Thank you, Janice, for another clear-eyed and unbiased description of our society. What you describe is the clearest evidence one could find for my contention that, under feminist culture, we have only accountability and no compassion for men, and only compassion and no accountability for women. Both genders suffer in this scenario, women from infantilization, men from brutalization.
I've sometimes thought that a word better than 'infantilization' might be 'deification,' the turning of women into goddesses, but that doesn't capture it either. If women truly were infantilized generally, our situation in the west would be less dire. It would be recognized that women can't handle the responsibilities, moral and otherwise, that men are routinely required to bear, and we wouldn't encourage women to take them on, understanding that women tend to snap under pressure, make decisions on the basis of emotion rather than rational calculation, and refuse accountability for bad actions. But we don't recognize that generally--quite the opposite, we claim women are better than men at everything, except when they commit atrocious crimes.
It's a sort of Schroedinger's paradox, in which the woman is either strong and capable or weak and defenseless depending on what works to her immediate advantage. In the long run, of course, it is morally disastrous.
You're right, Janice, it's utterly paradoxical. Women want power without accountability, or rather, to take credit for what they do that looks good on them, but never to be blamed for failure, failure is always someone else's fault. It's a game that can't be played honestly, and so it is indeed morally disastrous.
My Japanese wife says that Japanese women flip from wanting a house cat to wanting a tiger when it suits them. Predominantly, the house cat roams the house and, if we see the "infantilisation" of women, we also see the "feminisation" of young Japanese men because that's what the young women feel safest with and easier to manipulate. The Sales industry is all for it, of course and the number of male cosmetics sold and worn make this old fella queasy. Cultivated incompetence is also a device I see in some women. It pays not to know and to take advantage of the male instinct to help a damsel in distress. I was inclined to think that a man who moves to help a woman leaning forward over a dead engine, butt in the air, was being presumptuous. No, he's responding to signal from a Syrene.
You're right, the word "infantilization" does not properly describe our treatment of women. "Deification" gets closer but is too exaggerated. I think the word "pedestalization", although rather clunky, captures it better. We put them on a pedestal, where different standards apply.
Let's run a thought experiment - if men were given a free pass to rape and murder with little to no consequence - what percentage of men do we think would choose to do so ?
Thanks David. I agree other than the idea that women "suffer" from infantilisation. They positively welcome infantilisation because that reinforces their unaccountabiliy. Men and children (and sometimes other women) are the ones who suffer as a result.
Jack Nicholson played the part of a novelist in "As Good as it Gets" (1997). An excited female fan asked him, “How do you write women so well?” He replied, “I think of a man. And I take away reason and accountability.”
Males suffer collectively in terms of the "toxic masculinity" label; they are always presumed to be responsible for deliberately using violence without mitigation. This is striking in the way mental state, intoxication, mental illness or past trauma or experience of abuse are discounted for males yet are invoked for females (even officially in the Coston report). Children (and men) also suffer because this blinds officialdom to perpetration by females and of course allows the repetition of crimes. I do not think feminism created this dynamic, it is after all pretty frightening to admit that those who give birth and nurture us at our most dependent; might be so dangerous. But feminism has accentuated this bias to be an axiomatic gulf which drives "institutionally sexist" policy and practice in criminal justice and journalism.
Exactly - a major reason for feminism's rapid adoption was that it was simply a catalyst for existing societal attitudes. Men have always been the more 'disposable' set.
Thanks, Mike. The fact that (some) women welcome infantilization doesn't mean that they don't suffer from it, just as the fact that many people welcome sugary drinks and fatty foods doesn't mean they don't suffer from consuming them. It is a tragedy for everyone, the women included, when adult women reject adult accountability.
Appreciate the focus on precise word meaning, analogy. I think you are right, suffer isn't the right word here, since its usual meaning is immediate conscious pain. I would say that they are harmed, damaged by their welcoming of infantilization, and that that will lead eventually to a stunted life with various kinds of suffering, of which none will likely be attributed to be the result of their own choices.
I think women definitely become worse human beings in this scenario, but I don't think they necessarily suffer like victims.
I think they suffer like white southerners suffered under Jim Crowe. Their moral Fibre is diminished, but I have a hard time finding any sympathy to give their way.
It is that way for the women because it enables the leaders of the movement to remain in charge of them.
It removes their need for independence and keeps them under control, which is pretty strange considering the feminist movement ideology preaches for the opposite.
It probably isn't really all that unusual, because just about all extremist ideology movements preach against a so called (or imagined) enemy, where they are the biggest offenders themselves and lead to even worse outcomes.
Feminism is, among other things, the imposition of a double standard: Men who commit crimes of violence are inherently evil; women who do so are victims of the evil patriarchy.
As you point out, women are only presented as victims with no agency of their own. Women are permanently infantine (not infantile), and their actions are not their responsibility. Men, on the other hand, are predators responsible for their own actions from the moment of birth.
It is insulting to grown women to deny they possess agency, and are mere automata. Feminism, ultimately, is an excuse for women to avoid any form of responsibility, and to be enshrouded in permanent victimhood. Meanwhile, actually innocent children die.
Postmodern Progressivism does precisely the same infantilizing thing to trans people and black people. White people (mainly men) have agency and are evil, but trans and blacks can commit the worst crimes and be portrayed as helpless victims with endless excuses made for them. In fact, just like society hides the crimes of women, the media refer to violent trans criminals as "women" and the hide the true scope of black crime.
Those invested in presenting women as victims discount agency, as you say, to uphold the truth about their victimization. In other areas, of course, they champion women's agency--a double standard inside a double standard. Thanks for the comment.
Janice, thanks for this excellent piece, the latest of so many!
You write, "... it is more accurate to say that women, unlike men, are more hesitant to engage in risk-filled violence. Female killers typically murder those who are too weak or incapacitated to fight back."
Women are more risk-averse than men so we would expect this to be true also in respect to violence. The most evil manifestation is of course when pregnant women have their unborn children killed. More than 73+ MILLION such cases worldwide every year, according to the WHO - 50+ years after the introduction of near-infallible contraception in so many countries.
Throughout recorded history men have never slaughtered human beings on this scale. It is a Holocaust - I have no qualms about using that word, and hope I don't offend any of your Jewish readers - with no end in sight, to the utter delight of feminists in particular.
As far as violence in the home is concerned, I must cite again The Partner Abuse State of Knowledge Project (PASK13) https://domesticviolenceresearch.org/ which was published in May 2013 in the journal Partner Abuse and is the most comprehensive review of domestic violence research ever carried out. This unparallelled three-year research project was conducted by 42 scholars at 20 universities and research centres. The headline finding of the PASK review was that:
“Men and women perpetrate physical and non-physical forms of abuse at comparable rates, most domestic violence is mutual, women are as controlling as men, domestic violence by men and women is correlated with essentially the same risk factors, and male and female perpetrators are motivated for similar reasons.”
A key numerical result from the PASK review was:
“Among large population samples, 57.9% of intimate-partner violence (IPV) reported was bi-directional, 42.1% unidirectional, 13.8% of the unidirectional violence was male-to-female, 28.3% was female-to-male.”
The last point is worth emphasising. In the 42.1% of (heterosexual) couples in which one partner is always the perpetrator and the other the victim, the woman is TWICE as likely to be the perpetrator and (therefore) half as likely to be the victim. The couples with the highest levels of abuse are lesbians.
One reads constantly in media articles that women constitute the "overwhelming majority" of the victims of domestic violence, partly in an effort to sustain the highly lucrative feminist DV industry. PASK13 shows conclusively that this is a lie, women don't even represent a tiny majority. In the 11 years since the report was published I have never seen it challenged by feminists, nor reported in the mainstream media.
Thank you, Mike. The domestic violence statistics are particularly helpful.
Do you know of any reliable studies of male perpetrators of domestic violence showing the connection--oft mentioned but nowhere fully explored, it seems--between men's violence as adults and their victimization as children *by their mothers*? I've found many references to male perpetrators' childhood abuse, but--conveniently and unsurprisingly--the sex of the parental abuser is almost always hidden.
I recently read a book about serial killers (the one mentioned above) that found that nearly all male serial killers were victims of childhood abuse; a much smaller percentage of female serial killers were.
Thanks Janice. Studies of convicted (male) rapists in prison in both the US and UK have shown the majority of them were abused as children by one or more women, sometimes their own mothers. One of my blog posts, from 2017, references the American study by Petrovich and Templer (1984):
"The most evil manifestation is of course when pregnant women have their unborn children killed."
In case you hadn't noticed this is not a piece on abortion. It's a piece about infanticide and filicide, and the disparity in treatment of male and female killers. It's an important discussion, which should not be derailed or hijacked by abortion issues.
Thanks Orr, but I shall post comments as I see fit. My comments on this piece have been liked by a number of people, including my comments on domestic violence. One of the reasons Janice's comments streams are enjoyed by so many people is that they cover issues related in some way(s) to the subject(s) of her pieces. In my experience this is immensely valuable in helping people 'join the dots'.
I too appreciate your comments on domestic violence. It's a closely related topic, indeed many infanticides and filicides occur in the context of domestic violence. Abortion is not a related topic. It is utterly irrelevant to infanticide and filicide. There are no dots to be joined. I grew up with a violent abusive mother who tried to drown me and my brother when we were little. I imagine there are others in this forum with similar stories. Our stories have nothing to do with abortion. Likewise the victims mentioned in Janice's piece. When you equate or conflate infanticide and filicide with abortion you discount those victims. For one thing, abortion is legal.
The killing of an unborn child one day (say) before birth is an unrelated action to killing him / her one day afterwards? That doesn't make sense to me.
As I'm sure you're aware, abortions are only permitted up to a certain date, eg. 20 weeks of pregnancy, prior to which the foetus is considered unviable.
Ah yes, the viability question. So no comparison should be made between killing an unborn child x weeks before natural term, and killing the child x weeks after that date?
I think we're done here, but I'd like to end with a link to a hilarious video (1:20) on the Comedy Channel of my site Laughing at Feminists http://laughingatfeminists.com. It was made by a young American woman, titled, "The Magical Birth Canal". Enjoy:
Abortion IS indeed a related topic. Because it shows wo-MEN'S solipsistic nature and also wo-MEN'S view of children as their property. International prosecutor John B Davis created a graph that shows wo_MEN to be the perpetrators of TWICE as many child murders as MEN, NOT counting abortion! That 73 MILLION abortions happen worldwide, is indeed connected to wo-MEN'S solipsistic nature and their view of children as THEIR property. Mike you are so right. If you connect the dots, you WILL see abortion as EVIDENCE of wo-MEN'S solipsistic nature and their view of children as their property. There are videos of wo-MEN throwing ABORTION PARTIES (dancing in celebration) the night before an impending abortion! So, while I support a MAN'S right to sign off on paternity, abortion is indeed infanticide and connected to wo-MEN KILLERS nature.
So you're saying abortion is related to infanticide/filicide because they're all manifestations of women's solipsistic nature. The problem with that reasoning is that while most women support abortion, and millions actually have abortions, ZERO women support infanticide/filicide, and the number of cases is infinitesimal. So there's obviously no connection or correlation. Female child killers, like male child killers, are not normal people. When you tar all women with the same brush, you're doing exactly what feminists do to men.
You mean like when Andrea Yates drowned FIVE children in the bathtub and literally got the support of half the wo-MEN in the country calling up news stations demanding she not be sent to prison? NOPE. In fact, MOST wo-MEN are sympathetic to fe-MALE child killers, which is why they get the Post Partum defense, the PMS defense, the battered wo-MAN'S defense, Munchausen syndrome defense, did you know the wo-MAN in California who stabbed her boyfriend 108 times GOT OFF because of weed? And Loreena Bobbit who mutilated a sleeping MAN literally got the support of half the wo-MEN in the country? How about Amanda Knox posing with her? When Andrea Yates drowned FIVE children in the bathtub, half the wo-MEN in the country called up news stations and demanded she not be sent to prison. MOST blamed her husband, & religion again. Even Kimberly Gufoil was among those who blamed the husband. Go on ANY you tube video where a wo-MAN committed a heinous child murder and MOST of the wo-MEN feel sorry for the wo_MAN killer and blame her husband/religion/ >Look up Deana Sclosher who cut the babies arms off with a kitchen knife, virtually ALL the wo-MEN on the page feel sympathy for HER and blame her husband & religion.
God bless you, Mike! You speak with the elegance of an English nobleman. Just a note: I worked with a lesbian who over the course of 5 years, three wives & several girlfriends, would come to work with black eyes bruises and contusions all the time.
Thanks Joseph! I'll take that as a compliment despite having only an English accent - from living in this wonderful country almost my whole life - and no English blood. Scottish on my father's side, French-Canadian on my mother's.
Many years ago I had an email saying something like, "Half Scottish and half French-Canadian? Wow, no wonder you're so confrontational!!!" haha! We have a general election in two days' time, which is confidently expected to result in a HUGE Labour majority in the House of Commons. Just one of a number of reasons I'm planning to emigrate mid-August.
Women are highly likely to kill their infants in far, far higher numbers than men do, because even before the child is born, they regard them as their property to do with as they please, much as a little girl regards a doll.
Indeed they're taught to do so: secular society assures women they are fully entitled to kill their children in utero, as a matter of right. Women have the power to confer personhood on an unborn child: depending on whether the mother wants the child or not, it is either "my baby" or "the foetus".
Women today are conditioned to believe that if they decide they don't really want the child they are carrying, they are perfectly justified in dismembering it. The child is theirs alone, to do with as they wish: why wouldn't they continue to believe this once the child is born? Even in conservative circles, women are celebrated as "givers of life" for bearing children, whereas men are never said to give life to children. Can not she who gives also take away?
In short, why wouldn't women kill their children far more often than men do?
It's exactly what one would expect when a society gives women the power to play God.
"Women today are conditioned to believe that if they decide they don't really want the child they are carrying, they are perfectly justified in dismembering it." Quite so and as you say it should not surprise if the same attitudes continue
This was a hard read, but something our society needs to look at with clear eyes.
I grew up with a mother who has BPD and while she was rarely physically abusive, the verbal and emotional abuse were almost constant. She never apologized, never thought she was wrong, and had no problem saying terrible things to her children and giving them the silent treatment for days after an infraction on our part, of say, forgetting the umbrella at school or walking home from a friend's house when she was supposed to pick us up but forgot (our walking home made her look bad you see). My parents were married until my early 20s and my father has his own issues but he wasn't volatile, supported us financially and in our interests, and was present as much as a passive alcoholic can be. He says sorry, and follows with what he says he will do. He's a welder by trade and a "man's man."
All that to say, I am grateful for my childhood because I had to grapple with the "always nurturing, always loving" Mother Myth from a young age. I've never assumed women are better than men and was spared by the male-hating pathos of my older Millennial generation and many of my friends. In fact, I've appreciated men BECAUSE their conflict is usually obvious and in the open, and not hidden and manipulative like female conflict tends to be. While this has led to me needing to learn to love my feminine nature (as I was naturally suspicious of it), it has saved me from a lot of toxic women in friendships and my family. These days all it takes is a nudge from my intuition and I stay away from those women, no guilt at all!
Now how to teach my daughters (and son!) to recognize toxic femininity without being an agent of trauma?...
Getting through to your children is the difficult part, given how ingrained these attitudes are.
Myself and my 3 sisters were fortunate enough to recognise the emotional abuse from our mother at a young enough age to declare our intent then and there to terminate that aspect of our genetic inheritance.
Although my own daughters are mostly well-balanced, they've still taken on board certain feminist themes from the education system - and from their own mother I regret to say.
Thanks Professor Fiamengo for bringing your lucid thinking and writing to this issue.
Just this week in New Zealand (please excuse the British spelling in this comment), Lauren Dickason was sentenced for murdering her three beautiful daughters, one aged 6 years and twins aged almost 3 years. She smothered them to death despite the oldest daughter asking her why she was doing it to the younger twins and reminding her she loved her mother. Her lawyers tried unsuccessfully to have the murders ruled as 'Infanticide', one of many sexist laws in New Zealand favouring women that provides a maximum punishment tariff of 3 years imprisonment for women who murder children up to 10 years old if:
'...her mind was disturbed, by reason of her not having fully recovered from the effect of giving birth to that or any other child, or by reason of the effect of lactation, or by reason of any disorder consequent upon childbirth or lactation...' (s178, Crimes Act 1961)
This is a crime category based on archaic ideas and essentially blaming hormones for women's violence. Men of course are not allowed to refer to testosterone or evolutionary factors when they have been violent. Any man who commits a homicide like that of a woman's 'infanticide' is eligible only for a murder conviction and relevant punishment.
Her lawyers also tried to run an insanity defence based on her history of diagnosed Depression and the fact she had suffered Post-Natal Depression for a time. However, Depression does not meet the high bar for an insanity defence because it doesn't render the mind incapable of recognising the consequences and moral wrong of one's actions. So she was convicted of three murders.
In New Zealand murder is nearly always sentenced by life imprisonment which legally requires a period before parole eligibility of 10 or more years. In the absence of a successful insanity defence, any man who killed 3 people would be sentenced to 3 concurrent life sentences and would likely have a minimum non-parole period considerably in excess of 10 years.
What was Dickason's sentence? A finite sentence of 18 years with no minimum period before parole eligibility, to be served initially under the Mental Health Act in a psychiatric facility until she is deemed well enough for prison. Therefore she will likely be free in 6 years. Her sentence was essentially a 'helping' sentence and she is likely to serve much of it in the relative comfort of a psychiatric hospital from which, presumably, she can be granted home leave when she is deemed 'well' enough (but she probably won't be deemed well enough to go to prison until close to her first parole date).
All the features in cases of female murderers described in this article were on display regarding Dickason. Most media coverage focused mainly on her Depression and circumstances at the time involving her move to New Zealand from South Africa in the context of COVID19 isolation (like quarantine) requirements and general inconvenience. Few articles described details of the murders apart from "smothered them" or gave readers a sense of the horrible reality of her breach of the children's trust and helplessness. A rare article informed that she tried to choke the children with cable ties that she had deliberately obtained from the garage but when that didn't kill them she smothered them with blankets. She used her much greater adult size and strength to subject others to fatal violence, but it's only when men do that it's considered significant enough to mention. One article reported Dickason's responses at police interview following the murders; this showed that primarily she was angry towards the children for being boisterous and somewhat disobedient. Another factor was that her husband, the children's father, had gone out to dinner with work colleagues and had left her to look after the children; one can't help speculate that the murders were at least in part motivated by a wish to punish him. At police interview she was lucid and fully aware of her deliberate planning and actions in committing the murders. She had been thinking about murdering them for some time. Imagine if a father murdered out of anger at young children's boisterous behaviour! He would be portrayed in media as an example of toxic masculinity, patriarchy and a male need for power and control that if thwarted will result in terror. Not to mention his unforgivable irresponsibility in not seeking help during a period of contemplating the murders during a period of weeks before committing them, in line with men's alleged failure to communicate.
Plenty of media coverage was provided for her family-of-origin's blaming of others and the state for not recognising the extent of her Depression, and so forth. "The greatest victim in this situation may be Lauren herself" was a heading in one news article about her sentencing and typical of the news coverage generally. Her lawyers' comments were always reported widely, such as that she "...would never recover from the loss her actions caused." Oh yeah, poor lady. (Of course she's likely to suffer in living with her actions and loss but the same applies to any man who harmed loved ones, yet highlighting his suffering would be seen as excusing his violence.) The sentencing judge referred to "her severe mental illness" without which the murders would not have occurred. So although her mental illness was not severely impairing of her mind as occurs with psychotic disorders, she was treated de facto as legally insane.
How many men who murder their children or loved ones do you suppose were not somewhat insane at the time? Perhaps a few psychopaths. But most are overwhelmed by some emotion and the circumstances. However, no man convicted here of murdering his or anyone else's children has ever or would ever receive any sentence other than life imprisonment.
Conspicuously absent has been any objections to her light sentence. When a man convicted of violence is shown mercy due to extenuating circumstances, feminists and others are always loudly up in arms demanding the State appeal the sentence as too lenient, and the State will often comply.
Thanks EL, very interesting. But I don't understand this:
"What was Dickason's sentence? A finite sentence of 18 years with no minimum period before parole eligibility, to be served initially under the Mental Health Act in a psychiatric facility until she is deemed well enough for prison. Therefore she will likely be free in 6 years."
How does the third sentence follow on from the second? Thanks.
Sorry, should have included that in NZ prisoners are eligible for parole at one third of their sentence. They are not necessarily released at their first Parole Board consideration but women more often are and Dickason probably will be, in continuation of the special female treatment in our justice system.
Not only words fail, I think it's actually beyond human comprehension. Just thinking about it makes me feel queasy. What is it saying about the value of a child's life?
Indeed. I know you don't think the subject of abortion should be raised in these comments, but which is the greater moral wrong? A very lenient sentence for a mother who's killed her young children, or state support for women to have their unborn children killed?
I understand the grave moral problem that abortion presents, and the staggering scale of the problem, I just see it as a different issue from infanticide/filicide, with a different set of considerations. It's really not possible to make any moral comparison, partly because it becomes Stalin's "one death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic."
Excellent piece Janis. You've probably never heard of Angela Surtees. Three weeks before the Rowan Baxter incident she doused her 36 year old husband with petrol and set him alight in his armchair, while their children watched TV. At her trial in Melbourne: "The court heard Surtees had tried to convince police, doctors and her husband's family that he had poured the fuel on himself during a wild physical attack on her. They were shocking lies called out by Justice Tinney, who refused to accept that Surtees held any remorse for what she had done." Nevertheless she somehow got off with manslaughter and will serve only 7 years for his death. It's just another case but the timing makes it noteworthy. Every Australian knows the name Hannah Clarke but precious few will have heard of Angela Surtees.
The elephants in the room here are the abusive mothers' impact on children during their formative years. While this example is one of the more egregious and blatant ones, I hate to think how those children will grow up.
Yes, this is the elephant. The book on serial killers that I read as part of my research here mentioned, but did not develop, that nearly all male serial killers were abused as children (the same is not true of female serial killers, interestingly enough, though some of them were). We need to know a lot more about abuse by mothers.
Funny you mention the Surtees case. As I was reading the article it came to mind. I live close to where this happened so I’m one Australian that’s knows it!
Her ex-husband killed their son but somehow she's the victim.
I heard she had money and was sending him pictures of their son on extravagant holidays when he was struggling to survive.
His mental health deteriorated and he murdered his son.
In one of the links above she's mentioned.
She is in my opinion, a ghoul.
"Prominent anti-violence campaigner Rosie Batty said she was "deeply concerned" by any comments made in defence of Mr Baxter.
"I am also deeply concerned by some commentary from people in authority and the media that have presented the murderer as a loving father," she added.
"A loving parent never considers murder as ever being an option or a solution. No-one is 'driven' to murder, no matter the circumstances or situation that they find themselves in.""
The statistics on the frequency with which women kill their children are chilling. Thank you, Dr. Fiamengo, for providing this information and perspective that the media insist on obfuscating. It sickens me deeply that the mainstream media have been so complicit in furthering a feminist agenda that contravenes their duty to accurately report events. I yearn for the day where there will be some legislative action to hold the media accountable for their deplorable sexist bigotry. They should be required to post a warning to readers that their news coverage has been proven to misrepresent facts in favor of sexist caricatures. I occasionally listen to NPR, which boasts that it has one of the most enlightened approaches to the news of any news outlet in the United States, to see if it has evolved to represent gender without sexist, feminist stereotypes. I have as of yet not been able to listen to an hour of reporting without hearing the kind of disgusting, twisted representations of men that Dr. Fiamengo describes above. I regularly contact them during their pledge drives to tell them that I will send them a $10,000 check if they can go a week without broadcasting news containing bigoted feminist propaganda. Needless to say, that money is safe in my account.
Public broadcasters don't need donations because they've already stolen it out of your bank account via complicit governments in the form of 'taxation'.
Excellent article, as always Janice. If anyone is interested in reading more about the appalling job our media and institutions did on Rowan Baxter, read my discussion of the coroner's hearing which ignored all the evidence about how apprehended violence orders were used deny him contact with his children. He was simply labelled as "evil" and a monster. https://bettinaarndt.substack.com/p/outcast-powderkeg-men
Bettina, thank you! I was so absorbed in this subject that I didn't think to look at what YOU had to say about the Baxter murders. Of course you addressed it with your usual thoroughness and courage. Thank you a million times.
One day, I hope, someone can do a documentary about the Baxter case using the information you uncovered and with thorough interviews of everyone who knew what Baxter went through at the hands of his ex-wife's family.
way back in the 1960s "feminist" researchers started to notice the "benign sexism" which meant lighter sentences, reluctance to prosecute and excusing criminality by reference to "illness". By my dabbling in feminism in the 1970s the notions of "benign sexism" and "denying agency" seemed well established in the language of feminism. To the extent some even argued that this excusing females was a bad thing for equality and "medicating" women rather than taking them as responsible for their actions. For two decades I was too busy building a career to raise a family and when I started again paying attention to feminism i found this all but expunged and everything turned to achieving "benign sexism" that excuses any and all offending by females. Feminism's ascendancy means that there is no research done on sociological issues, yet often, as in this case, the conclusions and arguments are at odds with the actual data presented. The hypocrisy of feminism is massive. For they conceal both their own theory and often findings, when they absolutely must know they are telling deliberate lies.
The deepest hypocrisy in this is the use of the gynocentric veneration of mothers and motherhood to further their chauvinism (female) while simultaneously denigrating women who seek motherhood!
Our society has increasingly given its social and legal imprimatur to women to unilaterally kill children still inside of them. As such, we should not then be shocked that they are routinely let off the hook for killing children after the seemingly magical status-conferring threshold of birth.
As to how deeply and subtly and pernicious is the denial of woman as human capable of hurting, I came to the film Cracked Up. About the life of a famous American comic who suffered from serious mental health problems. See below. Note what the review donesnt say: the diagnosis was he was a survivor of maternal narcissistic abuse. His mother had crippled him.
It was odd that the review-promo didn't say the mother did it. And when I looked at 8 other mainstream reviews not one mentioned the word mother as the cause.
In Cracked Up we witness the impact that childhood trauma can have over a lifetime through the incredible story of award-winning actor, comedian, master impressionist and Saturday Night Live star, Darrell Hammond. Darrell is famous for his impressions of Bill Clinton, Donald Trump, Sean Connery and more, but few know his true story and the suffering he endured. Darrell performed brilliantly on live TV, but behind the scenes he struggled with debilitating flashbacks, self injury, alcohol and drugs and once was taken out of SNL in a straight jacket. Darrell was misdiagnosed for 40 years with different mental illnesses and put on a long list of medications. After a suicide attempt, Darrell finally met the doctor who gave him the proper diagnosis of “childhood trauma”.
Courageously transparent, Darrell takes us through his past and present day experiences with incredible resilience, vulnerability, wisdom and humor."
I came to this from a discussion about the evil nature of narcissism and the denial of that evil and the denial of the prevalence of narcissism. You may find the talk interesting.
The Collective Denial of Evil and its Impact on Psychiatric Treatment - Sheri Heller
Just a few days ago: another woman for whom violence was clearly not a last resort:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i3vXOxpt7rM
Thank you, Janice, for another clear-eyed and unbiased description of our society. What you describe is the clearest evidence one could find for my contention that, under feminist culture, we have only accountability and no compassion for men, and only compassion and no accountability for women. Both genders suffer in this scenario, women from infantilization, men from brutalization.
Yes, well said!
I've sometimes thought that a word better than 'infantilization' might be 'deification,' the turning of women into goddesses, but that doesn't capture it either. If women truly were infantilized generally, our situation in the west would be less dire. It would be recognized that women can't handle the responsibilities, moral and otherwise, that men are routinely required to bear, and we wouldn't encourage women to take them on, understanding that women tend to snap under pressure, make decisions on the basis of emotion rather than rational calculation, and refuse accountability for bad actions. But we don't recognize that generally--quite the opposite, we claim women are better than men at everything, except when they commit atrocious crimes.
It's a sort of Schroedinger's paradox, in which the woman is either strong and capable or weak and defenseless depending on what works to her immediate advantage. In the long run, of course, it is morally disastrous.
You're right, Janice, it's utterly paradoxical. Women want power without accountability, or rather, to take credit for what they do that looks good on them, but never to be blamed for failure, failure is always someone else's fault. It's a game that can't be played honestly, and so it is indeed morally disastrous.
My Japanese wife says that Japanese women flip from wanting a house cat to wanting a tiger when it suits them. Predominantly, the house cat roams the house and, if we see the "infantilisation" of women, we also see the "feminisation" of young Japanese men because that's what the young women feel safest with and easier to manipulate. The Sales industry is all for it, of course and the number of male cosmetics sold and worn make this old fella queasy. Cultivated incompetence is also a device I see in some women. It pays not to know and to take advantage of the male instinct to help a damsel in distress. I was inclined to think that a man who moves to help a woman leaning forward over a dead engine, butt in the air, was being presumptuous. No, he's responding to signal from a Syrene.
You're right, the word "infantilization" does not properly describe our treatment of women. "Deification" gets closer but is too exaggerated. I think the word "pedestalization", although rather clunky, captures it better. We put them on a pedestal, where different standards apply.
Socially and culturally disastrous as well.
Let's run a thought experiment - if men were given a free pass to rape and murder with little to no consequence - what percentage of men do we think would choose to do so ?
Thanks David. I agree other than the idea that women "suffer" from infantilisation. They positively welcome infantilisation because that reinforces their unaccountabiliy. Men and children (and sometimes other women) are the ones who suffer as a result.
Jack Nicholson played the part of a novelist in "As Good as it Gets" (1997). An excited female fan asked him, “How do you write women so well?” He replied, “I think of a man. And I take away reason and accountability.”
Males suffer collectively in terms of the "toxic masculinity" label; they are always presumed to be responsible for deliberately using violence without mitigation. This is striking in the way mental state, intoxication, mental illness or past trauma or experience of abuse are discounted for males yet are invoked for females (even officially in the Coston report). Children (and men) also suffer because this blinds officialdom to perpetration by females and of course allows the repetition of crimes. I do not think feminism created this dynamic, it is after all pretty frightening to admit that those who give birth and nurture us at our most dependent; might be so dangerous. But feminism has accentuated this bias to be an axiomatic gulf which drives "institutionally sexist" policy and practice in criminal justice and journalism.
Exactly - a major reason for feminism's rapid adoption was that it was simply a catalyst for existing societal attitudes. Men have always been the more 'disposable' set.
Thanks, Mike. The fact that (some) women welcome infantilization doesn't mean that they don't suffer from it, just as the fact that many people welcome sugary drinks and fatty foods doesn't mean they don't suffer from consuming them. It is a tragedy for everyone, the women included, when adult women reject adult accountability.
Have to agree with Mike here, David. The word "suffer" is out of place. Perhaps it is to their detriment, but "suffer" is insulting to their victims.
Appreciate the focus on precise word meaning, analogy. I think you are right, suffer isn't the right word here, since its usual meaning is immediate conscious pain. I would say that they are harmed, damaged by their welcoming of infantilization, and that that will lead eventually to a stunted life with various kinds of suffering, of which none will likely be attributed to be the result of their own choices.
Certainly women's moral growth is stunted when they are held to such a low standard.
Fatty foods are good, as long as the fats are saturated animal fats, olive oil or coconut oil.
I think women definitely become worse human beings in this scenario, but I don't think they necessarily suffer like victims.
I think they suffer like white southerners suffered under Jim Crowe. Their moral Fibre is diminished, but I have a hard time finding any sympathy to give their way.
It is that way for the women because it enables the leaders of the movement to remain in charge of them.
It removes their need for independence and keeps them under control, which is pretty strange considering the feminist movement ideology preaches for the opposite.
It probably isn't really all that unusual, because just about all extremist ideology movements preach against a so called (or imagined) enemy, where they are the biggest offenders themselves and lead to even worse outcomes.
Orwell explained it all in 1984 and Animal Farm, didn't he?
Feminism is, among other things, the imposition of a double standard: Men who commit crimes of violence are inherently evil; women who do so are victims of the evil patriarchy.
As you point out, women are only presented as victims with no agency of their own. Women are permanently infantine (not infantile), and their actions are not their responsibility. Men, on the other hand, are predators responsible for their own actions from the moment of birth.
It is insulting to grown women to deny they possess agency, and are mere automata. Feminism, ultimately, is an excuse for women to avoid any form of responsibility, and to be enshrouded in permanent victimhood. Meanwhile, actually innocent children die.
Postmodern Progressivism does precisely the same infantilizing thing to trans people and black people. White people (mainly men) have agency and are evil, but trans and blacks can commit the worst crimes and be portrayed as helpless victims with endless excuses made for them. In fact, just like society hides the crimes of women, the media refer to violent trans criminals as "women" and the hide the true scope of black crime.
Those invested in presenting women as victims discount agency, as you say, to uphold the truth about their victimization. In other areas, of course, they champion women's agency--a double standard inside a double standard. Thanks for the comment.
Janice, thanks for this excellent piece, the latest of so many!
You write, "... it is more accurate to say that women, unlike men, are more hesitant to engage in risk-filled violence. Female killers typically murder those who are too weak or incapacitated to fight back."
Women are more risk-averse than men so we would expect this to be true also in respect to violence. The most evil manifestation is of course when pregnant women have their unborn children killed. More than 73+ MILLION such cases worldwide every year, according to the WHO - 50+ years after the introduction of near-infallible contraception in so many countries.
Throughout recorded history men have never slaughtered human beings on this scale. It is a Holocaust - I have no qualms about using that word, and hope I don't offend any of your Jewish readers - with no end in sight, to the utter delight of feminists in particular.
As far as violence in the home is concerned, I must cite again The Partner Abuse State of Knowledge Project (PASK13) https://domesticviolenceresearch.org/ which was published in May 2013 in the journal Partner Abuse and is the most comprehensive review of domestic violence research ever carried out. This unparallelled three-year research project was conducted by 42 scholars at 20 universities and research centres. The headline finding of the PASK review was that:
“Men and women perpetrate physical and non-physical forms of abuse at comparable rates, most domestic violence is mutual, women are as controlling as men, domestic violence by men and women is correlated with essentially the same risk factors, and male and female perpetrators are motivated for similar reasons.”
A key numerical result from the PASK review was:
“Among large population samples, 57.9% of intimate-partner violence (IPV) reported was bi-directional, 42.1% unidirectional, 13.8% of the unidirectional violence was male-to-female, 28.3% was female-to-male.”
The last point is worth emphasising. In the 42.1% of (heterosexual) couples in which one partner is always the perpetrator and the other the victim, the woman is TWICE as likely to be the perpetrator and (therefore) half as likely to be the victim. The couples with the highest levels of abuse are lesbians.
One reads constantly in media articles that women constitute the "overwhelming majority" of the victims of domestic violence, partly in an effort to sustain the highly lucrative feminist DV industry. PASK13 shows conclusively that this is a lie, women don't even represent a tiny majority. In the 11 years since the report was published I have never seen it challenged by feminists, nor reported in the mainstream media.
Mike Buchanan
JUSTICE FOR MEN & BOYS
http://j4mb.org.uk
Thank you, Mike. The domestic violence statistics are particularly helpful.
Do you know of any reliable studies of male perpetrators of domestic violence showing the connection--oft mentioned but nowhere fully explored, it seems--between men's violence as adults and their victimization as children *by their mothers*? I've found many references to male perpetrators' childhood abuse, but--conveniently and unsurprisingly--the sex of the parental abuser is almost always hidden.
I recently read a book about serial killers (the one mentioned above) that found that nearly all male serial killers were victims of childhood abuse; a much smaller percentage of female serial killers were.
Thanks Janice. Studies of convicted (male) rapists in prison in both the US and UK have shown the majority of them were abused as children by one or more women, sometimes their own mothers. One of my blog posts, from 2017, references the American study by Petrovich and Templer (1984):
https://j4mb.org.uk/2017/02/08/unspoken-abuse-mothers-who-rape-their-sons/
Their paper:
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.2466/pr0.1984.54.3.810
Thank you greatly! That is wonderful to have.
"The most evil manifestation is of course when pregnant women have their unborn children killed."
In case you hadn't noticed this is not a piece on abortion. It's a piece about infanticide and filicide, and the disparity in treatment of male and female killers. It's an important discussion, which should not be derailed or hijacked by abortion issues.
Thanks Orr, but I shall post comments as I see fit. My comments on this piece have been liked by a number of people, including my comments on domestic violence. One of the reasons Janice's comments streams are enjoyed by so many people is that they cover issues related in some way(s) to the subject(s) of her pieces. In my experience this is immensely valuable in helping people 'join the dots'.
EPIC! TRUTH! LEGEND! JAB! CROSS! HOOK!
I too appreciate your comments on domestic violence. It's a closely related topic, indeed many infanticides and filicides occur in the context of domestic violence. Abortion is not a related topic. It is utterly irrelevant to infanticide and filicide. There are no dots to be joined. I grew up with a violent abusive mother who tried to drown me and my brother when we were little. I imagine there are others in this forum with similar stories. Our stories have nothing to do with abortion. Likewise the victims mentioned in Janice's piece. When you equate or conflate infanticide and filicide with abortion you discount those victims. For one thing, abortion is legal.
The killing of an unborn child one day (say) before birth is an unrelated action to killing him / her one day afterwards? That doesn't make sense to me.
As I'm sure you're aware, abortions are only permitted up to a certain date, eg. 20 weeks of pregnancy, prior to which the foetus is considered unviable.
Ah yes, the viability question. So no comparison should be made between killing an unborn child x weeks before natural term, and killing the child x weeks after that date?
I think we're done here, but I'd like to end with a link to a hilarious video (1:20) on the Comedy Channel of my site Laughing at Feminists http://laughingatfeminists.com. It was made by a young American woman, titled, "The Magical Birth Canal". Enjoy:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CNgwsT295G8&list=PL9TSgIKqzJEP1qC4AoC_0rvVsTSqNEW81&index=25
Abortion IS indeed a related topic. Because it shows wo-MEN'S solipsistic nature and also wo-MEN'S view of children as their property. International prosecutor John B Davis created a graph that shows wo_MEN to be the perpetrators of TWICE as many child murders as MEN, NOT counting abortion! That 73 MILLION abortions happen worldwide, is indeed connected to wo-MEN'S solipsistic nature and their view of children as THEIR property. Mike you are so right. If you connect the dots, you WILL see abortion as EVIDENCE of wo-MEN'S solipsistic nature and their view of children as their property. There are videos of wo-MEN throwing ABORTION PARTIES (dancing in celebration) the night before an impending abortion! So, while I support a MAN'S right to sign off on paternity, abortion is indeed infanticide and connected to wo-MEN KILLERS nature.
So you're saying abortion is related to infanticide/filicide because they're all manifestations of women's solipsistic nature. The problem with that reasoning is that while most women support abortion, and millions actually have abortions, ZERO women support infanticide/filicide, and the number of cases is infinitesimal. So there's obviously no connection or correlation. Female child killers, like male child killers, are not normal people. When you tar all women with the same brush, you're doing exactly what feminists do to men.
You mean like when Andrea Yates drowned FIVE children in the bathtub and literally got the support of half the wo-MEN in the country calling up news stations demanding she not be sent to prison? NOPE. In fact, MOST wo-MEN are sympathetic to fe-MALE child killers, which is why they get the Post Partum defense, the PMS defense, the battered wo-MAN'S defense, Munchausen syndrome defense, did you know the wo-MAN in California who stabbed her boyfriend 108 times GOT OFF because of weed? And Loreena Bobbit who mutilated a sleeping MAN literally got the support of half the wo-MEN in the country? How about Amanda Knox posing with her? When Andrea Yates drowned FIVE children in the bathtub, half the wo-MEN in the country called up news stations and demanded she not be sent to prison. MOST blamed her husband, & religion again. Even Kimberly Gufoil was among those who blamed the husband. Go on ANY you tube video where a wo-MAN committed a heinous child murder and MOST of the wo-MEN feel sorry for the wo_MAN killer and blame her husband/religion/ >Look up Deana Sclosher who cut the babies arms off with a kitchen knife, virtually ALL the wo-MEN on the page feel sympathy for HER and blame her husband & religion.
God bless you, Mike! You speak with the elegance of an English nobleman. Just a note: I worked with a lesbian who over the course of 5 years, three wives & several girlfriends, would come to work with black eyes bruises and contusions all the time.
Thanks Joseph! I'll take that as a compliment despite having only an English accent - from living in this wonderful country almost my whole life - and no English blood. Scottish on my father's side, French-Canadian on my mother's.
Many years ago I had an email saying something like, "Half Scottish and half French-Canadian? Wow, no wonder you're so confrontational!!!" haha! We have a general election in two days' time, which is confidently expected to result in a HUGE Labour majority in the House of Commons. Just one of a number of reasons I'm planning to emigrate mid-August.
Women are highly likely to kill their infants in far, far higher numbers than men do, because even before the child is born, they regard them as their property to do with as they please, much as a little girl regards a doll.
Indeed they're taught to do so: secular society assures women they are fully entitled to kill their children in utero, as a matter of right. Women have the power to confer personhood on an unborn child: depending on whether the mother wants the child or not, it is either "my baby" or "the foetus".
Women today are conditioned to believe that if they decide they don't really want the child they are carrying, they are perfectly justified in dismembering it. The child is theirs alone, to do with as they wish: why wouldn't they continue to believe this once the child is born? Even in conservative circles, women are celebrated as "givers of life" for bearing children, whereas men are never said to give life to children. Can not she who gives also take away?
In short, why wouldn't women kill their children far more often than men do?
It's exactly what one would expect when a society gives women the power to play God.
"Women today are conditioned to believe that if they decide they don't really want the child they are carrying, they are perfectly justified in dismembering it." Quite so and as you say it should not surprise if the same attitudes continue
This was a hard read, but something our society needs to look at with clear eyes.
I grew up with a mother who has BPD and while she was rarely physically abusive, the verbal and emotional abuse were almost constant. She never apologized, never thought she was wrong, and had no problem saying terrible things to her children and giving them the silent treatment for days after an infraction on our part, of say, forgetting the umbrella at school or walking home from a friend's house when she was supposed to pick us up but forgot (our walking home made her look bad you see). My parents were married until my early 20s and my father has his own issues but he wasn't volatile, supported us financially and in our interests, and was present as much as a passive alcoholic can be. He says sorry, and follows with what he says he will do. He's a welder by trade and a "man's man."
All that to say, I am grateful for my childhood because I had to grapple with the "always nurturing, always loving" Mother Myth from a young age. I've never assumed women are better than men and was spared by the male-hating pathos of my older Millennial generation and many of my friends. In fact, I've appreciated men BECAUSE their conflict is usually obvious and in the open, and not hidden and manipulative like female conflict tends to be. While this has led to me needing to learn to love my feminine nature (as I was naturally suspicious of it), it has saved me from a lot of toxic women in friendships and my family. These days all it takes is a nudge from my intuition and I stay away from those women, no guilt at all!
Now how to teach my daughters (and son!) to recognize toxic femininity without being an agent of trauma?...
Thank you for this. Staggering.
Getting through to your children is the difficult part, given how ingrained these attitudes are.
Myself and my 3 sisters were fortunate enough to recognise the emotional abuse from our mother at a young enough age to declare our intent then and there to terminate that aspect of our genetic inheritance.
Although my own daughters are mostly well-balanced, they've still taken on board certain feminist themes from the education system - and from their own mother I regret to say.
Thanks Professor Fiamengo for bringing your lucid thinking and writing to this issue.
Just this week in New Zealand (please excuse the British spelling in this comment), Lauren Dickason was sentenced for murdering her three beautiful daughters, one aged 6 years and twins aged almost 3 years. She smothered them to death despite the oldest daughter asking her why she was doing it to the younger twins and reminding her she loved her mother. Her lawyers tried unsuccessfully to have the murders ruled as 'Infanticide', one of many sexist laws in New Zealand favouring women that provides a maximum punishment tariff of 3 years imprisonment for women who murder children up to 10 years old if:
'...her mind was disturbed, by reason of her not having fully recovered from the effect of giving birth to that or any other child, or by reason of the effect of lactation, or by reason of any disorder consequent upon childbirth or lactation...' (s178, Crimes Act 1961)
This is a crime category based on archaic ideas and essentially blaming hormones for women's violence. Men of course are not allowed to refer to testosterone or evolutionary factors when they have been violent. Any man who commits a homicide like that of a woman's 'infanticide' is eligible only for a murder conviction and relevant punishment.
Her lawyers also tried to run an insanity defence based on her history of diagnosed Depression and the fact she had suffered Post-Natal Depression for a time. However, Depression does not meet the high bar for an insanity defence because it doesn't render the mind incapable of recognising the consequences and moral wrong of one's actions. So she was convicted of three murders.
In New Zealand murder is nearly always sentenced by life imprisonment which legally requires a period before parole eligibility of 10 or more years. In the absence of a successful insanity defence, any man who killed 3 people would be sentenced to 3 concurrent life sentences and would likely have a minimum non-parole period considerably in excess of 10 years.
What was Dickason's sentence? A finite sentence of 18 years with no minimum period before parole eligibility, to be served initially under the Mental Health Act in a psychiatric facility until she is deemed well enough for prison. Therefore she will likely be free in 6 years. Her sentence was essentially a 'helping' sentence and she is likely to serve much of it in the relative comfort of a psychiatric hospital from which, presumably, she can be granted home leave when she is deemed 'well' enough (but she probably won't be deemed well enough to go to prison until close to her first parole date).
All the features in cases of female murderers described in this article were on display regarding Dickason. Most media coverage focused mainly on her Depression and circumstances at the time involving her move to New Zealand from South Africa in the context of COVID19 isolation (like quarantine) requirements and general inconvenience. Few articles described details of the murders apart from "smothered them" or gave readers a sense of the horrible reality of her breach of the children's trust and helplessness. A rare article informed that she tried to choke the children with cable ties that she had deliberately obtained from the garage but when that didn't kill them she smothered them with blankets. She used her much greater adult size and strength to subject others to fatal violence, but it's only when men do that it's considered significant enough to mention. One article reported Dickason's responses at police interview following the murders; this showed that primarily she was angry towards the children for being boisterous and somewhat disobedient. Another factor was that her husband, the children's father, had gone out to dinner with work colleagues and had left her to look after the children; one can't help speculate that the murders were at least in part motivated by a wish to punish him. At police interview she was lucid and fully aware of her deliberate planning and actions in committing the murders. She had been thinking about murdering them for some time. Imagine if a father murdered out of anger at young children's boisterous behaviour! He would be portrayed in media as an example of toxic masculinity, patriarchy and a male need for power and control that if thwarted will result in terror. Not to mention his unforgivable irresponsibility in not seeking help during a period of contemplating the murders during a period of weeks before committing them, in line with men's alleged failure to communicate.
Plenty of media coverage was provided for her family-of-origin's blaming of others and the state for not recognising the extent of her Depression, and so forth. "The greatest victim in this situation may be Lauren herself" was a heading in one news article about her sentencing and typical of the news coverage generally. Her lawyers' comments were always reported widely, such as that she "...would never recover from the loss her actions caused." Oh yeah, poor lady. (Of course she's likely to suffer in living with her actions and loss but the same applies to any man who harmed loved ones, yet highlighting his suffering would be seen as excusing his violence.) The sentencing judge referred to "her severe mental illness" without which the murders would not have occurred. So although her mental illness was not severely impairing of her mind as occurs with psychotic disorders, she was treated de facto as legally insane.
How many men who murder their children or loved ones do you suppose were not somewhat insane at the time? Perhaps a few psychopaths. But most are overwhelmed by some emotion and the circumstances. However, no man convicted here of murdering his or anyone else's children has ever or would ever receive any sentence other than life imprisonment.
Conspicuously absent has been any objections to her light sentence. When a man convicted of violence is shown mercy due to extenuating circumstances, feminists and others are always loudly up in arms demanding the State appeal the sentence as too lenient, and the State will often comply.
Thank you for this. I should list you as co-author now. Very disturbing and, as you say, fits the pattern to a T.
Thanks EL, very interesting. But I don't understand this:
"What was Dickason's sentence? A finite sentence of 18 years with no minimum period before parole eligibility, to be served initially under the Mental Health Act in a psychiatric facility until she is deemed well enough for prison. Therefore she will likely be free in 6 years."
How does the third sentence follow on from the second? Thanks.
And she will ensure that she has wonderfully recovered from the Depression in time for the first parole eligibility.
Sorry, should have included that in NZ prisoners are eligible for parole at one third of their sentence. They are not necessarily released at their first Parole Board consideration but women more often are and Dickason probably will be, in continuation of the special female treatment in our justice system.
EL, thanks for the explanation. A possible release at six years after killing her three young children. Words fail me.
Not only words fail, I think it's actually beyond human comprehension. Just thinking about it makes me feel queasy. What is it saying about the value of a child's life?
Indeed. I know you don't think the subject of abortion should be raised in these comments, but which is the greater moral wrong? A very lenient sentence for a mother who's killed her young children, or state support for women to have their unborn children killed?
I understand the grave moral problem that abortion presents, and the staggering scale of the problem, I just see it as a different issue from infanticide/filicide, with a different set of considerations. It's really not possible to make any moral comparison, partly because it becomes Stalin's "one death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic."
Unfit: hormones
Excellent piece Janis. You've probably never heard of Angela Surtees. Three weeks before the Rowan Baxter incident she doused her 36 year old husband with petrol and set him alight in his armchair, while their children watched TV. At her trial in Melbourne: "The court heard Surtees had tried to convince police, doctors and her husband's family that he had poured the fuel on himself during a wild physical attack on her. They were shocking lies called out by Justice Tinney, who refused to accept that Surtees held any remorse for what she had done." Nevertheless she somehow got off with manslaughter and will serve only 7 years for his death. It's just another case but the timing makes it noteworthy. Every Australian knows the name Hannah Clarke but precious few will have heard of Angela Surtees.
Oh wow--thank you. Manslaughter! extraordinary. Much appreciated.
The elephants in the room here are the abusive mothers' impact on children during their formative years. While this example is one of the more egregious and blatant ones, I hate to think how those children will grow up.
Yes, this is the elephant. The book on serial killers that I read as part of my research here mentioned, but did not develop, that nearly all male serial killers were abused as children (the same is not true of female serial killers, interestingly enough, though some of them were). We need to know a lot more about abuse by mothers.
Funny you mention the Surtees case. As I was reading the article it came to mind. I live close to where this happened so I’m one Australian that’s knows it!
Then there's a feminist called Rosie Batty.
Her ex-husband killed their son but somehow she's the victim.
I heard she had money and was sending him pictures of their son on extravagant holidays when he was struggling to survive.
His mental health deteriorated and he murdered his son.
In one of the links above she's mentioned.
She is in my opinion, a ghoul.
"Prominent anti-violence campaigner Rosie Batty said she was "deeply concerned" by any comments made in defence of Mr Baxter.
"I am also deeply concerned by some commentary from people in authority and the media that have presented the murderer as a loving father," she added.
"A loving parent never considers murder as ever being an option or a solution. No-one is 'driven' to murder, no matter the circumstances or situation that they find themselves in.""
I remember that case. The cynicism and cruelty of her double standards is jaw dropping.
The statistics on the frequency with which women kill their children are chilling. Thank you, Dr. Fiamengo, for providing this information and perspective that the media insist on obfuscating. It sickens me deeply that the mainstream media have been so complicit in furthering a feminist agenda that contravenes their duty to accurately report events. I yearn for the day where there will be some legislative action to hold the media accountable for their deplorable sexist bigotry. They should be required to post a warning to readers that their news coverage has been proven to misrepresent facts in favor of sexist caricatures. I occasionally listen to NPR, which boasts that it has one of the most enlightened approaches to the news of any news outlet in the United States, to see if it has evolved to represent gender without sexist, feminist stereotypes. I have as of yet not been able to listen to an hour of reporting without hearing the kind of disgusting, twisted representations of men that Dr. Fiamengo describes above. I regularly contact them during their pledge drives to tell them that I will send them a $10,000 check if they can go a week without broadcasting news containing bigoted feminist propaganda. Needless to say, that money is safe in my account.
Public broadcasters don't need donations because they've already stolen it out of your bank account via complicit governments in the form of 'taxation'.
Excellent article, as always Janice. If anyone is interested in reading more about the appalling job our media and institutions did on Rowan Baxter, read my discussion of the coroner's hearing which ignored all the evidence about how apprehended violence orders were used deny him contact with his children. He was simply labelled as "evil" and a monster. https://bettinaarndt.substack.com/p/outcast-powderkeg-men
Bettina, thank you! I was so absorbed in this subject that I didn't think to look at what YOU had to say about the Baxter murders. Of course you addressed it with your usual thoroughness and courage. Thank you a million times.
One day, I hope, someone can do a documentary about the Baxter case using the information you uncovered and with thorough interviews of everyone who knew what Baxter went through at the hands of his ex-wife's family.
way back in the 1960s "feminist" researchers started to notice the "benign sexism" which meant lighter sentences, reluctance to prosecute and excusing criminality by reference to "illness". By my dabbling in feminism in the 1970s the notions of "benign sexism" and "denying agency" seemed well established in the language of feminism. To the extent some even argued that this excusing females was a bad thing for equality and "medicating" women rather than taking them as responsible for their actions. For two decades I was too busy building a career to raise a family and when I started again paying attention to feminism i found this all but expunged and everything turned to achieving "benign sexism" that excuses any and all offending by females. Feminism's ascendancy means that there is no research done on sociological issues, yet often, as in this case, the conclusions and arguments are at odds with the actual data presented. The hypocrisy of feminism is massive. For they conceal both their own theory and often findings, when they absolutely must know they are telling deliberate lies.
The deepest hypocrisy in this is the use of the gynocentric veneration of mothers and motherhood to further their chauvinism (female) while simultaneously denigrating women who seek motherhood!
A child is burned alive in every saline abortion.
I can't like your comment but agree totally.
Fred abortion is a truly awful atrocity.
Thank goodness we have Janice Fiamengo in our corner debunking and countering the myths and stereotypes of male only violence.
Our society has increasingly given its social and legal imprimatur to women to unilaterally kill children still inside of them. As such, we should not then be shocked that they are routinely let off the hook for killing children after the seemingly magical status-conferring threshold of birth.
Agreed. It seems you can have fairness and justice for both men and women, or you can have abortion rights, but not both.
Yes to all of your points here.
As to how deeply and subtly and pernicious is the denial of woman as human capable of hurting, I came to the film Cracked Up. About the life of a famous American comic who suffered from serious mental health problems. See below. Note what the review donesnt say: the diagnosis was he was a survivor of maternal narcissistic abuse. His mother had crippled him.
It was odd that the review-promo didn't say the mother did it. And when I looked at 8 other mainstream reviews not one mentioned the word mother as the cause.
"Cracked Up
https://youtu.be/fK_WmHUqvvk
In Cracked Up we witness the impact that childhood trauma can have over a lifetime through the incredible story of award-winning actor, comedian, master impressionist and Saturday Night Live star, Darrell Hammond. Darrell is famous for his impressions of Bill Clinton, Donald Trump, Sean Connery and more, but few know his true story and the suffering he endured. Darrell performed brilliantly on live TV, but behind the scenes he struggled with debilitating flashbacks, self injury, alcohol and drugs and once was taken out of SNL in a straight jacket. Darrell was misdiagnosed for 40 years with different mental illnesses and put on a long list of medications. After a suicide attempt, Darrell finally met the doctor who gave him the proper diagnosis of “childhood trauma”.
Courageously transparent, Darrell takes us through his past and present day experiences with incredible resilience, vulnerability, wisdom and humor."
I came to this from a discussion about the evil nature of narcissism and the denial of that evil and the denial of the prevalence of narcissism. You may find the talk interesting.
The Collective Denial of Evil and its Impact on Psychiatric Treatment - Sheri Heller
https://youtu.be/pPVSSWV1_pE