Comments on: Bruce Pardo: On the Way Americans Justify and Excuse the Brutalities of White, Middle Class Men

By: Mark

Mark — Sat, 21 Feb 2009 04:26:07 +0000

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.

By: Satsuma

Satsuma — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 21:25:21 +0000

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?

By: Aletha

Aletha — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 08:31:01 +0000

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.

By: Satsuma

Satsuma — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 23:19:26 +0000

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!

By: Mary Sunshine

Mary Sunshine — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 21:53:09 +0000

*** Standing Ovation For Satsuma !!!! ***

By: Satsuma

Satsuma — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 05:45:20 +0000

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.

By: Aletha

Aletha — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 07:35:18 +0000

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.

By: Satsuma

Satsuma — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 00:45:27 +0000

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.

By: Branjor

Branjor — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 23:49:32 +0000

Ditto to what Emma said. He may be overcome with rage at the discovery, but he still knows that killing them is killing them.

By: Emma

Emma — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 20:14:38 +0000

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.