College student Johanna Justin-Jinich murdered

Friday May 8, 2009 MIDDLETOWN, Connecticut (AP) — A man who Connecticut police say sparked two fearful days at a university by killing a student and threatening a campus shooting spree surrendered Thursday night after seeing his photo in a newspaper.

Stephen P. Morgan, 29, was taken into custody about 9:15 p.m. ET (0115 GMT) after stopping at a convenience store in Meriden, about 10 miles (16 kilometers) from the Wesleyan University campus.

Wesleyan officials said that police told them that Morgan targeted Wesleyan students and Jews in his journals. Justin-Jinich, of Timnath, Colorado, came from a Jewish family, and her grandmother was a Holocaust survivor.

Although initial reports claimed Morgan was his victim's "boyfriend," in reality

"When police confiscated Morgan's car they found a journal in which he spelled out a plan to rape and kill Justin-Jinich before going on a campus shooting spree..."

and

"Police records show she filed a harassment complaint against Morgan when they were enrolled in the same six-week program at New York University. In a complaint filed in July 2007, Justin-Jinich said Morgan called her repeatedly and sent her insulting e-mails.

One of the e-mails warned: "You're going to have a lot more problems down the road if you can't take any (expletive) criticism, Johanna."

Both were interviewed by university police, but Justin-Jinich decided not to press charges."

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Rape as entertainment

There's been a lot of talk in the last couple of weeks about the new movie Observe and Report, starring Seth Rogen and directed by Jody Hill. The controversy is over a scene in which the protagonist rapes an unconscious woman. Why is there controversy? Because some people are trying to claim that it wasn't really rape, because the woman wakes up midway through the rape and says something. Some people also say it's the woman's fault because she was drunk, so the rapist is not to blame.

The grim humor of the scene in O&R is that it's a microcosm of American attitudes towards rape. Reading comments on other sites is like turning over a rock and seeing the furious wriggling of rape apologists exposed to the light. People genuinely believe that rape is something a woman does to herself. It's what women deserve for drinking, wearing the wrong/right clothes, being in public, being a woman. The rapist is completely invisible - he's the mythological agent of punishment for everywoman, who is believed to deserve it. The very occurrence of the assault automatically makes it her fault for "letting it happen."

The unspoken assumption that any man will rape us if we ever relax our eternal vigilance is also a deeply disheartening view of the American male.

I don't think Rogen intended the scene to expose these attitudes as problematic. I think it was an attempt to be ugly and shocking in a type of comedy that the makers consider successful when you cringe and laugh uncomfortably and hate yourself for laughing. Rogen's character is a horrible person who does violent, criminal things and that's supposed to be funny.

It is a good opportunity to insist that people answer some questions: Why are you defending the male character? Do you think what he does is good? Does the rest of the movie portray him as a good person? Is he a person you want to help or be friends with or be like? Would you rape a drunk woman if you had the chance? Would you not feel bad about it because you think she deserved it? I hope someone gets a chance to ask director Jody Hill and star Seth Rogen these things.

This post is an expansion of a comment I made on the Tiger Beatdown blog's excellent coverage of the movie.

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Mass murderers

Always men. Men with guns. Like the family annihilators, these men want to destroy as many lives as possible. The difference is, they take out their insanity on strangers instead of their families. As with the family annihilators, the news always tries to come up with a "motive" - that is, someone to blame besides the actual murderer. Often the "motivator" is a parent, a woman, or women, that have rejected the murderer, or insulted him by having the temerity to have jobs, go to college, etc. Other popular "motivators" are the economy, job loss, fear of losing guns, and bullying.

• PITTSBURG, PA, Saturday April 4, 2009 – A 911 call that brought two police officers to a home where they were ambushed, and where a third was also later killed during a four-hour siege, was precipitated by a fight between the gunman and his mother over a dog urinating in the house. When officers Paul Sciullo III and Stephen Mayhle arrived, Margaret Poplawski opened the door and told them to come in and take her 23-year-old son, apparently unaware he was standing behind her with a rifle...
• BINGHAMTON, N.Y. — Friday April 3, 2009 -- The man who gunned down 13 people on Friday was well known at a Johnson City, N.Y., outdoors store, where he often purchased or exchanged handguns, a store employee said.
  Jiverly A. Wong, 41, frequently exchanged guns at the store, said Dave Henderson, Gander Mountain's outdoor education series coordinator. Wong would buy a handgun and shoot it for a few weeks before returning it, saying he didn't like the gun, Henderson said. "He was in there real regular. Everybody knew him," Henderson said. Police suspect Wong walked into the American Civic Association in Binghamton, N.Y., on Friday, killing 13 people and wounding four others before shooting himself. Police found two semiautomatic handguns and a satchel full of ammunition at the scene.
• March 29, 2009, NC - North Carolina police are investigating whether the man accused of killing eight people in a nursing home shooting spree may have targeted the home because his estranged wife worked there, according to The Associated Press.
• Wednesday, Mar. 11, 2009, Winnenden, Germany -- Tim Kretschmer, a 17-year-old former student of Albertville Realschule entered the school's plain, white flat-roofed building wielding a 9mm Beretta and, as a police spokesman described it, "simply opened fire". [...] The killing spree, which took a total of 16 lives, finally ended when Kretschmer, aware that the police were closing in, shot himself. Twelve of Kretschmer's 15 victims were women. Eight of the nine pupils he killed at his old school were girls and all three of the teachers he gunned down were female.

As always, many more entries are to come.

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The Truth about Gender "Differences"

Studies show that one's sex has little or no bearing on personality, cognition and leadership, and there are more differences between individuals than between sexes.

Mars-Venus sex differences appear to be mythical, even though they are extremely popular fodder for news articles and are commonly used as excuses for all types of bad behavior. "Men are just hard-wired to _____" (fill in the blank with ogle, assault, cheat, lie, rape, look at pornography, abuse prostitutes, abandon their children, etc., etc.) is seen all-too-frequently.

A 2005 analysis of 46 meta-analyses that were conducted during the last two decades of the 20th century underscores that men and women are basically alike in terms of personality, cognitive ability and leadership. Psychologist Janet Shibley Hyde, PhD, of the University of Wisconsin in Madison, discovered that males and females from childhood to adulthood are more alike than different on most psychological variables, resulting in what she calls a gender similarities hypothesis. Using meta-analytical techniques that revolutionized the study of gender differences starting in the 1980s, she analyzed how prior research assessed the impact of gender on many psychological traits and abilities, including cognitive abilities, verbal and nonverbal communication, aggression, leadership, self-esteem, moral reasoning and motor behaviors.

Hyde observed that across the dozens of studies, consistent with the gender similarities hypothesis, gender differences had either no or a very small effect on most of the psychological variables examined. Only a few main differences appeared: Compared with women, men could throw farther, were more physically aggressive, masturbated more, and held more positive attitudes about sex in uncommitted relationships.

More, with lots of references, here

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Family annihilators

Family annihilation is an act usually perpetrated by a man (95% of incidents are committed by males) upon his wife/girlfriend/ex and immediate family, including children and grandparents. It is usually followed by the man committing suicide. It is a phenomenon that exposes the ugly truth that in our culture women and children are still considered to be men's property, to be destroyed at will. Many (although by no means all) of these murders are committed using guns. Reuters points out, "Mass shootings have become a feature of life in the United States." Time Magazine notes that US firearms sales in large retail outlets are up 39% in 2009.

• June 28, 2009, Henry County VA. -- William Carter Sr., his wife, Bonnie Williams Carter, also 56, and their son William Ronald Carter Jr., 29, of Danville were all found shot to death in the basement. Carter lured his 22 year old son, Timothy Carter, home and shot him as well, but the son pretended to be dead and escaped. "He [the murderer] seemed to be in good health, and he was always talking about his flowers and his yard," she [a neighbor] said. "I just don't understand it."
• June 8, 2009, COMMERCE, Ga. -- A Jackson County grandfather accused of killing his 6-year-old grandson and shooting his wife remained in an Atlanta hospital Monday.Robert Clark, 55, was charged with murder Sunday after police said he shot and killed his 6-year-old grandson, Michael Levigne. Police said Clark then shot his wife Linda and threatened police officers during a standoff.
• June 7, 2009, SWIFTWATER, Pa. — A man who kidnapped his 9-year-old son in northeastern Pennsylvania led police on a 40-mile chase that ended in a crash and an exchange of gunfire that killed him and a state trooper, state police said Monday. Another trooper was wounded, but the boy was not shot.
• June 3, 2009, PHOENIX AZ - Dad kills son in failed murder-suicide. Police say a Phoenix man stabbed his 5-year-old son to death before turning the knife on himself in a failed murder-suicide. While the boy died, the man is in an area hospital and is expected to survive.
• June 1, 2009, ENCINO CA - Three children were in the custody of relatives today after their father fatally shot their mother and then turned the gun on himself at their Encino home, police said. The bodies of Pedro Papias, 41, and Rosa Valencia, 35, were discovered in a bedroom of the house, said Officer Sara Faden of the Media Relations Section.
• May 31, 2009, Portland, OR - Police say a man shot and killed his 7-year-old son and his 6-year-old daughter before turning the gun on himself on a hiking trail in Oregon. Hillsboro Police say the man, 45-year-old James Gumm, killed his son Tyler and daughter Kylie, and that he was under stress and unemployed at the time of the murders. He used a 9-milimeter handgun.
• May 30, 2009, Miami FL - Jilted man kills ex, friend, himself. Police said the killer of two young women at a Plantation gas station is now dead and once had a relationship with one of the victims.Jillian Hauck, 27, and Brooke Pazo, 22, were gunned down early Friday by a man who had shadowed them in a black car. Their killer, police said, was Robert J. Vaughan, 30, of Pembroke Pines, who had recently split up with Hauck.
• May 27, 2009, BARDSTOWN, KY - Bardstown man kills toddler son, self. A 21-month-old baby is dead and police believe it was at the hands of his father. Nelson County deputies say they are not ruling out anything at this point, but they think 28-year-old Tim Frazier was the shooter; his toddler son, Cole, the victim, and it all was the culmination of a heated custody battle.
• May 26, 2009 KARACHI, Pakistan - A man killed his young wife and her alleged paramour on suspicion of illicit relations at his home and fled from the scene on Monday. The bodies of Alia, 20 and her alleged paramour Hakim Ali, 25, were found on Monday afternoon from a house in New Muzaffarabad Colony, Landhi within the limits of Quaidabad police station. SHO Asif Rauf confirmed that the man and woman were shot twice, adding that Alia’s husband Zaidullah, who is from Swat, murdered the two,
• May 26, 2009, SPLIT, Croatia, -- A Croatian man shot to death his wife and two children as they slept in their Split apartment on the central Adriatic coast, then killed himself, police said. Ljubomir Zaradic, 43, a tourist office inspector, fired at least eight rounds from his East German-made automatic rifle as his family slept in their apartment in the residential Pazdigrad neighborhood along Split's eastern seafront. The killings of Oriana Zaradic, 38, son Trpimir, 10, and daughter Deni, 5, occurred early Monday, investigators said.
• May 26, 2009, Boulder CO., Police in Boulder, Colo., say a man who killed his wife and son, then himself, at the family's home had been fired as a police officer in the 1970s. The victims were 63-year-old Elizabeth Schwarzenbach-Dileo and 23-year-old Philip Christopher Dileo. They were believed to have been shot Monday.
• May 21, 2009, LA CROSSE, Wis., Dang Xiong, 24, shot and killed his wife, 22-year-old Pa Hou Vang of Onalaska, as she got out of her car outside his home about 11 p.m. Thursday, authorities said. They still were married but had been separated. He then turned the gun on himself, according to La Crosse police. No one knows what led up to the shooting. “We don’t know if this was a planned murder-suicide or if it was an impulsive action,” Vue said. “Murder-suicides are very rare in the Hmong community - this is not something that happens in Laos.”
• May 20 2009, ATHENS, Greece, -- A toddler survived a Greek family tragedy when his father killed the wife and jumped with him and his brother off their apartment's balcony, Athens police said. The 40-year-old southern Athens man stabbed to death his 26-year-old wife, embraced his sons, ages 2 and 3, and jumped off the fifth-floor balcony, killing himself and the younger boy.
• May 18, 2009 - Annapolis MD - A Tracys Landing man shot his girlfriend then turned the gun on himself yesterday in an attempted murder and suicide. He died, but his girlfriend survived and was in critical, but stable condition this morning. Andrew Mackall, 21, died of his self-inflicted wound, police said.
• May 12, 2009, FRUITLAND PARK, Fla. - Man Kills Wife Then Self While Family Watches. Lake County investigators say a murder-suicide was especially brutal, because the shooter committed the acts in front of the family and a young child. Ronnie Warren, 51, and 36-year-old Tonya Warren were owners of the Cain Pole South Baitshop in Fruitland Park. Police said, even though they were having troubles and Tonya wanted a divorce, they still worked together.
• May 3, 2009, LAKELAND FL, Four people were killed Sunday night in South Lakeland in one of the worst shooting rampages in Polk County history. A man armed with a high-powered rifle shot his wife, infant son and 7-year-old son, and then killed himself, officials said. The gunman fired at his 13-year-old son but the boy escaped unharmed and was in the custody of sheriff’s deputies late Sunday. Authorities identified the gunman as Troy Ryan Bellar, 34. They said he killed his wife, Wendy R. Bellar, 31, 5-month-old Zack Bellar and 7-year-old Ryan Patrick Bellar. They did not release the name of the 13-year-old.
• April 26, 2009, ATHENS, Ga. — Authorities from Georgia to Texas had little to go on Sunday as they searched for a University of Georgia professor suspected of shooting his ex-wife and two other men to death outside a theater near campus. Neighbors watched Saturday as SWAT team members, guns drawn, swarmed their tidy middle-class suburb about seven miles from the campus looking for 57-year-old George Zinkhan. But he wasn't in his home or office and hadn't used his credit or ATM cards. [Update: his body has been found in a grave he apparently dug himself.]
• April 20, 2009, Towson, MD, - Baltimore County police disclose William Parente killed his wife and two daughters by "blunt force trauma and asphyxiation" at a Towson, Md, hotel before committing suicide. Police said he cut himself and bled to death in the bathroom of his room on the 10th floor. Parente was 59, the murders are being blamed on his financial problems.
• April 18, 2009, MIDDLETOWN, MD - A father killed his wife and three young children, then shot himself in an apparent murder-suicide that authorities are calling this quiet Frederick County community's "worst, most horrific event" in decades. Frederick County sheriff's deputies found the bodies in the family home after receiving a 911 call from a relative shortly after 9 a.m. Saturday. The father, identified as Christopher Alan Wood, 34, died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound, authorities said. Wood's 33-year-old wife, Francis Billotti-Wood, and their three children were each shot once and also sustained "traumatic cut injuries," although authorities said autopsies would determine the exact cause of their deaths and how long they had been dead.
• April 7, 2009, SEATTLE, Washington - A Washington state man shot and killed his five children, between the ages of seven and 16, then turned the gun on himself after his wife told him she was leaving him, in the third US mass shooting since Friday. James Harrison, 34, killed his children early Saturday inside his mobile home in Graham, 100 kilometers (65 miles) south of Seattle, then drove to a nearby casino and shot himself inside his car, Pierce County sheriff Paul Pastor told reporters. Although many news reports are trying to blame the murderer's ex-wife for the shootings, Pierce County Sheriff Paul Pastor described the crime as a “horrible thing”. “This was not a tragedy. It was a rotten murder,” Pastor said. “This appears to be the terrible work of the biological father. If that doesn’t break your heart, I don’t know what does.”
• March 29, 2009, SANTA CLARA, CA -- Six people, including three children, were shot and killed and a seventh victim is fighting for her life in what Santa Clara police are investigating as a murder-suicide, one of the deadliest such incidents in the Bay Area in recent memory. The suspected gunman, a man, is believed to be among the dead inside a home on Headen Way in the city's upscale Rivermark community north of the Montague Expressway, said Santa Clara police Lt. Phil Cooke. "We do believe this appears to be a family-on-family murder-suicide," Cooke said.
• March 29, 2009, MILTON, Mass. -- Relatives and friends of two young sisters slain Sunday in suburban Boston, allegedly at the hands of their brother, are reeling as they try to understand the grisly crime.Grief counselors were scheduled to be available to students at Milton High School, where Samantha Revelus, 17, known as "Princesse" to her friends, attended classes.Revelus and her 5-year-old sister, Bianca, were killed in their home, one of them as a police officer looked on in horror, authorities said.A third sister, Sarafina, 9, narrowly escaped being killed when officers shot the girls' brother, Kerby, 23. The girl remained hospitalized Monday with stab wounds to her hands, abdomen and one of her legs.
• March 19, 2009, Mobile, AL - A jury has convicted Lam Luong of murdering four young children by throwing them to their deaths from an Alabama bridge last year. Prosecutors say the man threw the four children from an 80-foot-high span of a coastal bridge after an argument with his wife. Three of the children were his and the fourth was his wife's with another man.
• March 15, 2009, Miami, FL Guillermo Lopez, 49, shot and killed his estranged wife, his mother-in-law, his 19-year-old step-daughter and her 27-year-old boyfriend. The party was in honor of the boyfriend's birthday. As is common in such cases, the police are "seeking a motive" and the press has seized upon the ex-wife as causing the carnage, not the actual man that committed the murders.
• March 11 2009, BIRMINGHAM, Ala., - Eleven people including the suspected gunman Michael McLendon and his mother were killed in a shooting spree and car chase in southern Alabama on Tuesday, authorities and local media said. The shooter, who was in his mid-30s, killed five people including the wife of a local deputy sheriff and her 3-month-old baby at a mobile home in Samson, according to Wynnton Melton, mayor of nearby Geneva, Alabama. His other victims included his own mother, two people killed at a convenience store and a man in a pickup truck who died during a car chase as the gunman apparently fired at random, said Melton. In all 10 people plus the gunman died, according to the website of the Dothan Eagle newspaper.
• March 03, 2009 , Illinois, An Illinois man convicted of killing his first wife more than 20 years ago shot and killed his second wife and her teen son Monday before turning the gun on himself. Police were called to the Wilmette home of Richard Wiley after his wife Kathryn Wiley-Motes failed to show up for work on Monday morning, MyFOXChicago reported. After forcing their way into the home, police found the bodies of Wiley, Wiley-Motes and her 17-year-old son Christopher Motes.
• Feb. 25, 2009, MIAMI - A 53-year-old music teacher fatally shot his wife and two daughters Wednesday before killing himself, while his 16-year-old son who survived the attack managed to call police as he escaped uninjured from the Miami home, authorities said. Police haven't released names, but neighbors identified the family members as Pablo Josue Amador; his wife, Maria; their youngest daughters, Priscila and Rosa; and the escaped son, Javier. They said the couple also had a 19-year-old daughter who attends college.
• February 18, 2009, BELLE VALLEY, Ohio — A man who told a sheriff's dispatcher he had money problems strangled his wife and 11-year-old son, then shot and killed himself, authorities said Wednesday. Theodore Bayly, 39, called the dispatcher around 2 a.m., saying he had already killed his family and was going to take care of himself, Noble County Sheriff Landon Smith said. Bayly told the dispatcher in a seven-minute call that he was having financial problems and "couldn't afford it anymore," Smith said. He told the dispatcher where to find the bodies and then hung up.
• February 5, 2009, Washington, D.C. A D.C. firefighter shot his former fiancee, also a D.C. firefighter, and her parents in their Prince George's County home yesterday and then killed himself, law enforcement sources said.
• January 28, 2009, Los Angeles, CA, A man who shot dead his wife and five young children and then took his own life may have done so after losing his job, police in LA have said.
• December 26, 2008, COVINA, Calif. Stinging from an acrimonious divorce, a man plotting revenge against his former wife dressed up like Santa Claus, went to his former in-laws' Christmas Eve party and slaughtered at least eight people before killing himself hours later.
• LOS ANGELES, CA Oct. 6, 2008 An unemployed man with an advanced finance degree who was despondent over his own financial problems shot and killed his wife, three children, mother-in-law and then himself in an upscale home in a gated community, police said Monday.
• NAGPUR, India August 8, 2008 Fed up of financial woes, a man killed his wife, two children and jumped to death himself, police said on Friday.
• Toronto, May 31 2008 A Canadian man, who believed he was possessed by the devil, was Friday confirmed responsible for stabbing to death his wife, two young daughters and a tenant in the city of Calgary in Alberta province. In their first report on Tuesday’s multiple murder case which has shocked Canada, the police said 34-year-old Joshua Lall, an intern architect at a local firm, first killed his basement tenant before stabbing his wife Alison Lall, 35, and daughters Kristen, 5, and Rochelle, 3, to death.
• Austria, May 14, 2008 An Austrian has admitted killing five members of his family including his seven-year-old daughter and his wife, some of them with an ax.
• Winnetka, CA March 28, 2008 The disturbed young man who triggered this week's deadly shootout with police went room to room to kill his brothers and father in their Winnetka home while his father's companion hid inside a bedroom, police said Friday. Edwin Rivera, 20, who phoned police to report the killings and then taunted them to `Come get me,' crouched in the back of the living room as eight SWAT team officers stormed the Welby Way home about 12:30 a.m. Thursday. Officers Randal Simmons, 51, who died in the shootout, and James Veenstra, 51, who was critically injured, were the third and fourth officers, respectively, to enter the home.
• Clearwater, FL December 2007 Police said a Clearwater man killed his ex-wife, their two young children and another woman before taking his own life Friday.
• Massachusetts, August 2007 Sometime between late Saturday and late Sunday, police say, McDermott, 39, shot his girlfriend in the head with a .44-caliber revolver as she lay in bed, killing her. He also allegedly shot in the head two of the woman's three daughters, leaving them critically injured in a second-floor hallway, and killed the family dog. He left the scene and drove to commuter rail tracks in Walpole, where he stood between the rails and shot himself seconds before he was crushed by an onrushing train.
• Bay Area, CA, June 18, 2007 Kevin Morrissey, 51, killed himself after fatally shooting his wife, Dr. Mamiko Kawai, 40, and their two daughters, Nikki, 8, and Kim, 6, in a Tilden Park parking lot. Police said Morrissey was overwhelmed by money problems.
• ANAHEIM, Calif, June, 2007, Iftekhar Murtaza murdered his ex-girlfriend, and her father, beat her mother almost to death, and burned down their house.
• Accrington, Lancs, England October, 2006 A father killed his wife and four daughters in their sleep because he could not bear them adopting a more westernised lifestyle. Mohammed Riaz, 49, found it abhorrent that his eldest daughter wanted to be a fashion designer, and that she and her sisters were likely to reject the Muslim tradition of arranged marriages. On Hallowe'en 2006 he sprayed petrol throughout their terraced home in Accrington, Lancs, and set it alight.
• NEWPORT, Ky., Dec. 29, 2005 A northern Kentucky man remained behind bars on Thursday after police say he went on a rampage on Tuesday, killing his wife, his daughter and her boyfriend. Police say Michael Richardson, 45, confessed to the killings, telling them he was having family problems and he just "snapped."
• Aug. 18, 2005, San Mateo, CA -- Anthony James Richards, 53, bludgeoned his wife, Nicole, and strangled and smothered their two daughters, Alexa, 17, and Tessa, 13, at their San Mateo home and called police before killing himself. Richards was debt-ridden.
• Richmond, CA, Dec. 30, 2004 -- Roderick Fernandez, 34, fatally stabbed his wife, Roselle, and their two children, Kalena, 3, and Roman, 11 months, inside their Richmond home. Their 10-year-old son escaped the attack and alerted a neighbor, who called police. Fernandez fatally shot himself before police arrived.
• CHITRADURGA, India, JULY 30 2004. A man is said to have committed suicide after allegedly killing his wife and two children at Thimmappa Nayakana Kote village in Parashurama Pura Police Station limits in Chitradurga district. Police suspect the crime may have occurred on Thursday.
• Santa Clara, CA, Dec. 6, 2003 -- Todd Vernon shot his wife and three children from his previous marriage before killing himself in their Santa Clara home. His children were Amber, 12, and Matthew and Robert, 10-year-old twins.
• Santa Clara, CA, April 4, 2002 -- Tae Schiefer, 42, fatally shot her estranged husband, Uli, 38, and their daughters, Jessica and Elsa, in their Santa Clara home. Tae Schiefer also killed her 12-year-old daughter from a previous marriage before killing herself.
• Santa Clara, CA, March 26, 2002:Retired Santa Clara County Sheriff's Deputy John Hogan entered his estranged wife's home and killed his daughter, Michelle, 5, and his stepdaughter, Melanie Willis, 17, and stepsons, Stanley Willis, 15, and Stuart Willis, 14, before killing himself.

Many more examples to come...

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Nice to see Sony still sucks

Wow, has it been two years since I last posted about how much Sony sucks?

I guess it's comforting to know that some things never change. This article about the future of free gaming shows that Sony is still on the gender essentialist kick.

"Sony's Free Realms – shopping for the girls, car racing for the boys"

I signed up for the beta and might be granted access eventually. The promo video shows boys battling and playing chess, while girls get to be fashion designers and raise pets. The ratings promise "crude humor and cartoon violence." I can't wait.

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The Pathos of the Male Ego in Contemporary Science Fiction

I do a lot of reading, fiction and non. I like criticism, books about plants, history, mystery, horror and religious studies. Ever since I was a child, I have particularly enjoyed science fiction, and still read a lot of it. Last year I read exclusively women sci-fi writers.
This year I have started reading some male SF writers again. And you know what? It's painful. To read a book in which the author can envision interstellar and inter-cosmic travel, colonies on Mars, post-apocalyptic civilizations that live in giant clock towers, and still drop passing references to prostitution and pornography, is painful. Yes, I am looking at you Neal Stephenson. Yes, I am looking at you John Varley. To me, when you drop these comments, and they add nothing to the story at all, do you know what you are telling us? You are telling us that even with your brains and imaginations as big as planets, you still can't envision a world without the institutionalized rape of women. You have to assure your male readers, "In the future you will still be on top, big boys! Some women may be space-ship captains, but this heresy will always be made up for - there will always be a caste of women available for you to rape and assuage your tender egos! Things may change in the future, but not that much, never fear!"
And this is what you are telling your female readers: "You may have somehow infiltrated this male world of words and rocket ships, but you will never escape the boot in the face. Never."

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Details wonders, "Are we assholes?"

That bastion of good taste and mainstream male thought, Details magazine, was last noticed when they published an article asking "Is it it OK to demand anal sex?" This introspection continued recently when the magazine asked itself, "Have we become the assholes our mothers divorced?"

The article starts with "Dave ... a decent guy ... a devoted spouse and a doting father to the three young children."

Dave has a "shady side habit, an indulgence he tells himself he's entitled to." He secretly goes to prostitutes. He once felt bad but realized that all his guy friends are doing it. He is just like everyone else.

Dave wonders why this generation of men has been "so damn well-behaved." After being repressed for so long, the natural male instinct is to let "roguish instincts run free." Going to prostitutes is but the extreme end; the instinct is also expressed by going shopping to get away from the family, getting drunk and tuning out, and pretending not to hear the baby crying. This "everyday selfishness" is how men retrieve "a bit of unapologetic selfhood—manhood, damn it—back from the clammy clutches of coupledom."

This is partly normal middle-aged male behavior. But it’s mostly because of feminism. Girls get to be girls AND men, while men are forced to assist in their own emasculation, with nothing in return.

The enlightenment of postfeminist men is but a veneer, there is actually a volcano of resentment about having to help raise children.

Jill Brooks of First Wives World, a website for divorced women, jokes that men still just want geishas – silent, adoring servants.

Today’s man is exemplified by Madonna’s ex, Guy Ritchie, who put his manhood on the shelf, only to be cheated on.

The revenge for Everyman is internet porn, and eventually strip clubs, “emotional” and online cheating, and prostitutes. The youngest of men won’t go that far because they don’t want to be like their own asshole fathers. Yet.

The article concludes that men are nostalgic for less confusing times, but there is no going back. The only recourse is to “act out in pathetic little increments … men are no longer fighting the war of the sexes—just mounting a sad little insurgency.”

On one hand, this narrative details what qualifies men as assholes, and claims modern men don’t want to be like their workaholic fathers that ignored them or abused them as children. On the other hand, it minimizes all the asshole behavior as “roguishness” and holds that there is this perfectly understandable volcano of anger.

It clearly spells out the problems:
1. Wives are no longer “geishas” - domestic servants providing unlimited sexual access
2. Men are expected to interact with their families and share responsibility for children
3. The workplace is no longer exclusively male. Men may have to work for women
4. It is now possible that there may be a woman that is more successful than most men

Because men are no longer allowed to abuse the women in their families and workplaces, they are driven to secretly consume and abuse other women. That’s why the majority of men are regular internet porn consumers. That’s why the tamest of porn sites feature women being anally and orally raped. That’s why pimps exploit the most vulnerable women and children available. It’s revenge. It’s the price women pay for demanding human rights – a percentage of us will be prostituted. Our fathers and brothers and boyfriends and husbands and neighbors and co-workers are so angry that they will go home tonight, or sit in their offices this afternoon, and seek out videos of women being sexually abused. And it isn’t enough – these men are still angry. There is the inescapable threat of continual escalation, as American culture becomes more brutal, more crude.

Where is the narrative of joy? Where are the stories about being fathers and lovers? About watching children grow up that get to know their fathers, to rely on them? How are women supposed to love men who lie to them and cheat on them? How are children going to trust fathers that are so angry at being fathers and husbands that they hang out on “Gag Factor” and “Bang Brothers”?

The Details article is here. The accompanying images are disturbing but some of the comments are insightful.

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Why are women so untrusting?

Gretchen Rubin over at the Huff Post points out that people often react to random acts of kindness from strangers with suspicion. Commenters are appalled by the cynicism of people today.

A feminist forum poster writes that her boyfriend is mad at her because she didn't answer the doorbell when she was home alone. What was she thinking? He might have missed an important delivery!

Why are women so untrusting and cowardly? Nothing bad is going to happen, and if it did, it wouldn't be your fault, right?

It's not like, if a woman was missing and probably murdered after going home with someone she met at a New York City nightclub, people would say things like, "THIS IS THE RESULTS OF A LADY THAT WANTS TO GO OUT AND HAVE SEX WITH STRANGERS." or "...had he not killed her after raping her, she would still be interested in him" or "I know how some of these young hispanic girls think. She wanted to impress her friends with her new gringo "boyfriend"." or "I don't know when young women will learn that you don't go to a club, drink too much and leave with a perfect stranger because they are "cute." " or "this girl is 100% at fault" or " I agree. Until today's young women get smarter, this kind of thing will keep happening." (Quotes are from comments on the NY Daily News web site)

Surely your own brother wouldn't blame you for your own murder. "My sister was a good girl. ... She would never have done something like this." (NYDN)

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Privileging religious hate over children's lives

States that have privileged religious-based hate over the lives of orphans and unwanted children:

Arkansas passed bans on unmarried straight or gay couples fostering or adopting children, November 2008. Fueled by evangelical Christians.

Utah bans unmarried straight or gay couples fostering or adopting children. Thanks to their Mormon population.

Mississippi bans gay couples, but not single gays, from adopting children. Just because they are Mississippi.

Florida outright says what they mean and bans gays from adopting. Go Florida, most bigoted state in the union! Currently there is a case in the courts challenging this.

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