Would you take part in a Particicution?

[ThePM]

In the handmaids tale, Particicution is a form of execution where the handmaids get to basically batter a violent sexual offender to death.

when I first read the book I remember feeling absolute revulsion. But when I now read of sexual offenders and men who murder women and children they claim to love, I know that I would join in a Particiution against them. Not as a volunteer but similar to jury service.

Anyone else.

No. Can't you see this makes you just like those men? They also think their violence is justified.

No, I often indulge in violent thoughts about slapping people so hard there faces swivel to the other side of their heads, but I know that it would be impossible to achieve and it would likely break my hand.
But being part of a mob that beats someone to death, no, that's just unhinged.

No. We pay for a prison service to deal with these people. I hope they have a miserable time there.

Absolutely not.
In Handmaids Tale iirc there are hints that the victim isn’t actually the sex offender they tell the women he is; I might be wrong but it was a thought that crossed my mind. You would have to have a very high level of trust in the state to be absolutely certain you weren’t helping commit an atrocity against someone innocent.
I also think encouraging violent revenge generally degrades everyone and makes all violence more likely. I don’t support the death penalty but if I did it wouldn’t be like that.

Good grief. No of course not.

Some of the men are part of Mayday and the handmaids choose to kill them quickly. In this world no I would not but in Gillead as a handmaid raped and beaten I don't know - what is the consequence of not joining in - look at Emily or Janine.

No - and the point of patricutions is two fold - firstly it enables men who are poltical prisoners to suffer a horrible death, literally torn to pieces, as a warning and secondly it gives the Handmaids so heavily controlled at all other times, a release valve so that more of them don't go completely mad

No. Never. That would make me as bad as them.

Have you ever been in a hand to hand combat situation? Martial arts or role play, if not a real live situation?

I assume you have not. You, and everyone else, have no idea how they would react even in a self defence scenario. Some people give it all this 'oh I'd have kicked him in the balls etc' - when the stress hormones kick in you have no idea whether you would freeze up.

In most martial arts you have to practise being the attacker so your partner can practise their techniques on you. Its really hard to make yourself hit another person in cold blood., even when you know they likely won't be hurt.

And inflicting real violence is a further step removed. Its all very well getting hot under the collar while reading about their crimes but if you were eyeballing the criminal face to face, seeing them as a living breathing human, I very much doubt you would be able to pick up a crow bar or whatever and just batter them (and thank God for that! ).

We have violent films and tv to thank for giving the impression that most people could just pick up a weapon and off someone without a second thought. Thankfully, most people can't .

I have. I was violently raped.

In the Handmaid’s Tale, that they were sex offenders was a lie.

But still, no I wouldn’t. I don’t have violence in me.

It’s a good question.

I think such barbarity tends to be practiced only in places where the oppression is significant. It’s an opportunity to defuse a population that might otherwise turn on the oppressor. Bread and circuses.

I do think it desensitises us to do such things. We end up more brutal and less inhibited in all life situations.

I'm sorry that happened to you.

My question was directed to the poster suggesting we all join in bearing criminals to death.

In the sense that an eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind, yes of course.

But I disagree that they feel their violence is justified. I always felt it came from a sense of entitlement. So it is deeply cynical and comes from a sense of “what you going to do about it?” In the same way that Jezebels was from a sense of entitlement to control women precisely as the wished.

I suppose I see it as similar to the dispatching of Mussolini; The Ceaucescus or Gadaffi: gruesome, but sort of inevitable, given the decades of rage. And a risk they were willing take given what they subjected their people to.

The punishment for violent and sexual offences generally don’t touch the sides of the harm they cause.

Being more serious about it - does it not enrage you?

There's rage.. . And there's rage.

On an intellectual level, Im mightily pissed off. When I read some victims stories I am moved to tears.

I still couldn't pick up a bat and set about another human who was not posing an immediate threat to my/my children's own life.

I don't think we should be using 'could you murder the perpetrator in cold blood' as the metric to judge whether we care sufficiently about an issue.

ETA - do you think you could do this OP? If so, do you think that's a good thing?

I wouldn't plan on it, but i reckon I could probably get in the spirit of it if the opportunity arose

No.

I am fairly sure that I would take up arms to directly protect me and mine (I'm a terrible shot, but I doubt that would stop me trying). But in cold blood, no.

Your question reminded me of this case.

https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2022/nov/17/what-drove-200-women-to-stab-a-gangster-to-death-netflix-series-revisits-that-shocked-india

If I were in that situation myself, I'm not sure if I would take part, I would certainly be cheering on anyone who did though.

Asking whether I feel angry about sexual violence is completely different to asking me if I want to beat an actual man to death. I reject violence.

I do feel angry about the rapes and assaults suffered by almost every woman I know. I've never met a woman whose rapist has been convicted, but I've met many many women who have been raped. Rape is basically legal, it's so little prosecuted or punished. The conviction rate is less than 1%. It's almost impossible to imagine a world in which it was actually prosecuted at the rate of murder. But I'd like to try.

We know that around 90% of rapes are committed by repeat offenders, and on average a repeat rapist commits 5-6 offences, so we could cut the numbers drastically and quite strategically, especially if we triangulated by the common comorbidities of domestic violence and child abuse. The absolute numbers are still staggeringly large. If we estimate there are around 300,000 serial rapists operating in the UK today, if 60% of them went to prison (roughly the conviction rate for murder), we'd have to build two more entire prison systems. So there are very strong social forces against handling this in the criminal justice system, alas.

Taking one serial rapist off the streets saves four women. If we could identify them earlier, when they're just hitting their mum or their teacher, maybe we could even save the rapist too. It's a vast project, but consider what things like police and deweaponisation has done for the murder rate. Moving from a culture where all men carried knives and swords to one where nobody is armed has cut our murder rate massively. We changed the culture and over time the culture changed us. We can keep on at this. I'm working on it, myself. I think for me part of the feminist project is to work on building a culture women can live in, can thrive in, without this bullshit.

So I guess for me, anger can motivate action but it's got to be productive action. I'm just not here to entertain revenge fantasies or to add more bullshit into the world. We've got enough.

It does remind me of a Hungarian story where women poisoned their abusive husbands with arsenic distilled from flypaper. Apparently the ringleader, a midwife, would say something like “I don’t know how you put up with him” which was code for would you like some poison?

Obviously it’s not the same but I don’t blame women who are in difficult positions from banding together to off each others abusive husbands. I don’t blame those Indian women for getting stabby in a courtroom either. I think when justice is denied people can only be pushed so far before taking matters into their own hands. I’m not sure if I could participate though.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angel_Makers_of_Nagyr%C3%A9v

I’m very angry about what he did to me.
im not going to beat him to death over it.

Being more serious about it - does it not enrage you?

OP, I find this a very odd thread you've started. You have had several thoughtful and a few very heartfelt responses, but I am not sure what your purpose in posting this was. Are you trying to get women to admit that they would join in, or encourage, mob violence (which, if I'm not mistaken, is unlawful in the UK)? Or is this purely an academic exercise for you?

I think some potential posters might prefer to understand your motivations before answerany of your questions.

Yes, very odd.

No thank you. I live, or rather have lived in a great civilisation until recently.
This practice reminds me of Emperor Palpetine in Star Wars revelling in encouraging good people to do evil things, knowing it destroys them.
Margaret Atwood has a lot to answer for.
What an odd post.

Of course I understand mob violence is illegal in the UK.

My question was different: Particicution was the mandated form of punishment. Do you think that the internal rage many or all of us feel, could be externalised in a legally mandated way? My point was that my answer has changed, I think, from a no to a yes as I have got older. Being driven by multiple factors, which I know involves having daughters and no sons.

I don’t think it’s compulsory to agree with me, and it is definitely more a purely hypothetical rather than testing the water for a Reform justice policy. Particularly as someone pointed out they don’t know one person whose rapist has been convicted (me neither, and mine is now dead).

I hadn’t heard of that case in India, but I can imagine what they felt.

I wouldn't take place in something like that, it can't be a judicial decision, and it can only rarely be a private community one without turning into a lynchmob. I think extra judicial actions like that aren't true justice, but can be a necessary matter of community safety when the law fails.

It's still murder, but exists in a moral gray area for most people. Like the roving gangs of aunties in India and Pakistan who beat gangrapists with cudgels, or how in some sub-Saharan countries, communal meals just weirdly get contaminated with pesticide that took extraordinary means to reach the community it landed in.