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by Anonymous User on 02:52 PM February 17th, 2004 EST (#1)
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It's the same old story. Or maybe the story itself changes but the message is the same.
Men don't matter.
When will we matter?
TLE
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by Anonymous User on 04:02 PM February 17th, 2004 EST (#2)
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It just goes to show that all of us here are getting really good at "predicting" the message of movies like this.
I recall several of us on this site, saying that "this film will portray Ailene Wournos(SP?) as a hero". and by cracky, faith and b'egorah if it didn't turn out to be the case.
It's just like the "Catwoman" subject on another thread. I hadn't even SEEN previews for the film yet, but I "predicted" that it was gonna be yet another 'woman-ties-up-&-beats-up-the-men' movie. Then when I finally saw some previews, I found that I once again had "predicted" correctly.
Same thing with the TV show "She-spies". I simply HEARED what it was about and BAM, it was exactly what I expected. B.T.W. Is that show even ON any more, does any one know? It ran at least one season, then it began a second season earlier this fall, but I havn't seen it lately, here where I live. My hope is that it was cancelled, but my gut tells me it's probably still airing, at least SOME where.
Thundercloud.
"Hoka hey!"
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You might like this. I posted an article on the Men's Hour Blog and got three comments back along the lines of men are worse than women and so forth...
Aileen Wuornos, Lesbian Serial Killer? No, Silly! Saying that just puts a righteous gender spin on it.
My item Aileen Wuornos, Lesbian Serial Killer? No, Silly! Abuse Victim Finds Love According To "Monster" about how Aileen Wuornos was being mis-represetned in the film "Monster" as just a troubled women defending herself has drawn three comments....
LilOrphan wroteI'm sure you'll just denounce me using the ubiquitous "feminist" arguments already seen in your post above Ah! You Guessed!but it's greatly interesting to me that you post statistics of
15 percent versus 85 percent still makes for quite the difference. Every item I've seen by women like yourself wants to talk up the percentage of abuse that is male, and then accidentally forget the female abusers. The whole point of "Monster" was to pretend that a female serial killer somehow wasn't really a serial killer. My question to you is that if they were 100 murderers in the room, why would you want to let 15 go? I'm curious as to the male/female stats for sexual predators and pedophiles. Guessing that the percentages are also far larger for males. Yes, you are guessing. In Fraternizing With The Enemy Child Abuse we seeIn over 70% of cases of child abuse, the mother is the perpetrator or one of the perpetrators; in 35% of the cases, the father is the perpetrator or one of the perpetrators. Back to the commentAs for the whole issue of her being sexually abused, yes, that alone isn't enough to explain it away or create sympathy for murder. But if it's valid (and who knows, really?), it's going to be part of her story, organically - not necessarily to promote a feminist viewpoint, but to shed light on factors that led to her having borderline personality disorder.
If the directors and others have an axe to grind in favor of Aileen, it's just as easy to level the same charges at you for conveniently focusing on a handful of deranged individuals who happen to be female. Where's the expose on how many prostitutes are killed every year, or the stats on domestic violence by gender? So it's a documentary! and if a director wants to spin it in favour of the woman killer, that director is obviously working in a complete vacuum and not being influenced by a society that wants to excuse women perpetuators. As for my focus, it is primarily because they are so many women like you around. A multi-million dollar film vs a blog? I'm a little like King Canute here.
Someone else calling themselves LilOrhpan wrote
Just a cursory glance:
http://www.ndvh.org/dvInfo.html
92 percent of all domestic violence is committed by men against women, according to 1994 statistics. Of women who reported being raped and/or physically assaulted since the age of 18, three quarters (76 percent) were victimized by a current or former husband, cohabitating partner, date or boyfriend. It's easy to come up with alternative stats through a search engine. But rather than continue in this vein, wouldn't it be wiser for all concerned to deal with the issues alone, rather than attributing some righteous gender spin on them? Just tell me where you are performing your stand up comedy act and I'll pay highly to see it. You just "happen" to find the most anti-male domestic violence figures around, then you say it's easy to find alternate figures, so why choose those figures? You could easily try Scale of domestic abuse uncovered More than a quarter of the women who were questioned - 27% - said they had been physically abused. The corresponding figure for men was 21%. That puts it at around 60:40, but No, you prefer 92:8. Would it be wiser to deal with the issues, like whether or not Aileen Wuornos is a lesbian serial killer? She was convicted, but Hey! details!
Nacny Simpson wrote I am a therapist in a prison. Most, if not all, of the violent offenders were abused as children. I had a beautiful man of about thirty, tell in a therapy group, of his father beating him with electrical cords and belts and then rubbing salt in the bleeding wounds. He stood up, then, and lifted his shirt up. We gasped as we looked at the ridges of scars that lined his back. The other male inmates and I all cried. I don't know if wars of gender-words are where it is at.
The fact is men are statistically and in reality more violent than women. So what?
The question is how do we stop the inhumanity of child abuse which is the root cause of most other abuse, be it murder or serial murder or assults and etc. Apparently she wants to save the world. Fine, but why does it always seem to come out that only women seem to need saving?
I criticise a film that tries to excuse a lesbian serial killer, excusing her because she was a woman and maybe because she was a lesbian, but I get comments about "gender wars" and so forth. I'm sure you would support a film about how Ted Bundy was an abused child just as much. Of course, I'm also sure the Earth is flat! But what does all this amount to? It is the usual feminist response. Any man who complains about anything, such as a let's excuse the woman murderer film, gets not a single response dealing with the complaint, but essentially only women who wish to complain about the complaint.
I have also had this comment
Does anyone find it just a little bit strange that Theron, a "feminist" actress who has praised the Hillary for president idea, appears in this movie as a man-killer, given her peculiar personal history, where her mother shot her father to death in South Africa?
The claim was "self defense". The father was "drunk" and "abusive". No one seems to question that, of course.
Apparently the only two witnesses were Charlize and her mother, who are unusually "close".
The only two witnesses still living, that is.
You know, people often confess to crimes obliquely. I wonder if this role isn't Theron's way of telling the world there's more to the story of how her father died. For years, according to some reports, she claimed that her father was killed in a car accident.
But hey, that's a little bit psycho-babble.
You'd just think some media dufus would have picked up on this a little, about how strange her taking this role is. I mean, it's weird.
Posted by: johnnyringo
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by Anonymous User on 08:26 PM February 17th, 2004 EST (#4)
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Raymond, you ol' stink-pot!
Where have you been?!?
I've missed your posts.
Incidently your current post was dead on!
Thundercloud.
"Hoka hey!"
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Hi Thundercloud,
I’ve been doing work on my blog, Men’s Hour Blog. I’ve posted some items over here, especially about Fathers 4 Justice, who are doing so well over here.
Raymond
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by Anonymous User on 10:41 PM February 18th, 2004 EST (#12)
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Well, either way it's good to see you back!
Keep up the good work.
Thundercloud.
"Hoka hey!"
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Did anyone see the recent "Give me a break" piece by ABC's John Stossel concerning the movie "Monster" and its dishonest depiction of Wuornos as a victim. Stossel's piece showed the male victims' family members denouncing the notion that Wuornos was a victim. Stossel also pointed out to the movie producer that Wuornos had denied that a brutal rape had launched her on her killing spree. The producer or director responded by arguing that she had lied about that in order to hasten her execution. Give me a break!
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Give me a break. After the piece we read from the biographer of Wournos I know that that is bullshit. She tried to cover how the "attack" happened, and then the forensic evidence showed she lied. She could have, at any time, after being convicted, told the truth and gotten CLEMENCY (or at least tried). It shows remorse.
These people knew the truth, and that lie is a good sound bite. Which for most people is the "truth" these days.
What a lame attempt at bullshit.
Steven
Guerilla Gender Warfare is just Hate Speech in polite text
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by Anonymous User on 09:15 PM February 17th, 2004 EST (#5)
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Yeah, I was at my sisters house. The channel was changed to a female comedian on comedy central....Immediately I said something like, 'great here come the stupid male jokes'. Sure enough that's what she did. In a matter of like 30 seconds or so after I said that she started in on it.
I wouldn't even be so bothered by it if it wasn't such an extremely common thing for female comedians to do, and that when they do it, it sounds like they aren't doing it in a friendly way, but more hateful.
p. george
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by Anonymous User on 01:27 PM February 18th, 2004 EST (#9)
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P. george,
I know what you mean.
Any time I'm watching TV and I see a female comedian, I always change the channel, ALWAYS.
With the exeption, perhaps of Louise D'uart, I have never heared a female comedian who DIDN'T make anti-man "jokes".
Of course if you call them on it they always say; "It's just a joke!"
How much do you wanna bet that no MALE comedian (like Andrew 'Dice' Clay) could ever say the same about his FEMALE jokes?
Thundercloud.
"Hoka hey!"
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Well, I have to jump on the Monster bandwagon, a little late I'm afraid. I finally saw it earlier this week and was blown away by Charlize Theron's performance. As many have said, she truly embodies the role of Aileen Wuornos and presents a sympathetic picture of a woman whose circumstances and desperation led to her killing several of her johns. Wuornos was not a serial killer, as the media and the prosecution suggested, but a homeless woman attempting to support herself as a prostitute. Monster argues that her first murder happened in self-defense and then the other murders followed quickly after.
I have no answers here, but a curiosity about my own lack of curiosity after seeing Monster. Am I simply satisfied with the sympathetic portrayal of a person about whom I was already sympathetic? Am I just happy to see such a powerful performance by Theron? Or is there something about "human actuality" and the way that Monster sews up the narrative of Wuornos' complicated life and death that is troubling me?
http://blue.typepad.com/weblog/2004/01/monster_and _tru.html
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More of a Monster Than Hollywood Could Picture
By Sue Russell
Sunday, February 8, 2004; Page B03
LOS ANGELES
The movie's horrific rape scene is grueling to watch. In a car, a terrified
prostitute is bound at the wrists and tied to one of the door handles.
Already bloodied and beaten, she is viciously sodomized by the man who
picked her up by the highway. Somehow, she breaks free and, wild with rage,
bravely turns the tables on her attacker. She grabs a gun from her bag and
fires bullet after bullet into his chest. The audience, watching
breathlessly, feels a rush of sympathy for her.
So, as portrayed in the movie "Monster," begins the one-year killing spree
of real-life serial killer Aileen Wuornos, played by Charlize Theron. A
beautiful actress who stunningly transformed herself into a dead-on
facsimile of the chunky, rough-looking Wuornos, Theron is a top contender
for the Best Actress Oscar and has already won a Golden Globe award. The
buzz about her performance has brought the independent film significant
attention. What bothers me is that moviegoers will think that scene of
torture it depicts is true.
With "Monster's" sympathetic take, Hollywood has put its boot print on a
piece of history. And as Aileen's biographer, I find the movie's distortions
disturbing. The filmmakers acknowledge upfront that "Monster" is
fictionalized, that it is only "based upon" a true story. But will anyone
notice this disclaimer, let alone pay attention to it? Already, most people
seem not to. Reviewer upon reviewer has referred to Aileen's saga as
depicted in the movie as true.
To be sure, the hitchhiking prostitute who confessed to killing seven men in
Florida in 1989-90 and was executed in 2002 was no JFK or Malcolm X, two
other real-life figures whose stories were altered for the big screen. But
by retooling her into a victim who began killing to fend off a rapist,
"Monster" conveniently transforms her into something we can stomach far more
easily than we can a woman who's a ruthless robber and murderer. It
perpetuates the comforting yet erroneous belief that women only kill when
provoked by abuse. But women kill for other reasons, too, as Aileen's real
life amply demonstrated.
While we would rather not accept this, we should. When we change the story
of this wounded but vicious woman to make her more a heroic victim than a
coldblooded killer, we miss an opportunity. Far more valuable than another
cookie-cutter Hollywood defense of a downtrodden, abused woman would be a
film that confronted the truth of Aileen's life and rage directly, both for
the window that truth offers into the psychology and pathology of female
murderers, and for what it says about women's capacity for violence, as well
as American society and the culture of celebrity and fame it nourishes.
At first, I was hesitant to criticize "Monster " (might it seem like sour
grapes because writer-director Patty Jenkins didn't option my book?). But
after 30 years in journalism, I feel a deep attachment to facts. And the
movie's treatment of them is something I can't let go unchallenged.
I began studying Aileen soon after her 1991 arrest. She had gunned down
complete strangers, shooting them multiple times, sometimes in the back, as
they tried to flee. Her victims fought for their lives as desperately as any
female murder victim. Calculatingly, she covered her tracks, wiped away her
fingerprints and made off with their cars, cash and possessions. She
admitted that she killed to avoid leaving witnesses to her robberies, which
I believe she conducted when she felt that her relationship with her lesbian
lover was in peril, since she believed cash was a way of shoring it up.
But beyond this, Aileen craved fame. She had told friends that she wanted to
do something no woman had ever done before. She had repeatedly expressed
fantasies of leading a Bonnie-and-Clyde-style outlaw existence (though she
ultimately acted alone) and going down in history. She wanted a book to be
written about her life. She wanted society to view her as a heroine.
The source for the movie's rape scene is clearly Aileen's own jaw-dropping
court testimony. She first publicly aired this cinematically dramatic
account at her trial for the murder of her first known victim, 51-year-old
electronics shop owner Richard Mallory, a full year after her original
confession to police. Initially, she had told detectives that Mallory was
nice and that they had spent five fun hours together before she killed him.
She said variously that she shot him because he wouldn't take off his pants,
because he wasn't going to pay her, and because he'd paid her but she was
afraid he was going to take his money back. But she didn't say he'd raped
her until she took the witness stand.
Her rape account, however, simply didn't match the physical evidence. She
said Mallory was coming toward her when she first shot him, yet a firearms
expert testified that a hole in the back of his sleeve indicated the gun had
been fired from behind. Asked to explain why the bullet's trajectory didn't
match her story, she said, with chilling detachment, "I thought he was so
decomposed you couldn't tell." Mallory was found fully clothed, his pants
zipped, his belt buckled, and his pockets turned inside out as if they had
been emptied.
Even more important was the testimony of Aileen's lover, Tyria Moore, a
jovial, very hefty, openly gay woman with missing teeth who was often
mistaken for a man. (In another instance of Hollywood's romanticizing touch,
Moore is replaced in "Monster" with Selby, a rather whinily dependent young
woman struggling to come out as a lesbian, played by the winsome Christina
Ricci.) When detectives first caught up with and interviewed Moore, she was
very scared, and they were convinced she was truthful. When she later
testified against her lover, she stuck to the story she had told them. She
described Aileen coming home and casually declaring, as they watched TV, "I
killed a man today." Aileen drove Mallory's car when she and Moore used it
to move. She behaved normally. She made no mention of, nor bore any visible
signs of, an attack. That the volatile Aileen would not have cursed out a
brutal rapist to Moore simply beggars belief.
In "Monster," so pervasive is the sense of Aileen as a victim that any true
sense of menace is absent. No one I spoke to who had seen the film reported
feeling any chills of fear, of the kind you might get watching a film about
notorious male murderers such as Ted Bundy or Richard Ramirez. Since
"Monster" paints Aileen as the victim of her victims, it's hard to shake the
empathy one feels for her. Yet the real Aileen was so violently volatile
that I certainly wouldn't have wanted our paths to cross in a dark alley.
She could be scary -- and people trying to understand what she did should
know that.
I'm not without empathy for Aileen. Researching her childhood in Michigan, I
felt great sadness as I pieced together the misery of her life. Abandoned by
her mother before age 2, she was raised by her alcoholic grandparents as
their own. Though her accounts varied wildly, I do believe she was sexually
abused as a child. She began selling her body at age 11 or 12. It's highly
likely she endured rapes over the years; most prostitutes do.
But "Monster" suggests that her rage sprang whole from a brutal attack and
that she thereafter just carried on killing. In reality, her seemingly
uncontrollable furies first manifested themselves in childhood. With no
apparent impulse control, Aileen so scared or repelled her peers that she
was treated as a pariah. Her mother's sister, with whom she was raised as a
sibling, told me how the adolescent Aileen once terrified her by holding a
kitchen knife to her throat over a trivial babysitting dispute. At around
age 20, Aileen spent a couple of weeks under her birth mother's roof. The
woman was so petrified of her that she barely slept.
And what about her victims? The media routinely lump them together as her
"johns." Yet, excluding those whose bodies were found naked, it's just as
likely that some were simply good Samaritans lending a helping hand, since
Aileen's modus operandi was to hitch rides, claiming her car had broken
down. These men have been demonized in a way in which we would rarely
demonize female homicide victims. And that has brought incalculable pain to
some of their families.
After Aileen's conviction, it did come out that Richard Mallory had been
convicted of a sexual assault at age 19. But his record had been clean for
decades. Prostitutes whom he frequented described him as a nice man and a
generous tipper.
I know that Hollywood routinely whitewashes or changes the truth. But doing
that obscures the moral message of Aileen Wuornos's real life. I've got
nothing against Charlize Theron. Her physical transformation in "Monster" is
eerily good and her acting mesmerizing. I'd polish her awards myself. And
I'm not against the movie, either -- as entertainment. But fictionalized or
not, it's about a real person, and I can't help feeling that it's trying to
fit Aileen's story into a more politically correct mold than the reality
allows. It all but guarantees that she and her murders will end up on the
microfiche of collective memory in a way that is fundamentally inaccurate
but closer to what her own hopes for her legacy were.
I don't think she quite deserves that. I'll admit it was chilling to see her
sentenced to death. She was severely damaged goods and mentally flawed. Yet
many have endured far worse than she. Ultimately, she was irredeemably
dangerous. She killed in cold blood, cutting down men who had lives and
wives and families. That's a truth not even Hollywood should pretty up.
Sue Russell is a freelance journalist in Los Angeles and the author of
"Lethal Intent" (Pinnacle Books).
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I haven't seen the film, and I have no intention to see it. However, it was mentioned at my job (I work in library preparation) with reference to a book called " Women who Kill: Profiles of Female Serial Killers that we were working up. While I haven't read it in full (I do have a job to do), the basic thesis as explained on the back cover is that despite the lower percentage of female murderer's, women who murder are not in anyway less ruthless or vicious than their male counterparts, and that it is, in fact, a disservice to women in general, to make the assumption that they are incapable of commiting murder without being coerced or abused into doing it.
This is an interesting point. Is it really beneficial to women to dismiss any genuinely reprehensible actions they commit as a result of the things men have inflicted on them? Isn't this just another portrayal of women as essentially passive creatures, unable to act without a man's direction? I, for one, would think women in general would be rather disgusted by this insinuation.
Amo magnas nates et fallere non possum.
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by Anonymous User on 11:12 PM February 18th, 2004 EST (#13)
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I'm about to get a bit more personal than I usualy like to be. But this whole thing calls for me to be.
Okay, when I was about 9 or 10 years old, I was molested by an older neighbor hood girl. (She was a teen ager)
I was small for my age as a child, I got teased and beaten up alot. Not just by larger boys but larger girls too.
As I grew up, I was teased and sometimes physicaly attacked, on and off the job.
Nearly 13 years ago I was attacked by a black man, then exactly one month later I was attacked by a white man, both men were twice my size. Both of these attacks have left me crippled. I suffer from Tempro mandibular joint dis-function, I was blinded in one eye, my nose shattered, my sinusses are damaged and I have to walk with a cane.
and I am still taunted and stared at and threatened by non-Indians.
My point?
Yeah, my life has been anything but easy but...
I DON'T GO AROUND KILLING PEOPLE BECAUSE OF IT!!!
And there would be NO excuse for me if I did, damn it!
I am sick of society and the "entertainment" industry excuseing WOMEN for any thing and everything they do that is wrong.
And I am equaly sick of the attitude that if women hurt men, then some how those men DESERVE it!
What a crock.
Thundercloud.
"Hoka hey!"
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Thundercloud, I appreciate your experiences and your positive attitude. You endured a lot of physical cruelty but seem to have still come out sane. I agree that the media look for excuses for women who commit violent crime. Patricia Pearson, in her book "When She Was Bad - Violent Women and the Myth of Innocence", talks about this tendency on the part of society to not hold women accountable for their violent behavior. The effect is harmful to everyone.
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Thundercloud,
You sure have had to deal with more than your share of abuse. Thank you for sharing it, it really did illustrate your point. It obviously made you a very strong man.
Another point you made, unintentionally, was that if you did become a serial killer, most people really wouldn't care what kind of abuse you went through, because you are a man. That is the sick part. It would have been [in their opinion] because you are innately evil because you were born male.
I get so sick of the constant exceptions to the rule that women are all good. At what point will people start seeing that they are not exceptions, but the same percentage as men.
The Biscuit Queen
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