Misogyny 6, women 0
Oh, god. I feel sick. I feel like screaming. I do, I feel like screaming and screaming and screaming.
An Islamic fundamentalist shot and killed a female Pakistani minister yesterday because of her refusal to wear a Muslim veil. Police said that the bearded attacker had singled out the prominent women’s rights activist in the belief that women should not be in politics. Zilla Huma Usman, the Punjab provincial minister for social welfare and supporter of President Musharraf, was shot as she prepared to address a public gathering in the town of Gujranwala…As party members threw rose petals at her, the gunman shot her in the head, police said. They identified the attacker as Malulvi Ghulam Sarwar and said that he was opposed to the participation of women in politics and the refusal of many professional women in Pakistan to wear the veil…Mr Sarwar, a stonemason in his mid40s, appeared calm when he told a television channel that he had carried out God’s order to kill women who sinned. “I have no regrets. I just obeyed Allah’s commandment,” he said. Islam did not allow women to hold positions of leadership, he claimed. “I will kill all those women who do not follow the right path, if I am freed again,” he said. Usman was well known as a women’s rights activist and had organised a controversial mini-marathon involving female runners.
Meanwhile, back in Lancs:
Mohammed Riaz made every conceivable attempt to prevent his wife and daughters enjoying their Westernised lifestyle. He destroyed their clothes…t[T]he labourer killed his wife and four daughters by throwing petrol over them as they slept and igniting it.
I feel sick. Perhaps I’ll be told again that ‘we partly are for others, not just for yourselves. The aggressive individualism you often put forward here is almost equally as distasteful as the repression of individualism you rail against,’ but that’s just too bad. Funny how this ‘we are for others’ idea applies so much more to women than it does to men – applies to women so thoroughly that some men think they have the right simply to obliterate them when irritated. Fuck that. I’m not for others, and others don’t get to kill me because I’m not obedient enough. Aggressive individualism for all, that’s what I say.
We’re sorry, Zilla Huma Usman. Well done with the marathon and the women’s rights activism. We’re sorry, we’re sorry, we’re sorry. We’re sorry Caneze, Sayrah, Sophia, Alicia, and Hannah Riaz.
I feel sick.
Yeah, OB, it is contemptible, what a big sin it is for this degenerate to desecrate in one fell swoop – a consecrated life. The “gun and roses scene” from what I have been clued-up; on, by a Pakistani, is an accustomed incidence. It will, by his admission – to all intents and purposes in a couple of days – be effectively elapsed. Women in Pakistan are ceaselessly being besieged; under daily attack and anguish by so-called -men for not adhering to the strict code of attire. “I have no regrets. I just obeyed Allah’s commandment,” he said. Islam did not allow women to hold positions of leadership, he claimed. “I will kill all those women who do not follow the right path, if I am freed again,” This religious ignoramus stonemason has obviously no remorse. I wonder how he would react if it were suggested to him by the women that they would “stone him” for his ‘individual; unlawful wrongdoing. If you live by the “stone”- you shall die by the “stone“.
I, TOO, WANT TO EFFECTIVELY “”SCREAM””!
I should point out O.B.that all cultures are entitled to equal respect,and anyway I blame all this moslem misbehaviour on Israel!
Take the piss, and you are in danger of calling down the curse that every woman you know and love should be treated as badly as these women have been. Except of course that that would be awful, and wrong.
For what it’s worth, Mr Riaz was obviously mentally ill by the time he performed his despicable act, and a man who has drunk his liver to cirrhosis can hardly be put down as a ‘Muslim fanatic’.
Still, to say he should have known better doesn’t really begin to cover it.
I can’t condone it, of course, but there seem to be tragic complexities in the Lancashire story. Yes, people who come here should get their heads screwed on properly and know that they’re in Blighty, but I can’t help feeling a tad of sympathy for the situation he found himself in – a man so inextricably bound into his culture. Clearly off his rocker by our standards, of course, up there with cultists and the nuttier end of religious … well, nuttiness. Help me, somebody. I detest the encroaching Muslim presence in Britain, but there’s something tugging at a part of me that feels something vaguely akin to compassion for the man. It’s still sickmaking, of course, and OB is right to express feelings of nausea at the whole shitty business. Even if one were to feel sympathy for Mohammed Riaz himself, one cannot help but rail most bitterly against the ideology that allowed such a situation to come about. Maybe it’s that which makes Ophelia sick more than the man himself. Dunno. It’s all very shocking, and I guess I’m just thinking in print …
“there’s something tugging at a part of me that feels something vaguely akin to compassion for the man”
Pleased to meet you
Hope you guess my name.
To me the underlying theme of these specific examples and a lot of our conversations here is the misogyny of the major religions – if a man is depressed, upset, feeling humiliated the teachings of these cults give him a cast-iron excuse for taking it out on the wife and kids or any other woman who happens to annoy him or just be passing by wearing lipstick or having an opinion.
If you want something really sickening, look here:
http://voxday.blogspot.com/
At the (presently) top article headed: “Feminism doesn’t work anywhere”
– for an example of misogyny, driven (of course) by religion, in a supposedly advanced society….
Accomplished womens’ lives have been terminated by deeply inadequate males. End of.
“The more vehemently one hears liberal progressives claim progress, the more one wonders who they are trying to convince. Increasingly, the stridency with which the non-religious attack the religious belies their own profound insecurity – that the progress they like to attribute to western or enlightenment values is a much-compromised property”
Madeleine Bunting
Monday January 29, 2007
>”We’re sorry, we’re sorry, we’re sorry. We’re sorry Caneze, Sayrah, Sophia, Alicia, and Hannah Riaz.”<
What a sad and cruel way to die, what more can one add but to concur with OB.
“We’re sorry” “we’re sorry” “we’re sorry”.
To go with Bunty’s comment there’s this:
“The fact that feminism and “equality” are eviscerating societal functionality in countries that have never known any Judeo-Christian tradition indicates how completely dysfunctional it is.”
An American commentator in Vox Popoli, as mentioned above ….
Oh I see. Feminists have eviscerated societal functionality. They had it coming then.
GT: There’s a lot more sickening sites out there. Believe me. I’ve been a long-time lurker at freerepublic.com. I must say, though, that “vox popoli” is a bit rich coming from someone probably quite concerned about the decline of civilization, classical education, etc. (what is a “popolus”!?).
Nick S.:
Accomplished womens’ lives have been terminated by deeply inadequate males. End of.
I guess that’s why I understand why Andy A. feels something “vaguely akin to compassion for the man”. By the account of the article, he was a sad failure who saw himself overshadowed by his wife and his daughters – but couldn’t hack it himself. It’s an unimaginably sad story as well as an unimaginably horrible one. Difficult to comprehend how a man gets to the point he does something so unspeakably evil as setting fire to his three-year old kid.
Sympathy for HIM?
Sorry, no.
Sure, I get that he was unhappy, and I could feel sympathy for his unhappiness, but given that he decided to compensate for his unhappiness by setting fire to six females, I can’t do it, I’m too busy feeling sympathy for the six females he set fire to.
Weird, this hand-wringing over his unhappiness. What about theirs? Why does he seem to matter so much more than they do? Why is it about him and not them? Why does one man take up more space than six women and girls? Is there still a vestige of the old old old idea that men have minds and souls and consciousness and women kind of sort of don’t? That six or six million women somehow add up to less than one man?
Merljin, Andy… sympathy for someone trapped, deluded, but where do you stop ? Most BNP supporters are de facto deeply inadequate too… “He couldn’t help it m’lud, he’d lost his job and after getting real drunk then stabbed the black lawyer twenty times, a victim as he was of his own shortcomings. Please show mercy.” Nah.
“To me the underlying theme of these specific examples and a lot of our conversations here is the misogyny of the major religions”
Yup. Which is why Jerry and I are writing a book on the subject.
I’m sorry the guy died. Sorry he found a quick oblivion when a more appropriate consequence would have been intensive treatment by mental health professionals to give him a real understanding of what he had done. Then let him deal with it, for the rest of his life.
Did he die thinking his god would reward him for what he had done, or punish him? I hope the latter, but suspect the former.
Not “major” religions, please. Maybe call them the “big” religions. Or the “nastier” religions. Can’t wait for the book. Wonder if it’ll be made into a “major” film?
It’s also interesting to consider the nature of this unhappiness. How much of it was about his own personal situation, and how much was rooted in illegitimate ideas about other people? If he was unhappy partly because his wife and daughters were not sufficiently ground down, that cuts down on the sympathy.
Well, Ophelia, I did say ‘there’s something tugging at a part of me that feels something vaguely akin to compassion for the man’. So, by the time we’ve dealt with the ‘something’, the ‘vaguely’ and the ‘akin to’, you have to admit that it’s at least three removes from actually feeling compassion. I was just trying to express the complexity of it, while not condoning what he did in any way, no, sirree. There’s a heluva difference between condoning an action and speculating on how it may have come about. But my sympathy, too, is with the women, and many like them who must be subject to the mindless evil produced by this obscene doctrine.
Andy, I know. And I think I know what you mean (I felt a twinge of sympathy too, until I got to the method, after which I didn’t any more).
But actually I think it’s interesting to think about how much of the unhappiness may genuinely have been rooted in mistaken ideas. Maybe his unhappiness was greatly increased by, say, humiliation that his wife was thriving while he wasn’t. It’s interesting to think that he could have been proud and happy about that; that that is one available option; and that if he had perhaps he wouldn’t have been unhappy at all.
Just a little more affection and acceptance of equality might have made an enormous difference in the happiness of eight people. Intense misogyny is not a great recipe for general happiness and fourishing, I think. In fact I often wonder how misogynist men can stand living with such a poisonous viper right next to them.
Flourishing. Not fourishing. Nor fiveishing either.
“Every organized patriarchal religion works overtime to contribute its own brand of misogyny” (Robin Morgan).
And it also has fanatics within it who work overtime to deliver their own brand of executions to innocent women/children whenever the urge comes on. Women/children have to apologise for merely breathing. Lord have “mercy”
>continuation from above<
on the souls of the innocent victims who died at the hands of the vile misogynistic nonentities. I find it empathetically so very difficult to comprehend their ruthless actions.
You know…one of the many interesting things about Sister Helena’s testimony about Goldenbridge is that she says herself the thinking behind the way the children were treated now appears very mistaken. I was especially struck by her answer to a (heartbreaking) question about why the overall treatment was so cold. Why was it so harsh and unloving, what was the idea behind treating children that way? What on earth, in short, were the Sisters of Mercy (try not to laugh, or cry) thinking? She admitted that a lot of it was just plain bad thinking and lack of understanding. That’s not completely implausible – even non-institutional child care thinking had a harsh phase (though not as harsh as that) – the whole keep the baby on a schedule, ignore its crying approach. Parents were really told not to hug or cuddle babies ‘too much’ – an idea that just seems deranged, now.
Thinking matters. Bad thinking can do a lot of harm. Bad feeling is all mixed up with bad thinking, and bad actions are mixed up with both.
Look I dont care how unhapy this piece of garbage was or whether he had trouble fitting into our western society,he murded his wife and children he should burn in hell for that,I am with O.B. on this one!
Well except I don’t actually think anyone should burn in hell! I don’t think anyone should burn period.
But I’m hesitant to express sympathy for his unhappiness, too; for one thing that in a way seems to put some blame on the women themselves (though not intentionally). A caring neighbour could have told them before the murder, ‘Look, he is so unhappy about the way you are living, you could make him so much happier if only you would give up your job, wear a hijab, etc etc etc…’ People can always make unreasonable demands on other people and then say they are unhappy when their demands are not met. Some demands or requests are reasonable; others aren’t.
Well there’s a large subject. I think I won’t get into it just now.
I most certainly don’t feel sympathy for the guy who did it. I feel sympathy for the three-year old, who never got a decent shot at life, never even given the chance to read a book, or fall in love. Or for the Adam kid, who in addition to being terminally ill had his family ripped away from him in this manner. Or indeed for the girl who wanted to be a DJ and the other victims and all the possibilities that were foreclosed by this.
There’s just the nagging feeling that this guy was not born evil, that something went wrong down the road and he ended up being a sad underachieving bastard, and that then something went very wrong and he ended up being a murderer. That things could have gone differently, and better (for him as well as, obviously, his wife and daughters).
Used to teach in a strongly patriarchical but rapidly westernizing former Soviet republic. With a few exceptions either way, the guys in the class were leisurely sitting back, legs wide, waiting to be entertained, not even having a pen with them; the girls were attentive, taking notes, doing their homework. Same scene on the streets: girls usually intent on getting from A to B, guys lounging about, being “cool” with their sunglasses and leather jackets, not really in a hurry to go anywhere.
Being the pampered prince of the household, accustomed to be served by your mothers and sisters, is not very good for a person. While being second place everywhere – in the family, in society at large – does wonders for one’s work ethic. Despite the stranglehold of traditional religion, traditional patriarchy, and all that, I think that eventually more and more girls from this and other similar cultures (as well as immigrant cultures in the west) are going to realize that it’s they who bring home the money, they who got the high grades, and that they don’t need to be anyone’s doormat.
One woman I met there was a divorcee – and being a divorcee is a road to instant social isolation, as divorces cannot be due to anything else but the intrinsic meanness of the female part involved. So she set up a small company, and only hired other divorcees. Excellent idea – cause now they make money, aren’t dependent on anyone, and eventually I think more and more of the society is going to move in this direction.
To a much smaller extent, I think the situation may be similar even in westernized countries. Over here at least, the girls are in the majority in undergraduate courses, and I think they tend to get better grades as well. Postgraduate and higher, it’s still men in the majority – but this cannot hold in the long run.
Which means I think there’s going to be a lot of sad underachieving bastards such as Mohammed Riaz. My hope is that they will take the honourable road and stimulate their daughters and their sons to take the chances they have missed. Which is what you, OB, suggested when you wrote that: It’s interesting to think that he could have been proud and happy about that; that that is one available option; and that if he had perhaps he wouldn’t have been unhappy at all..
>”Bad thinking can do a lot of harm. Bad feeling is all mixed up with bad thinking,”<
OB,
Bad thinking; bad feelings; bad treatment; bad understanding; bad loving; bad actions; bad caring; bad cuddling; bad hugging; When one is unendingly bottle-fed all this badness it must all boil down to bad babies/infants/children. Perchance – to say, in the Sisters of Mercy’s eyes, Goldenbridge children should not have in the first place existed, just like the victims who died at the hands of the aforementioned fanatical religious misogynist lunatics. The sisters of our lowly status as well reminded us -just like the executioners – them. Alternatively, and conceivably so can there be female misogynists? On the other hand, maybe I am I thinking bad feelings, etc, etc. Gosh, OB, hope I am making sense. All this mal -imprinting leaves its dirty footprints behind
The “bad thinking~” the bad floggings; the bad actions; the bad education; the bad child caring; and the bad everything that the Sisters of Mercy of Goldenbridge meted out, as Sr. Helena O’Donoghue herself says, “The thinking behind the way the children were treated now appears very mistaken.” will for eternity leave its tell-tale signs. All the bad “mixed up” thinking which resulted in severe psychological, emotional, and mental damage will be handed down by “ mixed up” dysfunctional victims/survivors of Goldenbridge. The wheel will continue to turn and turn and turn. But some of them might perchance happen upon butterflies on wheels that will stop them in their tracks to contemplate so as surely to give them a glimmer of delicate hope.
But Marie t you have not gone on to destroy the lives of others(quite the reverse)
History and Literature are full of examples of domineering, psychopathic males. It’s the conceit of every generation to believe that they live in the most turbulent times; with this alibi they can excuse almost anything.
Richard, The wheel never turned sufficiently smoothly enough for me to have gotten the probability to construct ‘other’ lives – let alone ’destroy’ the lives of others. Fear of Life; fear of self; fear of others; Fear of closeness; fear of loving; fear of committal; fear of everything saw to all of that. Fear, like the misogynists who stole the precious lives mentioned heretofore also like a thief stole my emotional life.A vast amount of Goldenbridge contemporaries committed suicide because they could not handle their past demons. Some who married and who have children just managed to hang on, having handed down to their offspring the legacy of their past suffering. It will go on and on and on sadly to have to go on..
I don’t think we should sell our own civilisation short, though. Lydia Bennet may not have had many career choices, and the other Bennets are pretty unhappy about her running off with Wickham, but none of them ever considers murdering her as a solution to their problems.
It might not go on and on and on, Marie-Therese. It’s surprising what a lot can happen between one generation and the next. People can (sometimes) do a lot better by their children than they were done by. Don’t despair!
Gina Khan pointed out how much social services can help. Things can get better.
And you are helping other people, as Richard pointed out. You’re doing a lot.
True about Lydia – but there is that moment when Fanny Price thinks Maria would be better off dead. Dear Fanny, what a barrel of laughs she is.
What a desperately bad and sorry situation. Reading the comments above I see each of us, of every opinion, is revolted and wishes something could be done to undo it, or stop the next one.
Here is the real face of violence, felt personally. It shows why violence to prevent such horrors is morally justified.
Merlijn de Smit writes, ‘I think there’s going to be a lot of sad underachieving bastards such as Mohammed Riaz.’ Yes, and we see this phenomenon in Western society, too. I’m sure I’ve seen movies with this theme. But added to the chauvinism that often rages uncontrolled in some men because they can’t control their testosterone and all the emotions that triggers is the religious certainty Riaz no doubt had that women just don’t do that kind of thing. That’s what annoys me more than most things. We can’t foresee how any given male person is going to turn out unless we’ve had (psychs have had) opportunity to peer into his mind, and even then it’s no certainty. However, given the tenets of that religion, this type of attitude should be predictable – or at least its probability. Fortunately, most that happens is forced marriage and the odd beating. ‘Fortunately’? You know what I mean. I’m comparing. So is there not a case for an education programme that puts religion in its place? Yes, there is, but are we ever going to get one? Doubt it. Not while we continue to kowtow to religion in general and Islam in particular with its seventh-century attitudes and values.
See the latest Jesus-and-Mo for more on this ….
http://www.jesusandmo.net/
It seems that some version of this story pops up in the press at regular intervals: the unhappy man who decides his whole family has to die before he does. But I don’t think I have ever seen a woman do it. I guess it must have happened but it seems to be very rare. I wonder why.
Good one GT.
The bastards who need castrating are the ones who listened to him moan and said ‘You really need to put that b*tch in her place, brother…’ I expect he heard it more than once.
The Political Consequences of Child Abuse by Alice Miller
>”Many people motivated by what they thought to be the best of intentions complied with the advice given them by Schreber and other authors about how best to raise their children if they wanted to make them into model subjects of the German Reich. They did this without even remotely suspecting that they were exposing their children to a systematic form of torture with long–term effects. Germany sayings and catch–phrases like “Praise be to the things that make us tough” and “What doesn’t kill us will strengthen us,” still to be heard from educationists of the old school, probably originated in this period.”,
The parents – in hell, can also pave best intentions by the experts. The parents systematically emotionally tortured their offspring for generations because of all the bad advice and bad thinking of the day.
It smacks as well, of “oh, we did not know that – sexually, physically, emotionally and psychologically abusing children in institutions was wrong. Even to this day, the religious are in such deep denial, and I think that that is also massively precarious.
>”even non-institutional child care thinking had a harsh phase (though not as harsh as that) – the whole keep the baby on a schedule, ignore its crying approach. Parents were really told not to hug or cuddle babies ‘too much’ – an idea that just seems deranged, now”< Mothers/fathers on a grand scale never held or showed any emotions to their children it was virtually a crime to do such actions. AT THE OTHER END OF THE SPRECTRUM, I was recently talking to a very pleasant person who had just lost her mother. I was dazed and knocked for six when she told me that her mother had by no means ever given her a hug in her entire life. She has six siblings and it was the identical state of affairs. They had a Nanny/Housekeeper whom she considers more of a mother figure. Yeah, OB the idea does seem crazy!
Sisters of Mercy = 200 [Total Deprivation] Goldenbridge Past Inmates = 0
“Thinking matters. Bad thinking can do a lot of harm. Bad feeling is all mixed up with bad thinking, and bad actions are mixed up with both.”
OB, it precisely when I understand most clearly that I feel most acutely.
But at the same time . . .
. . . GT, I WANT that tee-shirt!
“Germany sayings and catch–phrases like “Praise be to the things that make us tough” and “What doesn’t kill us will strengthen us,” still to be heard from educationists of the old school, probably originated in this period.”
Not the second of them, which is Nietzsche. I’ve always been puzzled by that particular aphorism. It’s not literally true, obviously, so perhaps it is best understood as ‘what isn’t making me stronger, is killing me’. I often find myself sympathising with this idea when reading blogs (but not this one).
John M, thanks for that inversion of Nietzsche. I always thought that phrase smelled like rationalization.
I, too, am sickened.
>”Thinking matters. Bad thinking can do a lot of harm. Bad feeling is all mixed up with bad thinking, and bad actions are mixed up with both.”<
Just like weedkiller the whole bleeding concoction is fierce deadly.
Symbolically, yellow, black and grey. = a highly poisonous metallic element having three allotropic forms, yellow, black, and grey, of which the brittle, crystalline grey is the most common. Arsenic and its compounds are used in insecticides, weed killers, solid-state doping agents……..Somebody ought to give all those weedy, dopey misogynists out there who care little about the value of the fairer sex a lethal dose of the above medicine. Bad thinking can definitely create a lot of bad feeling when it is put into action!
The “Rose” petal strewn area was
surely a prognostication of ominous significance. “Pride and Prejudice” like a desperate rejected lover doubtlessly played its part in the guise of a misogynistic stonemason. What a fateful, portentous moment in civilization…it was sold very short indeed for Zilla Huma Usman, the Punjab provincial minister for social welfare and supporter of President Musharraf on “ASH” Wednesday 2006
“Mr Riaz was obviously mentally ill by the time he performed his despicable act” said Dave.
Wel, obviously. He was affected by a particularly virulent strain of delusion which we know as “religion”.
“Muslim fundamentalists fear, just as early Christians did, that Islam will lose its influence and power if it makes radical changes to its ‘Dark Ages’ cruel barbaric laws, and its culture of oppression of women and men. The pressure is on Islamic people to reform and change to a liberal democratic religious and political system. Christians and Muslims should eliminate discrimination against women and eradicate violence and terror for religious and political advantages.
Religionist fundamentalists have no right whatsoever to impose their belief system by using fear and violence, which is what, occurs in many regions. Allowing Muslim women complete physical and intellectual freedom and access to full education will advance Islam culturally, and scientifically, only then, will the Islam world begin to emerge from its self imposed ‘Dark Ages’ incarceration.” {Reality non Reality}.
The above articulates everything I would like to say regarding the cruel SELF IMPOSED “dark ages” of an organised religion – and especially that of one lonely, sad and sorrowful “DARK NIGHT” of six innocent souls. Namely, the mercenary shooting of Zilla Huma Usman and the burning to death of Caneze, Sayrah, Sophia, Alicia, and Hannah Riaz.
ALL BECAUSE OF FEAR OF LOSING ITS INFLUENCE ISLAM FUNDAMENTALISTS DECIDE TO ANNIHILATE AND OBLITERATE “WOMEM”! WHAT KIND OF GOD TELLS PEOPLE TO MURDER OTHER PEOPLE. HE SURELY IS NOT A GOD OF COMPASSION, OR LOVE, OR LIFE FOR THAT MATTER – IN MY ‘BOOK’. {WHATEVER ONE WOULD LIKE TO CALL IT}
“The struggle for freedom does not include the submission to a religion which, like the Muslim religion, wants to annihilate other religions.
Oriana Fallaci
Yeah, and it should not include shooting and burning its own {not chattels} women if they do not adhere to their “dark ages” self imposed rules.