The sad story of Tracey Greenbury, 33, killed by a shotgun blast to the back of the head by her partner,Leigh Robinson, 62, took another stepforward today, with a sentencing hearing for Robinson – whose defence was that he was chasing her with a shotgun, which went off accidentally, and who is appealing his conviction.
Robinson had already served more than 20 years for the murder of a woman in 1968, after she refused to go out with him. He’s a poster boy for the death penalty, but that’s not my focus here.
Instead it’s to consider what sort of killing this was.
Women who are murdered are overwhelmingly murdered by their male partners, and the relationships and the crimes have a fairly common pattern – angry, narcissistic man, fairly beaten down in working or public life, but with a talent for psychological control, and women with deep need to attach – often damaged themselves – who cannot break-away.
Sometimes they’ve left and are hunted down and killed (or their family threatened with reribution if they leave), but most often they’ve stayed attached, or become fatalistic about their impending murder.
These are the dominant forms of femicide in our society. They are culturally determined killings, based on certain assumptions about male rights and legitimate behaviour. Yet they are never seen as such. Instead they’re seen as simply random occurences, without pattern or meaning.
By contrast, Muslim ‘honour’ killings usually of daughters – are seen as utterly determined – cold expressions of a misogynistic religion. In the general haze of femicide, they stand out as clearly delineated and constructed.
The result is that Western ‘honour’ killings – men murdering their partners out of rage at perceived humiliation, deceit, disobedience or whatever – are never named as such. Yet they conform to an individualistic culture, as much as Muslim honour killings do to a monotheistic patriachal one. The male wounded ego, the enraged self has to be restored to a sense of power – first by violence and then by murder.
This is bad enough, but there is a darker question – has the focus on Muslim honour killings actually taken the heat off tackling secular femicide? Has it served to disrupt any notion that these killings are highly patterned and ritualised, and could thus be lessened?
In the UK for example there are about 200 murders of women a year, 95% of them by men (or men and women together – though in such cases the man is usually the leading partner). About 10-15 of them are Muslim ‘honour’ killings. Yet while there is no distinct femicide police unit in the UK, there is one dedicated to Muslim ‘honour’ killings, withe funds for community education, outreach etc.
There is no reason for that. In both secular and Muslim femicides, the culprit is almost always obvious, evidence easily gathered and convictions largely dependent on the defendant’s lawyers ability to negotiate a lesser charge. Yet a Femicide unit with the same outreach and education brief would be intervening in a much larger thing – the ocean of major violence against women in broken fractured societies. But because secular ‘honour’ killings cannot be named as such, there is no object for such a unit to be organised around.
The disparity between the treatment of these two occurrences was probably at its worst during the Iraq war, when a number of pro-war imperial feminists used the misogynistic aspects of Muslim culture to spruik the war against Iraq (one of the most secular of Arab nations) in concert with progressive allies, such as Saudi Arabia. For pro-war writers like the late Pamela Bone, Julie Szego and Janet Albrechtsen, (some of whom had written about male on female violence before), any notion that femicide might be, at its root, a single thing with different cultural expressions, went out the window. In the obsessive focus on Muslim misogyny, the actual condition of women became a pretext for military spruiking shading into racism.
The Iraq stuff has all been shown up for the criminal delusion it was, but the profoundly racist construction of Femicide continues – obscuring the things that would really lower the murder till, more and better refuges, short-term individual emergency accom, judicious intervention and education campaigns, and above all a recognition that these things have a shape, a history and a politics.
13 Comments
Well said, Guy. A good reminder that just as religions don’t have a patent on values like tolerance, forgiveness etc neither do they have the patent on bigotry, violence and ‘evil’. Sadly a fear and hatred of women transcends cultures and religions. But still we ignore it!
Very good Rundle. No trace of the bald Swiss bankerwanker here.
The clinical diagnosis industry has already come up with a gem for the Robinson case: “intermittent explosive disorder”. This is not an Afghan joke. Tonight’s news.
Egads! “intermittent explosive disorder”, how far can we go in medicalising criminality?
Great thoughful article.
“intermittent explosive disorder”
A fancy pants way of saying he lost his temper big time.
Great post. Insightful.
well bugger me, “intermittent explosive disorder” gets 180,000 google hits. It’s orthodoxy. And guess what. “a 2006 study suggests that the disorder is considerably more prevalent than previously thought.” Seek and ye shall find. Careers blossom, research grants flow…
I suppose afghan road rage is…IED
“sudden, unpredictable acts of aggressive behaviour in otherwise normal persons…” -climate change posts on Crikey. Not sure about the “otherwise normal” though, right kdkd?
These killings certainly do have a history – Shakespeare even wrote a play about the issue!
Stop the press!!!!
Guy finally realizes there such a thing as murder in society and places the murder of females in proper context including Muslim honor killings. It’s all the same, just as child molestation by Catholic Clergy was nothing special either compared to “regular” molestation.
Nothing to see here people.
One of these days Crikey is going to realize that quantity and quality aren’t the same.
when did i not think there was such a thing as murder jc123, you lunatic?
Guy: why not ask jc123 what he means by his incomprehensible comment? No point just chucking a Crikey and branding him/her a “lunatic”.
Guy: as far as loons go, you need to be medicated you’re that far gone, you pathological lying loon.
Does Crikey actually pay you? I’m serious.
good piece, thank you. Guy wrt the measures you suggest at the end to lower the femicide rate, I recommend you look a little further, and in particular at what Tasmania has done with its Safe at Home legislation and resourcing. Basically it’s a pro-arrest policy that removes the alleged attacker from the house, rather than forcing the victim to have to leave which is often a major barrier to women saving themselves. It also includes a risk assessment approach based in the context of a clear evidence-based understanding of the cycle of escalating violence that leads to a domestic murder. Importantly it applies equally to men and women, recognising that while a much smaller group, women-on -men violence does happen (and of course there’s same sex couples).
I believe Tas provides an excellent model for the rest of Australia to think about.
Well said. Can we now stop funding these gov’t and University think-tanks to “understand” Muslims? If a Muslim commits a crime they are a criminal, same as a member of any other religion or alternate ridiculous belief system that criminals like to claim excuses their crime.
Wouldn’t it be nice if we had as many institutes and centres and think-tanks for “men studies” as we do “Islamic studies”.We don’t need to understand Muslims to know why some of them choose to blow others up, we just need to prosecute the terrorists for their criminal acts and get on with our lives. Ditto with the psycho misogynists of any colour or creed who kill women. If we choose to fall for their religious clap-trap then these poor women will continue to suffer. Stop apologising for them and allowing them to hide behind religion or culture!