Bruce Pardo: On the Way Americans Justify and Excuse the Brutalities of White, Middle Class Men
Jan 1st, 2009 by admin
Although I can barely stand to post this photo of Sylvia Orza Pardo (left) with Bruce Pardo, the man who destroyed her and many of her family members, I’m posting it anyway because of the story it tells to anyone with a discerning, woman-friendly eye.
She was just caring and down-to-earth,” said a friend, Jenee Epps of Edmond, where Sylvia Pardo once lived.
Her boss in El Monte, Calif., described her as a joy to be around.
“She was well-liked by everybody in the company,” said Steve Jones of Bodger Seeds, where she worked as Jones’ administrative assistant.
“And, actually, we have customers all over the world. Everybody knows Sylvia and thought very highly of her.”
I wouldn’t need to hear that from her employer or friends. I can see it in the photo. I get this, looking at Sylvia Pardo. She has a kind, friendly, wide-open face, an easy smile. She comes across even in photographs as a good person.
Pardo on the other hand comes across as (1) male; (2) white; (3) middle class; (4) traditionally attractive. He had a good job, made good money, owned a nice house and drove expensive vehicles. That’s really all a man needs in order for huge numbers of people to admire him, think well of him, all the way to defending him when he has murdered. It’s all a man needs to be assured that many, many people will search for justifications and excuses for his having committed mass murders and atrocities. He can also rest assured these same people will accuse and castigate his woman victims freely, without any basis in fact or reasons whatsoever to do so.
Sylvia Orza Pardo was Mexican, a woman of color. Maybe she was even an “illegal,” the malevolent thinking goes. She was probably a gold digger who married Bruce Pardo for his money and was taking him for all she could get. Why, she should have been grateful that someone like Pardo — such a paragon of white, male, heterosupremacist, middle class virtue — married her in the first place. That’s sure what Bruce Pardo was counting on, as abusers always will, that his, in his own mind, magnanimity and generosity in marrying Sylvia Orza would make her easy prey, easy to hurt, easy to use and abuse without anyone suspecting or criticizing him for it. And he was right. In his death, he is still enjoying white middle class male immunity, that particular immunity from criticism and harsh judgment that is the province of men like him, that shields them from accountability for rape, murder, battering, domestic violence and every form of abuse. It is revolting to the point that I struggle to even write about it. Even Salon (not that I am all that impressed with Salon, but it holds itself to be, and is believed to be, progressive), titles its report, “Santa Gunman Was in Bitter Divorce, Lost Job.” I have scoured the news reports in mainstream media and blogs and I have yet to see anyone (besides me) putting two and two together so far as Pardo’s job goes. He was ordered to pay spousal maintenance in June. He “lost” his job in July. He got no unemployment and no severance. These widely-available facts should at the very least arouse some suspicion that this is a guy who quit his job vindictively, to avoid paying spousal maintenance to his wife. But it doesn’t. Progressives, liberals, conservatives in incredible numbers instead suggest there is some connection between this job “loss” and the fact that this guy murdered nine people and shot two little girls in cold blood. It is breathtakingly horrifying. The latest reports say Pardo was planning these murders for six months. Once again, his planning coincided with the Court ordering him to support Sylvia Orza until their divorce was final. I can only see failing to make this connection as willful ignorance or dangerous denial and yet I don’t see anyone publicly making the connection but me. Reports say Pardo purchased not one, not two, but five handguns in the six months leading to the murders, eventually using four to kill Sylvia Pardo and her family members and one to kill himself, even receiving a warning from California authorities that he may have violated gun control laws by buying more than one gun in a single month. These guns, for the most part, were purchased in June.
Lundy Bancroft writes that women of color and immigrant women partnered with white men are the most vulnerable women of all when their partners are abusive:
While I have focused here on cultural differences and similarities among abusive men, there is another situation in which race and culture are very important to abuse: when the abuser is white American (or Canadian) but his partner is a woman of color or an immigrant. The abuser in such a relationship tends to use racism as an additional tactic to insult and control his partner. Women of color who have white abusers can face considerable bias from police, courts or child protective services.
Robert Aragon
Contrast the astonishing willingness of the general public and media to excuse and justify Pardo’s execution and arson spree with the treatment of poor men or men of color who harm their children by accident or negligently. On Christmas Day, for example, Robert Aragon allowed his two children, ages 11 and 12, to begin a 10-mile trek to visit their mother. There were blizzard warnings, there was a foot of snow on the ground, and little Sage and Bear Aragon were wearing down coats, snow boots, and flannel pajama bottoms. Aragon’s car, a 1988 sedan, had become stuck in a snow drift. The children separated at some point when Sage said she couldn’t continue.
Sage’s body was found covered with snow 2.7 miles from where her dad’s car had been stuck. She had died of hypothermia. Bear was found in a Bureau of Land Management restroom, delusional from hypothermia. He had taken off his clothes down to his long underwear. Aragon has been arrested, charged with second degree murder, and is being held on $500,000 bail. He had custody of his children. His three adult daughters and those who knew him say he was a good dad. The only criminal record he has, from what I’ve read, is a marijuana possession conviction from last February.
I do not intend here to in any way justify or excuse this horrifically negligent, thoughtless, (in my opinion, again, connect the dots) possibly marijuana-influenced act. There IS no justification and there is no excuse. I am pointing out, though, that there IS no public attempt, in the media or on blogs or anywhere, to excuse or justify what Robert Aragon did. There are no headlines that scream, “Job loss, financial problems preceded negligent act,” though Aragon was poor, making his living hauling manure. There are no tortured attempts to justify, excuse or explain Aragon’s negligence. That is a response reserved for white, heterosexual, middle class or rich men. Aragon was Native and poor; so far as most Americans are concerned, he deserves nothing and should be cut no slack. Bruce Pardo was white and middle class and so he gets a pass with all sorts of people, even for murdering nine human beings execution style and planning to murder his own mother. Pardo also apparently suffered no consequences for the near-drowning of his one-year-old son eight years ago. Nothing at all came of that.
Alberto Rios
Or consider the horrific case in my area last summer of the Mexican dad, Alberto Rios, whose infant son died in a terrible accident. I also read everything I could find about this situation as it was unfolding. The father and his family were in the United States illegally. He was a construction worker and by all accounts, hardworking and law-abiding. He had just finished a job at a construction site and was having a party at his house to celebrate. He’d had a number of beers and it was late, in the wee hours of the morning when partiers had left. It was hot that evening and his baby was fussy; he told his wife he’d take the baby outside with him to rest near the fire pit, something the family regularly did according to neighbors. All who knew Rios say he was devoted to his baby. But something went terribly wrong, the dad went to sleep and in the morning the baby, who was 7 months old, was found in the fire pit dead. The father was inconsolable when police came, weeping and in agony. When he was arrested he had to be put on suicide watch. He pled guilty and took full responsibility for the child’s death from the beginning. He was held in jail on $1 million dollars bond on suspicion of first degree manslaughter.
Once again, I am in no way excusing this act of horrific negligence that resulted in the death of an innocent baby. What I want to say is, there was no public or media attempt to excuse or justify what Alberto Rios did. There were no headlines attempting to connect Rios’s level of stress and life traumas with his negligence — even though Rios did not speak English, was in the country illegally and had only a first grade education. On the contrary, there was ongoing vilification and demonization of Rios, headlines suggesting he was “no stranger to the criminal justice system,” for example. But when you read the story, you found out Rios’s “familiarity” had to do with his being in the U.S. illegally and with possession of marijuana. By contrast, Bruce Pardo’s son requires round-the-clock care for injuries he suffered under the care of Pardo, and Pardo simply walked away. Pardo murdered his ex-wife and eight other people and the headlines are ablaze with excuses, justifications, rationales, “reasons” for his having “snapped”. Because, after all, middle class white men just don’t do this kind of thing. They aren’t like poor men or men of color, those beastly men who can’t control themselves and who can (and should) be expected to bear up niftily under any amount of life stress or difficulty, bar none. When white men commit atrocities, the public sentiment is, they must have had some good reason. If they killed their wives or girlfriends, undoubtedly they were driven to it.*
Too, when a white middle class guy “loses” his job or comes up short paying the bills, that’s viewed as a calamitous situation, such that it’s understandable that the guy might “snap” at any time. Ohmygod, a white middle class guy came up short paying his bills, call 911! A poor man who spreads manure for a living, on the other hand, while he raises two kids? Somehow, that’s not viewed as stressful, much less a life emergency, much less any excuse for anything or cause for “snapping”. A man in the country illegally who has a first grade education and doesn’t speak English? Tough luck. Any stress he has is his own damn fault, the malevolent thinking goes.
The impunity with which white, middle class or rich heterosexual men may batter, abuse and kill their female partners and others is central to the perpetuation of white male heterosupremacy. It isn’t a fluke that people are excusing Pardo or justifying what he did or blaming his ex-wife for it. It isn’t some anomaly. This is, in fact, what white male privilege IS. This is white male heterosupremacist privilege on parade. This is what it MEANS. No group of men on earth is so immune from the consequences of femicide and abuse as this group of men is, and the privilege they enjoy expresses itself and works itself out every single day, not just in horrific events like these murders, but in a million ways, small and large, in the interactions between white men and white women, white men and men and women of color, white men and children, white men and animals, interactions which, in the end, are, again, the heart and soul of white male heterosupremacy.
This is Women’s Space, so why am I writing at length about the relative privilege of white, middle class men compared with other men? Because until these dynamics and mechanisms are thoroughly analyzed, interrogated, understood and their outworkings challenged and brought to a severe end, white male supremacy will continue, sexism will continue, racism will continue, classism will continue, lesbophobia and ableism and oppression of animals will continue. It isn’t enough to talk in terms of some amorphous class of “men.” So long as we fail to analyze the way white male power works in the world, white men will continue to do what they do with impunity, and all the while, they will be pointing the fingers and blaming men of color, poor men, immigrants, women, children, which, of course, allows them to continue to batter, bludgeon, rape and murder all the way to the “smaller” abuses of every day life, the abuses of power, the abuses of entitlement, knowing most people will excuse them or won’t even recognize what they have done. What they do has weight; it is white affluent men who have the power in the world.
*Go here to read a male blogger describing his own murderous fantasies as though it’s just everyday blogging material. We are not supposed to be worried because this guy finally came to Jesus. He just wants us to understand that there are lots of guys around like Pardo. Well, some of us already know that only too well.
Heart
Yes indeed it is white male middle-class heterosexual privilege which enables murderers such as Bruce Pardo to have their crimes justified, excused or if that fails denied. Here in the UK white male heterosexual privileges works in similar ways because if a white ‘respectable’ male cold bloodedly murders an ex-female or current female partner and her children then his crime(s) are alll too routinely labelled a ‘tragedy.’ Not a deliberate act of murder but a ‘tragedy’ because as always, the woman is blamed since she supposedly provoked the white respectable male to commit murder.
Same applies if men who are migrants, non-white or ‘not respectable’ commit a crime then they are immediately castigated as ‘criminals who deserve to be punished.’ It is abuse of power and that power is still held by white, powerful, middle-class men who are determined to keep women and less powerful men subordinated and oppressed.
It does not mean of course, that men who are not middle-class and ‘respectable’ do not commit violence against women but unlike white ‘respectable middle-class males,’ their crimes are more likely to be seen as criminal acts but of course without any gendered analysis or understanding.
Wow, I think this is one of the most important blog posts you have ever written. What you say here I both know and don’t know. It is knowledge I have that I try to hang onto but which gets away from me regularly anyway. It is a constant struggle. This regrettable condition stems, I am sure, from the abuse I myself, as a white lesbian, suffered at the hands of white male heterosexual mental health professionals and their (sometimes female) minions. It was largely psychological in nature but devastating nevertheless. I am in a constant struggle to articulate it, what was done and what it meant. If I didn’t have so much trouble expressing it I would write a post a mile long, blog about it and maybe even write a book. I hope one day I will be able to.
Thank you again for more thoughts on Pardo. I agree much of the media coverage on this stinks.
Branjor, such a good point that abuses of power can and do exist wherever white privileged men engage with women, whether in het relationships, family relationships, on the job, in doctor-patient/therapist-patient relationships, or where police arrest a woman, in church, in education, wherever. And, too, in all of these situations, the impulse amongst the non-conscious, (read: most Americans/Canadians), will be to defend the man, excuse him, justify what he did, if it is a white middle class or affluent het man we are talking about. If the guy is a man of color, is poor, is gay, then if he is abusive or harms a woman, he will not be defended, he will be viewed as guilty guilty guilty, because these groups of men are viewed as inherently or essentially criminal, as “criminal elements,” in ways affluent white het men never are no matter what they do. The one exception is with het men of color who are very wealthy or are superstars in some way, i.e., O.J. Simpson. Even then, a whole lot of white people believed him to be guilty not on the basis of the facts and the evidence and the testimony of Nicole Simpson and those who knew her, but because he was black and therefore assumed to be beastly and criminal. Resulting in people of color defending him, often without investigating the facts, the evidence and the testimony, in what amounted to a confrontation, not over the guilt or innocence of O.J. Simpson or the credibility of Nicole Brown Simpson, but over racism as it is expressed against black men. Underneath all of it is the way white male power constructs white, privileged heterosexual males to be the standard, the default, the people who should always be believed, the people who are deserving, good, respectable, entitled to justice and to a sympathetic hearing and who deserve to be taken care of by the whole world in a way nobody else on earth ever is.
Peridot, thank you, and thanks, as always, for your amazing insights, Jennifer Drew! I always appreciate reading you.
Branjor, I really hope you do write your book.
As I said in the other post, Pardo very much deserved those burn wounds he got in the fire.
We need to strive to capture as many of these spree shooters as possible alive (as long as there would be no additional casualties). Then make them suffer as much as possible by throwing them in solitary confinement, with no contact with anyone and with only horrible tasting food and stone-cold handlers who take him to exercise. Nothing to read, nothing to do.
Pardo reminds me of this guy I knew in Texas a long time ago, when I was trying to live totally by the hippie ideal of living off the grid and everything. He was married and had two children. We all were on a subsistence level farm. His wife took care of their two small children all day, and did housework. He was supposed to go out with the men to jobs that made money but spent much of his time lying in bed with migraines, so he claimed, for which he “needed” marijuana to cure. The weed didn’t cure the migraines, apparently, as he still ended up lying in bed all day. He was a big Ayn Rand worshipper, which means his loyal wife was too. He was verbally abusive to her about her weight and she would quietly hang her head when he became insulting.
One day she told me a story about why she hated Ann Richards, then the governor of Texas. It was because she’d passed certain laws regarding men who skip out on their child support. Well, men and women, but we all know who really skips out, right? Well it was all Ann Richards fault her husband couldn’t work a straight job. I asked why. Well because he had been falsely accused of fathering a child because of “some lying tramp”. Oh, said I, had he slept with her? Well yes he had, but the baby wasn’t his! Had he used birth control, I asked. Well no, she was supposedly doing that. Did she have a baby in the expected time frame after he slept with her? Yes, but she was a tramp and could have been sleeping with anyone! Well maybe you should get a paternity test, I suggested patiently. Long silence. Well they had one and it said the baby was his, but those tests aren’t always accurate! (Oh the power of denial)
The upshot of the story is that he refused to work legally because he wasn’t going to have the wretched tramp steal his money for a kid that “wasn’t his”. And he blamed his former girlfriend for his family’s poverty. Yes, he let three children live in poverty rather than get a damn job.
Was he white and middle class? You betcha!
Dear Heart:
I am in the middle of my own abuse situation right now. It’s not “standard” abuse, (adult child taking care of dying mom with abusive father). I got out out on Tuesday and working my way to being whole and free.
This post struck a nerve with me because I am working with the shelter people, and they just don’t get when I say “but if I choose the nuclear option of abandoning my dying mother, and disowning my enabling siblings and my abusive father, I will be labeled as the ungrateful, lying, drama queen bitch who makes everything about her.” My father is wealthy and generous, I mean he brought me home when my business hit a snag, paid me out of the goodness of his heart when I couldn’t work at a demeaning underpaid job while took care of my mom, and told me when my sister was kicking me out the house, that I would be moving in with my parents. I mean, this is the man who bought me a new car in March and this how I repay him, accuse him of abuse and walk out on my dying mom? The shelter people tell me people are smarter than that, then if so, why is my sister telling me that I am making shit up about my past memories of abuse? Why, when I tell the stories of my memories of abuse to my sister, who tells me that she doesn’t remember that and i make shit up, or to anyone who knows my father that they can’t believe me? I kept thinking it’s because he is rich and he is very generous, but this post, is making me think it’s because he is white middle class man with extraordinary privilege.
Now, because I haven’t been there in three days, taking care of my mom, I am sure he is getting accolades from everyone over how stressful it is, and how generous he is, and what a fucking bitch I am.
Thank you Heart, I am going to print this out and bring it to my shelter meeting today.
I thought of this post when I saw the heartbreaking photos (of murderer and his victim) accompanying this article in today’s NY Times:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/02/us/02veterans.html?hp
Heart, your reply brings up a good question - what if one or more of the male heterosexual mental health professionals in my “treatment”/abuse had been black? He would not have been poor or an immigrant in that case, just black. Would a black male mental health professional, say a psychologist or psychiatrist, qualify as a “superstar”? Would the same excuses, justifications, blaming of me, be done in his case? I have a feeling the answer is yes because he would be a professional, working for and a representative of the white male heterosupremacist mental health establishment, not just a poor immigrant father making a living hauling manure like Mr. Aragon above. It is an important question in its own right, but of course my needs focus on my own salvation and recovery from the effects of this abuse.
I’m glad that you had the stamina to write this essay, Heart - thank you. I can barely bring myself to think about the people who were murdered by this coward. The fury that I feel about the men who commit these atrocities is at a breaking point. I want to dance the dance of rage like Kali and not stop until the patriarchal insanity ceases.
This sentence is so very powerful and true, particularly the “brought to a severe end” part:
“Because until these dynamics and mechanisms are thoroughly analyzed, interrogated, understood and their outworkings challenged and brought to a severe end, white male supremacy will continue, sexism will continue, racism will continue, classism will continue, lesbophobia and ableism and oppression of animals will continue.”
I agree with you Branjor. I have been disabled by female doctors, immigrant physicians of colour, the children of privileged, wealthy, upper caste people in their own country, whom our country welcomes, gives preference in order to meet our countries efforts at equality (ushering them to step carefully over the nasty Indians at their feet). I have bent over backwards to make excuses for them because they are 1.) women 2.) of colour, but I’ve stopped now, no more “I understand and I’m so sorry for the racism you suffer”. I live with the damage caused me because of their willingness to throw their patients under the bus so they can ‘belong’. But it’s not just them, white newbies in that profession do it too.
I think to the degree that a person will shill for white male heterosupremacy, to that degree that person will enjoy its protections when they harm people who come to them for help or who are under their authority somehow. Ultimately, nobody can make it inside of patriarchal institutions if they don’t shill, or if they make it for a while, it won’t be long before they begin the long slide into the oblivion reserved for those who won’t play the patriarchal game by the patriarchal rules.
My post here is about how this particular mechanism is most visibly, publicly enforced, i.e., where a man commits a highly-publicized murder, rape, mass murder or other atrocity. White het affluent men can commit virtually any atrocity and be excused by large numbers of people for it because white men have the power in the world (it is waning, but they still have it). If white men did it, the thinking goes, it must have been okay, or there must have been good reasons for it, or they must have snapped, anything but considering that white men commit atrocities because they have the power to commit them and want to keep it. If people recognized this, they might actually rise up, resist, in large numbers.
Public violence of the type Pardo committed and the response to it remind us of what happens to people who get on the wrong side of white male heterosupremacist power. You might get offed, your family might be destroyed, and you will be blamed for it, is the message. That particularly egregious, horrifying and visible enforcement filters down and throughout all of the institutions of patriarchy — medicine, psychology, religion, education, agriculture, law — in ways that construct, enforce and reinforce white male heterosupremacy. So, medical professionals and all kinds of professionals abuse their female patients and their female patients are blamed.
It functions just as any gang functions. There are a few people in any gang who are the enforcers, the thugs, the people who dole out the punishments and consequences for resisting or straying and the willingness of those few to dole out the punishments and of the rest of the gang to support them keeps everyone ruled or in fear of the gang in line. It’s just that white male heterosupremacy is a particularly, penultimately powerful gang whose leaders are horrifically dangerously wealthy, own arsenals and nuclear weapons and run the corporations that determine the fate of the world.
But events like the Pardo event provide us with an opportunity to see just how this works. The guy is defended. He is excused. By huge numbers of people, in the media. In a way men of color, for example, are not, and certainly women are not! My god, if this had been a woman. We would certainly not have had headlines suggesting her job loss or divorce caused her to “snap.”
I wasn’t suggesting, Branjor (or Sis) that it is only “superstars” who get away with harming women within patriarchal institutions. There, anybody who shills for white male heterosupremacy becomes an honorary member of the white affluent male heterosupremacist gang that rules the world, including women, including men of color, whomever.
It’s only in these instances of egregious public violence that we can see the hierarchy of male power, though, as it actually exists. White men can get away with virtually anything, including bombing the hell out of civilians, all the way to offing a family. Men of color cannot. Neither can women. Men of color can only get away with instances of egregious public violence where they are shilling for white male heterosupremacist power, as in wars white men have made.
I agree. In the context of this thread. But I’m not turning the other cheek any longer. They gave me their name and took my country. Bad exchange. Natives are such passive people. Like European Jews were. I will not be complicit in my abuse any longer; not as a woman, not as “Dalit”. Sic.
Of course, feminists can shill, too, and to the degree that they do, they will also enjoy the protections of affluent white male heterosupremacy. I saw you, the other day, Sis, standing alone on a well-known feminist blog against dedicated defenses of patriarchal medicine and Big Pharm. The bloggers there defend these guys all of the time, and that is part of the reason for their “success” (as patriarchy measures success, not as we do, as women committed to the end of patriarchy). To the degree that feminists also shill for affluent white male heterosupremacist institutions and ideologies, to that degree those feminists will be protected. Those of us who work very hard to stand outside of all of that stuff have our work cut out for us, always.
theunmarrieddaughter, first, I hate what you are having to go through and if I could make it stop, you bet, I would.
Having said all that, I’ve been mulling over your story and thinking about how similar our stories are in so many ways, as women. Rebecca Mott writes more eloquently than anybody I know about the way johns/punters insist and believe that the money they gave a woman for sex means she “consented” to whatever abuse they heaped on her. They might rape her, choke her, gag her, torture her, any number of things, and when confronted, their response is, “She consented, she agreed, it was a business deal, I paid her XX dollars.”
How far is that, really, from the situation you are describing in your own life? As though all the money your father has given to you, the ways he’s helped you in the past somehow cancels out his abuse and misogyny. It does not. It cannot. Money changing hands, gifts, trinkets, whatever never equal consent to abuse, whether we are talking about prostituted women or daughters or wives or female partners or whatever. It reminds me of the way so many people seem to think incest, sexual abuse, rape, battering, psychological/emotional/physical/spiritual/economic abuse don’t count if the victims are members of wealthy families.
You weren’t and aren’t for sale. Your father chose to give you certain things, that’s one issue. He abused you, that’s a whole separate issue. You owe him nothing. I wish you could get your mom out of there.
There is nothing you can do about what other people say about you. People like your father do enjoy the immunity from criticism and judgment that is the province of affluent, white men. You will be blamed and judged as we all are, as women, when we dare to resist and to remove ourselves from our batterers/abusers. It sucks and it’s wrong and it’s what feminism exists to address.
I agree with what you’ve said about white male supremacy. But not completely: When this happens in native culture with say, drinking and children harmed as with the Aragon situation, there is about 50/50 saying it was his fault, and others saying no it is society’s fault. And there is a growing number of native women saying, yes, we’ve all suffered, but enough, start behaving reponsibley, quit using alcohol, drugs, raping, beating, abusing and killing us and our children and saying you love them/us so much.
I may be misunderstanding you, Sis, but if what you’re saying is, why don’t white women demand that white men start behaving responsibly, quit using alcohol, drugs, raping, beating, abusing and killing us and our children, you’ve got me. There are a whole lot of white women out there who excuse these guys, justify, defend what they do, just like the men do. White women are definitely raised from birth understanding or being taught or learning by example or having modeled for us that it’s our job to take care of white men and that white men deserve to be taken care of. We learn that how well we get by in the world has to do with how well and whether we take care of the men. Some of us have to get knocked around pretty hard before we see things as they are.
When a man harms someone through negligence or violently, I think he is always responsible as an individual for what he’s done. I don’t think society ever did it or drugs did it or whatever, HE did it. But I don’t think it’s enough to say that, to stop there. I think we have to also examine which men get away with negligence and violence and which men don’t and why– otherwise, again, it’s only certain men who are going to pay for what they do (mostly poor men and men of color) and white guys will continue to walk (and will continue to do what they do). In order for any one of us to be healthy as individual people, we have to create a society that is healthy– our health is intertwined with the health of the world we are living in. Identifying or removing one source of dis-ease or un-health just identifies and removes that one source; it doesn’t get to the sickness or un-health of the surrounding culture.
I’m going to post something along those lines that I read last night that I thought was good and relevant.
I think in my rambley way I’m saying some native people would make lots of excuses for Aragon, just like some whites, male and female, do for white men. It wasn’t his fault he cracked, drinks and uses drugs to treat his pain. Etc. But now, some native women (mostly; but one or male three leaders here and there too) are saying stop using it as an excuse. You may only be able to take one step up, but start. Now.
And this ties in with that idea of “reverse” racism Jeyoani and I talked about. You can just see the lawyers leading them with what the left will accept. But some native (women) are not accepting that anymore. They are saying, get your shit together. No matter what; you were abused yourself, you were in residential school, you get your shit together because yes that’s true, but we are going beyond the excuses now.
So I read that about Aragon, and I know the white society will come down without understanding, or accepting what is true. And lots of native people are doing the same. They are not aligning with the white rednecks but they are also not excusing these guys anymore.
Yeah, I agree– leftists are consistently colluding with misogyny, refusing to hold men responsible for harming women and children, blaming everyone but the men (including the women and children that have been harmed). The Right colludes in a different way; it virtually never takes responsibility for protecting (and creating and funding) institutions and organizations and governments that are misogynist and violent or that protect misogynists and violent men.
(Oh, and btw, Aragon’s 29-year-old cousin has been also arrested and charged with second degree murder. He was there in the car, too. It boggles the brain. Why didn’t ONE of them, especially the cousin, go *with* the children when they took off walking? Based on what I’ve read, it sounds like the kids wanted to start walking. I get that, they wanted to be with their mom on Christmas and there they were, stuck in a snowdrift. It sounds like they insisted they’d be fine. Well, kids can be hard to say no to. But the thing to do was, one of the men needed to go with them! The really horrible thing too is, after they got the car unstuck, they just turned around (the two men) and drove back to Robert Aragon’s house! They didn’t go looking for the kids to make sure they were okay! The cousin was also charged with possession of meth, marijuana and drug paraphernalia. So, my bet is, these guys were high.)
If you do a google search on “Robert Aragon” or “Alberto Rios” though, and if you read the articles and comments from mainstream media, you don’t see anyone excusing these men, or offering reasons why they might have been negligent in their kids’ death, far from it. There are no headlines suggesting anybody but these two men themselves were to blame for what they did. A google search on “Bruce Pardo” is a different story. There it’s all about how he must have “snapped,” it must have been his divorce, his job “loss”, even his “guilt” over his son (which is totally bogus. I read everything I could find, there are zero suggestions that he ever felt guilty about his son, his son’s injuries, claiming his son as an exemption on his taxes, nothing. There’s nothing to suggest he felt guilty for not telling Sylvia Pardo about his son either.) Nobody even wonders how it was Pardo walked away after his son fell into the swimming pool and was so gravely injured.
Here’s the thing I was reading last night, or an excerpt. It’s Starhawk, from her book Truth or Dare. Starhawk frustrates me, because it’s as though she never clinches the deal, sort of. She says so many good things but never seems to gather her analyses together into a clear and incisive whole. It’s hard to explain. Still, I like her a lot and I really like what she says here:
So I read that about Aragon, and I know the white society will come down without understanding, or accepting what is true. And lots of native people are doing the same. They are not aligning with the white rednecks but they are also not excusing these guys anymore.
I think this is the point Heart’s making, Sis. That male abusers should be judged without either prejudice OR excuse. That excuses are not “the” problem, in a vacuum, but that they are part of the problem — so, white people (e.g. the white media) should stop making excuses for Pardo. And that white people should stop treating minority men in such a fashion, re: either prejudice or excuse, that the waters are muddied for women who wish to hold men accountable and it becomes harder for them to do so.
There are a lot of ways to muddy the waters. For instance, I will accept without knowing a single detail that you’ve been abused by South Asian female doctors, as you say you have been. But without further explanation, without knowing that an Indian woman referred to you as untouchable, referred to your caste, I am not going to just associate these women, about which I don’t know anything, with some sort of caste-based thinking. Not because they’re incapable of race prejudice, everybody is, but because it’s one specific way that Indians have been treated with prejudice (it’s now racism against Indians has been excused since at least the British Empire). So it doesn’t seem like a credible thing to lay at the feet of these unknown minority women based primarily on how your government seems to treat them (and not their own views).
It’s especially troubling combined with “They gave me their name and took my country.” since “they” certainly did not name you, and (unless my Canadian history is way off) Indians did not take your country, white people did.
And while it’s possible that your claim re: affirmative action (that, unlike the US, Canada preferences South Asians in education and employment and that your government grants them race-motivated job opportunities that put them ahead of First Nations people) may be true, and I’m not going to claim it is false even though I’ve never heard of such a thing, I’m also NOT going to lay that on, specifically, South Asian women, whether they abused you or not. Because I know that regardless of what race policies the Canadian government has, and what kind of abuse certain women in this group may have visited upon you as an individual, it was NOT women who wrote those policies. And I’m 99% sure it was not South Asians who wrote them. It was, predominantly, men and white people who approved any racially problematic employment/education policies.
There is a school of thought that abused, hurting women — and they are countless — can “take off the gloves.” That they can “get real” in ways that “aren’t PC” or whatever. But what it boils down to, too often, is reaching into that master’s toolbox.
Tthere’s a difference, and it is real and tangible, between standing up for one’s own rights, advocating for oneself, defending oneself, and refusing to be nice or sugarcoat truth
and
using patriarchal logic to hurt someone who has been hurting.
Saying that Pardo deserved to be burned, for instance — it is — IT IS — saying that someone is capable of doing something that justifies being put into intense, tormenting, physical pain.
And so, although it looks like support for women and children abused by this man, it justifies every single time some media idiot (or, worse, law enforcement official) asks that offensive question “well, she was brutalized, but what, if anything, DID she do to provoke it.” As though there is an answer that would make it okay. As though there is such a thing as deserving physical pain and torment.
Well, plenty of people really do think there are some things you can do that justify suffering real mental and physical pain and damage. But it’s my experience that they’re more focused on untangling neverending tit-for-tat struggles over which abuses are “merited” and whose causes are “just,” than ending abusive systems and freeing people.
Just some thoughts.
I know what you mean Heart about Starhawk never clinching the deal. I really like her and have attended workshops she taught in the Bay Area, but still I had exactly that same impression of her writing. She’s missing some piece, and I think it is not directly naming the agents of evil for women directly. Sometimes straight feminists are a little too namby pamby for my tastes, compared to the lesbian feminists like Z. Budapest, who were not afraid to call a spade a spade!
[...] Violence, Racism and Patriarchy What Heart Said. Sylvia Orza Pardo was Mexican, a woman of color. Maybe she was even an “illegal,” the [...]
Hello all,
I’m a man, so I hope I’m not breaking protocol by posting here.
Anyway, I absolutely agree that the news coverage of this crime has been poor. I also agree that there is an implicit white middle class privilege going on here. But I think there may be some other issues going on. (bear with me)
The crime is really horrific, and I think a lot of people are struggling to understand it. It’s so horrible, that most “normal” people read about it, and think to themselves, “it can’t possibly just be over $10K. There must be more to it than that. He must have been reacting to something horrible.” I think that is part of why the coverage has tended to be the way it is. The idea that he was just a total psychopath is just too scary.
I agree with most of your analysis, by the way. I think he quit or was “fired” from his job on purpose to avoid paying alimony. I also think he may have been the arsonist that burned down his mother’s house. Her house was destroyed in one of the SoCal wildfires this fall. It was a fire that destroyed many houses, including his mother’s, that police said may have been arson. I suspect that fire may have been a “test run” for him:
http://blogs.laweekly.com/ladaily/crime/sylmar-fire-biggest-arson-inve/
On another blog I read that he was fired from JPL back in the early 90’s for time card fraud (marking down 40 hours when he was working more like 20). Later, he re-applied at JPL under a fake identity and was rehired. Eventually someone recognized him and he was escorted off the premises.
He also literally left a woman at the alter around that time. Everything was in place for the wedding, and he simply didn’t show up.
What a stand up guy!
You know, there’s something really wrong in his face. Look at that picture of him. That guy is a permanent toddler.
This speculation over what made Pardo snap is such a bizarre disconnect. This man was plotting his revenge for six months, since before the job was mysteriously lost. His plan was detailed and methodical. He was in full control of his faculties, and might have gotten away with it if his costume had not caught on fire. What about this has anything to do with his snapping?
I think there are some instances when men snap. A man who discovers his wife in bed with another man and kills them on the spot, might be said to have snapped, reacting in a murderous rage without taking any time to think or realize what he is doing. That is what a snapped man signifies to me, a man totally out of his mind with no sense of reality. Bruce Pardo was nothing like that. I have written up nearly a hundred articles in my Men Terrorizing Women series, about one a week since I started the blog two years ago, and I do not think any of the men in those stories snapped. They were just boys being boys, showing women who is boss.
I think there are some instances when men snap. A man who discovers his wife in bed with another man and kills them on the spot, might be said to have snapped, reacting in a murderous rage without taking any time to think or realize what he is doing. That is what a snapped man signifies to me, a man totally out of his mind with no sense of reality.
Do you really think that a man can “snap”, i.e. lose all sense of reality, simply from finding his wife in bed with another man? This seems inconsistent with everything I’ve read from you. Your statement is a defense of honor killings and I can’t believe you meant to do that.
Ditto to what Emma said. He may be overcome with rage at the discovery, but he still knows that killing them is killing them.
Do women often catch their husbands cheating? How often do women “snap” and kill men by the thousands after discovering this?
My guess is next to zero.
No, I did not mean to defend honor killings. I was trying to draw a distinction between Bruce Pardo and whatever those defending him as having “snapped” meant by it, which is not clear to me in any event. I think it cloaks a sinister agenda. I do not like the word or its usage for the insanity defense, which is problematic enough. It seems people are trying to equate the state of mind Pardo was in with insanity, while it seems to me he was a cold calculating killer, totally unlike either insanity or the state of mind that might be described as having snapped. I would not describe it that way, and it certainly is no defense. That is the old crime of passion argument, which I have railed against time and again on my blog, the man lost his mind, so he could not control his rage. That is just an excuse for a man who did not want to control his rage. Men make all kinds of excuses for committing violence against women, none of which make any more sense than excusing Bruce Pardo because the pressure got to be more than he could bear, so he snapped. He was not insane, did not snap, and was under less pressure than billions of people on this planet.
As to what can make a man lose all sense of reality, since I have little faith in the male sense of reality, I think anything can make a man lose it, if he wants to react that way. That depends more on his mindset than the circumstances. A man always has the choice to control his emotions, unless he is truly insane, but all too often, men choose to let themselves get out of control. That is their choice and their responsibility, regardless of the provocation. In that sense, a man who “snaps” wants to snap, so he lets it happen and pretends he has no control or responsibility for what happens.
I am sorry I did not make my meaning clear. I gave that example to illustrate why it seems so farfetched to me to say Pardo snapped, not to imply snapping excuses murder. Unfortunately there are many people who think snapping does excuse murder, so those who sympathize with Pardo say he snapped. This was a fully premeditated massacre, but people are trying to pass it off as a crime of passion by a man who snapped. This is no innocent mistake. These people have an agenda. I read one comment by a guy who said more of this needs to happen until the divorce laws change.
I believe all male violence (not an oxymoron here) is about men feeling entitled to do anything they want to vis-a-vis women. Men have no sense of honor when it comes to women. They make it very clear that they resent every advance women make in the world, that they hate paying child support, that they hate independent women, and that they hate all women who want freedom. Men feel entitled to be as violent as they want to be–witness Gaza– this is all about male violence folks, men deliberately going out of control and causing yet again another crisis in the Middle East. I think it’s time for men to get out of government in Gaza period, and have women take over the peace process. Women are half the world’s population, and yet you never see large mobs of women attacking innocent men and boys, you never see female orchestrated mass genocide like Rwanda. The prisons in America are filled with violent men, men dealing drugs, men buying guns and creating mayhem in their communities. Who is causing all the world’s problems here? It’s time to really put this very much front and center.
No man “snaps” and kills his wife or children. He calculates this and executes this because he feels entitled to do it. Men believe they own women, and when women believe they have the freedom to walk out on a bad relationship, men believe it is their right to kill them. I never feel fear in large groups of women, and I often wish we had more large events where only women filled the athletic fields or concert halls or cathedrals. I wish all mainstream churches had months of services just for thousands of women. (and not right wing services either, but feminist church services by for and about women). They used to do this every year in San Francisco at Grace Cathedral and it was heavenly. I wish there were large cities or urban areas where women could go and no men would be there ruining the tranqulity with their leering sexist foul mouthed selves.
I want large parts of the world where women live in peace, and I actually think that until we create true viable alternatives to male controlled spaces, with the male sense of entitlement to oogle, harass or even kill women, we won’t see an end to this violence.
Shame on the men of Gaza and the men in Israel with their bombs and mortors. Shame on them all for the violence and havoc they cause for countries that women and children live in too, and for homes where women and children live. Shame on the police state men subject women to worldwide. I’m so sick of everything they do. I’m sick to death of men killing women and having it justified in any way. Men would stop all this if they knew punishment and loss of freedom was an definite outcome of all of this. No, men don’t snap, anymore than men think they have to rape because they can’t control themselves. They do it with malice and because they think they own women body and soul. That’s why they do it.
*** Standing Ovation For Satsuma !!!! ***
Wow, Mary Sunshine, I take that as a very high compliment indeed! We’re few and far between, us lesbian separatists and separatist leaners, so rare as our words are, it is a real validation!
Men have no sense of honor when it comes to women.
This is effectively almost the case, but there is this peculiar concept men call chivalry. It is so extremely flimsy, unreliable, and easily turned off that it might as well not exist, but if this thin veneer men hide behind to pretend they are civilized really did not exist at all, as dangerous as men are to women, I think it would be even worse.
I can’t imagine what “”as dangerous as men are to women, I think it would be even worse…” could mean. Rwanda, the Congo, an inner city neighborhood here infested with gang banger teenage boys? The world is terrible, because men are terrible. They commit all these crimes, the prey on women and traffick them and beat them and think women are toys. All men believe this in one way or another. Some simple don’t act on these violent impulses all that much, they are simply mild manner accountants who underpay their female secretaries. I’ve never seen a group of human beings get away with more infamy daily than men worldwide. There seems to be no stopping, shaming or changing them.
Our job as feminists is to enlighten women, to empower women, and to try to wake up women so that we as women can free ourselves. The more we focus on what will work for us, the less time we spend enabling the oppressors, the sooner things will change. Not all women can see this. They are in deep denial, or they are too beaten down to fight back. The challenge of feminism today is to do everything in our power to wake women up, to get women to pay attention, to help women escape men, and tell their stories, and to blunt the soul destroying women hating propaganda that is the entertainment industry, the church, social norms.
As a lesbian, I sit on the sidelines watching all this craziness, watching women marry inappropriate men, watching women date these jerks. What can you do?
Oh wow what a relief, I sincerely appreciate your taking the time to express your views here regarding the “job loss” nonsense which I percieved as absolute absurdity before I even finished reading the sentence describing “it” in the first of many, many stories I have read since this inconceivable event occurred. Horrendous acts of ultimate selfishness occur probably on a daily basis of course but this one especially perplexing, the deep roots of your subject regarding the manner in which events by certain types of people are portrayed to the public certainly play a substantial role in the overall personalities of such disgusting individuals. I live a few miles away from where this occurred and can add a quick perception I’ve had though about having learned a long time ago while dating a few women from the area that “ex’s” (boyfriends and husbands) of all cultural & economic backgrounds do in fact “act up” in a very pronounced and wildly inexplicable and overblown manner with regard to their seemingly strange need to retribute, interfere or harm in any number of complex ways women with whom they have had failed relationships with.