Guyger case just more evidence that this is a "woman's world" when it is about right and wrong

Every day there is a new “bombshell” report about Donald Trump and his stooges trying to undermine democracy and the Constitution, but there are other incidents of hypocrisy going on in the world that draw my ire. Take for example the case of Amber Guyger, a blonde, white female Dallas police officer who had parked her car on the wrong parking floor of her apartment building, approached what she assumed was her apartment room, heard noises inside it, barged in with guns blazing, fatally wounding a black man, Botham Jean, who was just sitting in his own apartment, watching television and eating ice cream.  There were so many “wrong” things about this story, but the main thing was concerning her psychological state before she entered the room. Why was the only thing that popped into her mind was to go in shooting? She could not explain this; of course she was “sorry” she did it—“sorry” she killed a man who was doing nothing at all to justify what she did, and that she might actually go to jail.

 

Prosecutors in the case were correct in dismissing her self-serving “regret” on the stand, but the question that jurors had to ask themselves is what motivated her shoot without once stepping back even for a moment to examine if it was justified. Guyger was convicted of murder, but his brother then testified that he “forgave” her and the family did not want a “harsh” sentence, after which Guyger was allowed by the court to get out her seat to hug him in a plain play for sympathy.  One white juror, who said he was “moved” by family testimony that Jean was a “Christian” and was “caring,” said "We all agree that (the shooting) was a mistake, and I don't think Bo would want to take harsh vengeance. I think he would want to forgive her." 

How do you know? He’s dead. If he could speak from the dead, he might be asking what everyone else was asking: Did Guyger even for one millisecond consider his life when she shot him? Another, juror, a black woman, said "I can't give her 28 years. I know a lot of people are not happy about the 10 years. But I felt like  this case was not like any other case." She claimed that there was a “difference” between this white woman shooting in the coldest of blood a black man, saying that unlike other officers who shot unarmed black men “She showed remorse and that she's going to have to deal with that for the rest of her life." You know what, unlike, say, the case of Michael Brown who had a criminal record and apparently had just robbed a convenience store and then engaged physically with the police officer who would shot him, Botham Jean was just a law-abiding man with a good job, sitting in his own apartment eating ice cream (after imbibing on a bud) and watching TV. Guyger acted on impulse, whether from racism, paranoia, psychological instability, or the typical cop “instinct” to shoot first and ask questions later. 

Guyger’s actions were thus more reprehensible and less deserving of “forgiveness.” Protesters outside the courtroom were right to be outraged by the lightness of the sentence, for it only confirmed the idea that some lives don’t matter “that much.” One wonders if the black jurors were so inured to the fact of black homicide rates—either as perpetrators or victims—that this was just one more they had to “get over” and “forgive.” One thing I find interesting in the discussion concerning black “forgiveness” for killers of loved ones is that it is usually when the victim is a “good” person that this forgiveness is given, but when the victim is clearly not a “good” person, then we hear that the person who shot him is not “forgiven.” The Brown case for one, and the Trayvon Martin case for another; Martin’s mother (and the media) continue to deceive the public about who her son really was and his “aptitude” for violence; completely discounting George Zimmerman's version of the events that night. Martin's father shoulders some blame for not warning his ex-wife not to send him to Sanford, a community which was torn apart by crime and home break-ins by mainly “young black transients,” according to a story by Reuters, and Martin’s prior criminal behavior clearly fit such a description.

But this idea that women—particular white women—are somehow less “responsible” for their actions than men has become the social norm. Crime shows like “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit” have propagandized into the popular culture that they are “special victims.” White women are the least likely demographic to be the victim of homocide (black males are 23 times more likely to be the victim of a homicide), yet the large majority of homicides that are “worthy” of being reported by the national media are white women, especially the “attractive” sort. This gives the untruthful perception that most victims of homicides are women, and add to that accusations of domestic violence and sexual crimes, there is a clear gender bias at play—the same kind that dehumanized Botham Jean because he was a man, and “humanized” Guyger because she was a woman.

We  could on and on here. Brooke Skylar Richardson, anther attractive blonde white female, was recently acquitted of the murder of her newborn baby two years ago. A doctor who she had been seeing in secret was to perform the birth procedure, but Richardson (18 at the time) never showed up again until she requested birth control pills, at which point the doctor became suspicious and contacted police, and the skeleton of the baby was discovered buried in the backyard of  her home. Again, jurors were conned into feeling “sorry” for her, after being fed unproven tales about prior abuse, psychological “issues,” and testimony that she was a “nice” girl. At trial, she kept bobbing her head as if she was spastic. But the facts were these: she never told anyone she was pregnant, and tried to conceal her pregnancy. She went to a baseball game the day before she gave birth with her parents; they did not even realize then that she was pregnant. During the game she complained about feeling what she called “cramps”—in fact labor pains.

The Cincinnati Enquirer reported that the day after she gave birth “She sent a text to her mom: ‘I’m literally speechless with how happy I am,” Richardson said. ‘My belly is back omg I am never ever ever evertrrr letting it grt like this again your about to see me look freaking better than before omg.’ Less than 24 hours after prosecutors say she killed her baby, Richardson texted her mom again: ‘I’m literally so excited for dinner to wear something cute yayy my belly is back now I am takin this opportunity to make it amazing.’ She also texted her boyfriend: ‘Last night was like the worst ever. But I feel so much better this morning. I’m happy.’” No one seemed to be interested in how exactly she “lost” weight so quickly. 

This sounds like a person eager to be rid of a baby nobody save the doctor she was seeing even knew she was carrying. Her comments following the birth sounds like a person completely obsessed with herself and the way she “looked.” She didn’t sound “crazy,” just “relieved” to be rid of her “problem.” Yet here again we see something that occurs all too often: that an attractive adult white female’s life is more important than that of a child. Bizarre “syndromes” and other psychological “problems” that only women seem to suffer from, or blaming a man, seems to be sufficient to assuage any recognition of the differences between right and wrong in such extreme cases. 

Take the case of Andrea Yates, who continues in residence at the Kerrville State Hospital in Texas, who was found “not guilty” in her retrial for the drowning of her five children in a bathtub by holding them under water until they ceased breathing. She was not of “sound mind” when she did it?  Oh, really? Yates was “sound” enough of mind to wait until her husband left for work, and to lock up the dogs to keep them from interfering with what she planned on doing, fill the bathtub with water, and starting with her six-year-old, took them one-by-one into the bathroom and held them in the water until life was extinguished. The oldest boy apparently discover a sibling floating dead in the bathtub and tried to run away, but Yates caught him and proceeded to drown him as well. Instead of killing herself, Yates decided to live, calling the police and her husband—apparently to “explain” why she did it. 

Yates was found guilty of murder in her first trial, but the case was sent to retrial because the jury had allegedly “improperly” received testimony that Yates had been “influenced” by an episode of Law & Order in which a woman feigned insanity for killing her children. The episode allegedly didn’t exist, although one was later aired that had the audacity to follow the tale told by Yates defense: that the father was at fault for supposedly ignoring warnings about his wife’s mental instability and that she had been “influenced” by some apocalyptic religious nut. 

Yet who could imagine that a “mother” would do something so horrific as physically hold down a child in a tub of water and deliberately drown that child—let alone five of them without once feeling any remorse after the first one?  Why is it so “easy” to believe that if a woman does something so horrific only “insanity” or a “man made her do it" can explain it? Apparently this has been a popular defense strategy in Texas. It’s been used in cases involving a mother “stoning” a child to death, another of hanging her children, and another of stabbing her children to death. Does anyone remember the movie Freedomland? Julianne Moore stars as an attractive white woman who murders her young son, and initially blames it on a black man, causing social and media unrest. Later she admits to the crime, but the viewer is supposed to feel “sympathy” for her when she claims her son was “demanding” like a “man.” Another movie that made me sick, Daisy Diamond, was about a woman who, upset that her crying baby had messed up an audition for an acting role, drowns her in a bathtub. The only “punishment” she suffers for doing it is bad conscience and acting in porn movies for awhile. 

What else? I had no idea who rapper Cardi B was until I read about how three years ago she bragged on an Instagram video how when she worked as a stripper she lured men into hotel rooms with the promise of sex, then drugged and robbed them. When the video recently resurfaced, she “explained” herself thus: "Whether or not they were poor choices at the time, I did what I had to do to survive. I never claimed to be perfect or come from a perfect world. Nothing was handed to me. Nothing,” Well, she was “right” about one thing: Those men didn’t “give” her anything; she just “took” it. Some people pointed out the hypocrisy of the way the media, law enforcement and society in general has been treating this story…you know, “what if a man had admitted to this…” Well, there does seem to be more than a few male rappers who are currently being locked up from accusations made by women. 

The fact that Cardi B felt “entitled” to steal doesn’t surprise me much. I was at a Fred Meyers store in Seattle a couple years ago when I observed a security guard and the store manager trying to wrestle away a rolling travel bag from a woman in the parking lot; which she apparently filled the  bag with items she did not pay for. After several back and forths for possession of the bag, the two men decided to quit the effort out of embarrassment and just let the woman escape with the loot; no doubt she felt “entitled” to steal it.  

This attitude of “entitlement” and not being “responsible” for one’s action seems to have become rather commonplace in this environment of “victimhood.” I read this story about how a woman, who had been sued by actor Robert DeNiro for embezzling $6 million from a company he was involved in, was countersuing him for $12 million. She is accusing DeNiro of giving her work that was “beneath” her title of vice president. Well, there are about 100 “vice presidents” at the downtown Seattle Bank of America main office building, so the title doesn’t really mean all that much, but this VP accuses DeNiro of “sexism” by paying her lots of money just to do “hausfrau” work for him, or at least that is what she says. Frankly, not many people would complain about being overpaid for what they do, but obviously this woman is playing by that tried-and-true playbook to avoid answering for her own alleged crime.

A more “immediate” example of this: I was riding a bus recently when I couldn’t help but notice a woman who was talking loudly and rudely on her cellphone, interspersing her commentary with the “N-word” and “B-word” as well as other expletives. She didn’t sound “angry,” that was just her “normal” speaking level and her language skills, suggested further by her pronunciation of the work “ask”: “aks.” At some point she pulled the stop cord, and the driver obliged her by pulling up to the next stop location.” But she kept on blabbing away until she noticed people were gesturing toward her, and she said she “meant” the next stop. As the bus was pulling out, she pulled the cord again, and when driver pulled up again to next stop,  she just sat there yammering away. The man sitting in front of her turned around and told her this was the next stop, but she just ignored him. The driver pulled out and this person again pulled the cord; when the driver pulled in at the next stop, and she didn’t appear “moved” to move, the driver in exasperation told her that he had seen her pull the cord. By now she was no longer talking on the phone, but just sat there completely oblivious. After noticing several people looking at and gesturing toward her she announced her “confusion” about why people were “bothering” her. To clear things up for her, I told her that she had pulled the stop cord three times, and she had the audacity not to see what the “problem” was? When she continued to feign “confusion,” I called her an “idiot” and observed that she was pissing off the driver, to which she had
nothing further to say.

Another time I was on a bus, some man got on and sat down blasting so-called music from his cell phone so that everyone was forced to hear it. Now, there is a posted list of “Ride Right” rules, and one of them is to “Use Earphones.” Since the driver said nothing to enforce the rule, I let it out that “Someone doesn’t have earphones,” and the man just looked up and mugged smugly; a woman sitting in front of me then asked me what the problem was, because nobody else was complaining. I explained to this person that it was a matter of principle; the rule was that you were not allowed to use speakerphone on the bus; you had to use earphones. I even pointed at the posting that said precisely this. But the woman (who I think was trying to make this a “racial” thing, but I was having none of that) repeated the question of what my “problem” was, and I simply asked her “What is the rule?” and this exchange was repeated two more times. She refused to answer the question I posed, because it would only reveal her as a hypocrite who believed that certain people don’t have to obey the rules; it makes you wonder how some people are “raised” by their mothers.

Domestic violence,  meanwhile, is almost wholly treated as crime in which women are only victims, never perpetrators—or if they are it doesn't “count.”  Yet even when evidence suggests that women are capable of intimate partner violence, it is only admitted in the “context” that women are also the victims. Take for instance recent surveys that suggest that domestic violence between lesbian couples occurs at a higher rate than any other couple combinations; the perpetrators might be women, but the victims are still women, so it is a “wash.” While domestic violence incidents are frequently reported involving male athletes, they are also quite commonplace among professional female athletes, particularly in the WNBA. During one “season” of violence a few years ago, Deanna Nolan was arrested for beating her second “wife”—the syntax even sounds “off,” doesn’t it?—after they had an argument about Nolan’s affair with a Russian woman; Nolan had previously been accused of beating her first “wife.” Chamique Holdsclaw was charged, convicted but sentenced to no jail time for following an ex-girlfriend’s car to her new “partner’s” house, wrecking the car with a baseball bat and firing a gun into the car while the ex was still inside.  Malika Willoughby, apparently unhappy that her lady love Rosalind Ross was going to leave her for a coaching job to another state, shot her to death outside a restaurant. Willoughby was found guilty of murder, but sentenced to only 13 years in prison. Brittney Griner—“famous” for cold-cocking Jordan Barncastle on the court when she was playing for Baylor University—and domestic partner Glory Johnson were both involved in a domestic incident that led to both being arrested and serving brief game suspensions. 

But female partners were not the only victims in these incidents. A restraining order was placed on Jantel Lavender after she threatened to kill her boyfriend, Adam Ashley. Ashley claimed that he had been in hiding for fear of his life after she had pulled a knife on him—after she had grabbed his head and slammed it against a wall. Before that, he claimed that she tried to choke him, and that there were many more such incidents. But such things never seem to make it onto cable news shows, so it is easy to assume it "never" happens.

 

But sometimes you just have to be "bemused" at the audacity of hypocrisy. Take for instance, Hillary Clinton making the talk show rounds with daughter Chelsea. During one episode she was asked what the “gutsiest” thing she has ever done. She replied that it was staying married to Bill. For the average person in the real world, that would probably be true. But let’s be honest: Hillary doesn’t deserve all the adulation and good will she is getting from the media for that or anything else, and never did. Even those voters who regret the presidency of Donald Trump just want him to get out of the way as soon as possible; there is no “regret” that Hillary wasn’t elected, she is out of the way for good, we may hope. Bill Clinton married Hillary because he felt a “smart” woman like her would help him in his political career. I’m suspect that privately he came to regret it, because she comes off as a bit of a cold fish now and probably always was. But she is being disingenuous about not being aware of his dalliances; she was apparently willing to look the other way as long as they were “private” and he wasn’t “bothering” her with his urges. 

In fact, Hillary was so disliked by Arkansas voters who saw her as aloof and cold that internal polling suggested that this was a major reason why Bill Clinton lost his first re-election bid as governor. When he ran again there was an effort made to “reshape” her image to make her more “likable.”  Although Bill Clinton’s numerous dalliances made headlines as well as leading to an impeachment, he “survived” because most Americans found his personally “affable” and “downhome."  What personality Hillary Clinton has is mostly dour and sour, except when she is in front of a sufficiently adoring audience. Bill Clinton really didn’t need her specifically, but she needed someone like him to allow her to emerge from the dark shadows of her personality. What positive most people see in her is through the prism of his personality. We saw that at a 2016 Iowa campaign stop, when Bill engaged with the locals about their farm animals, and Hillary just wandered off uninterested. Hillary Clinton would have remained a relative nobody in the  just like 99 percent of the rest of the world; even the majority of those who voted for her in 2016 really didn’t want her. It was yet another case of  “entitlement” being forced down people’s throats whether they liked in or not. 

What is and isn’t socially acceptable and the level of responsibility in this country has indeed changed since I was young, and I have a hard time seeing that it has changed for the better.