So this week I got to watch a travesty of justice. Fun!
After months of watching Oscar Pistorius revert to the age of about 6 in the courtroom - the puking, wailing, and sticking his fingers in his ears was particularly telling - the judge did the equivalent of giving him a time-out while patting him on the head. Kootchey kootchey koo, sweetums.
His behaviour in court annoyed me. This is what happens when you shoot a living, breathing human being, you ass. They bleed and die, and it's not pretty.
Stuffing your fingers in your ears doesn't change what you did. Puking sure as hell doesn't bring a dead girl back. Let's not even talk about the made for t.v. movie acting abilities. Crying and snivelling made it seem he was a hell of a lot more sorry about being in court - why didn't the cops just accept his story that night?
But hey - you can say you were terrified! You can say you thought it was intruder! (One that stopped for a potty break before charging into your room to slaughter you? Really? I'm not an expert, but that doesn't seem like normal procedure for a home invasion.)
Only an idiot fires repeatedly through a door when they can't see the target. An idiot, or a man raging about something who thought he'd teach his girlfriend a lesson. Maybe the intention was to frighten. Maybe the man should never have been given a gun license. We simply don't know.
You have to wonder what the current girlfriend thought of all of this. 18 is pretty impressionable, so the odds are he was given a soothing back-rub and a cold beer to soothe his nerves afterwards.
There's a chance he'll get a custodial sentence, but I'm not holding my breath on this one. The Telegraph headline on Friday read in part: "Shattered Oscar leaves court." What it should have read was "Destroyed Steenkamp family loses hope in justice."
In a country where it seems killing women is becoming a national fucking sport, this sentence is terrifying. Wife burnt the roast? Shoot her, and tell the world you thought it was a burglar. Girlfriend talks back? Shoot her. Tell the cops you thought someone was breaking in. Hell, if you set it up right, (i.e: not in a frigging toilet without the space to swing a cat) you'll probably get away with it. You might even get a bloody book deal.
This case made headlines because both Reeva Steenkamp and Oscar Pistorious were national figures. But look: a woman in South Africa is murdered by her partner on average every 8 hours. That's a slight improvement; this link cites a study that shows in 2004 it was every 6 hours. Sexual offence cases in 2012/2013 sit at 66 387. That's not a typo. Now think about the fact that less than half of sexual attacks are reported.
In this respect at least, South Africa is a microcosm of a much larger global disease, one that declares females as inferior, incompetent, and terrifying to certain males. We need to teach our kids that it is unacceptable to be a punching bag, and completely repulsive to use your partner as one. We need to teach them that using a weapon against another living being results in horror.
Until education eliminates that view point, until judgements are made that slaughtering your girlfriend in a toilet is murder, that raping a woman is abominable, that beating the ever loving crap out of a woman because you can is assault, there will be more death.
More blood on the ground. More families weeping over raw earth as coffins are lowered.
After months of watching Oscar Pistorius revert to the age of about 6 in the courtroom - the puking, wailing, and sticking his fingers in his ears was particularly telling - the judge did the equivalent of giving him a time-out while patting him on the head. Kootchey kootchey koo, sweetums.
His behaviour in court annoyed me. This is what happens when you shoot a living, breathing human being, you ass. They bleed and die, and it's not pretty.
Stuffing your fingers in your ears doesn't change what you did. Puking sure as hell doesn't bring a dead girl back. Let's not even talk about the made for t.v. movie acting abilities. Crying and snivelling made it seem he was a hell of a lot more sorry about being in court - why didn't the cops just accept his story that night?
But hey - you can say you were terrified! You can say you thought it was intruder! (One that stopped for a potty break before charging into your room to slaughter you? Really? I'm not an expert, but that doesn't seem like normal procedure for a home invasion.)
Only an idiot fires repeatedly through a door when they can't see the target. An idiot, or a man raging about something who thought he'd teach his girlfriend a lesson. Maybe the intention was to frighten. Maybe the man should never have been given a gun license. We simply don't know.
You have to wonder what the current girlfriend thought of all of this. 18 is pretty impressionable, so the odds are he was given a soothing back-rub and a cold beer to soothe his nerves afterwards.
There's a chance he'll get a custodial sentence, but I'm not holding my breath on this one. The Telegraph headline on Friday read in part: "Shattered Oscar leaves court." What it should have read was "Destroyed Steenkamp family loses hope in justice."
In a country where it seems killing women is becoming a national fucking sport, this sentence is terrifying. Wife burnt the roast? Shoot her, and tell the world you thought it was a burglar. Girlfriend talks back? Shoot her. Tell the cops you thought someone was breaking in. Hell, if you set it up right, (i.e: not in a frigging toilet without the space to swing a cat) you'll probably get away with it. You might even get a bloody book deal.
This case made headlines because both Reeva Steenkamp and Oscar Pistorious were national figures. But look: a woman in South Africa is murdered by her partner on average every 8 hours. That's a slight improvement; this link cites a study that shows in 2004 it was every 6 hours. Sexual offence cases in 2012/2013 sit at 66 387. That's not a typo. Now think about the fact that less than half of sexual attacks are reported.
In this respect at least, South Africa is a microcosm of a much larger global disease, one that declares females as inferior, incompetent, and terrifying to certain males. We need to teach our kids that it is unacceptable to be a punching bag, and completely repulsive to use your partner as one. We need to teach them that using a weapon against another living being results in horror.
Until education eliminates that view point, until judgements are made that slaughtering your girlfriend in a toilet is murder, that raping a woman is abominable, that beating the ever loving crap out of a woman because you can is assault, there will be more death.
More blood on the ground. More families weeping over raw earth as coffins are lowered.
