Over on the Men’s Rights subreddit, the regulars are discussing the case of a Japanese man who set himself and his nine-year-old son on fire on a playground in an attempted murder-suicide; the man died, but his son, while severely burned, managed to survive.
The discussion amongst the Men’s Rightsers is actually less awful than one might expect, with only a few commenters making excuses for the man, or blaming his ex-wife. Many of the regulars are actually condemning his actions straightforwardly.
And then there’s TyphonBlue, the highly inventive female Men’s Rights activist who is one of A Voice for Men’s self-proclaimed “Honey Badgers.” She thinks the fact that the man tried to kill himself along with his son is a point in his favor and, more than that, a sign that men are better than women.
No, really. She blames “pedestalization” for it all.
![typhonblue -12 points 1 day ago (18|30) He didn't kill his son. Unlike mothers, fathers don't scrimp on the suicide part of the suicide-murder. permalink source parent save give gold hide child comments [–]osbe 11 points 22 hours ago (15|4) He didn't kill his son What the fuck are you trying to say? The son didn't die (yet) so this is not "as bad" as what women do? permalink source save parent give gold [–]typhonblue -1 points 8 hours ago (2|3) Little more time today. Am I puncturing your vision of women as the "more moral gender"? How about this, when you give a group of people an automatic "more moral than thou" card, they become worse human beings. The pedestal creates the monster.](https://i0.wp.com/www.wehuntedthemammoth.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/typhonmurdersuicide.png?resize=496%2C407&ssl=1)
You see, if you didn’t put women on a pedestal, they’d kill themselves along with their kids, and all would be well in the world. I guess? I really don’t see why this would be better.
Later in the thread, TB tries to explain her peculiar logic further:
I think it’s time to pull out the old Don Draper “what?!” gif again.
I will grant her one point: she’s correct that, while fathers and mothers are roughly equally likely to kill their children, men are much more likely to kill themselves as well. Why this would be a sign of moral superiority I don’t know.
I should also note that this doesn’t mean that the men and women kill children equally: while 57 percent of those who kill children under 5 are parents, the non-parents who kill children are mostly men.
In any case, “pedestalization” has pretty much nothing to do with it — unless you’re talking about the tendency of fathers who kill themseves and their children to overrate their own indispensablility.
So why do parents kill their children? Not surprisingly, mothers and fathers tend to have wildly different motivations. In Slate, Dahlia Lithwick summarizes what we know:
Researchers, building on the work of Phillip Resnick, have shown that women tend to kill their own offspring for one of several reasons: because the child is unwanted; out of mercy; as a result of some mental illness in the mother; in retaliation against a spouse; as a result of abuse.
It may be hard to understand how a mother can come to believe that killing her children would be an act of mercy, but that’s what postpartum psychosis can do to your brain.
The motivations for fathers tend to be rather different:
Most frequently … they kill because they feel they have lost control over their finances, or their families, or the relationship, or out of revenge for a perceived slight or infidelity. … more often than not, men kill their children to get back at a woman—to take away what she most cherishes.
As Charles Patrick Ewing, a University of Buffalo law professor and psychologist, told Elizabeth Fernandez of the San Francisco Chronicle
“These are narcissistic, self-centered guys who see themselves as the glue of the family. They feel they have to take their own life, but first, they have to kill the children. To them, it seems rational. They think they can’t manage and the family can’t manage without them.”
It’s also worth pointing out that when you look at murder-suicide in general — and not just when children are among the victims — it is almost exclusively (roughly 90%) a male crime, with the victims almost always female, generally the man’s wife, girlfriend, or ex. Not surprisingly, disproportionate number of those responsible for murder-suicides involving intimate partners were also domestic abusers. (As was, reportedly, the Japanese man who set himself and his son ablaze.)
The only heartening thing here is that TyphonBlue actually got downvoted in the Men’s Rights subreddit for spouting her toxic nonsense.
EDITED TO ADD, 12/30/13: The son, who had been in critical condition since the incident, has now died.
Nah, I think he actually thinks that “matricide” is what happens when a mother kills her child, because he is a dumbass.
Or it broke his wittle brain that infanticide isn’t a gendered term (which is usually what it is when mothers with postpartum depression/psychosis kill, which I maintain has to be wtf trolly is on about)
Yep… finding the word “infanticide” would have taken some serious page turning in the hypothetical dictionary he doesn’t know how to use.
Ab pater/matre infanticide btw. Sort of, infanticide isn’t straight Latin, but I figure translating the concept to literal Latin would just be extra confusing. And I’m not entirely sure that’ she right declension for father/mother, but there you go, infanticide by (the) father/mother.
So I don’t know if this has been addressed (I can never keep up with the comments here. I don’t even try anymore) but I’m kind of cringing at that list of reasons why mothers kill their children.
I’ve been up all night so I’ll try to be clear. Two things need to be noted:
1) There has been a disturbing trend of mothers killing/attempting to kill their disabled children and um… getting support (see: Issy Stapleton, Alex Spourdalakis).
2) Disabled people are way more at risk for violence from abled people rather than the other way around, and yet the myth of disabled people being violent and a danger is prevalent.
So I read the reasons and “mercy” sounds to me like it’s talking about people who think their disabled children are a burden and are probably better off dead. Why else would they consider it “merciful” to kill them? Children can usually be taken care of by someone else should the mother be unwilling/unable to do so.
Note that mental illness was mentioned as a separate reason to the “mercy” one. So I think it’s ableist (yes, I know you didn’t mean to be) on two fronts here for you to group them: one, it attributes more violence to mental illness which just feeds into the myth (which in turn contributes to the prejudices against disabled people that result in people thinking they should be locked up and/or killed for “safety”), and two, it overlooks the most likely ableist reason children are often killed by their mothers.
D.
Jesus H. Christ. Fucked post. You oversimplified pretty much everything.
I think you’re replying to one of the quotes in the OP? Other than that, you were perfectly clear, regardless of your need for sleep (or coffee!). And yes, so much yes. This mentally ill commenter is really sick and tired of the assumption that bipolar + PTSD = OMGS I’M GONNA SNAP!!
Yeah, I’m not, not even at my worst, a danger to anyone else. Otoh, well, PTSD. So yeah, other people being a danger to me? It’s a thing that has occurred.
I can’t see any good way to frame calling the murder of your child merciful though, not actual mercy, some twisted version of it maybe, but not actual mercy.
Shiraz — I think D. is responding to this quote in the OP — “Researchers, building on the work of Phillip Resnick, have shown that women tend to kill their own offspring for one of several reasons: because the child is unwanted; out of mercy; as a result of some mental illness in the mother; in retaliation against a spouse; as a result of abuse.”
And it really is a few layers of fucked up buried in a whomping pile of fucked up.
Fratricide is sibling murder. Your Latin sucks.
Also, you lack reading comprehension.
And STFU about hamsters, you jackass.
While jeanocide is the mass destruction of jeans, of course.
Jeanocide is what happens when you go into a store and there are no real jeans, just jeggings.
@Shiraz It’s a bit difficult to “oversimplify pretty much everything” when I wasn’t even attempting to address “pretty much everything”. I was talking about a specific thing, this quote:
Researchers, building on the work of Phillip Resnick, have shown that women tend to kill their own offspring for one of several reasons: because the child is unwanted; out of mercy; as a result of some mental illness in the mother; in retaliation against a spouse; as a result of abuse.
And this added commentary:
It may be hard to understand how a mother can come to believe that killing her children would be an act of mercy, but that’s what postpartum psychosis can do to your brain.
It’s one thing to be confused as to what I’m referring to but I don’t see how you could possbly mistake this for an oversimplification of “pretty much everything”.
@Argenti Aertherl:
Precisely. People so often blame mental illness for violence when we’re really not that dangerous.
http://www.who.int/disabilities/violence/en/
http://www.secasa.com.au/pages/research-statistics/violence-against-people-with-disabilities/
I can never figure out whether jeggings are just leggings made in a heavyish material, or leggings trying to look like blue denim.
Can be either! The ones that are more like super-stretchy jeans with pockets and stuff I don’t mind, but the leggings pretending to be jeans I don’t like.
I have a weird prejudice against pants with no back pockets. Remember when that was the thing, regular jeans with just a back yoke and no pockets? Looked terrible on everyone, imo.
I’m a zealous denimandrist myself. I’ve only worn jeans for men, so they make me feel dysphoric.
Have you tried women’s jeans? I know your Dad would throw a tantrum if he saw you in them, but trying them on in a store might be interesting.
I haven’t tried women’s jeans. I might try them on some day (probably not in a store because anxiety) but not until I’m more comfortable with my body.
What about that shop you mentioned that serves trans people, Ally? Do they deal in clothes like jeans, or only makeup and accessories and so on?
I don’t mind the jeggings that aren’t pretending to be blue denim, either. Those ones tend to be too thin a cloth to really get away with it. The heavier ones are just like really stretchy jeans, from what I’ve seen. I’ve seen women wearing some really nice patterned leggings, but stuffed if I can find any in bigger sizes; if you’re over a 12 (about US 8, I think) forget it, you’re stuck with the Henry Ford option. Come to that I’ve yet to see any really nice patterned leggings actually on sale in shops; I think people must be buying them online.
I don’t recall the no back pockets phase. When was that happening?
No back pockets – maybe early 2000s? It may have been a phenomenon limited to the US.
Agreed on the jeans-that-are-just-really-stretchy issue. For example, these are jeggings, and I think they look fine.
http://www.revolveclothing.com/DisplayProduct.jsp?product=PAIG-WJ919&row=5&column=3&c=Paige+Denim
Most of the really cool patterned leggings I see come from China, which unfortunately means that anyone over maybe a US 8 at the most is out of luck.
Though two things I dislike about even the nicer jeggings – they tend to flatten the butt, and they wrinkle at the back of the knee in a weird way.
Those are nice; I’d have thought they were just stretchy jeans, rather than jeggings.
It’s the same with clothing here; 99% of clothes in our stores (hey, why should MRAs be the only one to use that percentage?) seem to come from China. I do wish that if Australian companies are going to get their stuff made there, they’d at least order their whole ranges in sizes for the majority of Australian people, who are not small.
I’ve reached the point of wearing leggings with long tops, but I still don’t feel that comfortable doing it. I am certainly not going for the butt-hanging-out look, as if one’s walking around in tights and forgot to add a skirt. Even on nicely shaped backsides, I don’t think it’s a flattering look.
They’re a boutique, so they sell many kinds of clothes (especially dresses, gowns, etc.). I’m not sure if they have jeans, but it’ll be cool if they do. 😀
My issue with leggings + short top is that you can usually see people’s undies, and that’s more intimate than I want to get with most strangers (and more intimate than I want them to get with me, which is why even as a teenager I wore long sweaters over leggings).
Undies plus every last bump, lump and wobbly curve. They are not things I want to see in public!
Ally, fingers crossed that shop sells jeans, then! You like to wear casual comfy clothes, am I remembering right? Do you fancy skirts at all? I like long skirts over leggings in winter.
Also super comfy and feminine – sweater dresses. Those plus tights plus knee-high boots are one of my winter uniforms (especially if it’s raining, because boots are somewhat water-resistant but pants are not).