Murder is murder, regardless of politics

Authorities have a suspect in custody in the killing of Jim Pouillon, an anti-abortion protester in Michigan. It's been confirmed that Pouillon was definitely targeted because of his protest tactics.

Let me be clear - This man should not have been murdered for his activities related to abortion.

Likewise, Dr. George Tiller should not have been murdered for his activities related to abortion.

Murdering someone is always wrong, regardless of the person and their views. Why is that so hard to understand?

Quick Read: Muslimah Media Watch on Neda and the Media

Take a minute to read this really great post by Fatemah at Muslimah Media Watch on the media's use of Neda Agha-Soltani's image after her death:

Aside from the talk that she is a martyr for Iran’s opposition movement, many in the West are using her death to educate themselves about Iran’s current crisis, viewing Iran through a lens of violence and cruelty, which many add to their current knowledge of the country as repressive, backward, and unsafe for Americans. Neda’s death may help Iranians band closer together and become stronger in their fight for a government that treats them with respect, but here in the West, her lifeless body is little more than another reminder of the instability and danger of “over there”.

What difference has her death made here in the West? As far as I can tell, the only Western response to her death (aside from the gruesome fact that her last moments are a now common fixture on blogs and news sites) has been a website, weareallneda.com, where mourners can leave messages to a Neda who cannot read them. Below the site’s banner is a stylized rendering of her lifeless face amid a river of blood, shown above left.

The cruelty and horror of Neda’s death may be a call to action, but her death mask shouldn’t.

You can find it here.

Unsafe abortions in Tanzania take toll

The feminist blogosphere has done a good job at covering the murder of Dr. George Tiller in his church in Wichita, Kansas this past Sunday. This news has been deeply felt by many of us who identify as pro-choice, and other bloggers have done a much better job talking about this event than I feel I can.

However, I found this piece on the New York Times website the other day that I felt tied in with the news of Dr. Tiller's murder in an interesting way.

I will warn that it's a rather brutal reading about the large problem of unprofessional and unsafe abortions in Tanzania where the procedure is illegal, except to save the mother's life, and ignorance about safe sex practices is widespread (only about a quarter of Tanzanians use any form of contraception).

Maternal mortality is high in Tanzania: for every 100,000 births, 950 women die. In the United States, the figure is 11, and it is even lower in other developed countries. But Tanzania’s record is neither the best nor the worst in Africa. Many other countries have similar statistics; quite a few do better and a handful do markedly worse.

People who provide safe abortions are very important asset to the women who seek them. We need to support these people and make sure they have what they need, be it supplies or protection, to do their job.

Quick Read: Ex-soldier convicted of rape, murder of 14-year-old Iraqi girl...

...and the soldier, Steven Green, could be facing the death penalty for the gruesome 2006 act.

(trigger warning)

Grand Theft Auto 4 wants you to kill hookers to get your money back

I play video games obsessively. I was probably one of the first people in my area to own a Play Station 3. I have played Rock Band with friends until three in the morning many times. If you have no idea what I am talking about, you should get the game.

However, despite its popularity, I have never really liked the Grand Theft Auto series. I thought it was pretty boring, simply because I wasn't very good at the missions and shooting up cops and jumping off buildings eventually got old, although it was funny the first several times. My male gamer friends love the series, however. They like to claim that I am just being overly sensitive because all the main characters in Grand Theft Auto are male. Although, I loved Assassin's Creed, which was extremely violent and dominated by male characters. If I held my breath waiting for video games that feature women as something other than eye candy or damsels in distress I would have to throw out most of my game collection. At the end of the day, I just got to suck it up and ignore the sexism if I want to have any fun playing video games.

Nevertheless, I simply cannot condone the sexualized violence in Grand Theft Auto 4. One of my friends went to a preview party hosted by Rockstar Games. As is typical for the gaming world, the entire party was a big sausage fest with no women in sight other than the models hired to promote the game. He reported back to say that the highlight of GTA4 was the strip clubs and buying sex. Kind of gross, but that wouldn't make me outright dislike the game. What really stuck out was that you can kill the prostitutes to get your money back. According to that friend, he said what most guys that got to play the preview set up found most enthralling was paying for demeaning sex and then shooting the prostitutes and running them over with their car. "Because it's funny," he said, "and you can also get your money back."

Very classy. I especially like how the game tries to be political by developing these elaborate back stories for fast food workers and victims of the drug war to highlight those issues. However, no word on sexualized violence and the huge problem of violence against sex workers. You can just run them over afterwards to get your money back, it's not like they have a name or purpose other than sex and then dying. From the previews I have seen around the internet, it seems like Rockstar's newest contribution has no other purpose for the women in "Liberty City" other than sex and death. I really like that underlying message.

I'll go on the record saying that I like violent videogames. When most people moan and groan about how video games are corrupting the youth, I think they sound a bit dull. However, I really have to go with the fundies on this one. Sexualized violence and killing hookers is not cool. Thanks for enabling the elaborate joke socialization thinks violence against women is, Rockstar. I just don't think it's at all funny.

Props to Feministing and Samhita for pointing this out.

Disabled pregnant woman abused, died

Dorothy Dixon, a 29-year-old mentally disabled woman from Quincy, Missouri, was 6 months pregnant with her second child when she died after weeks of abuse administered by five adults and a 12-year-old child.

“Investigators put much of the blame on Michelle Riley, 35, who they said befriended Dixon but pocketed monthly Social Security checks she got because of her developmental delays.

Dixon saw little, if any, of the money, Hayes said. For months she weathered the torment to keep a roof over her head and that of her year-old son, who weighed just 15 pounds when taken into state custody after his mom's death.”

Dixon met one of her abusers (Riley) at a center that helps the developmentally disabled find housing and other such services, and ended up moving in with Riley. This is a deeply disturbing thought. If this woman went to a place where she should have been able to find good, honest help and ended up dead, it scares me. I hope that this is an isolated incident, but honestly, I don't know for sure. Her story is devestating.