FEMICIDE

‘Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile’, a new feature film based on the life of the notorious American serial killer Ted Bundy, that has just begun streaming on Netflix. In the mid-70s Bundy, who used to be a law student in university, preyed on young and beautiful girls of various different universities in different cities. He would kidnap them, rape them and then kill them. In the beginning even though he tried his best to claim he was not guilty, on realizing there was no way out he later confessed to thirty such murders. Experts believe that the number of women Bundy killed was more than thirty, that it was possibly close to a hundred if not more. Ted Bundy was so handsome and so smart that one glance at him was enough to impress girls. Besides, he was such a smiling, well-behaved man that those who knew him could not have even imagined that he could murder someone. Catching him had not been easy either, he had twice escaped from two different prisons. But one day they did catch up to him, he was caught, tried and sentenced to death. Consequently it became possible to answer numerous questions surrounding him, how he used to abduct his victims, how they were killed and so on. But the one question that remains unanswered to this date is why his victims were exclusively women, especially when murder was something he was addicted to. Why did he not count men, animals or birds among his victims? Besides, it was not as if rape was the driving force behind his actions. There were many victims of his who were found to have not been sexually violated at all before being killed.
Around the time Ted Bundy was killing girls, two other notorious murderers emerged as well – Kenneth Bianchi and Angelo Buono, called the Hillside Stranglers. Just as Bundy they too used to abduct young or adolescent girls, to rape and murder them. Bundy operated in Washington, Utah and Florida while the Stranglers operated in the California region. Is there any region that has not been a witness to femicide? Just a few years back, in 2014, Californian Elliott Rodger took to the street with a gun to shoot any girl he could find. So virulent was Rodger’s misogyny that he had even uploaded a video on Youtube containing his manifesto of hatred directed at women. In the video he had confessed to being a virgin because no woman had reportedly agreed to have sex with him. His manifesto of anger and hatred against women had been 140 pages long and Eliott ended up killing six people. Surprisingly, after the murders, instead of his actions being denounced a veritable wave of praise directed at him was unleashed. In no time many men popped up at various places claiming to be his admirers. What outpouring of misogyny it was! They named Elliot ‘Supreme Gentleman’ and his likeness began to find its way to their t-shirts. Canadian Alek Minassian, having adopted Rodger as his spiritual guru, went on a rampage on the busy streets of Toronto one day, using his van to run over a number of pedestrians, most of whom were women.
Not just offline, a thousand misogynist organizations have recently cropped up online as well – groups identifying themselves as ‘men’s rights’, ‘incel rebellion’, ‘pick-up artists’ among others. The last group claims that the best way to have sex is to first incapacitate the woman. These people may be misogynists but they are not as bad as Minassian. The latter was a proponent of murder while pick-up artists, although not aligned with murder or something so extreme, nonetheless are fine with rape. In fact, they believe every man possesses the right to rape women. Eliott Rodger was not the first of his kind. In 2009 a misogynist man named George Sodini had barged into a health club in Pennsylvania and killed three women. Before committing the crime he had left an entry in his online journal, confessing how he had not had sex in years because women paid him no attention.
Who will teach these men that it’s not a woman’s responsibility to satisfy them every time they get sexually aroused? Who will teach them that if they believe they are entitled to being inconsiderate, intolerant, violent, cruel and barbaric just because of their gender then they are seriously delusional!
Despite knowing that it is this misogyny that is behind such killing sprees and massacres directed at women, anti-terrorist experts insist on claiming ‘lone wolves’ are behind such incidents. Attacks by such lone wolves follow no strict plans and various reasons like drug addiction, depression and troubled childhood and growing-up years are often cited as motivating factors behind such aimless acts of murder and mayhem. But men who kill women because of their hatred for women, who commit such acts in cold blood, can be anything but lone wolves. The only people who can be perfectly compared with such misogynist terrorists are religious terrorists. Just as the latter category wishes for the annihilation of anyone or everyone who is critical of their religious beliefs, misogynists too wish for the end of all women. As per them if women are fine with living as slaves serving under men then they can be allowed to live, or else no woman has the right to life. No matter what else they are, misogynist terrorists are not lone wolves. Neither are they psychologically or mentally impaired or acting under the influence of alcohol or drugs. They do what they do because they hate women. Such acts of violence have a purpose, they are planned, they are political.
How many of us remember Marc Lépine? In 1989 Lépine had barged into École Polytechnique in Montreal and singled out only women students whom he had shot dead. That day fourteen women were killed. In the 70s and 80s Charles Sobhraj, famously called The Bikini Killer, killed numerous girls in Thailand and Nepal. The notorious ‘Yorkshire Ripper’ Peter Sutcliffe murdered thirteen girls between 1975 to 1980, besides attempting to kill many more. In early 1984 Australian national Christopher Wilder went on a crime spree abducting and raping at least twelve women, eight of whom he killed. Americans Rodney Alcala, Carl Eugene Watts, Leonard Lake, Gerald Stano, and Canadian Keith Hunter Jesperson were all involved in femicide. Then there was Ariel Castro from Cleveland! The man who kidnapped three young women and kept them imprisoned in his house, bound in chains, for more than a decade, treating them as sexual slaves, raping and torturing them!
So many feminists have faced death threats while protesting misogyny. In this age of technology and information just as misogyny has become popular, threats against feminists have gone up massively as well. While other acts of terrorism can probably be curtailed, murderous violence arising from misogyny is impossible to curb simply because misogyny is so normalized in our society. Patriarchy and misogyny are inextricably interlinked, without the latter the former will crumble. That is perhaps why across the centuries patriarchal society has actively nurtured and sustained misogyny.
Due to such entrenched misogynous attitudes, women are always considered inferior to men in all respects. It is believed that women are less intelligent than man, less talented, weaker, less competent and brave, all reasons why men are expected to lord over them. Men will draw the lines within which women have to live, they will decide what women will wear, what they will eat, where they can go and how far, what they can read or talk about, what they can write or think – everything will have its limits. Without misogyny, it would not be possible to think of women as insignificant and inconsequential. It is simply because of this pervasive hatred that women continue to be tortured, why dowry-related violence is still rampant, why sexual harassment is widespread everywhere be it at home or in the outside world, why even the threat of capital punishment has not managed to curb rapes, and why women continue to be murdered with impunity. Be it in the name of honour or in the name of retribution for adultery.
Children who grow up witnessing women being discriminated against never manage to learn any lessons on gender equality. What they learn from their families and societies instead is plain and simple misogyny. If anyone dares to claim equal rights for women, be it in education, practice, law, in the eyes of the state or in society, or even within the family, they are bound to face excommunication in some form or other. Just because the Prime Minister of a country is a woman hardly means such a society is free of misogyny or discriminatory practices. The Leader of Opposition is a woman, ministers are women, the head of state is a woman – none of these things can guarantee that in such a country women will enjoy as much freedom as the men do.
Women are murdered for various reasons, not every murder is femicide. Femicide happens when a man kills a woman simply because of who she is, a woman. A comparative term for the murder of men does not even exist simply because in our societies men are hardly ever murdered because of their gender. Being a man is not a thing of shame like it is in case of a woman. Women co-habit with their murderers, in intimate relationships, often under the same roof. Most women are murdered by people close to them, by their husbands, lovers, friends or close relatives. Other than among human beings in no species is cohabitation with one’s executioner such a naturalized tendency.

Hope that efforts to remove women fails

Women have to fight every day, at home and outdoors. Women cannot even survive without fighting. When the environment is anti-woman, with patriarchy in control, women are on the battlefield right from birth. Men too fight to survive, but women have to fight twice as much. Yet, to everyone’s surprise, Indian Army Chief General Bipin Rawat stated: “In this country, the battlefield is still not for women. Women have many problems in getting into combat situations, beginning with maternity leaves. Furthermore, Jawans are not yet quite ready to accept women as commanding officers in battlefields.”

The General wants to say that the battlefield is for men only, not for women; women need maternity leave and for that reason, it is appropriate that they are not commanding officers in a battlefield. People do need holidays during illnesses, no one has any problem with that. But not accepting women for important jobs with the excuse that they need maternity leaves is not new. Maternity leaves are long; when the leader of a unit goes on that vacation, another would be assigned to lead that unit. Introducing this provision in the army is not particularly difficult. The problem mentioned is not impossible to solve. Besides, nowadays women do not give birth every year but produce one or at the most two children. All countries give maternity leaves as a rule. In many countries, not only the mother, but arrangements have been made for both parents to get such leaves. In civilized countries, especially in North European countries, if women get to leave for six months, so do men. It has been observed that less educated parents spend their leaves together over the same period, but couples with higher education take their leaves in tandem, one after the other. The father takes his paternal leave after the mother has spent the maternal leave and joins her work. Less educated folks believe that the main responsibility of fostering a child rests on mother, the father takes his leave at the same time as if to merely help the mother in her child-rearing. But the educated believe both parents’ responsibility in rearing the child to be equally important; the responsibility of raising the child is not the mother’s alone but the father too bears equal responsibility. That is why the father’s role is not merely to help the mother raise the child but his responsibility includes raising the child. Research has shown that children, who receive equal attention and care from both parents and even equal rearing-time from both parents, grow up to be healthy and well rounded. Studies have further shown that infant death rates are the lowest in countries where mother and father both take part in fostering the child. Civilized countries believe both parents have equal responsibilities toward their children and hence paternal leaves are as important as the material. The question could then be raised that do men lose their fitness to be commanding officers in battlefields because they enjoy paternal leaves? They do not. By the same token, women do not lose their eligibility as commanding officers in battlefields just because they take maternal leaves. Anyone leaving for vacation can be replaced by another assuming her work. All the women in the army do not get pregnant at the same time. Here the real problem is not with vacation per se but with the gender needing the vacation. Men do not consider persons with female gender as human beings as if their only job is to sit home, produce children and raise them.

General Rawat has further said: “If a female officer dies on the battlefield, and she has children, just imagine the consequences her family would suffer; they would be ruined. Besides if any Jawan peeks in on a lady Officer in battlefield changing clothes that would be even more trouble. Then the female officers would have to register repeated complaints to the authorities. Denying maternity leave on grounds of duty might cause an uproar.”

Death of a female officer at war might indeed ruin the family. But a male officer dying at the battlefield might ruin his family in the same way; is that a reason not to send male officers to war front? I do not see any rationale to stop female officers from going to battle in case some Jawans peep while they are changing clothes. Men and women officers both register complaints to the authorities all the time for various reasons. One hundred and one of these reasons pose no problem, only the complaints about peeping Jawans causes all the problems. If such complaints convert boorish Jawans into civilized humans then it must be a useful one. Peeping by Jawans might also occur while male officers are changing. Even the male officers might feel uncomfortable while some female officers might not feel any discomfort due to Jawans’ peeking. As a matter of fact, feeling discomfort is not necessarily gender-based but depends on the individual. Also, peeping/prying is not the characteristics of all Jawans but of only a few. Isn’t there a system of court-martial for punishing those who commit crimes? Is the system broken?

The Chief of Staff has observed: “A majority of the army jawans come from very far remote villages near the borders. Would the Jawans agree to go into the battle on the orders of a female officer? I wanted to send women into battle, but we had to take all these different issues into consideration.”

Listening to General Bipin Rawat one gets the feeling that Indian forces are not yet fully ready to send women into battlegrounds. There is no objection to women’s presence in the army as Doctor or Engineers. But the time to combat the enemy with weapons in hand, he says, has not come yet. Time does not drop from heaven; one has to usher it in,. Have the women ever said that they do not want to be commanding officers? They have not. The General has said that the Jawans from villages do not take women’s commands seriously. In that case, rather than stopping women from taking command, educating the Jawans seems to be a priority. Jawans have to be taught the lesson that the commanding officer, male or female, has to be obeyed. In the army not willing to obey a direct order from a higher officer results in a court-martial. Disobeying a Female officer’s command should have the same consequence; if not, then there must be some kind of flaw in the application of rules in the army revealing administrative weakness. If the culprit Jawans escape punishment, Jawans are not to blame. The fault lies with that influential, misogynist inauthority who want to achieve their heinous objectives while putting the blame on the Jawans. They want to see women as housewives, not as warriors. They want to see women with children in their laps and cooking pots and utensils in their hands. They do not want to see women as equally competent to men in all fields of work. They want to see women as soft, weak, dependent on others, scared beings. The truth that they can equal men in physical and mental strengths, firmness and sharpness – is not tolerable to such men. It does not stand to reason that just because Jawans have come from villages, they would not change even with a good education. One should not treat them with such contempt just because they are villagers. How many city-boys would willingly accept commands from women? Just because they are unwilling, should we deprive women of the opportunities to work in all fields? Absolutely not. Depriving them would make the misogynists victorious and we would only prove that it is quite easy to displace women from different workplaces. We should instead try to remove the immense hatred and jealousy from the minds of women-hater misogynists. Only then an unequal society could be transformed into one of gender equality and fairness.

At a certain point in time, our society was not willing to let women even be educated and objected to their working outside the home. When women slowly progressed ignoring and disobeying the opponents, even then they were kept under control with restrictions to prevent them from this or that work. If the misogynists’ opinions were valued, women could not be Doctors or engineers even today; they would remain as school teachers or nurses. That is why I say, listening to women-haters would destroy the society – the more you defeat them, the better.

Women are banned.

I like what an English journalist said,’The Unites States has routinely criticized some countries for the disenfranchisement of women and human rights abuse. It, however, does not criticize its close ally Saudi Arabia for its blatant discrimination against women.’

Saudi Arabia covers women’s bodies, from head to toe. Now it wants to covers women’s eyes, the only thing women have been allowed to keep uncovered. Women need to have eyes open because they need to see things, for example, the traffic signals while they walk in the streets. The essential eyes are now banned, because Saudi dicks get erected if they see any little body parts of women including eyes. Saudi men would rape women if women do not hide their bodies,and eyes.

Women are banned in Saudi society. They are invisible, ignored, insulted and terribly hated. Their eyes are banned too.

I don’t understand why Saudi Arabia keeps women alive. Why don’t they let all women die? Is it because Saudi men need to fuck them?

Bikini banned in Goa?

Oh My Goosebumps! Goan minister says, no bikinis, no short skirts, no pubs. He says men get crazy for women, law and order problems occur if women wear bikinis. What should be done? Ban bikinis. Very simple. Instead of banning bikinis I wonder why they don’t punish those morons who don’t respect women and create law & order problems? Or, why they don’t ask men to be blindfolded if it is too hard for men to control their sexual urges after seeing women on beaches.

The minister is saying that wearing bikinis is not Goan culture, so women must stop wearing bikinis. Misogyny rules. Women are not allowed to wear bikinis today. They will be forced to wear burqas tomorrow. Misogynists belong to every religion and every culture. Woman’s body is the property of patriarchal society. Men decide what women should and shouldn’t wear. One of the biggest tragedies of mankind is men’s culture and honor lie in women’s breasts,buttocks,vaginas. I pity women-hating cultures!

Another patriarchal festival today in India. Bhai Phonta or Bhai Dooj.

There are hundreds of patriarchal festivals in India. People are celebrating Bhai Phonta or Bhai Dooj or Bhai Tika or Bhai Beej today. On this day, sisters put a sandalwood paste or a vermilion mark on the forehead of their brothers and pray for their brothers to have long and happy lives, safety and success. There is no Bon Phonta or Bahen Dooj for sisters.

I changed the system when I lived in Kolkata, West Bengal, in 2004-2007. I made my fans and friends to celebrate Bon Phonta. We girls and women were given Phontas, and gifts by men,. Men wished for our well being, happy long life, our safety and success.

Here are some of those pictures:

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Bon Phonta was completely a secular celebration. No man prayed to any God. They wished us long life and good health.

I was thrown out of Kolkata in 2007. But Bon Phonta has still been celebrated every year in the city by a small group of people. Bon Phonta is a protest against patriarchal Bhai Phonta. If Bhai Phonta is not celebrated, Bon Phonta will not be celebrated. Men and women will wish each other good health and long life without any Phonta. But if Bhai Phonta is celebrated, Bon Phonta must be celebrated on the same day by the same people.

People should stop following patriarchal tradition. They should question it. And make the age-old tradition go. They should make cultures evolve. It gets filthy if it does not flow. Women have been treated as inferior beings in patriarchal societies, nobody has been concerned so far about women’s long life and good health, not even in the 21st century. My effort to celebrate Bon Phonta will not change the society today. But some people will learn how to question and how to say NO, and how to show the middle finger to misogyny.

Not long ago….

Once upon a time but not long ago, women didn’t have the voting right. Most people were against women’s voting right and their right to education. In some parts of the word, women had the right to education, even they had the right to work, but they did not have the right to vote. American women are telling us their stories.

Throughout history, there were people who did not want women to vote. Women would work, they would pay taxes, they would technically be considered citizens… but voting was for men. In America, when the right to vote was extended to include all races, all social positions, and all incomes, women were still not included. It didn’t matter if a man was illiterate, had been to jail, or if he was the town drunk. He could vote, and a woman, no matter who she was, could not.

Women suffragists (suffragettes) began campaigning in democratic countries all over the world to change this, starting in the mid-19th century. Their campaigns were largely peaceful and dignified… at least by 21st century standards. But by 19th century standards, these women were abhorrent and indecent, making fools of themselves by demanding to be treated like men.

One of the most notable things about the arguments put forth by the anti-suffragette movement was how weak its position was. Anti-suffragette arguments relied heavily on emotional manipulation and downright hateful nastiness. Humor was a much-used weapon against suffragettes. They were easy to depict as embittered old maids, brutal scolds, and cigar-smoking transvestites.

Ophelia tells us how 20th century London was.

You can see what kinds of hatred misogynists expressed in their cartoons against women’s voting rights.

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Men could not tolerate that women left home to join suffrage movement in the beginning of 20th century. They were so scared of taking care of their children! They feared that if women could get their rights, men would lose their’s. They still have this fear.

Women got the right to vote. They got the right to access to politics and to education. They go outside to work. They spend money they earn for their family. But still men don’t share chores and child care at home.

The feminists today suffer from the same misogyny the feminists yesterday suffered from. They are humiliated, hated, insulted, abused the way their feminist sisters were humiliated, hated, insulted and abused.

People get shocked today when they learn women were not allowed to get the right to vote and the right to education in the 20th century. People would get shocked tomorrow when they would learn that women were not allowed to get equality in the 21st century.

‘Burka Avenger’

Bina Shah is a Pakistani feminist writer. She expressed her opinions on Burka Avenger. Burka Avenger is a new TV cartoon series for children. The main character of Burka Avenger is a woman, mild-mannered schoolteacher by day, superhero by night, who wears a burka in order to fight villains in her village. The villains try to shut down the girls’ schools. Let’s read what Bina Shah wrote:

‘I’m especially pleased that the superhero is a woman, not a man. Pakistani society is hypermasculinized: children are used to seeing men in positions of power and authority, as leaders, military men, policemen, et cetera. They absorb this as the natural order of things from such early ages that it’s almost impossible to undo this conditioning later in life. Whereas the women of Pakistan are the silent heroes on the frontlines of the war we’ve got ourselves involved in today: schoolteachers, health workers and human rights activists are targeted by extremists and attacked and killed for going out and doing their ordinary jobs. It’s wonderful to see a woman being feted for something so true to life, and also to see that when her job is threatened, she doesn’t succumb to the aggression but instead fights back and triumphs. The children of Pakistan need this lesson as well.’

‘The superhero’s costume is such an integral part of his or her identity that it’s hard to escape from the question of whether or not the burka is an appropriate choice for Pakistan’s first female superhero. Yes, the burka is oppressive… the burka provides women with a modicum of agency. Women who would be confined to their houses are allowed to go out if they are wearing a burka.

I wish it weren’t so, but it is. Should we perpetuate the idea that women are strong when they put on the burka? Definitely not. Pakistani girls and women need to know that their natural state of being is not hidden away, shrouded by yards of black cloth to make their presence in society acceptable, safe, or halal. They need to learn that modesty can be interpreted in many different ways, and that a simple shalwar kameez and dupatta are good enough for us, because we’re Pakistanis, not Arabs. It will horrify me if little girls start wearing burkas in imitation of their hero, because that would be indoctrination of the worst kind.

My perfect ending to the Burka Avenger series would be that after the villains are vanquished, Jiya hangs up her burka in the closet and never needs to wear it again.’

Superb!
But the question is why should Jiya, the superhero, hang up her burka in the closet if she never needs to wear it? Isn’t it better if she just throw the burka in the garbage?

Salute to the brave girl!

11 year old Yemeni girl Nada Al Ahdal escaped arranged marriage.

My grandmother was given in marriage when she was 9. My mother was forced to marry when she was 10.
My grandmother could not escape her arranged marriage. My mother could not.
Hundreds of thousands of girls who are victims of child marriage can not.

I wish all the children in the world learned from Nada Al Ahdal and became brave. I wish all the parents in the world who didn’t believe in children’s rights learned from the little girl and became sane.