I’m not a PUMA sympathizer, but I think this woman’s rage needs to be heard. Her daughter, Louisa, was shot by her other daughter’s ex. She is in a coma and not expected to make it. Her other daughter is battling cancer. In 2009, it looks like this woman, Betty Jean, may lose two daughters. In a particularly horrifying twist, the man who shot her daughter is now claiming that Betty Jean was his intended target.
Betty Jean and her commenters talk a lot about advertising that celebrates violence against women - although I am as appalled by it as anyone else is, I think it’s a symptom, not the cause. Violence against women has existed for millennia, it won’t go away if we make disturbing Dolce & Gabbana ads go away, although this may be a good start.
Neither do I think that banning porn and refusing to wear tight blouses, or whatever, as some commenter suggested, is going to prevent women like Louisa to become the hapless victims of assholes armed with guns. I think this violence is much more primal and horrible than that...
There is also this: the man who shot Rodas, one George Hartwig, had already been convicted of abuse. Specifically, apparently, for attacking his wife, the -other- daughter, the one who's dying of cancer. With a hammer. In the face. Because he wanted her cancer drugs. He went to jail, yes, last summer. For three months. And then, they let him out. And then this happened. Gee. Who'd have thunk it, huh?
By the way, January is National Stalking Awareness Month.
(Via Pennsylvania Coalition Against Domestic Violence)
11 comments:
Three months for a hammer to the face??!?
I hate this world sometimes...
CHRIST.
This world is full of horror, isn't it?
I wish I had something better to say than that. But for now... I don't. I can't even imagine it. Wow. I... I wish that mother well, but I don't even feel I know how to do that, in the face of something so absolutely terrible.
Yeah, I felt the same way. Just horrific stuff. As if all this weren't enough, she'd had a son, who'd -also- died of cancer. I mean, I'm not a parent, but seeing -three- of your children buried...I can't imagine how agonizing that must be.
Did I read that correctly? She mentions her son as being in league with this piece of slime?
I can't process that piece at all. Her daughters....and then the guy gets three months in jail for attacking a sick woman with hammer....and after attacking the other daughter, he gets to taunt them from jail?
I wasn't clear about that, the other son; but that is what it sounds like, isn't it.
and yeah, the motherfucker's apparently still demanding to talk to his dying wife from jail; and apologizing because he hit the -wrong- person, the sister instead of the mother. (Shades of Warren Mears; too bad he won't meet a similar ending).
Yeah, I mean, again, not a PUMA fan, but if they were making a coordinated effort to get this into the greater news stream, major feminist organizations, -something-, that...I could get behind. If they're going to be politicizing it at all, which it sounds like they already are, Betty Jean included. Mostly just...yeah, incredibly awful, just stunning, really.
They're politicizing this? I mean, if it's terms of, "This is what men do to women when we're kept as second class citizens!"....Do I have to read it again? ARe they doing something else? Oh, God.
Yes, I am a wuss.
Yeah, riverdaughter's first reaction to this was to, of course, blame Obama. As if the piece of shit assaulter was like "well, I wasn't going to try to kill my wife and her sister, but now that Obama's elected..."
I agree that this story should be bigger, but the PUMAs are basically ruining any chance of that by immediately injecting their crazy into it.
Turning monomania into an art form, that. One doesn't really know what to say, there.
Well, you've seen Palinpumawatch at Lj. A lot of women use it to validate whatever hobbyhorse they've got.
And of course, there's some absolutely shocking racism going on. I can't imagine how you could be so....pissed at somebody you'll never meet---to use this for your agenda---two murders. It's not like racism is eradicated, is it?
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