She's making a really good point — and that's a good response to the guys who come into discussions about feminism and say "why don't you work on issues in the middle east, where women really have it bad??"
It's possible to care about more than one thing, and it's also important to be honest about conditions at home if you want to be critical about conditions abroad.
@stereomike111 They're not, of course, because some are panic killings, some are "cold-blooded", and so on. We do have a notional category, though — "crimes of passion" — which basically is a form of honor killing, often that of a woman by an enraged male relative, and considered to some extent excusable or deserving of leniency.
@caitlinburke I really can not see crimes of passion and honor killings representing the same phenomena. That's not to downplay either. The whole comment by J. Haiven is odd in its tone.
@stereomike111 She is a bit of a crusader against misogyny — so a bit of tunnel-vision is probably operating, not unlike a lot of people who are up in arms about, well, any specific horror in the world.
@Vidiot Quick numbers. 2014 populations: U.S. 317M, Pakistan: 188M, or ~60%. So 60% of 1,095 would be 657, or about 3/4 of the 869 killings in Pakistan. Certainly, reducing such a shitty category as this by even 1/4 is a good thing, but that's still too close to be anything other than dismaying.
I do appreciate the point, but in addition to "honor killings" they do also have domestic violence, and I'm gonna go out on a limb and say a lot of it is probably unreported compared to the US. Not like that makes us a winner or anything.
To oversimplify for my own comprehension: I think the point is that we tend to look at these stats in other countries as if their culture is f'd up, and at our own as if only individuals are f'd up, and maybe we would benefit from looking at the social structures that enable violence in our own and other cultures to see if there are underlying similarities.
It's possible to care about more than one thing, and it's also important to be honest about conditions at home if you want to be critical about conditions abroad.
So 60% of 1,095 would be 657, or about 3/4 of the 869 killings in Pakistan. Certainly, reducing such a shitty category as this by even 1/4 is a good thing, but that's still too close to be anything other than dismaying.
Not like that makes us a winner or anything.
This is the main problem with the reception of reporting about stuff like this: people DO act like that stuff makes us winners.