No means no, guys

http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/asiapcf/10/17/india.beheading.woman.ap/index.html?iref=mpstoryview

Powerban!

Was he a juggalo?

He'd been stalking her for three months? He's lucky she waited this long.

Stories like this seem so incredibly unreal to me. Mortal danger is so far removed from my life, particularly the kind of personal, intimate danger implied by rolling directly up on someone and stabbing/decapitating them, that stories like this make me react with incredulity and befuddlement.

I thought you lived in Boston proper?? (My .xls might be years out of date) But
how can you live in a major American city and presume such?

I think he rolled up on HER it sounds like, but the decapitation part stands, yeah.

Was just thinking about this last night for some reason and I think (is this retardedly obv?) that everyone is a killer, they just don't know yet what the trigger will be. I'm sure I'm the last person the party, and the dumbest, on the subject, so YMMV.

uh?

'Everyone is a meat-eater, they just haven't all quit being vegetarians yet'

'Everyone is married, they just don't know yet to whom'

'Everyone is a bus driver, it'll just take some time for all of us to pass the relevant driving test'

Okay, I was being lazy w/ my phrasing. Everyone has the capacity to kill, is that better? Whatevs, I feel like on ILX this will be preaching to the much-more-well-read-on-this-subject-than-I so never mind.

I kill but I'm not a killer

I thought you lived in Boston proper??

Haha just oustide. I've walked by the aftermath of outbursts of violence but it's always been in a sphere removed from my own; either kids messing with other kids or family members messing with each other, etc. The violence I see here more often than not is contained within groups of people who know each other; I am not saying assaults from strangers don't exist but my impression is that statistically speaking it's much more likely around here that you're going to be attacked by someone you know.

At any rate, getting shot by someone isn't nearly as... intimate (for lack of a better word) as decapitation! It's not like you can cut off someone's head from a distance unless you're a videogame character.

It's not the capacity to simply kill that gets me with this woman so much as the capacity to straight up decapitate a dude and go into the streets waving his head around by the hair. (Though Laurel's bringing up an interesting subject, I hope there really are people in here who are knowledgeable re: all that...)

where do u live dan - i feel like ive asked u this before - summerville maybe

ding ding ding

idk i don't think this woman's exhibited a particularly strange capacity for anything. dude crept up on her and tried to attack her while she had a fucking sickle in her hands, in these circumstances it's unsurprising that instinctive self-defence would lead to decapitation.

I don't know, I just have this feeling that when you're threatened, when your nerves are stretched and stretched so much that it starts being normal to be in danger like that, and there's a clearly guilty party like that guy (questions of unknown backstory and cultural relativism etc etc aside), killing the source of the threat just becomes the pragmatic thing to do. Better him than me, y'know, especially since I just want to harvest this grain, and he wants to rape me and hide the body.

DING! YAY!

It's a pity we can't exact similar justice on certain stalkers on ILx...

...and now the abstract has moved to the creepy. Thanks, Marcello.

http://soccerlens.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/09/alisher-usmanov.jpg

in these circumstances it's unsurprising that instinctive self-defence would lead to decapitation.

Yes, because it's easy to decapitate someone with a sickle.

Yeah, I'm not trying to downplay that this was a desperate act on the woman's part, I don't have some mistaken idea that you can cut through the vertebrae in one swell foop or anything, and there was almost definitely some very messy hacking involved. But I don't think the divide between you or me and someone who could defend with lethal force under certain circumstances is very big.

india is easily the fucking craziest place in the world

pretty sure a sickle would make decapitation relatively easy

o rly? Decapitation reported on Manitoba bus

xpost

At least the woman in India had good reason. She should get the Nobel Prize.

I agree with Laurel that one could easily have a DESIRE to commit extreme violence in angry self-defence. I am not so sure that one would necessarily have the physical ABILITY to realize this desire successfully.

yes really india is the fucking craziest place - not just cause of this decapitation

We need a bit more of this sort of thing in Britain, especially in town centres at night. That'll put "laddism" in its place.

I don't think anyone would blink about this story if the woman had merely stabbed and killed the guy; it's the "chopped off his head and paraded through the streets waving it around" part that I hope everyone can agree is perhaps a tad on the "o_O" side of human experience.

Don't know what o-O means but I say good for her. About time someone stood up and made a non-futile gesture.

Don't know what o-O means but I say good for her. About time someone stood up and made a non-futile gesture.

― A. FIND MISSING LINK B. PUT IT TOGETHER C. BANG! (Marcello Carlin), Friday, October 17, 2008 9:57 AM (19 seconds ago) Bookmark

yah fuck these guys

http://blog.tmcnet.com/blog/tom-keating/images/startrek-borg.jpg

maybe the man offered to give her head and she misunderstood

it's rather important when you approach a girl, to keep a cool head on.

http://tinyurl.com/5gr9xs

1) I don't care, decapitation is ALWAYS shocking. 2) Parading a head while soaked is fucking weird. There's some kinda mental flip here beyond simple self defense.

Oh, I missed this:

I don't think anyone would blink about this story if the woman had merely stabbed and killed the guy; it's the "chopped off his head and paraded through the streets waving it around" part that I hope everyone can agree is perhaps a tad on the "o_O" side of human experience.

― Like sicking a little bit of water into my mouth (HI DERE), Friday, October 17, 2008 2:55 PM (24 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

otm

"soaked in blood" that should say

Meanwhile in Britain...

http://www.timboucher.com/journal/wp-content/uploads/2006/12/salome-john-baptist-head.jpg

Chu, you are always so innocently deadpan!

Has anyone experienced the frustration and stress and fear and bittenress of being stalked and threatened for a significant period of time, with no recourse or help from anywhere? OK I haven't but it must suck.

on the decapitation specifically...this is the third "paraded the head around" story in the last few months (greyhound bus psycho, guy in greece). i recognize the statistical insignificance of that and the uselessness of anecdotes. otoh, i don't remember hearing about any decapitations for years and years. so even though i know this could just be a factor of instant worldwide media, which turns any bad thing anywhere into instant news everywhere. but i can't help wondering what effect the widespread publicity given to al qaeda/jihadist beheadings in the last 7 years has had in terms of planting it somewhere in our brains as something that happens. not that exposure to violent ideas necessarily encourages violence, but that maybe the particular forms violence takes can be influenced?

anyway. this is at least the least disturbing beheading story of the year.

(hmm messed up some syntax there. but you get the idea.)

Yeah, I actually think this one is kind of awesome. It seems sort of like a big "Don't fuck with me" sign in a society where I'm guessing women have somewhat limited recourse against these sorts of things.

http://imovies4you.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/04/bandit-queen.jpg

cutting off someones head and parading it around a village is imo never ok

yeah i think we have to throw caution to the wind and just make a stand on that

Perhaps all the people who are in favour of what the woman did are also in favour of capital punishment.

But perhaps not, because there is one difference - what she did was a practical action, which stopped her from being assaulted, whereas legal capital punishment is retrospective and does not serve to prevent a crime that is about to take place.

it is not good to not have a head

Initial cutting-off of head: self-defense. Parading-around of the head: questionable, but still kind of awesome.

id image the removing the head and parading it around part came well after she had prevented the assault

The woman, 35, told police she had gone to a nearby forest to cut grass for fodder for her cattle when a man attacked her from behind.

"In a bid to save her dignity she beheaded him with a sickle," Bharose said, adding that the woman had bite marks on her neck and cheek.

Plus this guy had been stalking her for three months and there presumably wasn't much that anyone was doing about it. If the killing was truly in self-defense in the first place, then your objection to the beheading/parading seems to be more just that it's grotesque. If the killing went beyond necessary self-defense in the first place, I guess that's another story. But I still feel sympathetic to her.

There's so little information it's impossible to guess why she might have done the bloody parading...if she's a widow and has no one to speak for her or protect her in village circles, that guy she julienned might not have been the only one lurking around the edges of her life, or she might have been showing the evidence in public, saying "I won't hide it, you all know what he's been doing and this was my only recourse. I admit my guilt." Or she could just be batshit insane, I'm sure.

xp exactly

I mean it's like teaching junior high: you only have to shoot the first one amirite?

if this had happened in britain or america what wd yr reactions be folkz

cutting off someones head and parading it around a village is imo never ok

― joe the plumber (ice crӕm), Friday, October 17, 2008 11:13 AM (19 minutes ago) Bookmark

I don't know, do they have temporary restraining orders that are honored by the general population and enforced by law enforcement in small villages in rural India? Because considering how well they work in America....

In Britain and America rape is not a virtual death sentence.

in america restraining orders dont work v well

Indian women are fiery.They trump Latinas in the attitude department.

in america restraining orders dont work v well

― joe the plumber (ice crӕm), Friday, October 17, 2008 12:37 PM (8 seconds ago) Bookmark

Which provides support for what argument?

What if she just killed the dude and then went around the village showing the blood on her hands? I mean is your point that she shouldn't have killed him or that bloody heads are freaky?

freaky is a particularly trite description

Is your moral objection to the killing or the parading or both?

Gloating is good.

It's like a touchdown.

well i never mentioned the killing but i have complained abt the decapitation and parading multiple times so draw yr on conclusions xp

Indian Mardi Gras

my family used to own an elephant

india owns

HE BIT HER. ON THE FACE. Could have been during the death struggle, hypothetically, but given the reach on your average sickle, it seems like she would have had to be further away for the actual killing, meaning he may well have bitten her during his initial attack. But whatevs. Impossible to do anything but guess blindly, the point is that I don't care about that guy, and shame on anyone (in a small village I think that means basically everyone?) who knew she was in danger but did nothing.

If your only point is that the beheading and parading is kind of WHOA WTF in a post-that-shit-to-the-internet-and-gawk kind of way then I'm not arguing with you.

If you think it's some kind of horrifically immoral thing to do in this situation, I think you're expressing an extremely complacent and superficial morality.

spike the head, do the Ickey Shuffle

i think its a fucking psychopathic thing to do and that your displaying extremely pedantic tediousness and superficial morality

anyone hear seen "Dial M For Murder" btw

it's rly enjoyable

If you're looking for tediousness in ILX posters, it's a long list on this thread and I don't think Hurting is at the top of it.

I mean I'm perfectly willing to be ON that list, I'm just sayin': tar, brush, remarkably similar, etc.

Thank god it wasn't a chicken.She would've been runnin' forever.Dude deserved it.

The Indian Anita Hil.

Um,Hill.Ooops.

i know when ever i see someone parading a severed head down the street im all "thats prob the right thing to do in this situation"

what do you think the right thing to do in her situation was

jho, is this just because you ate your Wheaties this morning? Because if it is, may I recommend Nutri-Grain instead?

I'm trying to find the in-support-of-decapitation-and-head-parade post on this thread.

laurel, she used a SICKLE, not a scythe. hand-held, pretty close.

either way, i think it's possible to hold pretty firmly to the idea that decapitation and parading heads around is never ok and still recognize that it happens and that the circumstances arranging such a thing are complicated and problematic

http://www.zug.com/daily/journal/graphics/072902_harmony.jpg

There should be a video of this.Like the Iraq contractor bits.

Oh I see so what she did is "not cool."

"Whoa, that thing with the head, A LITTLE BIT OVER THE TOP, MMMKAY!"

talk about about fucking trite

why didn't she just stab at him w/the sickle?

seems more efficient

No,the COOLEST.

she cd have emasculated him and thus prevented rape in nonfatal manner

and then paraded his pork piece around town with him sorrowfully following behind, head bowed

Wait,what did she do again?

She cut off a head?

i think it's possible to hold pretty firmly to the idea that decapitation and parading heads around is never ok

In related news, when we're inside the house, we're supposed to use our "inside voice".

Is she a Bollywood hottie?If so,I have to use the bathroom.

Hurting, you are being a massive idiot here.

Saying "good for you!" to this basically allows you to gloss over the fundamental problem, namely that this woman was so disturbed, either through mental defect or from constant siege, that her response to being attacked went well beyond what most rational people would call "self-defense". There's a real issue here that should be addressed, one that is potentially a fundamental defect of this village's society (whether it is tied to the rights of women or the treatment of the mentally ill) that you are glossing over to score incredibly meaningless rhetorical points.

Remember Cornershop?

Would George Harrison approve?

well obv we dont have enough info to tell if the killing was warranted - if it was in self defense fin - im sure we can all have at least some sympathy for that

the parading a severed head down the street part is imo completely insane and likely to get her a long prison sentence and/or killed by her neighbors

if it the thought that hay thisll scare off any future attackers was truly her motivation its pretty blatantly unhinged - this is not beating someone in a fight - its displaying a incredibly taboo behavior which likely has v serious blowback - which is exactly what you dont want if yr trying to control a social situation

if i had to guess tho id say she decapitated and paraded because shes fucking insane

and just to be clear the decapitation clearly came after the killing - theres no way yr gonna be able to decapitate someone whos fighting back

having exhausted all possible self defense rationalizations for her actions were just left with the completely barbaric and traumatic to anyone who witnesses it fact of someone walking down the street human head in hand

http://www.localcelebrity.com/u/press/AMANDADIVA-VH1.jpg
"I saw where she was going, but then with the head thing I was just like WHOA YOU LOST ME"

I for one do not think murder in self defense should be exploited for self-expression. Mutilating a corpse is not self-defense.

Was she listening to Shelter?

LOL @ ickey shuffle!

Yeah,but the touchdown thing.

http://www.houseofbhangra.co.uk/ContentImages/spinner.JPG

You know, we don't even know if she was just walking through town with the head as evidence of her crime on her way to the police station, or if she was cruising the village strip offering interviews and autographed photos. So can we admit that her neighbors who haven't come forward for her in the last three months might not have uncomplicated motives about reporting her to the police NOW, when she's at her worst and weakest?

Personally I'm having trouble caring about the head thing, I think it's almost of a piece once you've killed someone in a violent way with your own hands.

dan otm

it "isn't cool" to cut off a dude's head, nor is it cool to be cornered into a situation where hitting someone with a sickle is the only recourse you have. nor is it cool to be harassed and threatened and so on. it's all unfortunate, and i don't understand how saying so is being "trite."

(unless saying "mental illness and rape and murder are bad" is some worn-out bromide. which i guess it is)

uh, I cannot imagine wanting to go any further once I've killed someone in a violent way with my own hands.

btw only the person parading a severed head through the streets is saying her neighbors did wrong by her - srsly if presented w/this situation outside of yr door would u be all o those fuckers

I can
xp

Saying "good for you!" to this basically allows you to gloss over the fundamental problem, namely that this woman was so disturbed, either through mental defect or from constant siege, that her response to being attacked went well beyond what most rational people would call "self-defense". There's a real issue here that should be addressed, one that is potentially a fundamental defect of this village's society (whether it is tied to the rights of women or the treatment of the mentally ill) that you are glossing over to score incredibly meaningless rhetorical points.

― Like sicking a little bit of water into my mouth (HI DERE), Friday, October 17, 2008 1:09 PM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark

Well, I don't know if I quite buy your first premise, but in any case that "real issue" is a WAY bigger and more pervasive issue than gratuitous head-parading. It's just that the "real issue" isn't fun to make threads about.

people who entertain the idea of killing other people with pleasure frighten me. I can't even fathom the idea.

I don't feel like hurting is trying to score any points, I think jhosea has that market cornered on this thread! Seriously!

it "isn't cool" to cut off a dude's head, nor is it cool to be cornered into a situation where hitting someone with a sickle is the only recourse you have. nor is it cool to be harassed and threatened and so on. it's all unfortunate, and i don't understand how saying so is being "trite."

Saying "it's all unfortunate" is CLASSICALLY trite, not to mention a bullshit moral equivalency

what should i say instead, hurting? that wouldn't be trite? that the guy deserved it?

There are certain moral equivalencies that should not be waved off as bullshit.

it "isn't cool" to cut off a dude's head, nor is it cool to be cornered into a situation where hitting someone with a sickle is the only recourse you have. nor is it cool to be harassed and threatened and so on. it's all unfortunate, and i don't understand how saying so is being "trite."

It's trite because saying it "isn't cool" is so profoundly and utterly irrelevant, given the facts of the situation and where and how it happened. It's not just that it's a meaningless opinion, but describing it in those terms comes off as quintessential clueless spoiled-Westerner paternalism.

parading head through street:india::parading 'jorts' through street:america

thinking its ok to cut someones head off in india because its sooo different there is racist - you are all horrible racists

it's classically trite insofar as people commonly say that "unfortunate" events are, you know, unfortunate. i mean, i get that saying "shit happens" is a platitude and a cop-out, but it doesn't make it untrue in this case. moreover, what else is there to say about something like this? seriously! i'm a clueless spoiled paternalistic westerner, apparently, so please tell me how i ought to be feeling about decapitation, rape, and the marginalization of women

How do you GUYS feel about female circumcision?

its ok as long as u parade the bloody clitoris through town

I can't even tell who's arguing what anymore, and as far as I'm concerned Mr Cool (bless changeable screen names) has been at least half-trolling the whole time, which is making Dan and gbx and any other more serious contributors look like they're supporting a more hardline point of view than they actually are.

The woman is still alive when she gets circumcised.

good effort

hahahahaha wait

(girl?) xxp

Mutilating a dead body is not equivalent to mutilating a living person. I'm not espousing some kind of blanket cultural relativism here.

i can agree with that. esp since if it were equivalent i'd be in a lot of trouble :-/

I think self-defense killing was prob permissible but cutting off his head and parading it through the streets is going further than "self-defense" & makes me wonder if she went further than she had to just to make some symbolic gesture

i am totally not trolling and i do believe said decapitation and parading to be insane and barbaric and my new screen name is a reference to a hilarious ilx meme of yore fyi laurel

I was attempting to make a point about "quintessential clueless spoiled-Westerner paternalism" but somehow that has turned into a game of "which is worse?"

hi dere narcissism of tiny differences

makes me wonder if she went further than she had to just to make some symbolic gesture

Uh who the fuck knows what she "had" to do? Apparently she had to kill a man in self-defense with whatever weapon she could find at hand, because he stalked her to a deserted area in order to do her grave harm, I really do not understand the reaction here against whatever came after.

her crazy ass actions certainly at least to some degree impeach her reliability as a witness

correct me if I am wrong but are there not many ways to kill/disable people with a sickle that do not involve entirely severing their heads

I don't think there's anything to do with "quintessential clueless spoiled-westerner paternalism" about feeling sympathetic to a woman who was about to get raped and had little recourse and finding that that sympathy overwhelms my concern for the barbarity of parading body parts.

I'm not dramatically disagreeing with people who think it's, y'know, abnormal, possibly excessive, and breaking what are probably some near-universal taboos, but, like...do we really care at this point?

Apparently we do!

Yeah, that's what I'm not really getting.

i would certainly be incredibly upset if i witnessed the parade - like you know the people who witnessed it probably were

She should have passed on the parading for the sake of small children or those with heart problems or weak stomachs imo.

I don't think there's anything to do with "quintessential clueless spoiled-westerner paternalism" about feeling sympathetic to a woman who was about to get raped and had little recourse and finding that that sympathy overwhelms my concern for the barbarity of parading body parts.

― Tyrone Quattlebaum (Hurting 2), Friday, October 17, 2008 12:36 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark

of course i'm sympathetic to the woman who was about to get raped and had little recourse! wtf, dude.

what else is there to say about something like this? seriously!

How about nothing?

Or at least, only things that reflect an awareness of the idea that maybe an affluent Westerner -- someone who (odds are) has never in his life been in a situation of genuine desperation, as this woman very probably was -- ought to check himself before he starts passing judgment on the fine points of her behavior?

I mean, Christ, this basic issue -- the hypocrisy of rich people passing judgment on the desperate poor -- makes up like half of all literature. This isn't an issue of cultural relativism, it's an issue of expressing yourself in a way that acknowledges that your position is inherently compromised.

I don't think there's anything to do with "quintessential clueless spoiled-westerner paternalism" about feeling sympathetic to a woman who was about to get raped and had little recourse and finding that that sympathy overwhelms my concern for the barbarity of parading body parts.

No, my point was the exact opposite -- that people who are saying this was "barbaric" are the ones who are being clueless, and/or sounding like 19th-century British aristocrats bloviating on the behavior of the "savages". I think sympathy, silence, or a kind of horrified astonishment (or even revulsion) are basically the only appropriate reactions.

makes up like half of all literature <--- good meme potential

Saying "good for you!" to this basically allows you to gloss over the fundamental problem, namely that this woman was so disturbed, either through mental defect or from constant siege, that her response to being attacked went well beyond what most rational people would call "self-defense". There's a real issue here that should be addressed, one that is potentially a fundamental defect of this village's society (whether it is tied to the rights of women or the treatment of the mentally ill) that you are glossing over to score incredibly meaningless rhetorical points.

I think this part of Dan's post upthread probably renders further disagreement unnecessary?

It's ironic, because generally ILX is very anti-judgment to a degree that rankles with me -- but this is a case where I'm honestly surprised that people don't realize that, in some fundamental sense, it's not their place to moralize.

ok, buddy.

She should have passed on the parading for the sake of small children or those with heart problems or weak stomachs imo.

― a shark shall fuck you (wanko ergo sum), Friday, October 17, 2008 1:39 PM (30 seconds ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

so the bar for sympathy for other people in far away news stories is somewhere between attempted rape and witnessing something extremely traumatic - glad we clarified that

her crazy ass actions certainly at least to some degree impeach her reliability as a witness

Okay I might get piled on for this, and I'm not TRYING to be a giant bitch (for a change) but this is uncomfortably close to the kind of language people have used for a really long time to dismiss women's experiences of abuse, violence, etc. She was hysterical, I couldn't get any sense out of her, are you sure you didn't just imagine a voice because you were afraid, you know how emotional your mother gets, pretty much fill in the deeply shitty blanks here.

i will say, based on totally anecdotal evidence of my own time in India, that my money is on the "constant seige" and "fundamental defect of this village's society" comprising at least a part of what needs to be addressed. the constant harassment women face walking down the street in some parts of India...i don't know what would have happened if i had had a sickle on me, to be honest, and i don't have to deal with that most of the time and i'm pretty sure i'm not significantly mentally ill.

(Also, re: evidence and reliability, the bite marks swayed me.)

xpost

SHE CUT OFF SOMEONES HEAD AND PARADED IT THROUGH A VILLAGE

pretty much no one does this btw

not saying that this woman is not significantly mentally ill; if she is it's very likely that she's never been treated which is also tragic and needs to be addressed.

also beheading is one of the worst things ever, but i trust everyone agrees on that.

she was maybe a little out of her right mind? let her plea out on 2nd degree manslaughter, 10 yrs probation.

And I use the word "hysterical" on purpose, here -- I'm assuming I don't need to get out the dictionary for most of ILX.

I'm not really sure why beheading is much worse than other forms of murder 'n' dying. We're instinctively repulsed by the desecration of a corpse, but it really doesn't matter much to the corpse. Dead's dead.

its not really you place to moralize charlie

yay ilx

Charlie, there is nothing less inherently paternalistic or patronizing about going "poor people, they can't help themselves" than there is about saying "this isn't right; what could have happened differently to avoid this?" Get off your imaginary high horse and read Native Son.

Laurel, I don't understand how you can be making almost virtually the same points I am making but come to what seems to be an almost completely different conclusion, so I am guessing we are probably talking past each other.

SHE CUT OFF SOMEONES HEAD AND PARADED IT THROUGH A VILLAGE

― mr. cool (ice crӕm), Friday, October 17, 2008 1:44 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark

SOMEONE STALKED HER FOR THREE MONTHS AND TRIED TO RAPE HER AND KILL HER AND NO ONE DID ANYTHING ABOUT IT

BOTH THINGS ARE IN CAPS I REALLY FEEL FOR EVERYONE INVOLVED THE WHOLE THING IS JUST A BAD SITUATION IMHO

Charlie Rose Nylund sounds like a 19th-century British aristocrat bloviating on the behavior of the "savages".

everyone should read native son. and yeah, it seems to me, again, that everyone in this thread agrees with what dan posted upthread so, yeah.

Dan, I think we sort of are, which is also what I mean when I said I think one or two people are putting forth a much more extreme argument and you're kind of on the center-line with gbx but it feels like you're further away because of more...aggressive posters' views.

hurting u do realize that no one in her tragically common situation has that reaction right

I agree w/dan too

If I were moralizing, you might have a point.

xpost HI DERE, you're totally off the mark; I'm not saying "poor people, they can't help themselves", I'm saying "rich people should STFU about it, especially in re: moralizing about female third-world rape victims who, moroever, come from a place that was exploited by the rich people in question".

xxpost go to hell, Curtis

hurting u do realize that no one in her tragically common situation has that reaction right

― mr. cool (ice crӕm), Friday, October 17, 2008 1:49 PM (34 seconds ago) Bookmark

What "reaction right" did she have?

sorry

and btw dan and laurel the reason why yo cant seem to figure our how yr agreeing is because youre not

I mean I know what you're going to say, kill the guy but don't cut his head off. We are going in circles.

its important to me that we figure out who is right here

hurting yr resorting to making fun of missing punctuation

here ",?"

max otm :(

hurting u do realize that no one in her tragically common situation has that reaction right

Okay, you know what? Shut up. No one, like ever? And you know this...because?

In a country where it hasn't been very long since widows burned themselves alive in order not to live, or be seen to live, without their deceased husbands and masters, my strictly emotional response is that this woman is a fucking hero. I'm trying to be all moderate and thoughtful about tempering that with more rational points but you're pissing me off.

the important thing is to exercise our own swift, harsh judgement on shit we read about for two seconds on the internet

-- goole, Thursday, July 31, 2008 10:18 AM

No, I think he genuinely misunderstood.

I'm curious as to how people place this situation vs. the famous "burning bed" spousal-abuse murder back in the '80s.

xpost!

Curtis and goole otm also

originally i wanted everyone to find points they could agree on so we could all be happy but now i want to figure out which person is most incorrect & then shun them and bring it up every time they try and post

That would be Charlie, then.

Umm if this happened in the U.S. I would favor (a) dropping any public-disturbance and abuse-of-corpse charges on condition of PTSD treatment, and (b) not trying to draw too many overarching moral conclusions from what is quite clearly the kind of bizarre, tragic event that mostly calls for people to just try to make things better and otherwise shake their heads sadly and silently. That is all.

Saying "good for you!" to this basically allows you to gloss over the fundamental problem, namely that this woman was so disturbed, either through mental defect or from constant siege, that her response to being attacked went well beyond what most rational people would call "self-defense". There's a real issue here that should be addressed, one that is potentially a fundamental defect of this village's society (whether it is tied to the rights of women or the treatment of the mentally ill) that you are glossing over to score incredibly meaningless rhetorical points.

― Like sicking a little bit of water into my mouth (HI DERE), Friday, October 17, 2008 1:09 PM (44 minutes ago) Bookmark

But see, I'm not really agreeing with this at all. It's focusing on the decapitation that allows us to gloss over those fundamental problems in the first place, which is exactly what I'm saying, and the only people who brought up those points in the first place are the ones who said "Why is the decapitation the big deal here?"

the important thing is to exercise our own swift, harsh judgement on shit we read about for two seconds on the internet

OTM. That (or its ironic subtext) is my point, and if I haven't articulated that clearly, there it is.

xpost HI DERE, wtf is your problem?

curtis, goole, horseshoe and max and of course nabisco otm

btw what if she used his head as a bottle-opener

Also, (wait for it) nabisco OTM

No means no guys:
http://www.miljan.org/music/blog/nomeansno.jpg

And I don't agree with making this about "mental illness" either because I think that also glosses over the real problem.

the decapitation is where the mentally ill part comes in xpost

not trying to draw too many overarching moral conclusions from what is quite clearly the kind of bizarre, tragic event that mostly calls for people to just try to make things better and otherwise shake their heads sadly and silently.

^^^^ trite, apparently

I wish there were more women on this thread, I'm beginning to wonder if there's a gendered component here. Or maybe that's only because I have dreamed of being Wonder Woman/an Amazon and bringing justice to wronged women since I was 4 years old. o_O

u do realize that no one in her tragically common situation has that reaction right

They ought to. I hope things work out alright for her. She is a hero. I hope there are copycats. Fuck rapists.

i am totally aware that im pissing you off laurel - srsly this isnt my intention - and youll note that unlike you i havent resorted to any personal characterization of yr argument

but i will at this point say that taking this barbaric behavior as heroic is imo extremely confused

LOL @ the idea that anyone posting to this thread (other than maybe Nabisco who said it in the first place) can claim to be "shaking their heads silently and sadly"

I will sadly shake my head as I post borg.jpg

ok, now I'm trying to score points

i think there is, Laurel. i am regretting having posted in this thread, but the reason i did is because the kind of rage that bursts up in women who are being harassed daily is something i am not sure men understand. i don't think, in me, that rage would have sustained decapitation but it would have sustained violence for sure.

I think she was right-on to defend herself!

but i will at this point say that taking this barbaric behavior as heroic is imo extremely confused

I think that if a woman manages to kill a man who's trying to rape her -- let alone an economically disadvantaged woman in a society where women are very much second-class citizen -- just about anything I can think of is a higher priority than taking the time to label her action "barbaric". She can make a pinata out of the corpse and fill it with Slim Jims for all I care.

good for you

T/S: Attempted Rape is ;_; vs. Decapitation is o_O

I don't think her cutting his head off is barbaric, and I REALLY don't think we have enough evidence to determine whether it is or not anyway. For all we know, she could have been in a place where wild animals would scavenge the body and she wasn't strong enough to carry it out, and she needed or wanted proof of her own actions. Which is why I said she could just have easily been ON HER WAY to tell someone and admit her guilt, but the story we're being told DOESN'T SPECIFY any of that.

"killing a man who's trying to rape her" isn't the "barbaric" part and you know it.

xpost to CRN

Ah, 3than Padg3tt, ILX's answer to a question no one asked.

hoo we're goin nuclear

"I don't think her cutting his head off is barbaric, and I REALLY don't think we have enough evidence to determine whether it is or not anyway."

^^ I agree with the second part of this. However, I also agree that calling it "heroic" is confused.

perhaps it's because I'm not as aggressive/violent as some other people on this thread

ok, you're right, hurting. still, the only point i've really maintained here is that the whole event is tragic and bizarre in several ways. i should have just kept my mouth closed, because merely saying "wow, what a horrible situation" is superficial. fair play.

A+

xpost

the idea that someone who finds decapitation and display horrifying somehow necessarily doesnt give a enough of a shit abt how women are treated is kinda absurd imo

Yeah I mean I have frequently had violent fantasies about men who've accosted me and I've never been more than mildly sexually affronted, not even close to a real threat of rape or physical harm. I am trembling with rage, like my hands are shaking, just thinking about this woman.

"killing a man who's trying to rape her" isn't the "barbaric" part and you know it.

Of course I know that. But WTF is the point of labeling it "barbaric"? What does it accomplish? Self-congratulation?

xpost Finding it "horrifying" is fine, because it is; finding it "barbaric" -- or, really, any moral judgment -- starts to get onto very shaky ground, IMHO.

perhaps it's because I'm not as aggressive/violent as some other people on this thread

can't tell if you're joking or not, but i really think there is a kind of violence that is a symptom of prolonged inequality that is bigger than the person who practices it. cf native son. IT DOES NOT MAKE BEHEADING OKAY AND THAT'S NOT WHAT I'M SAYING.

the kind of rage that bursts up in women who are being harassed daily is something i am not sure men understand.

this is OTM and also exemplified by this thread.

women are very much second-class citizen

?

"killing a man who's trying to rape her" isn't the "barbaric" part and you know it.

Of course I know that. But WTF is the point of labeling it "barbaric"? What does it accomplish? Self-congratulation?

― Charlie Rose Nylund, Friday, October 17, 2008 2:08 PM (43 seconds ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

i dunno, what's the point of saying you hoped she filled his corpse with slim jims?

I also got massively enraged by this story though and I'm really not trying to claim some kind of sensitive-dude points here. Maybe it's just sleep-deprivation plus caselaw overload?

xpost

Laurel, I think you're right that there's a gendered component, since this is basically an argument about what part of the story people choose to focus on, and many, many women in the world are more likely to focus on "she successfully fought off someone who attacked her."

I should clarify something above: when I say it's best not "to draw too many overarching moral conclusions" from a bizarre and tragic event, I am not counting the moral conclusion that altogether too many men on the planet attack women like this, or the moral conclusion that it is a good thing for women to be able to defend themselves against such attacks -- because those are not conclusions that are drawn from this example; they're drawn from way, way too many examples in general.

As far as the head-displaying, it's unsettling, but I'm not sure what we can firmly decide about that, other than the fact that this woman is surely pretty traumatized and could use some sort of help and safety -- the sort of stuff that in the first world we'd put under the rubric of "counseling" -- to be okay. This is where I think it's pointless to draw conclusions beyond that, beyond the part we'd probably all agree on: that hopefully she can eventually become okay and untraumatized and "well-adjusted."

what is the point of posting

To this woman I say, "You go girl!"

what is the point of children (xpost)

But see, I'm not really agreeing with this at all. It's focusing on the decapitation that allows us to gloss over those fundamental problems in the first place, which is exactly what I'm saying, and the only people who brought up those points in the first place are the ones who said "Why is the decapitation the big deal here?"

It's all intertwined, IMO; my point about the decapitation being the trigger point to look at this more closely is because societies in generals have levels of acceptable abuse. You cannot erase all bad things from a society, so there is a fundamental level of stuff inimical to your life experience that you have to put up with that is really set by common cultural acceptance mixed in with who has the power and how tightly they hold it. When things like this happen, that balance has tipped over for someone; the next question becomes "What are the after-effects?" Is this an isolated incident or is it likely to happen again? Do the people involved care enough that it happened to change their society to reduce the likelihood of it happening again? If so, do they have the resources/power to make and enforce these changes?

etc etc etc etc; few people outside of focused sociologists concern themselves about these things unless a flashpoint event happens.

I tried really hard not to be playing the "you'll never understand, because you aren't ONE OF US" card in this thread but my reaction to the whole story is so strong, it's taking over my brain on a reptile level, and I feel like all the patter about "should she/shouldn't she" is coming from a relatively comfy place where these things don't happen to you or people like you.

i dunno, what's the point of saying you hoped she filled his corpse with slim jims?

First, I didn't say that, and second, I will assume you can tell the difference between "her actions are barbaric" and "how she treated the dude's dead body is a matter of indifference to me". They're both judgments, I guess, but one presumes a lot more than the other.

srsly has anyone seen Dial M For Murder, it's rly cool imo

Apologies perhaps to Dan who may very well be identifying as part of a group to whom ACTUALLY barbaric and deeply wrong things have happened, but then I think he's a moderate voice here, relatively speaking.

haha I was about post "HI DERE, BLACK PEOPLE"

:D

Laurel, i think part of why decent men maybe don't understand is that they don't see this behavior? when they're with a woman it's less likely to happen to her? i have no idea, to be honest, but i understand what you're feeling!

xpost yeah, i almost said i think white men don't understand this because yeah.

Really, my entire point has been that stopping at the righteous rage reaction doesn't generate anything that could conceivably help stop the situation from happening again, if not in that location then somewhere else. Believe me, I understand the rage reaction! I just don't think that rage leads to sustainable solutions.

that seems right. like everything else you've posted. i'm going to go back to being sad.

Sorry, but I think using the phrase "leads to sustainable solutions" here is a bit obtuse. Her extreme reaction was a product of the very fact that there WERE no sustainable solutions being presented in the first place.

I just don't think that rage leads to sustainable solutions.

thread needs djmartian imo

Sorry, but I think using the phrase "leads to sustainable solutions" here is a bit obtuse. Her extreme reaction was a product of the very fact that there WERE no sustainable solutions being presented in the first place.

― Tyrone Quattlebaum (Hurting 2), Friday, October 17, 2008 2:20 PM (19 seconds ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

how do you know this? how do you know anything about this situation?

When things like this happen, that balance has tipped over for someone; the next question becomes "What are the after-effects?"

I think this is an excellent question and, as has already been mentioned, I think maybe there's a tendency to think that seeing the severed head of a rapist being brandished in the streets (or reading about it in the news) might, in some small way, discourage others from attempting the same thing -- because somehow it's not purely hypothetical anymore.

That might be a foolish thing to think, and it's very possibly true that these events will have no positive real-world effect, or might even inspire a backlash that leaves women worse off than before. But I also think it's human nature to expect this to resonate -- we process real events with concrete, vivid details very differently than we process more abstract things, and we tend to absorb them into our thoughts and beliefs more readily.

im totally not trying to negate any anger that people are feeling here and my argument def started when the thread was at a more omgwtf stage but srsly there is a reason why more people dont decapitate each other - they fight back against all sorts of horrible abuse - they spend years of their lives in the most extreme deprivations - but as far as i know only deeply disturbed people do things like this - the kind of disturbed that doesnt have an easily identifiable logic

and yah im with dan that i dont find anger constructive

and im quite sure that seeing the whole display was horrible for all involved

I could sure use a gif right now

I can think of multiple circumstances in which the beheading and display might serve a purpose, and I've already described at least two of them: if this woman had no one to protect her or make her case to the village as it seems likely she did not because, well, look how it all turned out, the guy she killed could have been one of a number of people who sought to or threatened to or even looked like MAYBE THERE WAS AN OFF CHANCE ON A BAD DAY THAT THEY COULD take advantage of her. That's some message, eh?

Or maybe she was already aware that she'd be going down for homicide and she thought, well fuck, as long as I'm COMPLETELY FUCKED ALREADY I might as well take this one last chance to point out that you guys are some hypocritical, cowardly, snivveling FUCKS who are made more MORALLY UNCOMFORTABLE by me, right now, being primal and desperate and RIGHT, and you know it, than you were when you were happy to pull a veil of social acceptability over my plight.

I'm totally OK with calling her actions "deeply disturbed", but I think (as Dan has said, if I understood him correctly) that we should use that as information, not as a basis for moralizing about how wrong it is to decapitate someone.

xpost Yeah, my gut reaction is that if she really was parading the head, she was making some kind of a statement to that effect. I could be totally wrong, though, and this sort of thing becomes projection very quickly.

how do you know this? how do you know anything about this situation?

― and what, Friday, October 17, 2008 2:21 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark

You're right. Maybe she lived in a rural Indian village that was a paragon of women's equality and the fact that no one had done anything about her stalker for all of three months was just an anomaly.

Seriously, I need to go for a walk, this is breaking my heart.

Sorry, but I think using the phrase "leads to sustainable solutions" here is a bit obtuse. Her extreme reaction was a product of the very fact that there WERE no sustainable solutions being presented in the first place.

I don't understand how you think that writing that is somehow disagreeing with me. My ENTIRE POINT is that her reaction means that something there was fundamentally broken and my questions are "what was it", "can we fix it and, if yes, how".

I think this is an excellent question and, as has already been mentioned, I think maybe there's a tendency to think that seeing the severed head of a rapist being brandished in the streets (or reading about it in the news) might, in some small way, discourage others from attempting the same thing -- because somehow it's not purely hypothetical anymore.

This is interesting because it's a pro-capital punishment argument that, as far as I understand things, has been proven via studies of crime statistics to be false.

laurel i think you're actually making some good points but do you get sent off a lot

I mean, when people mutilate someone after they've killed them, it's usually about humiliation and degradation. If there's any truth to this woman's story, then I find it easy to imagine that it was basically payback in her eyes.

xpost I guess you could see it as a pro-capital punishment argument, though I hadn't intended those implications. It depends on whether you accept the notion that there's ever deterrence, I guess.

This is interesting because it's a pro-capital punishment argument that, as far as I understand things, has been proven via studies of crime statistics to be false.

― Like sicking a little bit of water into my mouth (HI DERE), Friday, October 17, 2008 1:26 PM (6 seconds ago) Bookmark

and inhumane. i guess that's been my only real reservation about the discussion on this thread. that, in some situations, it's not merely permissible but right and good that someone get their head chopped off

some real "america had it coming on 9/11" arguments here

This is a side-comment, and I'm really thinking more about another board I look at where similar things are discussed, but there is a weird tension about self-defense / empowered revenge fantasy that is maybe playing out here: the desire to say "good for you, you defended yourself heroically" rubs up against the sense that ... well, I would imagine this was anything but a pure empowered feel-good heroic point in this woman's life. Surely it was unspeakably awful to do any of this, and surely her actions came from a place of feelings nobody should have to experience. I don't know that it's anything, even in a perfect world, she'd ever get to feel "good" about.

That's not advancing an argument about anything, by the way. It's just a dynamic that seems to play out around stories like this, ranging from the kind it's easier to cheer around to the head-shaking kind where even the heroic fighting-back was incredibly horrible and destructive and traumatizing for the woman who had to do it.

I can think of multiple circumstances in which the beheading and display might serve a purpose, and I've already described at least two of them: if this woman had no one to protect her or make her case to the village as it seems likely she did not because, well, look how it all turned out, the guy she killed could have been one of a number of people who sought to or threatened to or even looked like MAYBE THERE WAS AN OFF CHANCE ON A BAD DAY THAT THEY COULD take advantage of her. That's some message, eh?

Or maybe she was already aware that she'd be going down for homicide and she thought, well fuck, as long as I'm COMPLETELY FUCKED ALREADY I might as well take this one last chance to point out that you guys are some hypocritical, cowardly, snivveling FUCKS who are made more MORALLY UNCOMFORTABLE by me, right now, being primal and desperate and RIGHT, and you know it, than you were when you were happy to pull a veil of social acceptability over my plight.

― Vampire romances depend on me (Laurel), Friday, October 17, 2008 2:24 PM (29 seconds ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

the first scenario seems just like a really bad estimation of peoples reaction

the second i have more sympathy for but it does assume that everyone in her village is against her - which is possible i guess but does seem to lack the understanding that others might be suffering too - a giant fuck you is pretty much the attitude that allows people to victimize each other in the first place - and there we have the cycle of abuse

+ the idea that something this awful will act as a deterrent to indian rapists is, like dan says, straight out right-wing charles bronson vigilante fantasies

(Although -- for it really to be a pro-capital punishment argument, I think executions would have to be public, as of course they once were.)

xpost

i guess that's been my only real reservation about the discussion on this thread. that, in some situations, it's not merely permissible but right and good that someone get their head chopped off

I can understand that, but I also don't think it's useful or illuminating for us to talk about how wrong and bad or unacceptable ("not cool") it is, either. I guess that, in this particular situation, I see that whole dimension as irrelevant at best, hopelessly condescending at worst.

This is interesting because it's a pro-capital punishment argument that, as far as I understand things, has been proven via studies of crime statistics to be false.

You know, I think there's a very interesting difference here, Dan, and it has to do with the directness of the victim's OWN actions, not the system on their behalf. After a crime has already been committed and the victim's only recourse is The System and that's only IF the perpetrator gets caught AND sentenced in a court of law, AND loses all their appeals, AND etc etc...that's just not a very strong message and I can understand that. And it takes any power away from the victim and gives it to the pre-arranged system, which is probably as it should be in terms of deterring REVENGE or some kind of attempted eye-for-eye response.

But this woman was acting ON THE SPOT to prevent the crime against her person, something that isn't really the domain of the legal system. Her refusal to lie back and think of England and take what she had coming to her as disempowered person in her society is, and I think rightly, a very strong statement about the IMMEDIATE natural costs of wrong-doing against another person.

Deterrent to "Indian rapists" -- no
Deterrent to people in her village -- probably

Someone has to take a stand. If not this woman, than who?

Wow, tons of comments aside probably arguing about the morality of taking the law into your own hands - it was so refreshing that this wasn't another story about the woman being beheaded/beaten/stoned/etc.

the idea that something this awful will act as a deterrent to indian rapists is, like dan says, straight out right-wing charles bronson vigilante fantasies

Well, my next sentence was:

That might be a foolish thing to think, and it's very possibly true that these events will have no positive real-world effect, or might even inspire a backlash that leaves women worse off than before.

Having said that, if you think that revenge and "fighting back" are somehow a uniquely right-wing preoccupation, you're bonkers.

i don't really understand how people could think that she was acting in a rational way at that moment? "i will cut off this guy's head so that other guys won't rape women"? not that i know what was going on any better than anyone else but i think that it's about the way people stop being people to each other when sytematic inequality has worn down their psyches? did jhoshea already say this?

My guess is that it was more like "You humiliated and violated me, now I'll do the same to you". That doesn't need to be intentionally symbolic on her part for it to become one (a symbol).

i guess i'm being presumptuous in thinking i have an inkling of the kind of rage she was feeling, but if it's anything like the rage i have felt in much paler versions of that moment, i was not capable of formulating any kind of tit for tat thoughts. or thoughts whatsoever. the rage was having, and in a sense obliterating, me, not the other way around.

And again, I mean, the battered-spouse murder defense was nearly unthinkable fifty years ago. That probably wouldn't have changed if all the people who fought back, hadn't.

(xpost)

she was likely enraged and completely freaked out past the point of rational thought

ou know, I think there's a very interesting difference here, Dan, and it has to do with the directness of the victim's OWN actions, not the system on their behalf. After a crime has already been committed and the victim's only recourse is The System and that's only IF the perpetrator gets caught AND sentenced in a court of law, AND loses all their appeals, AND etc etc...that's just not a very strong message and I can understand that. And it takes any power away from the victim and gives it to the pre-arranged system, which is probably as it should be in terms of deterring REVENGE or some kind of attempted eye-for-eye response.

But this woman was acting ON THE SPOT to prevent the crime against her person, something that isn't really the domain of the legal system. Her refusal to lie back and think of England and take what she had coming to her as disempowered person in her society is, and I think rightly, a very strong statement about the IMMEDIATE natural costs of wrong-doing against another person.

I see that but I don't necessarily agree with that; the entire subtext behind victimizing someone else, regardless of what the victimization is, is the idea that you can get away with it. We aren't talking about a situation or society where people are encouraged to kill and mutilate someone who messes with them; we're talking about an isolated person who took action against another isolated person. Particularly when talking about people who know each other, there is a comfort level that overrides a lot of basic survival instinct due to baseline "oh I know so-and-so and they would NEVER do THAT" thoughts. I don't think, as an attacker, you can use this as a statistical data point to say, "hmm, the danger level of these attacks just went up, let me re-evaluate my life"; it seems to me the more likely reaction is "that dude picked the wrong mark; glad I'm smarter than him!" because no one ever thinks that bad consequences will befall their actions, or, if they do, they don't care nearly as much about that as they do the short-/mid-term gratification.

This is such a modern argument for us to be having, I mean, what do we think people did to ensure their safety or survival when law enforcement wasn't an option? For millions of years? Disable the threat and prevent a convincing argument against a repeat performance.

The "system", the police etc, could apparently do nothing to guarantee this woman's safety but now they're going to prosecute her for not being more "modern" and going through the right channels? I'm exhausted just thinking about it for the past two hours.

*preSent a convincing argument etc

i could see this being a v short term shock value sort of deterrent - but thats all

if violently fighting off sexual assults became common then yah it would have a significant effect

i dont think the decapitation and display would be necessary tho

because no one ever thinks that bad consequences will befall their actions, or, if they do, they don't care nearly as much about that as they do the short-/mid-term gratification.

Well, there's a continuum, isn't there? There are sociopaths who think they'll never get caught, or people whose sociopathic behavior is completely compulsive, but there are also people who actually do a cost-benefit, risk-reward analysis with their antisocial impulses. Otherwise rehabilitation wouldn't exist.

xpost

if violently fighting off sexual assults became common then yah it would have a significant effect

I'm sure there are people who would like to see violent self-defense become more common; whether it's realistic to think that this incident'll encourage that is another thing entirely.

Also, I have a sneaking suspicion probably not to be addressed in this thread that we have made taking the life of another person (or an animal, tbh) into some kind of grave watershed moment from which ye shall never return nor be made clean and honestly, don't tell that to people who come back from Bosnia, Afghanistan, Korea, Iraq. Because we just hired them to do our dirty work which before modernity would have been done by the bulk of the male population outside of harvest season, and by the female population too, if you happened to be the invaded territory and the Viking raiders or the Iroquois warriors or whatever were setting fire to your barn and you were the only there to do something about it. And afterward, if they survived, those people went back to being farmers and family members and etc until the next time.

I'm not saying that's a desirable way of life, obv, but it's not that far behind us, evolutionarily or historically.

Are we actually seriously considering the POLICY IMPLICATIONS of decapitation and head-parading?

Well, there's a continuum, isn't there? There are sociopaths who think they'll never get caught, or people whose sociopathic behavior is completely compulsive, but there are also people who actually do a cost-benefit, risk-reward analysis with their antisocial impulses. Otherwise rehabilitation wouldn't exist.

Earlier upthread you said this: I guess you could see it as a pro-capital punishment argument, though I hadn't intended those implications. It depends on whether you accept the notion that there's ever deterrence, I guess.

To me, this came across like you don't believe in rehabilitation, which makes it odd to me that you are now seemingly arguing for it.

I think the real question behind this is "Is rehabilitation worth it?" Is it worth redeeming people who have done or tried to do horrible things?

Laurel: I would do my absolute best to kill anyone trying to harm me but I harbor no illusions about what that would mean for the rest of my life; I seriously doubt I could come out of the other side of that experience without any emotional trauma and I harbor no illusions about what legal impact that would have on my life. It's from that standpoint that I make the argument that praising going beyond self-defense into mutilation of a corpse is a bad thing that should be prevented; I want to minimize the likelihood that I am ever in a situation where I find myself doing this.

Hurting: If we're boring you, you should feel free to fuck off to another thread. We won't stop you.

Woman beheads man, parades it through streets

In the interest of further pedantry, I'd also like to point out that this headline is grammatically wrong

hurting otm

Hurting: If we're boring you, you should feel free to fuck off to another thread. We won't stop you.

― Like sicking a little bit of water into my mouth (HI DERE), Friday, October 17, 2008 3:05 PM (13 seconds ago) Bookmark

Whoa, Dan. I'm not saying you're being boring at all, I'm just questioning whether "Is beheading going to solve anything and is it a good course to pursue?" are really the questions to be asking about this case. I don't have any problem with an abstract discussion of whether vigilantism has a deterrent effect.

Dan, I'd like to minimize that chance too, my grandfather never said one word in my hearing up to his death about having been in WWII but I vaguely recall the words "piano wire" being thrown around once in a vague way that was quickly hushed up, and he went on to be a deeply boring company man who did all the right things the rest of his life but never seems to have connected that to garroting Germans or whatever. We have done a disservice to many whole generations of men by insisting that extreme violence of all kinds belongs to another world than ours when really it's right here in all of us, all the time.

― Tyrone Quattlebaum (Hurting 2), Friday, October 17, 2008 12:05 PM (3 hours ago) Bookmark

― Tyrone Quattlebaum (Hurting 2), Friday, October 17, 2008 3:08 PM (30 seconds ago) Bookmark

ffs I need to stop

I mean has The Wire taught us nothing?

Hurting, it's kind of hard to talk about an abstract idea spawned by a real-life situation without ever referencing the real-life situation! :-P

I'm sorry Laurel, I too am completely missing the connection between doing all the right things in the rest of your life and garroting Germans in WWII. That is not a level of violence I want to have in my everyday life (particularly now that I am a manager).

Sorry, I'm getting off-topic, but I just wonder if violence isn't as extreme a response as we're assuming it is, by some magnitude...under circumstances when the other options, if there are any, are untenable for any person who wants to survive now and defuse future threats.

xpost -
Argh: can we be clear that this isn't really about "vigilantism" or "taking the law into one's own hands?" We're talking about a story where a woman defended herself against an assault, and then -- for reasons we can speculate on but never pin down -- behaved in a way that was, umm, violent and unsettling. I think it just muddies the waters to try and move that discussion along into any of these other things. It was on-the-spot self-defense that proceeded -- not all that surprisingly, if you ask me* -- into a violent display.

*(I.e., I can totally understand this on some smaller level: I have no desire to fight anyone or experience with fighting, and if I were ever attacked in such a way that I wound up in a life-or-death type battle with a person, I could not guarantee that I wouldn't freak out and do all kinds of crazy stuff. To which I hope people would say "that guy is traumatized and could use some psychological help to get over it.")

xpost - Laurel, I mostly agree with you about the capacity for violence (see above), and I don't think violence is an extreme response in the least. What's interesting here is maybe more about control of violence -- the way, when you force a person who feels powerless to become violent, that violence isn't going to be controlled or meticulous, it's going to just pour out. Weirdly, I think safety can do this, too; I mean, see above, the reason I can't guarantee my reactions to violence is that I'm lucky enough not to have to deal with it!

but people dont tend to do "all kinds of crazy stuff" is the thing - mutilation is generally off the table in self defense situations

In our legal system, you mean. (I get your point but let's be clear about the context.)

OK I'm late to this shindig but I think - I know - that panic-generated adrenaline is a factor, if not THE factor, in situations where women injure or kill others in self-defense and would probably cover the extreme behaviour of the Salomé sprint too. Her place as stalkee in a particular type of Indian village is also a factor - there are frequent Indian poster campaigns that admonish men for hassling women; Laurel and others are right to mention sexual harassment is a problem in India combined with the way its victims are usually judged by men there.

Y'all need to check Dirty Weekend by Helen Zahavi, a novel about British raped woman who becomes serial killer - something of a riot grrrrl classic.

I'm not sure I do get mr. cool's point, or exactly how it relates. Sure, most people don't do anything near this dramatic. This is a pretty clear extreme/outlying case. Obviously. I don't know that that significantly changes the likelihood that this was done from a place of rage or powerlessness or "snapping." We could speculate all day on what it was about this woman's circumstances or psyche that led her to this, but I'd find it very hard to believe it was done in a way that was pointed, rational, or opportunistic.

I mean, if the point is that it is surprising, and abnormal even in those circumstances, then okay, yes, that's why it's news and we're talking about it. I just mean the path itself is not entirely abnormal, the path where a person is forced into defensive violence and is traumatized to the point where he/she isn't exactly in rational, calm control for a while.

i want arguing that she was likely completely insane in ways unrelated to her attack

the idea that nabisco would just snap and do all kinds of crazy stuff does not pass the smell test

^^^^ This goes straight to my point linking perp reaction to this event with perp reaction to capital punishment and saying it's not an effective deterrent; HOW DO YOU KNOW nabisco wouldn't just snap and do all kinds of crazy stuff? You actually don't, but based on how well you know him, you've decided that it doesn't sound like something he'd do.

I think "completely insane in ways unrelated to her attack" is a giant and tremendously unfair leap. If you want to say she "may have had pre-existing psychic issues that informed her behavior," I would not argue with you, but I don't think we have nearly enough information to go beyond that.

I'd also, umm, agree that one's sense of a person from the internet is like 1 million miles from knowing how they'd react to some kind of sudden life-or-death struggle with a violent attacker! We couldn't even all agree whether Luna was real -- predicting how we'd act after fighting off a sexual assault isn't even on the table. (I can't even predict this about myself, because it's unimaginable to me, as it should ideally be for everyone.)

its important to me that we figure out who is right here

― max, Friday, 17 October 2008 18:52 (2 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

obv nabisco isnt the best example as i dont actually know him but he seems pretty sane and he was here so

"completely insane in ways unrelated to her attack" is a giant and tremendously unfair leap. If you want to say she "may have had pre-existing psychic issues that informed her behavior,"

these claims particularly when you consider whos saying them are pretty much the same thing

btw the only thing i can think of from my life that comes close to this is i knew a guy who when his mother died he put her in a freezer - he was pretty obv crazy for many years before that

in conclusion its been my experience that when crazy things get done its a crazy person doing them - the fantasy of just snapping is imo a way for people to ignore the often glaring mental health issues of those around them

I think this is not at all a matter of "just snapping one day, for some reason that's disproportionate to the stimulus". I think her behavior is ENTIRELY proportionate to the stimulus, including even the milder versions of what one imagines her last 3 mos to have been like (and frankly 3 mos may be an extremely conservative estimate).

were that the case many many more people would be doing it

laurel what's yr non-ilx yellow card count

I think it's safe to say she might have had some "mental health issues"
I don' think we can, without further evidence, imagine her to be some kind of Indian female Travis Bickle.

Do you mean, how many times have I ended up shouting at some guy on Franklin Avenue on my way to work in the morning? I think...twice?

Twice for actual public shouting, x infinity for number of middle fingers given silently.

do you not actually play the beautiful game? i envisage you as a ball-winning centre midfielder

eh it sounds like more than "some mental health issues" xp

one time in jaipur with my sister, we ended up leaving the hotel restaurant where we were having dinner a few minutes after dark to head back to our hostel. as we walked home, two separate dudes on motorcycles (separated by minutes) slapped my ass hard, as if to say, just so you know, you shouldn't be out here. the way i felt was like that jump cut in spike lee's malcolm x where denzel washington is smiling at the white patron he's serving on a train but in his head he's throwing the tray of food he's holding at his face and punching him out.

I don't even like to walk an extra block out of my way to run errands, much less run continuously for 90 minutes by choice. But it's a nice thought!

correct me if I am wrong but are there not many ways to kill/disable people with a sickle that do not involve entirely severing their heads

correct me if im wrong but if you're being raped you probably aren't contemplating these?

oh come on the decapitating obv came after the murder - its way too easy to protect yr neck when yr alive

A woman in northern India has admitted chopping off the head of a man she says tried to rape her.

But she denies reports that she then carried the head to her local police station in Uttar Pradesh state.

The 35-year-old said she had been working in her field cutting grass when the man tried to attack her. She hit back using her sickle.

She told the BBC she had no regrets. The man had reportedly been harassing and stalking her for some time.

"He tried to rape me and I hit back with the grass-cutting weapon to save my honour," she told Ramdutt Tripathi of the BBC Hindi service.

She says she went to the police station in her blood-soaked clothes after the incident, but denied newspaper reports that she carried the head with her.

Ram Bharose, police chief of Lakhimpur Khiri district some 125 miles (200km) south of the state capital Lucknow, said they were investigating the incident.

He said the woman had a legal right to defend herself against rape and sexual attacks.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7676341.stm

i shouldve said killing not murder there btw xp

i'm thinking she swung round and in one movement lopped his head clean off

but maybe i have seen too much tarantino

correct me if im wrong but if you're being raped you probably aren't contemplating these?

This is very OTM and why I've tried to confine my rhetoric to "how can we prevent/minimize the likelihood of the situation happening again" rather than "how could she have reacted differently".

The ensuing BBC xpost casts all of this in a very different light, lol.

Hurting, I said "may" because we can't know this; maybe she had unrelated issues, quite possibly she didn't; I don't want to speculate beyond just leaving a bunch of "may" on the table. The firm conclusion that she was "completely insane" beforehand is what looks like a totally unfair jump to me. (Not just because of its false certainty but because mr. cool is psychoanalyzing across cultures and situations with weird assurance here.) She was, so far as we can tell, put in a position where she had to kill someone to stop an attack, which sounds like one of the most traumatizing positions people ever get put in -- I'm not sure how fixedly we need to look for something else in her background to explain things. There "may" be something else, but I for one certainly don't need something else to wrap my head around this.

Haha xpost and now possibly we'll get straight news that says she didn't do anything weird in the first place, and sounds way less traumatized than we've had to imagine -- that's good news.

Probably depends on how sharp and big the sickle was. But I don't think it matters ALL THAT MUCH to either side of this argument whether she decapitated him in one fell swoop, then paraded the head around, or whether she, like, sliced into his neck, THEN cut the head off, then paraded it around.

man, you guys seem to think its real easy to keep your rational wits about you while killing someone in self defense

many xposts

You know, I did suggest several times that we didn't know she WASN'T on her way to tell the authorities under her own recognizance. o_O

Indian woman beheads 'sex pest'

Somehow this is an even better headline than the original!

God, that rapist guy was so annoying!

nabisco - wouldnt things like this happen much more often if the trauma of killing was enough to trigger it - i mean maybe yr right and in india decapitation isnt completely insaneo i guess shouldnt make assumptions across cultural boundaries

Nabisco's last post OTM. Oh, and I only just noticed the new version of that story in which the whole thing we're arguing about in this thread turns out to maybe not be true. Yay!

I also love that the quoted phrase "sex pest" appears NOWHERE in the actual article.

jhoshea you are one of my favorite posters but your tone in this thread is kind of driving me crazy!

This thread has made decapitation seem MUCH more reasonable, if you ask me.

DUH she was impersonating Goddess Chinnamasta in her rage which is what all good Indians do when they're pissed at times

http://www.netglimse.com/images/events/durga_puja/chhinnamasta.jpg

woah

that's pretty pissed

looking forward to the abel ferrara version of this

Ms. 45 is a 1981 American low-budget cult classic exploitation film directed by Abel Ferrara and starring Zoë Tamerlis Lund. Inspired by films such as Death Wish, the film is a revenge story is about Thana, a mute woman who becomes a vigilante after she is raped twice in one night when coming home from work. Critically maligned on its theatrical release, the arty, feministic B-movie is generally highly-regarded among fans of underground film.

Zoe Lund as ThanaWalking home from work one night, Thana, a mute seamstress in New York City's Garment District, is raped in an alley. She survives and makes her way back to her apartment, where she encounters a burglar and is raped a second time. She bludgeons this second assailant to death with an iron. She then keeps his .45 automatic pistol, dismembers the burglar's body, puts the pieces into plastic garbage bags and disposes of them in various locations throughout the city.

Noticed by a man while she is disposing of one of the body parts, she fatally shoots him. Taking her impulse for vengeance further, Thana then transforms her appearance and sets out to kill any man who annoys her. At one point, she dons nun's habit and red lipstick while in a shoot-out at a Halloween party.

jhoshea you are one of my favorite posters but your tone in this thread is kind of driving me crazy!

― horseshoe, Friday, October 17, 2008 4:54 PM (17 seconds ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

sorry i feel like im in the crazy overly analytical not seeing the forest for the trees funhouse!

Which is kind of where you belong for your posts on this thread!

u belong in the couldnt find his ass w/his hands house

Umm, mr. cool, here's a random thought experiment: how many women in the world do you think have fought back violently and crazily against attackers, but we never get to read this story because they lose the fight and are killed?

I would guess that many, many victims of rape or assault, if a scythe magically appeared in their hands at just the right moment, would have no problem with swinging it at the attacker's neck. I'm fairly sure I would, in that sort of situation. So I don't see how the "beheading" part is the issue, and the "carried the head around" part is now looking unsubstantiated. (I don't pretend to know how to explain "carried the head around" if it did happen, but I'm not sure why we need fixed explanations anyway. Like I said earlier, moral conclusions are not nearly so important as helping the woman involved be okay and taking whatever steps help prevent similar things in the future. . . . "Craziness" is for psychiatrists, and they don't judge such things based on what you did with a head under horrible circumstances.)

u belong in the couldnt find his ass w/his hands house

― mr. cool (ice crӕm), Friday, October 17, 2008 4:58 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark

And you belong in the couldn't find a good zing in a jar of miracle whip house

"Craziness" is for psychiatrists, and they don't judge such things based on what you did with a head under horrible circumstances.

This thread was worth it for this sentence alone.

haha

o god nabisco we are not in charge of doing anything in this case except talking abt it - if youd like to go help this poor woman i think thatd be really good - im sure she needs all the help she can get - until then stop talking like were having some sort of effect

Okay wait, now that you look kinda silly, the whole thing was an exercise in futility anyway? I have a fable you should read.

u belong in the couldnt find his ass w/his hands house

― mr. cool (ice crӕm), Friday, October 17, 2008 4:58 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark

And you belong in the couldn't find a good zing in a jar of miracle whip house

― Tyrone Quattlebaum (Hurting 2), Friday, October 17, 2008 5:03 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

my zing youll notice is not miracle whip dependent

Uh I meant to say lol internet!

you are misunderstanding my use of the word "we," dude (hint: it does not mean "ILX")

>> but because mr. cool is psychoanalyzing across cultures and situations with weird assurance here.

So otm, I mean you can talk abt the "gendered components" until you're blue in the face, but why ignore the cultural? Let's see, before we project our modern American values of sanity onto a non-urbanized village society, aside from Chinnamasta can we count the number of goddesses that specifically carry SCYTHES as part of their iconography? I'm counting Amba, Kali, Tara, other aspects of Durga, and I'm sure there are some Tantric ones I'm forgetting...furthermore, how many myths are there, such as in the case of Mahishasura, where these goddesses had to sever the heads of the demons they were combating, to ensure that they were dead (mere stabbing didn't work!)? If the people you're praying to are decapitating would it seem that barbaric to you to do so?

Also horesehoe thru her Jaipur anecdotes is so right: men there can and do get away with a lot more, and sadly, the woman frequently IS still blamed in Indian villages (not cities) of being "impure" or guilty of attracting undue attention. Furthermore, I hate to conjecture like this, but if she HAD "paraded" the head around I wouldn't doubt that the guy was alone in harassing her, without any of his bros by his side in past circumstances. Not that this is a good way of practicing deterrence, but in a way if it can scare others, why not? The woman was also being BITTEN on her face and neck like a VAMPIRE had attacked her - why are we all forgetting that - and she had been targeted by him for months...and now it's debatable whether there was any "parading" in the first place

When you're growing up in a culture in which the only powerful images of femininity to you are warrior goddesses, and you're being raped, assaulted, attacked and bitten, how rationally and in a "don't-want-to-appear-sociopathic-to-my-Western-audiences!" way are you going to react? Whoa, hope I ddn't go off the barbarism charts!

Plus: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eve_teasing

Eve teasing is a euphemism used in India, Bangladesh and Pakistan for sexual harassment or molestation of women by men. Considered a growing problem throughout the subcontinent, eve teasing ranges in severity from sexually suggestive remarks to outright groping. Some guidebooks to the region warn female tourists that eve teasing may be avoided by wearing conservative clothing, though eve teasing is reported both by Indian women and by conservatively-dressed foreign women.

In recent years the Indian government has made some efforts to round up eve teasers. The deployment of plainclothed female police officers for the purpose has been particularly effective ([1] ) The death of a female student (Sarika Shah [2]) in Chennai in 1998, caused by Eve teasing, brought some tough laws to counter the problem in South India. After this case, there has been about half-a-dozen reports of suicide that have been attributed to pressures caused by Eve Teasing. Many other cases go unreported for fear of reprisals and exposure to public shame.

you are misunderstanding my use of the word "we," dude (hint: it does not mean "ILX")

― nabisco, Friday, October 17, 2008 5:08 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

who then society - i shouldnt speculate or be curious abt this womans mental health because i should be dedicating all my powers towards doing something important - in that case 1st step get off ilx immediately!

zing set up^

i guess i've already played all the other cards; i'll add this about the jaipur anecdote: i am indian american and was wearing loose indian clothing when the ass-slapping happened. that was one of many incidents and probably not the most egregious one. (no one tried to rape us; i'm not suggesting an equivalence between my experience and this woman's). it was my (again, totally anecdotal) observation that indian women got a lot more shit + harrassment than white female tourists did and that it was just a feature of their daily lives.

Sickle i meant, not scythe. Scythe is so European Death!

You weren't "speculating" or "being curious," ya jackass -- you were convinced that she was "completely insane" while reasonable people argued back that who knows, anything's possible, but it doesn't exactly seem necessary here. People don't pretend you were on the opposite side of an argument from less than an hour ago.

Ok, done now.

I'm not pro-capital punishment, but I think the idea behind it as a deterrent is that it's meant to deter rational actors, not crazy people. I mean, for all but the most compulsive and delusional criminals, there's usually something that can get them to stop, at least temporarily; many serial killers have stopped for years, even decades, if they think they're at risk of being caught.

It's true that there are a certain number of crazy people (or people made crazy by a particular situation) that are going to do their thing no matter what. But I don't think it's at all a stretch to say that there's a certain amount of crime that can be deterred by something, because some of the people perpetrating it are rational (if amoral) actors who don't want more than a certain amount of risk to themselves. That's an entirely different argument than ascribing deterrence to a particular thing, whether it's capital punishment, women who defend themselves more often & more violently, or whatever.

Maybe it's not so much an issue of whether the men in the village are deterred, as whether the women start to think of violent self-defense as a real possibility.

u cannot call me a jackass and just be done - and besides you havent even touched on the inanity of yr importantness of tasks at hand scale

and i am quite certain anyone who parades a human head around in public is insane - sorry if i used a reasonable person word like speculate

btw turns out she prolly didn't actually parade the head around btw see second version of article supra

u cannot call me a jackass and just be done

Uh actually he can, are you new to the internets? This is the classic "insult-ditch" strategem.

obv the entire argument is predicated on the assertions in the 1st article - and the second one is just her denying it

no dan nabsico is a reasonable person he wouldnt do that

but she's obviously crazy so why should we believe her denials anyway

I mean she sounds completely batshit

hey guys what is going on in this thread

lol

"I did not carry around a head! That's a lie!"
"Then what is that in your hand?"
"... Ah, um... a papaya?"

this thread should have been locked after dan perry's eminently reasonable post about how this incident reveals some sad things that need to be addressed, if only for my own mental health.

"He tried to rape me and I hit back with the grass-cutting weapon to save my honour,"

lots of crazy/not crazy info there - certainly more than say someone carrying a severed head around would give you

i mean the thread should have been locked for my own mental health, not that sexual harrassment in India or ignorance about mental health should end for my own mental health.

Does a papaya grow in India?

shit I think I meant mango

Haha of course I'm "done," dude, you're not arguing from a consistent position or doing anything much other than repeating certain claims without justification ... I mean, there doesn't seem much point. I think you're being stubbornly super-wrong to an extent that's no longer worth arguing with, but whatever, that's okay.

i am not going to bother reading this entire thing but basically i am picking up that we cannot have prejudice against enthuiastic decapitators because they may very well be sane?? is that it

you know i think everyone can agree that lots needs to be done to protect people from being treated horribly by other people

the reason we are talking abt this incident is because something somewhat strange happened

that is also otm

"He tried to rape me and I hit back with the grass-cutting weapon to save my honour,"

I just wanted to point out that there is actually nothing the slightest bit crazy in this sentence. I can't tell from jhos's post whether he was making this point or not.

wtf nabisco find me one thing argument i made that wasnt basically i think this parading of heads is insane and horrible

god forbid some woman goes into some sort of sexual-trauma PTSD fugue state and wreak some double-reverse gorgon-style vengeance, but i wouldn't go so far as to qualify her state of mind as "sane"

I apologize for even beginning to argue with anyone on a thread that mostly calls for continual restatement of stuff most of us would probably agree on.

p.s. i don't imagine a "grass cutting weapon" is a close-quarters type of weapon

http://www.yagya.in/durga10.jpg

look even the sickle has an EYE so it can see what it's doing

http://www.funmunch.com/events/durga_puja/wallpapers/durga_puja_wallpapers_5_800x600.jpg

i am not going to bother reading this entire thing but basically i am picking up that we cannot have prejudice against enthuiastic decapitators because they may very well be sane?? is that it

haha not really

one side: This is really horrible. How do you roll through town waving around a head?

the other side: This is really horrible. At least she took down that rapist hardcore DAMMMNNN

The friction between the second halves of those statements caused this thread, with a spectrum of thought cascading between them that largely dissipated when a second report claiming the first report to be bogus came out, at which point it turned into "lol fake" vs "SHE LYIN', JUDGE JUDY!"

Also, said "grass cutting weapon" was a sickle, which by definition is a close-quarters weapon in that you can't really reach past the length of your arm with it.

(yes my post is grossly reductionist, I am not c/p-ing the whole thread for elmo)

Even if she did walk some distance with the head, which is all you could conclude even from the first article, she could just as easily have done so in a state of shock. There word "parades" never comes up except in the sensationalist headline, nor does it ever say that she waved the head or shoved it in peoples' faces or gloated or anything like that. The headline also doesn't mention the fact that she was defending herself against rape, and it was that kind of framing of the issue that pissed me off in the first place.

I mean it's true that we're talking about this "because something strange happened," but it's also true that we're talking about this because a newswriter and a headline writer figured out how to hone in on what would get us talking about this rather than what was necessarily most important and/or true.

Original article basically = Crazy Bitch Parades Bloody Head Around WTF?

Which is the article's fault, not any ILXor's

^^^^^ I agree with this as well, which is why I kept talking in terms of "how do you stop this" rather than "is she crazy".

we have about a dozen sentences to parse here, many of them translated.

lol

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/8/82/Blow-Up_DVD.jpg/200px-Blow-Up_DVD.jpg

can ilx admit to itself that its titillated by the bizarre nature of this case

???

hey jhosea sorry for making you the target of my library-madness-induced indignant anger before.

aw im sorry too im sure i was at least twice as offensive

its important to me that we figure out who is right here

― max, Friday, 17 October 2008 18:52 (2 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

― Carrie Bradshaw Layfield (The stickman from the hilarious 'xkcd' comics), Friday, October 17, 2008 4:12 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

that said i think i p much agree w/lauren here, even tho i am a misogynist pig - there's nothing wrong with just being a lil delighted by this on a visceral level, like when yr timothy mcveighs are executed - doesn't accomplish anything but it feels good to think abt~

car means car, Ken?

like when yr timothy mcveighs are executed - doesn't accomplish anything but it feels good to think abt~

Well, catharsis is an accomplishment, yes? Providing relief to the victim?

An 11-year-old girl was set on fire by a relative in India's northern city of Jaipur for wearing lipstick and being "inappropriately dressed", media reports said today.

http://www.theage.com.au/world/indian-girl-set-ablaze-for-wearing-lipstick--reports-20081019-53s7.html

Wonder if the world will ever get word of what happened to her. I hope she's okay.

To this woman I say, "You go girl!"

― cameron carr