Wednesday 24 September 2008

News: Evil Competition- Men vs Women (Men still win)

I was interested to see the case of Joanne Hill who murdered her disabled daughter in the news. Interested because she got a minimum of fifteen years, unlike this guy (just the title of that article tells you all about who’s fault it really is, the slut of a wife, who may or may not have been having an affair- well, she was probably thinking about it, so she deserved all she got, right?) who is basically already out.
Of course men have been killing their children left, right and centre all week and last month but hey, at least they had the decency to off themselves, and oh, they’d been under such terrible strain and were such devoted fathers. The use of the words ‘devoted fathers’ when describing men like this is grotesque, by the way, newspaper editors of the world. Devoted fathers protect their children, and they certainly don’t kill them out of spite, as is so often the case in these murders (the ‘if I can’t have them, no one will’ mentality- which was not in action in the Joanne Hill case).
Of course, murder of innocent children is murder whichever way you dress it up (diminished responsibility doesn’t cover your wife having an affair in my personal opinion). But how come the 15 years minimum sentence for Joanne Hill? She was an alcoholic with a history of depression and clearly at the end of her tether. She was obviously desperate (she pleaded with her husband to get the child adopted and he said no). I’m not making excuses for her; she could have just left. But I doubt if she’s going to run off into the sunset to live happily ever after, celebrating her actions, so surely 5 years would have done, or the usual ‘life’ sentence doled out to the kind of people who kick people to death in the street for a laugh. Or how about those lovely ex-boyfriends who hunt down and kill the woman who dares live without them? Is Joanne Hill really a threat to anyone else? Is she going to be a lesson to other mothers going out of their heads, or will they just suffer alone, and maybe crack, or maybe just go on struggling, like they are meant to?
The word ‘evil’ is bandied around a lot, especially when women kill, and especially when women kill children. It is seen as totally disconnected from the norm, whereas men killing their families is as common as Monday morning. The blame is attributed elsewhere; money, society, but most of all, women. Just look at Fathers for Justice; they virtually do a eulogy for these murdering bastards.
Well, women don’t make men kill. And men kill in far, far greater numbers than women ever will, such great numbers, that the vast majority of the time, it doesn't even make the news. Until the spotlight is put back on this truism, more families will die at the hands of the men who ‘love’ them. Joanna Hill’s sentence changes nothing. The judge is out of touch. But then, what’s new?

4 comments:

Ossian said...

If anything I think she should have got longer. I just thought only 15 years for taking a harmless child and drowning her. I don't care what the politics of it are, I just thought the sentence was no less than she deserved. She was out laughing and joking with shop assistants, with the body in her car parked outside. If that's depression, I just don't know what. I think to hell with depression then.

The mental health defence is a really strange concept, surely anybody who murders is insane - all of them. What are we saying when we confer sanity on some murderers? It's as if we're saying, ok, I see where you're coming from. Some of them are so insane that they really don't know what they're doing, but the others really know what they're doing - it's a fine distinction, a bit like a thought crime - a Catholic sin of thought. Defendant A killed somebody and Defendant B killed somebody. But forget about that, what we're interested in is what they were thinking. Now Defendant A thought clearly about it - how horrible! - but Defendant B thought cloudily about it - oh that's alright then.

Either way they're going down, A to prison to think clearly about the error of his ways and then be released; B to hospital to be drilled full of drugs and think cloudily about more people to kill, and then be released.

Horrible men, horrible women, sick, sane, insane - All I know is I'm sick of them all. There are more horrible men, I think, but they often have these lumpen female sidekicks who tolerate and join in in their cruelty, do they not?

lightupvirginmary said...

Except for your first paragraph, I agree, especially about the levels of insanity. It's not sane to drown or stab someone, is it? You're right.
But what makes a murder worse, for example, a hate crime gets a longer sentence than not; if you stab someone because they are black or gay, they are still dead after. All murder is a hate crime. I'm GLAD the sentence is longer; but I want ALL the sentences to be longer, i.e. I don't want murderers wandering round (I explained that really badly.)
As for female sidekicks; it's the men that drove them too it! Hindley would never have killed if she hadn't met Brady. And so on. I'm inarticulate today.

Anonymous said...

I don't want to seem like I'm making excuses for a mother killing her child like the case above but the circumtances of child murder are very gendered.
Men kill their whole families for financial or pride reasons whereas women tend to kill their children out of desperation. Joanne Hill was very depressed and asked for help many times. If she had been given help it could have saved the life of her child. The issue here is that her husband was happy to let her get depressed by taking on 99% of the caring of their child and refused to help her. We need to think again about how we view women's roles as mothers. She is no more evil than all the father killers out there. I'm glad you posted about this.
Also I think that postnatal and maternal depression needs to be taken much more seriously. It's not an excuse for murder but if Joanne Hill had been looked after things would have been different. Ossian you don't understand depression and that's ok but laughing is entirely possible even when you are feeling suicidal and not a reason to deny that someone is suffering. And to say she could have just left is also very judgmental, just like saying women who are abused by their husbands can just leave. It would have been done had it been that simple.

Men have got 3-5 years for killing their wives. They should get 15 years too but it's unlikely. It is right of you to point out that consistency is needed.

lightupvirginmary said...

I thought the same; the husband seemed to be condemning and shouting, but I doubt if he would have been able to look after that child full-time had the mother left; which you rightly point out, is not easy.
Women are so often left 'holding the baby'; and a lot of men don't want to take responsibility but are quite happy to hang off rooftops protesting when it all goes wrong (which incidentally has very little to do with loving/ caring for their child) or, worse-case scenario, wiping out the whole family.
Consistency in sentencing? Maybe in the next world...!