"Inconvenient victims": another brilliant piece by Victoria Smith

[RoyalCorgi]

She is so good. She puts her finger on something that has disturbed me for a long time - the minimisation of violence against women if the perpetrator belongs to a group that progressives regard as underprivileged:

thecritic.co.uk/inconvenient-victims/

Yes, the second case discussed in the article is very pertinent as to race, it'snot a digressionto bring it up. It was believed the poor woman, Jane Britton, was raped and murdered by a Harvard Professor. When it turned out her killer was a black, serial rapist (proved posthumously through DNA) how the woman's enthusiasm for her 'true crime' seemed to have curdled. Just like Beverly's killer, the man who did it was a tawdry criminal.

This is a very thought-provoking article - thank you. Victoria has articulated very well the discomfort/ anger many people felt about the Guardian article which focused more on the rapist-murderer’s “identity” than on his poor female victim, Beverly Guenther.

Is there?

I've never seen this, which news outlets are you reading?

There is proof in the article itself that often it's being trans, and therefore mistreated anytime anyone thought you were your birth sex, 'excuses' any murder that a TW carries out. Women don't have this excuse. It's so rare for a woman to murder that obviously people look for 'reasons', and being mentally ill quite often is a reason (not an excuse).
So I agree that people look for reasons for a woman carrying out a violent crime but I disagree that people look for any reason beyond 'it's tough being trans' as a reason for TW doing likewise (which is far less rare).

And remember we have no way of knowing which male people feel like they are 'women' inside, unless they choose to declare it.

I'm almost certain he's being ironic (I hope) bearing in mind this tweet he is quote tweeting from Sister Helen Prejean: mobile.twitter.com/helenprejean/status/1610494592218189825

As for @Onnabugeisha ’s post - you’re being very obtuse.

@CrossPurposes ah thanks, that didn't come across as I don't know who the bloke is!

Not because her husband murdered someone. It was because her husband was murdered by her lover.

The description in the BBC article of the high profile nature of the Edith Thompson court case and the attitude of the public towards her was very interesting, particularly if you think back to a high profile court case last year involving two celebrities (not a murder case) and the kind of media coverage / public commentary which it attracted.

My apologies, thank you.

Anytime a woman murders anyone, there is an all pervasive reaction that seeks to excuse the killing

This is absolutely disconnected from reality. In fact women who kill their abusive husbands, even if they likely saved their own lives by killing him, get harsher sentences than male long term abusers who murder their female victims in the culmination of their escalating violence.

Have you never seen the kind of horrifyingly sympathetic news coverage that family annihilators (male) get?

Did you completely miss the spate of men who brutally murdered their female partners during sex and got light sentences because they claimed their partners consented to sexual brutality?

Have you never noticed that the female accomplices of male murderers that you mention are vilified even more than the men even though the males are the instigators and the dominant partners?

One recent case that stuck with me was the mother of a child who was murdered in the US, who got a longer prison sentence for the murder than the actual murderer (male, her partner) got, even though she was not convicted of killing the child and was almost certainly being abused by the man as well.

@DarkDayforMN
This is absolutely disconnected from reality. In fact women who kill their abusive husbands, even if they likely saved their own lives by killing him, get harsher sentences than male long term abusers who murder their female victims in the culmination of their escalating violence.

Not true. Study Leniency for Lethal Ladies, Aug, 2019:
“Two key findings emerged from the analysis, one substantive and one methodological. First, an APIM of actor and partner age, race, sex, and number of convictions along with several dyadic characteristics revealed that women are significantly less likely to receive a harsher sentence for the crime than are their male counterparts, consistent with the leniency effect (Hypothesis 1a). The effect persists even when controlling for age and number of convictions (two factors that may serve as proxies for culpability).”

”Consistent with prior research on homicide in general, this study provides support for the leniency effect, indicating that even for the most extreme of all crimes—multiple homicide—benevolent sexism protects women in the criminal justice system (Baumer et al., 2000; Curry et al., 2004; Franklin & Fearn, 2008; Johnson et al., 2010). The fact that leniency for female offenders still applies for such a severe crime also casts doubt on the “evil woman corollary” and suggests that gender-based sentencing disparities exist for all types of crimes, including violent and sexual offenses (Embry & Lyons, 2012; Rodriguez et al., 2006). Furthermore, the leniency effect seems to operate independently of partner gender; female murderers receive lesser punishments regardless of whether or not they offend with a male who may be perceived as more culpable.”
journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1088767919867420

Have you never seen the kind of horrifyingly sympathetic news coverage that family annihilators (male) get?

Nope never seen any that are sympathetic to the murderer

Have you never noticed that the female accomplices of male murderers that you mention are vilified even more than the men even though the males are the instigators and the dominant partners?

Also not true. See above.

One recent case that stuck with me was the mother of a child who was murdered in the US, who got a longer prison sentence for the murder than the actual murderer (male, her partner) got, even though she was not convicted of killing the child and was almost certainly being abused by the man as well.

Which case was this? And are you seriously basing your “reality” on this one isolated case and not on systematic studies of gender differentials in sentencing?

Another study Adjudication Outcomes in Intimate and Nonintimate Homicides, July 2016
”Using an original data set of homicide cases adjudicated guilty in Philadelphia during the period 1995 to 2000 ( N = 1137), intimate and non-intimate homicide cases are examined in bivariate and multivariate contingency table analyses. Contrary to earlier research suggesting harsher treatment for women convicted of IP homicide, the results indicate that male defendants convicted of IP homicide are treated more severely than female defendants at all examined stages of the criminal justice process. Additionally, male defendants are sanctioned more harshly for IP than for non-IP homicides. Explanations for the divergence of these findings from those of earlier studies are discussed.”
journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1088767907304121

Which case was this? And are you seriously basing your “reality” on this one isolated case and not on systematic studies of gender differentials in sentencing?

no, do try and read better. I guess you didn’t notice, but there was more than one paragraph in the post you responded to! Helena Kennedy has done the systematic research you’re looking for, that should be a good starting point if you were genuinely interested. Julie Bindel is also a great resource on this and has done a lot of campaigning to help the unjustly sentenced abuse victims I mentioned in one of the (short) paragraphs you didn’t notice.

I’d ask what “systematic studies” you’re basing your unrealistic notions on but i don’t really want to see what you pull out of your ass. 😊

Oh thanks for the link! I guess you didn’t realise that the article you posted acknowledges the historical injustice in how battered women were sentenced and characterises its findings as that injustice being corrected (in Philadelphia in the 90s/2000s.) Didn’t you read it? I’d copy and paste the relevant paragraphs for you but my phone doesn’t want to copy from a PDF so you’ll have to find them yourself.

If only correcting the injustice in sentencing in a particular time and place (at the peak time for women’s rights before the current backlash) had also corrected the social attitudes which led to the injustice of women being demonised and punished for protecting themselves from male violence. Sadly, as the trans rights movement has demonstrated, those attitudes are still going strong.

Not true. Study Leniency for Lethal Ladies, Aug, 2019:

dude - I was talking about press coverage in my discussion of the female accomplices of dominant male mass murderers - that’s why I used the word “demonised” and not “sentenced” in that paragraph.

Historical injustice is in the past much like Edith Thompson execution by hanging for daring to have an affair. This still makes your statement untrue:

”This is absolutely disconnected from reality. In fact women who kill their abusive husbands, even if they likely saved their own lives by killing him, get harsher sentences than male long term abusers who murder their female victims in the culmination of their escalating violence.”

Reality= now, not in history
Use of present tense , ‘kill’ ‘get’= you’re claiming this is the case now, not in history.

If you meant historical injustice, you’d not have objected to my true and accurate statement in the first place and written something like

“In the past, women who killed their abusive husbands get harsher sentences than…”

So, yes I read the paper. And no, you’re still mistaken if you think historical injustice is the reality of today.

Also I just noticed that you used that “Lethal Ladies”study as an attempt to refute a point about battered women killing their abusers. If you’d read even the abstract you would know it’s irrelevant.

Can you at least read studies before you post them? Why should I have to do the work for you?

Dude, you said
This is absolutely disconnected from reality. In fact women who kill their abusive husbands, even if they likely saved their own lives by killing him, get harsher sentences than male long term abusers who murder their female victims in the culmination of their escalating violence.

HARSHER SENTENCES… that’s not press coverage. I quoted exactly what you said that I was responding to and the study was in response to your statement above about HARSHER SENTENCES.

No, it’s not irrelevant. But I’m beginning suspect you’re not entirely coherent by claiming your harsher sentences comment was about press coverage.

I don’t think that Philadelphia in the 1990s at the peak of women’s rights is “the reality of today” and I find that to be a pretty silly argument.

One study showing that a long standing pervasive bias that has been demonstrated by many other studies has been partially corrected in one particular cultural and historical context does not mean that bias has been eliminated. It certainly doesn’t mean that an opposite bias now exists, as you were trying to argue.

I’ll leave it there.

But I’m beginning suspect you’re not entirely coherent by claiming your harsher sentences comment was about press coverage

Oh, for fuck’s sake.

The comment about being demonised was about press coverage. The comment about harsher sentences was about harsher sentences. Two different concepts. Two different paragraphs. And no, the study of mass murderers was not in any way relevant to the comment about abuse victims who kill their husbands.

hope that clears up your confusion, but somehow I doubt it. I don’t like leaving this kind of blatant misrepresentation of my words uncorrected, whether it springs from malice or confusion, but I guess at this point I have to trust that if you do it again anyone reading will go back and check for themselves what was actually said. And now I’ll leave it there.

”One study showing that a long standing pervasive bias that has been demonstrated by many other studies has been partially correcte” that’s not what that study shows btw….that’s your spin on it…there are no “many other studies” just like you can’t link to this mysterious ‘case’ you alluded to regarding mother getting a harsher sentence than the father who murdered their children?!

I can post more recent studies to support….while you what? Oh, yeah you can continue to post exactly zero studies supporting your alternate version of reality. So, yeah best for you to “leave it there”.

there are no “many other studies”

THEY ARE REFERENCED AND EXTENSIVELY DISCUSSED IN THE STUDY YOU LINKED.

fucks actual sake

Yes and I quoted your paragraph about harsher sentences and then responded to that paragraph and then you pretended, dude, that I was responding to the press coverage paragraph which I obviously wasn’t because I did not quote it or refer to it. HTH.

It wasn’t a study on mass murderers….you didn’t read it. It was a study on murderers and one of the confounding factors they adjusted for was whether the murderer had murdered for the first or a successive time as a prior history of having murdered before leads to a harsher sentence. But go on with you.

Yes these many studies which support my accurate statement:
Consistent with prior research on homicide in general, this study provides support for the leniency effect, indicating that even for the most extreme of all crimes—multiple homicide—benevolent sexism protects women in the criminal justice system (Baumer et al., 2000; Curry et al., 2004; Franklin & Fearn, 2008; Johnson et al., 2010).

But no “many studies” that support your assertion that women get harsher sentences.