea_11SEP06.aspx

Heh, women.

The only thing that surprises me is that she got a life sentence. I thought she would have cried about 'abuse' (eg. he slammed the door hard once in anger!), and the court would have given her 2 years probation.

 

Well, yes and no. The image of "women" in our religious society is that ThEY brought evil into the world; THEY are responsible for the Fall of Man; and THEY of course are unable to control themselves (even though they only commit roughly 10 percent of the murders). The other interesting half of this thread is why do men commit 90 percent of the crimes. But let's not go there for the moment. I won't even begin to comment on how orthodox Muslims treat their women.

Why? Because they are supposedly "weaker?" Seems to me a women running down her husband in the driveway, like one did here in Houston, doesn't have to be strong, and only needs to be able to drive a nice Mercedes to do the job.

That I agree with, but why?

Men get the blame, it seems (not that I agree).

http://www.oprah.com/showinfo/Exclusive-Clara-Harris-The-Woman-Who-Ran-Over-Her-Husband

Clara Harris is an interesting study:

But what do the songs "Parchman Farm," "Hey Joe" and, even the Beatles, "Run For Your Life," have in common?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_of_passion

http://www.39online.com/news/local/kiah-domestic-murder-story1,0,5582397.story

Uh, oh. She is black and a woman. What do think she will get? We should follow this case.

 

Ah, that was not the point of what I said. I was not saying that women inherently deserve leniency.

I was saying that the jurors in these cases think they have a reason why women should be treated with leniency. Or rather, the jurors who fight for her leniency. We all seem to think this is so for a different reason, all I meant is that none of us truly know for a fact why these jurors are easier on women then men, no matter how slightly. It could be any of the reasons we suggested, a combination of them or none of them.

As I mentioned earlier, debating here whether or not women truly are weaker or anything else is irrelevant until we assess, factually, why people are more lenient on women. This is something I don't think we can know or even make a good assumption on. Especially because punishment is dealt on a case by case basis; we would have to look at a large majority of murder case with a female defendants, compare, contrast and then after we do that, do the same thing with the cases for men and then finally compare both subsets of cases and the reasons behind the jurors' and judge's decision.

 

Ah, much like I am doing, just laying out the pieces of the puzzle. I get it.

 

Tangent alert: when women cheat, it's usually because of something their partner is not doing or giving them, or it has nothing to do with their partner at all.

 

And on that tangent, and with no relation to the original topic whatsoever, I would like to suggest everyone read The Five Love Languages, or at least do some research into it. Actually, you can take the test here, and probably figure things out from there pretty easily. It's a simple concept that has saved numerous marriages (and possibly lives somewhere, considering the way some 'separations' happen).