Homicide close to home

Yesterday’s horrific events in which a man murdered his two young children and their mother – his estranged wife, shook the intimate Maine town of Dexter.  It has been said that we are all globally connected by 6 or fewer degrees of separation.  In Maine, it is more like 1 or 2.  So it is not surprising that both my husband and I, located nearly 75 miles from Dexter, knew both the shooter and one of the victims.

My husband knew the wife by association, as she was the cousin to a friend from Greenville.  It turns out that I had invited the shooter into our home a couple of years ago to do an estimate for a wood boiler install.  I was shocked when I found out the crime he had committed.  He had seemed like a regular guy…down to earth, helpful, charismatic – rational.  He divulged no clue that he was harboring inner demons, and that he was capable of such heinous actions.  So when I heard the news, my first reaction was to ask ‘How could this have happened?’

And then I read the Bangor Daily News article more closely.  It explained that there was a general belief in the family that Steven Lake’s reclusion from his wife and children was wearing on him.  He was not allowed to attend his son’s graduation ceremony, and that this was most likely the action that prompted the killings.  Steven’s uncle is quoted as saying, “What really dumped him over the edge was the fact he couldn’t go to his son’s graduation.  He kinda flipped out after that. You push a button long enough and things will come to a head.”

Raise your hand if your first reaction to this summation by the uncle made you think, “Gosh if only he were allowed to go to the graduation, maybe everyone would still be alive…if only she hadn’t pushed that button”.  Okay, admittedly, shamefully, I’ll raise my hand too.  And this was followed by thoughts like, ‘What more could she have done to ensure her safety?’ and ‘Maybe she should have hidden better, or invested in a gun of her own’.  It seems easy to blame the victim, or maybe it’s just that it makes the rest of us feel safer.  It is almost like we would have reacted differently, that the situation wasn’t inevitably deadly for everyone…just for them.

The Bangor Daily News went on to give statistics regarding how many deadly incidents of domestic violence in Maine have occurred this year…4 so far to date.    In 2010, there were 24 homicides and 26 in 2009.  What is lacking from these statistics is the obvious…who is responsible for these violent crimes???

Men are overwhelmingly responsible for killing, injuring, threatening, or otherwise harming other people.  They commit nearly 99% of all violent crimes, yet the media continuously refrains from naming the perpetrators as male.  If headlines read, “Another man killed someone today…” instead of the usual, “A woman, man, or child was murdered today…”, then perhaps the real issues could be more directly addressed.  They use the word ‘domestic violence’ to name crimes in which intimate partners harm each other.  Yet in every single example that the paper gave to substantiate the 4 crimes, the only perpetrator was male.  It would be more accurate to call it something like, “incidents of males killing their partners”.  

The issue surrounding the Lake family homicide has nothing to do with what the wife and mother could have done differently to protect herself and her children.  It has everything to do with why the father/husband even had the violent impulses to begin with and why he felt entitled to act them out.

The solution to creating less violent men is rather involved, but recognizing the problem for what is, is simple.  Boys are being raised to be dominant, and violence is tolerated - even expected.  We aren’t doing women, children, or men any favors by continuing to mask the issues with words like ‘domestic violence’, nor are we doing our society justice by accepting the norm of refraining from the obvious.  Men make up less than half of the population, yet they commit nearly all of the violent crimes.  I don’t know about you, but this statistic is not acceptable to me.  It’s about time that we recognize and name that a problem exists…and then work on correcting it.

Men's Violence Against Women

Gracing my bookshelf is a poignant book aimed at addressing the transgressions of men and how they hurt women. Jackson Katz effectually begins his book, “The Macho Paradox” by sharing an exercise that he does with groups that he speaks to about men's violence against women. He asks his class what steps they take each day to avoid being sexually assaulted. It is a provocative question that elicits some jokes and laughter among the men and an outpouring of suggestions from women. As the women spout off answers such as, ‘not wearing a ponytail’, ‘parking under a light’, ‘looking in the backseat of my car’, etc, the men begin to realize just how much the threat of sexual assault impacts every woman’s daily life.

Let me emphasize that women are not afraid of being assaulted every day by some stray perpetrator, some no gendered being that happens to be preying upon women that day. They are at risk of being raped, assaulted, stalked, harassed, or otherwise endangered by the whole other half of the population. Men are overwhelmingly responsible for violent crimes against women, children, and other men. The question we should all be asking ourselves is not, “why are women being raped and beaten?”; but rather “why are men beating and raping everyone else?”.

Debra Anne Davis bravely shares her story of rape while effectively showcasing one of the reasons that men hurt women.

“…(T)he Angel in the House was intensely sympathetic…She was utterly unselfish…in short she was so constituted that she never had a mind or wish of her own, but preferred to sympathize always with the minds and wishes of others.” (The Angel in the House)

As her rapist forced his way into her apartment, Davis did not instinctively shove her gun into his gut, claw his eyes with her fingernails, or even scream for her safety. Instead, her reserved upbringing, her Angel in the House, put her passivity and grace above personal safety by subconsciously urging her not to be rude or aggressive. Her rapist, on the other hand, had been raised to be dominant, to take what he wanted…to be male. Therefore, the two legacies of upbringing unfolded as the man raped and the woman submissively endured, survived.

Beyond the upbringing differences in aggression v. passivity, are the other forces at work in our society that perpetrate violence by men against women. The ‘impartial’ (and I use that term loosely) news reporters repeatedly report stories of violence against women without pointedly naming what gender is committing the violence…unless, of course, it is a woman committing the crime. Perhaps if viewers repeatedly heard newscasters say, “Another man assaulted someone today…” the message that listeners would hear would resonate as men being the problem rather than women being the issue. It isn’t enough to say that women are victimized…the perpetrators have to be called out as well.

Further, movies and television shows (produced and directed largely by men) repeatedly show violence against women as a sexualized event. In nearly every crime drama, the women are shown in provocative clothing, if clothed at all, splayed out and covered in blood, semen, or a combination of the two. Movies routinely contain murder scenes just outside the shower or bedroom where women are scantily clad or stark naked. The ties between brutality and sexuality are disturbing at the least, and serve to unite desire with violence.

It is so obvious to me that our society’s structure has everything to do with men’s violence against women. They are raised to be aggressive, to desire women, and to be powerful by any means necessary. Why, then are we surprised when the threat of incarceration does very little to end the violence? It seems like such a small deterrence to combat the onslaught of messages that boys and men are given on a daily basis.