Category: Feminist

Amanda Schlicht

Trigger Warning: The following content contains graphic details of the brutality women have faced. Rape, assualt, murder, and abuse surrond this topic. Due to the nature of article, no explicit reference will be made to minors due to the often cruel nature of the crimes. Read with caution.

To every women who is reading this, I hope you never feel sorry again.

“Globally, women are much more likely than men to be assualted, raped, or killed by a current or former partner. Intimate femicide most often occurs within relationships where there is a history of intimate partner violence”

The Female Body is transparent, designed of shapes descended from goddesses, who lay in bundles of leaves and wine-muddled nights. Rich, almost decadent, women have an assembly line of face products, body-only lotions, oils meant for skin and others poured for sweet-smelling vapor. Each wardrobe is lined in ripped pantyhose, men’s large jumpers, and socks dedicated to zoo animals. We come from backgrounds of standing long periods of time, automated with battery-powered lights should the ones littered on our bodies die out, with performative rules and an abundance of sticky notes fallen at our feet. We are made of eight PM curfews, turned nine, turned to always have a friend with you just to make it out alive that night. Must our body be shown on diagrams, littered on magazine covers and male-teenage posters for their new band, a distance must be enacted where their hold on my left hand is forced down their body, and my right grasps to the holes he feels is his right. We were never told it was possible to save some things for ourselves. Our bedtime stories told of the unkempt bedrooms, messy hair, moments of responsibility that resemble the dirty piles of clothes, the forgotten linen, why don’t you start dinner tonight, hunny? The existence of motherhood is stationary, a knowing duty we must fulfill when blood is seeped between each thigh, a mother’s guiding hand on the small of the back barely touched by summers of sunscreen, will begin to gather fingertips spread to bruise and hands meant to cover. The female body is to spin, rotate in abnormal ways only picturesque by men, worthy of a spot in their camera roll. We are of bent knees, commercials selling liquor, a mouth to hold a cigarette, a few crinkled dollars bills, but deprived a moment to eat, a conversation to speak in, their hands our down our throat, covering the expanse of our skin, our moment of pain is their moment to cum. We must be held on a leash, a room dedicated to collars and whips funded by the bank of the patriarchy, must we hold the hand of a male relative and accept the compliments of our beautiful, adult body on our thirteenth birthday. On every cover of a bad sex novel, we become the breast meant to hold the hand, a sticky brain muddled by a common voice, a symbol of the patriotic, a body once more conquered at the existence of a dick and two hands. The female body is a natural resource, stripped of her own kingdom, by her designated ability to provide, whose only measure of success is her potential to avenge her own mother and every woman who has come before her.

The Sexual Nature

In wake of this atrocious headline, I want to first suggest a plausible foundation that induces psychological depravities linked to intimate murder. Subreddits are ‘moral’ intersections of the internet and unethical desires, a forum to divulge in fantasies that come with mutual suffering and forced introversion, yet due to the unlimited access children and adults with respectable careers have, taboo ideologies infiltrate our soppy brains, muddling each personal belief until one is subservient, a hanging tongue and arched back, to their own wrong-fuelled desires. Horrific examples remain as such: 44(m) I jerked off to the thought of my daughter away at college. I admit I’m a dad cuck and I obsess over the idea of my daughter with men. She’s in college now and I know she’s probably getting up to all kinds of ‘fun’ which simultaneously scares me as her father and gets me so turned on.

When it comes to pornography, we make horrific use of it. The love for debasement, raunchy moments muddled with sweat, weak-kneed seconds pushed against walls, counters, washing machines. There is a known objective – the woman to be on her knees, a bearer of handcuffs and rope, suspended, thrown, shoved, until she folds onto herself, a noticeable moment of her youth, an unconscious plea to protect the beat between her breasts. She is to become nothing more than a still in a photograph, her hair splayed across the whitened sheets, her mouth slightly parted with the needed occasion to finally breathe since he came in contact with her. Yet, the noticeable ‘softness’ outlined above exists on the baseline of violence women accept in intimacy, a simple surrender or enjoyment of sexual escapades, and men’s intimacy lies in a psychological debasement, a voiced approval of ownership, of inequality, and eventually the sexual nature of men relies on an inherent need to exterminate the existence of women, because they are women. It developed taboo concepts, of the immoral justifications attached to such ideologies, of sexual encounters centered around incest, engaging with animals or minors, etc. because men can assert power to those who were once stripped of any voice at all. It leads them into moments at night with a lit-up screen centered close to their face, a closed door and lotion on hand, any link to violence, cruelty, a moment to laugh at falling tears and heartfelt screams, lead to dopamine rushes and chasing highs. The emotions are turned off as quickly as their laptop screen is shut, the display of a woman trapped behind his dirtied display, her pain to be felt for his next time around.

Imagine a world in which thousands of men band together, united by a common code of vitriolic rage, demonizing and railing against evil, soulless, greedy women, graphically plotting their rape and destruction in a glorious bigoted uprising. Imagine a world in which some men actually enact such fantasies, killing women in mass murders, leaving behind manifestos explaining the ideology that drives them to commit these acts of terrorism². While society dances around labels, rather regurgitating such atrocities could only exist to ‘other’ men, the ‘lone’ wolves, the ‘deranged’ ones, accountability becomes an intentional fallacy, existing outside of the mention of masculinity, of gender stereotypes and inequality, until the action of murder upon a women leaves him an outlier, an aberration, and she, another statistic. The degradement of women cannot be complete without the mention of incels, whose forums, posts, articles, etc. compile to form their own personal victimization toward their lack of sexual intimacy, creating a community of men lonely in action and marginalized to be ‘involuntarily celibate’, indoctrination becomes a safe desire, and responsibility is once more placed on women to perform, a characterization which coincides with split-gendered societies. An ideology molded by internet rhetoric, spewing accusations, anger, their sexual frustration, containing the same arguments, claimed by 13-year-old boys and men four decades older, quotes the same false statistics, claims, allegations until their philosophy is governed by the hatred of women in every facet of life. With this, the threat toward women’s lives are consistently the same, until the violence simmers, boiling into the same question, why is men’s first threat to a women rape? A rather disturbing fascination with her genitals, the crux of a woman, an identifier between herself and a presenting male. Could it be a symbol of feminity, antithetical to masculinity, leaving it sacred to our own identification of ourselves? A compulsion to demolish the barrier of consent by the act of taking with insertion, a need vice for domination? Even with the consistent threat of rape, the question of our honesty is always negated, a pathway to corner us as liars of the very thing they hold over our heads. Inferiority, victimhood, lack of relation, will eventually condemn women to the same historical inequalities we were once targeted with.

“Since they deserved to [be] raped, I cannot concern myself the pain rape causes them”

Comment on an Incel Forum²

The Political Nature

Globally, 137 women and girls are killed by a family member or intimate partner every single day. The result is more than 50,000 femicides each year.

I find it necessary, in the constantly published articles and news stories, to divulge the nature of their crimes by way of their titles. Only the names of the women affected are mentioned alongside. They go as such: [French husband ‘spent ten years drugging his wife at night and filming at least 83 men raping her after finding them on depraved ‘Without her knowing’ website dedicated to sex with unconscious victims’] Françoise, 70 [A drunk man was arrested while raping his minor daughter in the street of Saint Quentin. The victim indicated that she has been raped by her father for most of the day] [Mum and daughter, 6, shot dead and dumped in the basement after row over PS5] Aisha Nelson, 31, and Harper Monroe, 6. [Man jailed for 10 years for raping a girl who was later murdered by her brother] Amber Gilson, 16 [A Florida Man is charged with murder in the death of his wife, whose remains were found in the suitcase] Aydil Barbise Foutes, 80 [Brian Walshe killed and dismembered his wife Ana Walshe and disposed of her remains in dumpsters because HE wanted to end their marriage] Ana Walshe, 39, Mother of 3.[Iranian Man sentenced to eight years for beheading his 17-year-old wife] Mona Heydari, 17.

The death sentence is all the same, the consequence barely wavering. Almost like a teacher’s pet, men come in late, lacking culinary skills and responsibility, filled with laughter and some need to throw things, no pencils nor backpack, the teacher will gaze around, a subtle cue to tone it down, to sit in their seat, but no work is ever done, no given consequence. As a society, we can acknowledge that femicide is a crime, constituted under the common law of murder, but it becomes tolerated by public systems, officials, government operations on the notion of it being a gender-based discrimination. If we are to lead closely by definition, the target of femicide coincides with terrorism, no? Creating intentional violence and fear to achieve political or ideological aims seems accurate, already plausible. Must we conclude that such nonreaction is an answer in itself, that to embellish and recreate new laws, women have to be invited at all. Where women lead only 13 countries out of the existing 193³, nine of them being the first female serving leaders their country has seen, in which capacity could our voice be heard without death or injustice being a needed cause to finally listen?

Here are a few laws where women lack legal protection against violence and equality: The Equal Rights Amendment (US), Equal Pay Act (US), certain provisions in the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (US), Overturning of Roe v Wade (US), Section 76 of the Serious Crime Act (UK), Domestic Abuse Bill (UK), Title VII Civil Right Act (US), Slapping Law (Russia), Malta’s Criminal Code of 1854 (Malta), Hostile Environment Policy (UK). The European Parliment writes, “In a summary of the global extent of violence against women, UN Women has estimated that of the 87000 women who were intentionally killed in 2017, more than 50,000 (58%) were killed by their own family members every day. Adult women account for almost half (49%) of all human trafficking victims and 75% of child trafficking victims are girls. In total, 72% of trafficked people are female. It is estimated that there ar 650 million women and girls in the world today who were married before the age of 18, at least 200 million women and girls aged 15-49 have undergone FGM and approximately 15 milion adolescent girls (aged 15 to 19) worldwide have reportedly experienced forced sex (including forced intercourse or other sexual acts) at some point in their lives. Although these abuses are not femicides, many femicides are linked to or precipated by them” Naturally, the list will continue, destructive in their creation, minor in legal disruption, where prevention v response is lacking in either reaction, and seeking justice or legal equity is often not initiated by women who experience rape or abuse, whose only blame is our legal system to being with.

The expansiveness of the term, femicide, leads to various issues due to its inclusivity, marking a greater region of violence not yet acknowledged or fought for, the term includes such: Intimate partner femicide, killings of women due to the accusations of witchcraft, so-called honor killings, killings in the context of armed conflict, dowry-related killings, killings of aborginals and indegious women, killing as a result of sexual orientation or identity, etc. Children are to be included in this term, yet due to their inability to have ‘rights’ in the legal system, nor any physical or emotional experience, their mistreatment and abuse are incredibly hard to target, due to the power of the ‘adult’ voice. Henceforth, we have a standard of violence, marked in the fields listed above, where enacting or participating in intentional brutality has rarely any legal consequence when their relationships are considered, leading to previous acts as such: Property Crime charge if a woman was to be raped, and affected the status of the father due to his claim of his daughter being ‘property’ rather than the violence enacted onto the women⁵. The treatment is the same, with widely circulating Twitter threads quoting, “the phase where you slowly start hating your girlfriend is crazy,” (Twitter, @sk1tguru) “Three ways to consciously manipulate women before they subconsciously manipulate you” (TheRedPill Archive) “The most efficient and benevolent method of extracting the desired value out of the interactions you have with females is to punish and reward her by giving and withdrawing your attention,” (TheRedPill Archive) “it is ‘evolutionarily advantageous for a 40-year-old man to hit on a 15-year-old girl. Just because there’s a law doesn’t mean 15-year-old girls were always considered out of bounds (subreddit r/TheRedPill, republican lawmaker Robert Fisher)6 “I have never concealed my intense dislike for the devolved creature, the ‘woman’” (Comment on MGTOW forum, Men Going Their Own Way). With such widespread opinions, how do you differentiate a solution? The issue can be labeled as too expansive, broad, lacking shape, and due to its widely accepted nature, one must become fanatical about change. It delves into the corruption of systems, institutions, cultures, social policies, government bias, etc. and while there is change women have enacted through socio-economic and political protest, (i.e Suffrage Movement – the 19th Amendment, Act on Equal Status and Equal Rights Irrespective of Gender – Iceland, Women’s Anti-Pass March, 1956), the lack of action in judiciary courts leaves women to the same denouement: death.

To keep this short, as a daughter, there is a high possibility I can die at the hands of a man, of a relative, walking down the street or shopping in the mall (Ecole Polytechnique Massacre, Elliot Rodger⁷ – Isla Vista Massacre, etc.). I could lose my mother, an aunt, my two sisters to misogynistic violence, hate crimes, to hands other than their own. Every single one of them will have a mother who weeps at the tragedy, the brutality, the amount of blood and lack of life. Their situations could become comparable as they share the pictures of bruises and scars, the warning signs or the lack of them, of the fear and anger as each of them thought their own daughter could have a better chance than them. Women of Color, Indigenous Communities, LGBTQ+ women, will rally and extend warning braches of caution, of fear, of experience, of mistreatment, prejudice, injustice and no voice to carry over the hurt, blame, contempt, and one more missing daughter.

The Opinion

How much should I give of myself, which is to say, if I were to hand over my body for the use of the man’s pleasure, there would be nothing left of use for me. I could simply not object, repress and sequester my simple, soft body, but what peace offering could I possibly give when they already take with none? My relationships have become perplexing, often muddled, diluted enough to allow myself interaction with men at all. I could be labeled a misandrist at times, my words coarse and unwelcome, usually the first to point at the flaws, pinpoint the horrifying nature of their actions – (not contained by a simple time period, but rather a baseline to our timeline of humanity). I could complain of the wrongness of their normalcy or their marked persona of inability in relationships and personal development. It might rid me of such headaches, hands clenched between keys, over cups, grasping each hand of our friend as we make way to the bathroom, laughing with hands over mouth and smiles hidden behind each finger. I would lose my identity as a woman the more I deny the violence of men.

We are not guaranteed life, might I argue women are denied even more, given even less, forced to breathe on the occasion it contains the context of ‘help’. If we become women, which is to say we are thirteen with three children around our hips and dinner on the table, may we cater to another load, wash three sets of hands, make each single bed without worry to ours. They hold each day in their cat-filled calendar, three years overdue, packed with glitter x’s and school field trips, neatly stacked in their ‘box of memories’, a needed burial to attend such nightly duties. They become 25 before they are 16, which is to say, they have been catcalled, groped, assaulted, bled, wiped clean three times over and dirtied the next four. You no longer look like a child, so you must be a woman – their attention will never make it past your breast. You will drink, lay on the bathroom floor, huddled over toilets and steering wheels, constantly folded down must we cover the breast that protects the heart. Your life will become a long line of “fine”. You are closer to death than any man ever was.

Should such a conclusion be viable in terms of my words? I have little to offer other than experience, of feeling, of contempt, of anger, of fear, of bruises, of memories. I am rocked by men who have surrounded me, fostered me, held the tiny hand, the small toes, the children’s books, and the baby food. What am I to make of them on the subway, on sidewalks, in grocery stores, their own house, who am I to become by knowing them? Lessons become finicky over the centuries, a variation, a fracture, a division of sacrifice over practicability, I get lost in the knowledge that a before and after must exist in situations, but there has only been strange, ordinary middles and simple known verities. Must we put a moral truth on the death of women, might we begin to question the existence of men, at all. Might we finally become women. 

¹ Stockl H., Devries K., Rotstein A., Abrahams M., Campbell J., Watts C., Garcia Moreno C. (2013). The global prevalence of intimate partner homicide: A systematic review. The Lancet, 382, 859-865.

2: Men Who Hate Women, Laura Bates

3: Pew Research Center, “Fewer than a third of UN member states have ever had a woman leader”

4: European Parliment, “Preventing, Protecting, and Providing access to Justice: How can states respond to femicide?”

5: “The Government Has a Long History of Controlling Women — One That Never Ended”, Brennan Center for Justice

6: Reddit’s TheRedPill, notorious for its misogyny, was founded by a New Hampshire state legislator, Vox 2017

7: Polytechnique Massacre, Wikipedia