The Family Annihilator, Feminist Issues, and Materialism
Do Not Shoot. Turn and Walk Away.
April 7, 2009 – Some people blame feminism for the rise in domestic violence. These voices of culture often say something to the tune that it isn’t like it was back in the 50s, when family values predominated. Modern women, they will often claim, deny their natural gender differences and try too hard to be like men, to the detriment of everyone involved, especially children (who are stuck in daycare centers). To add insult to injury, goes the reasoning, men have become emasculated and violent in response.
Underlying the women-blaming rationale is the belief that men are completely dependent on women for their self-concept. It really is unfortunate that anyone would believe manhood is defined through how a woman acts. The consequence of such thinking is that it enables the belief that if women change, then men will too; if women do not change, women are to blame for the behavior of men. In other words, women are to blame for misogyny and violence toward women. In a culture like that, men don’t grow up.
Ann Coulter is one woman who consistently embodies the mentality that women define manhood. Recently, for example, she blamed single mothers for the vast majority of violent male criminal offenders in prison. On her website, she whines that society does not castigate single mothers in the same way that society castigates smokers, which she contends is unfair. She chided readers to admit that smoking makes her look cool and only kills old people. For Ann, its really not about family values nor is it about violence and crime. It’s all about smoking restrictions in public places, which has nothing to do with single motherhood, crime, violence, or manhood. Yet without scapegoating single mothers and attempting to define manhood for men, then there is a fair probability that Ms. Coulter’s voice would be lost in the drone. She is only one note in a musical melody of cultural madness that turns a hefty blind eye to reality. One has only to look at advertisements in the 50s to get a more accurate glimpse at the darkness pervading the American family home at that time. For example, advertisements in the 50s implored wives to stop blaming their husbands (for their affairs and wife beatings?) and wash away misgivings for being the sole cause of marital strife by dousing their germ-infested, stinking vaginas with Lysol disinfectant. Follow Coulter’s reasoning, if you like, but follow it at your peril.
The Family Annihilator
In the midst of the most recent economic downturn, domestic violence and suicide rates have increased. A rash of murder-suicides have cropped up across the country. Expecting an average of about nine murder-suicides per week, the increase could be attributed to increased media attention. Irregardless, according to statistics, between 1000-1500 murder-suicide deaths occur each year. Yesterday, in Graham, Washington, maritally-spurned James Harrison went on a family killing spree, brutally murdering his five kids before going after his wife and a male companion. After searching for her, he shot and killed himself. Today in Alabama, same thing. The “Family Annihilator” is a person who commits murder-suicide on their family members and involves at least three victims. According to the Violence Policy Center in Washington DC, these acts are overwhelmingly committed by men (~95%) in the home. Often the weapon of choice is a gun. Murder-suicides are a domestic violence issue and do at times leave remaining children without parents.
Men aren’t always the perpetrators of family violence. Earlier today, a woman shot her 20 year old son in the back of the head at a shooting range and then put the gun in her mouth and shot herself. Mental illness seems to be a gender issue in murder-suicide cases. Frequently, men involved in murder-suicides are labeled cold-blooded killers while women are regarded as mentally ill. It seems entirely unreasonable to believe that anyone, man or woman, who commits a murder-suicide is anything but mentally ill. What is considered “mentally ill” by psychiatric standards is that there is no malice aforethought. Rather, the mentally ill Family Annihilator tends to be delusional, e.g. that she has to kill her kids to save them from the Devil, or perhaps because she thinks God told her to do it. Family Annihilators who are not labeled mentally ill plan the killing and methodically carry it out. I personally have a hard time imagining that James Harrison was not mentally ill.
Once in an undergraduate psychology course, I wrote a paper arguing that the next Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-V) should include a disorder outlining the symptoms of a person who commits frequent domestic violence. Since the cycle of abuse is identifiable and the abuser often has difficulty controlling himself, it seemed reasonable to me to argue that such a syndrome should be considered as a mental disorder. My teacher promptly rejected my argument. His response on the top of my paper was curt. He asked me if I wanted men who commit domestic violence to not be held responsible for their actions because that is what would happen if their actions fell into the category of a mental disorder. Murder-suicides are an extension of domestic violence, a more exaggerated and final expression of it. Yet the mental health community resists labeling this problem within the DSM, which means it may not be adequately treated either. Experts consistently argue that these men are not mentally ill. Common sense says otherwise. In any case, it seems that the bottom line is that experts want to hold the perpetrators fully responsible for their crime, whereas the defense of mental illness may potentially garner perpetrators a lesser charge.
Men who kill their children and their wives have to be severely depressed. They have failed in their lives, their jobs, and their marriages. How different is the wife who kills her children because she has postpartum depression? Experts seem to think there is a difference; postpartum depression is validated as a mental illness. What about the possibility where the man is insanely jealous, as was most likely the case recently in Graham, Washington, where James Harrison killed his five children in what seems to have been a response to his wife leaving him for another man? Why is it that friends, neighbors, and other community members who knew these men often attest to their shock and dismay over the killings because they never thought he was capable of committing such an atrocity?
I recently watched the Woody Allen movie Vicki Cristina Barcelona. (Warning, tiny spoiler here). The Spaniards essentially accused the Americans of being too materialistic. Its an interesting theory, even if it was raised in a movie. When there is an increase in murder-suicides during an economic downturn, it signals to us how much we value our materialism. What does it say about a society when people become so distressed over materialistic matters that they take the lives of their loved ones and themselves? In America, we live with the motto, “Spend, spend, spend,” so that our economy can thrive. Murder-suicides are the unwitting sacrifices to the God of Materialism.
Resources:
American Roulette: Murder-Suicide in the United States from the Violence Policy Center, Washington DC.
