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On the fifth anniversary of 9/11, a suicide bomber tried to blow up a women's health center in Davenport Iowa. If you didn't hear about this attempted terror attack on US soil, Jennifer Pozner's not surprised:
"No national newspaper, magazine or network newscast reported this attempted suicide bombing, though an AP wire story was available. Cable news (save for MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann) was silent about this latest act of terrorism in America.
"Had the criminal, David McMenemy, been Arab or Muslim, this would have been headline news for weeks. But since his target was the Edgerton Women’s Health Center, rather than, say, a bank or a police station, media have not called this terrorism - even after three decades of extreme violence by anti-abortion fanatics, mostly fundamentalist Christians who believe they’re fighting a holy war.
"Since 1977, casualties from this war include seven murders, 17 attempted murders, three kidnappings, 152 assaults, 305 completed or attempted bombings and arsons, 375 invasions, 482 stalking incidents, 380 death threats, 618 bomb threats, 100 acid attacks, and 1,254 acts of vandalism, according to the National Abortion Federation...."
Earlier this month, I blogged about the impending execution of seven Iranian women for "crimes against chastity." But especially during Domestic Violence month, it's worth remembering that women's lives are devalued and endangered every day, both internationally and in the United States. And while we have grown accustomed to hearing horrific stories of women being persecuted under Islamic law, it's only in recent years that lawmakers have shed the ancient Judeo-Christian view that husbands and fathers were entitled to nearly complete control of their wives and daughters.
In a 1999 article in the Rutgers Law Review, "What's God Got to Do With It? Church and State Collaboration in the Subordination of Women and Domestic Violence," Linda Ammons, currently dean of Widener University Law School, explained:
"... Male supremacy, the belief that privilege, power, and dominance should be granted to men by virtue of the random assignment of biological attributes, has been perpetuated by tradition and reinforced by the intersections of politics, law, and religion. [FN50] History *1219 reveals that keeping women--one half of humanity-- under the control of men has been a priority. For many, the world is more orderly and comprehensible when men are in charge. [FN51] When male entitlement is threatened, those who are in position to be destabilized or rendered less powerful will fight to regain their status.
"The link between male supremacy and battered women is strong...."
Despite the gains of the feminist movement, that history is one plausible explanation for the failure to focus on the gender issues in the horrific school shootings of recent weeks.
Feminist Law Professors notes these comments by the New York Times' Bob Herbert:
...Stories about the rape, murder and mutilation of women and girls are staples of the news, as familiar to us as weather forecasts. The startling aspect of the Pennsylvania attack was that this terrible thing happened at a school in Amish country, not that it happened to girls.
The disrespectful, degrading, contemptuous treatment of women is so pervasive and so mainstream that it has just about lost its ability to shock....
Jonathan Katz, in a Counterpunch oped blogged by Mark Anthony Neal, took the media to task for refusing to call the school shootings what they were:
"hate crimes perpetrated by angry white men against defenseless young girls, who -- whatever the twisted motives of the shooters -- were targeted for sexual assault and murder precisely because they are girls."
As tough as it is to get people to recognize the problem, it's even harder to get a constructive conversation going. When Alternet editor Laura Barcella used the word "femicide" in a blog item about a report from the Violence Policy Center that analyzed state-by-state statistics on the killing of women by men, she was accused of being divisive and sensational, among other things.
