When I first planned this post out in my head, I was gonna put at the top “Thankfully, there’s no recent cases I know of.” But then this happened, right near where I live. Sigh.
Okay. One night, I watched a documentary about a case where a very wealthy man, faced with the prospect of losing his wealth, killed his wife, teenage daughter and himself. I can’t remember the names of anyone involved, but it was in the papers for a while. And it was pretty hard-hitting and my dad said to me that most men have that wired up in them, the idea that if they’re going down they’re taking everyone with them. So I watched that documentary, and then a few days later there was a show on BBC3 or something about comedy and comedians, with self-confessed arsehole Jim Davidson blathering on about how he hated women. And somehow it got into my head, these two very different documentaries about different things, they were probably connected somehow in one significant way…
One man might hate all women, and another man might believe that his wife and children’s lives mean nothing without him as head of the house, the husband, the father, what we’re told is the most important person– and I think both things spring from a failure to see women as fully-fledged people. Wikipedia claims that an overwhelming proportion of people who commit murder-sucides are men, and just looking at the news I think they’re right. Cases of women killing their children are not uncommon, I know, but I just remember all the news stories, so many, where it was the father or the husband who did it. Who seemed to think that without him, without a man, a female life couldn’t be worth living. So he shoots her first.
I hope it isn’t really hard-wired up in all men, I really hope not. I know that in some of these cases there were other factors, mental illness, and I know how badly I’m simplifying, but…a man says he hates women. A man kills a woman out of what he probably thinks is love and a kindness. Both of them spring from the idea that a woman isn’t worth as much as a man…