Saturday, April 28, 2012

Let's Stop Calling Them "Honour" Crimes and Call Them What They Really Are: Ownership Crimes

Those who see Obama in the White House for another four years are waging a war against Republicans by claiming that Republicans are waging a war on women. The basis of this claim hinges on the refusal of Catholic institutions to pay for contraception and abortions, moves which are in direct violation of Catholic religion doctrine and are therefore supposed to have Constitutional protections. For those who despise both religion and non-leftist, that is an unforgivable, even an abhorrent, "crime" against freeborn women and their right to control their own bodies and destinies. But that pseudo crime (which is no crime at all) pales beside a genuine crime that Sandra Fluke, the poster gal for Catholic-bashers, and her ilk would never dare to bring up lest it offend the communities from whence it springs. I refer, of course, to what have been dubbed "honour" crimes, an appellation that makes many uncomfortable because, despite these crimes being predicated on reclaiming a family's "honor" via the murder of the female family member who supposedly defiled it, civilized people can see that there is nothing in the least honourable about such barbarism. For that reason--and because the using the adjective "honour" in describing these crimes cannot help but convey the false impression that, in a way, the uppity chick had it coming (and, in Fluke/Steinem/Rebick-speak, who are we, guilt-riden white oppressors/exquisitely sensitive multicultists to judge?), I propose we do away with the "h" word and replace it with something else, something that does not dignify the crime, even if it's unintentional, via the use of the word "honour." Let's instead call them "ownership crimes," that is, crimes that are perpetrated specifically because a young woman has had the audacity to demand a say in her own future, and to claim ownership of her own person, including her own body, including her own vagina. That in direct defiance of the men in her immediate family who, for reasons of culture and/or religion, insist ownership of a woman's body and destiny is theirs alone.

I'm not persuaded that, even with the name change, the Sandra Flukes of the world would necessarily turn their attention to these crimes. (Is there a loquacious Muslim vajayjay--one, say, that's been subjected to the misogynistic, desexualizing horrors of FGM--in Eve Ensler's The Vagina Monologues? If there isn't, there damn well should be!) But maybe, just maybe, it would make others become sufficiently angry such that they'd be willing to put aside considerations of political correctness and do something about "ownership" crimes; crimes that are both disgusting and anathema in that they amount to the indentured servitude of women in 2012.

One has the feeling that, even then, we will have a long wait for the flukey Sandras, blinkered narcissists obsessed wth the supposed assault on their freedom, to muster the wit and awareness to be up in arms about a minority women's problem.

2 comments:

Mal said...

Absolutely right, Ms S.
Honour has never played a part in any of these crimes. It is pride murder.

Carlos Perera said...

I must respectfully disagree with Scaramouche regarding the lack of wit and awareness of Ms. Fluke et al. I think they know full well that "minority women," not Gerogetown Law political activists, have the real problem of male oppression. But they also know that black robe-clad teams of Jesuit ninjas are not going to come out of their bedroom closets to strangle them with their stoles, no matter how offensively anti-Catholic these fearless feminists choose to be.

Messing with Islam is a different matter altogether, and potentially not very good for one's health; however, the real drawback is that Moslems will not let themselves be intimidated by the words of creatures worth roughly half a man (and that only if the woman is herself Moslem!). What's more, Moslems can play the "racism" card--yes, I know, Islam is a religion, not a race, but we're talking about multiculti pieties here, not physical anthropology--which still trumps the "misogyny" card. Offending Moslems publicly has no upside and lots of possible downside.