Comments on: UPDATE: Bruce Pardo: Nice, Generous Guy, Church Usher, No Criminal Record: Why He Shot and Killed His Ex-Wife and Eight Others on Christmas Eve

By: Satsuma

Satsuma — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 21:50:11 +0000

Most people don’t know why people are bad. There are stereotypes of what “bad” is. Most people also ask, “Well why didn’t she _________?” What we need to look at is that something really awful did happen to not only the woman, but also to children and relatives as well. These monster men are pretty much everywhere, they have created weird corporate cultures that serve to preserve their clueless dehumanized ways of being.
I believe that most men actually do lie to women, they brag about it on talk radio all the time. You wouldn’t believe how openly they brag about how they lie, cheat and use up women sexually, and this is viewed as mainstream “entertainment.”
So what we can do as women is report the truth of the survivors, the truth of those women killed by the men, and learn what is the big picture of it all.
I think it is very hard for people to see institutionalized patriarchy for what it is, institution, and thus not about individuals, but about a deeply rooted and evil system. It is a system when fundamentalist christian men sermonize about women being submissive to their husbands (gods). It is everywhere in Mormonism, in Islam, in Catholicism.
There is the myth, “Well why are women members then?” and that I admit is one that makes me wonder as well. I think when you are a lesbian, you just really are pretty outside of all common human social situations, institutions and events. So nothing in the worlds that might be attractive to heterosexual women hold any attraction for us. We are bored a lot in hetero normative worlds, and boredom is always a sign of patriarchy, according to Mary Daly. Such a good insight.
I believe that Heart and Bancroft and others are revealing the depth of what these men are really about, and we have more information than ever before about how perps work, how pedofile men lure children, how battered woman syndrome sets in. We know more than we did in 1975 when almost no one (except Susan Brownmiller) knew about spousal rape of women in marriage by their husbands. What!! rape in marriage, isn’t that an oxymoron? I heard many men say this back then.
But if all marriage is really about male ownership of women, and is so deeply contaminated with this legacy, then it is our job as feminists to model what can work in a new world.
We are digging up the evil to study it, and learn how to flee from it in time. We are saving children by warning them what to look for in adults. Women are protecting children every day by being open and loving, and LISTENING to their daughters, and BELIEVING them.
Women are coming here and telling their stories, and this is enlightening to all of us, whether we were ever in the same situations or not.
When I see the womanhatred going blatant malestream, and the epidemic of violent porn, and the trafficking that men put women into, I know that patriarchy is panicing, running away, getting very fearful. We know that we can keep fundamentalism on the ropes, and I believe the biggest challenge as women, is to create alternative places for women to be and think. Here is one such place, but we need even more places.
We know that men need to do their own work, and that they waste our time. Liberal men waste our time, conservative men are not going to change. Women can change, and we must change.
We have to know that the one common denominator of all of this is that it is men doing it! We know how dangerous they are, and how they try to use women all the time. We know this, and we can tell the truth and be lighthouses of warning, but also oceans of inspiration to create a world where women are fully human, alive and fantastic. I’ve seen this fantastic world, I know it can be done, and I know we have more resources than ever before to report this to us.

By: admin

admin — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 18:09:08 +0000

So true, Amananta. Of course, when we DO leave it’s, “Why did she stay so long?” or “Why didn’t she say anything?” or “Why did she marry him in the first place?” or the WORST, most DESPICABLE one (imo), “Well, she must have issues to have hooked up with an abuser.” But then, if we leave and demand what we’re entitled to, it’s, “Well, she must not be afraid of him then, she must not be really abused.” Anything but face up to the fact that men in large numbers abuse and batter women, and there is no 100 percent for sure way to know ahead of time that you are connecting with an abuser.

Sick, sick, misogynist garbage.

By: Amananta

Amananta — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 14:30:18 +0000

I’m getting tired of the stereotypes of abused women too. “Abused women don’t”… because, you know, we’re all alike. Once a man hits us with his fists we all become weepy with our head down and can never stick up for ourselves again! If we dare speak up for ourselves or ever lift our chin again, why, he couldn’t have been abusive.

By: admin

admin — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 00:28:14 +0000

http://www.sgvtribune.com/news/ci_11332090

By: admin

admin — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 00:25:01 +0000

A.M.B., I’m so sorry. It sounds like you need a new attorney/solicitor though? One of my exes tried something like this, and the situation was solved when I got a new attorney who immediately issued a subpoena and a notice of deposition. He didn’t want to be deposed because he didn’t want to testify to anything under oath and he sure didn’t want to produce documents, so on the day of his deposition he showed up and we settled. This after just the kind of stonewalling you are talking about.

The problem, of course, is he’s probably bled you dry and you don’t have the money to hire a new attorney.

And heck yeah, we fight, we survivors, you better believe it. Sometimes the feeling is, you might take me out, sucker, but I’m going to go out fighting. God. If we didn’t have any fight in us we’d never have left in the first place!

Well, it’s as I supposed, as I knew, because I know these guys way too well. This is from an AP article where Sylvia Orza’s best friend was interviewed– her last name is Juarequi.

Jauregui recalls when Sylvia meet Pardo and how quickly the two of them fell in love. Jauregui and her husband would double date with the couple at various restaurants in Pasadena.

“He (Pardo) was nice and talkative,” Jauregui said. “We went out on a lot of occasions. He was always loving to her and she was loving to him.”

But Jauregui remembers things changing after the two wed in 2006. Though the two never fought, Pardo grew unattached from his wife and developed weird behaviors, she said.

“His personality changed, he didn’t seem to care and he he did not want to spend time with her,” Jauregui said. “He didn’t want to share his paychecks with her. Why would someone who she loved and who supposedly loved her was act so strangely?”

Jauregui said the breaking point for Sylvia was when she discovered Pardo had a son from another relationship that he kept secret from her.

After Sylvia told Pardo she was leaving him, he put all her belongings including dressers, clothing and her children’s belongings on the front porch.

“He didn’t fight for her or their relationship at all,” Jauregui said.

The sucker wanted MONEY. He was taking HER to the cleaners, not the other way around. He wanted her paycheck, her services, her homemaking, and for her to keep her mouth shut unless he told her he wanted to hear from her.

Another article says Sylvia Pardo wanted to have a baby with this guy– then she finds out he’s abandoned his disabled son. He won’t add her name to any bank accounts, though he’s building an $80K-plus nest egg thanks to her. She said he expected her to bear all of the expenses for her own children without looking to him for help, despite the fact that he made four times what she did and supposedly loved her and cared about her. Translated, all of this means, he thought he bought himself a possession for his use and exploitation and pillaging.

Just like I said.

For sure, Julia, this is not going to show up in the New York Times. The woman-hating Men’s Rights garbage has so filled the airwaves and media that even people who should know better do not, like bell hooks.

Emma, thanks so much, xxxooo.

Heart

By: A.M.B.

A.M.B. — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 22:59:18 +0000

“AMB: good luck. I’d guess it’s criminal that it’s taken so long already.”

Thanks Sophie, yes it’s been seven years and I still haven’t had a penny from an apparently ’straight forward’ divorce mostly because he delays, refuses to sign forms, put house up for sale etc. While he, I may add continues to live in a ‘paid for’ house half owned by me. No mortgage or rent while I live on incapacity benefit,

It just infuriated me that ‘Agirl’ (heaven help you if you are a ‘girl’) thinks that abused women automatically have no fight in them.

By: julia

julia — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 22:52:22 +0000

I meant Nicole Brown Simpson.

By: Satsuma

Satsuma — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 22:38:15 +0000

This will mark a little more than one full year since I came across this blog, and I must say, it’s provided such shocking insights into how women have to deal with men. You read about all the attrocities committed against women worldwide, and how the media covers it all up with “Israel attacked” or “three children were abused” or the catholic church settled a huge lawsuit against “those accused of child molestation” — i.e. rape etc. and never do you read the words “MEN DID ALL OF THIS.” I think this lulls women into this false sense of security out there, and yet this blog and Heart’s commentary finally expains the unexplainable.
Lundy Bancroft was also a big help to me.
I have so many friends who I come to know in time grew up in terrible circumstances with really abusive and mean fathers. You can know women for many years before these stories emerge.
This site has helped me a lot to connect with women, and to try to guy at underlying pain that women struggle with. This helps, because I can be more aware or more present, or gives my ideas on how to do a better job or be a better friend.
This hetero family violent awful world where men live in your home and become monsters is just something that I myself am not a part of. Even in my office, I interact in meaningful ways almost only with the other women. The men are so dead or so clueless or so creepily sexist, that I just leave them alone.
I hope this website can really educate young women as to what to look out for, what to see as a red flag BEFORE they ever get overly involved with these men. I know it’s hard, because they hide behind such snake oil salesmen smiles and charm, but again, if you know the patterns, if you suspect something or feel uneasy about a potential date or boyfriend, REALLY look into your Heart. It’s never too late to just back away if you feel disrespected even for an instand. It’s this flicker of insight that can protect you before it’s too late.
I’m very impressed with Heart’s ability to take the news that everyone else settles for and create a fountain of women’s insights into the true face of daily evil that is these abusive men who will kill entire families just because THEY didn’t win out in the end, or just because the woman chose to leave them.
The gravey train aspect of how these women’s small incomes get riped off was a shocker too — how Pardo “stole” his wife’s income to finance his lavish lifestyle, all the while the media trumpets HIS huge income and thus misses a sneaker and creepier truth.
I know how hard women work for money, and I know how women feel a lot of the time when a husband finally dies. I’m often surprised that they don’t feel much grief at all, they seem free of some burden, and now I’m beginning to see that women can live with men for 25 years and it’s a living hell. One of the other women financial planners in our office mentioned this to me about here clients who are recent widows. She’s been in the industry longer than I have, and she’s also straight, and perhaps has more insight into this — she’s divorced and made a successful second career–SHE KNOWS!
I’m rambling a bit. It takes time for me to really understand how it is that so many women’s lives are ruined by men, or how society is ruined by the crime, the violence the creepiness that is so much a part of men out of control worldwide. As a lesbian, I just don’t deal with any of this; it is the living nightmare of straight women, and how they actually have to be more vigilent around men than women ever have to be around other women.

By: julia

julia — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 22:29:31 +0000

I wish I could open the NYT and read this piece. By making us small and invisible (like the language Jeyoani talks about) we get used to not seeing ourselves, and then it becomes easy to empathize with the man, the murderer. Reading these comments reminds me of the one thing bell hooks has written that makes me furious: she, too, wonders why Nicole stayed in the marriage, talks about the glamour and comfort (?) of being married to a wealthy star. All I can think is patriarchy trains women to stay - through everything, even death. Patriarchy trains us to not even see ourselves, much less defend ourselves.

By: Somb Soondee

Somb Soondee — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 20:24:26 +0000

I am glad that Pardo suffered burns when he tried to burn the house down; he deserved to feel that pain.

It is a pity that we did not capture Pardo alive. Having to fight his burn wounds in the hospital while knowing he would be sent to prison would have been continuing justice.