stopping hate

[swan_tower]

I wish my motivation for a non-writing-related post were more cheerful.

Came across two things today. The more recent is this post about a murder that took place not too far from where I live. A couple of guys spent literally hours beating a man to death, dragging him out into the middle of nowhere, leaving him to die, then coming back to find and shoot him, and so far their defense for this has been "he was gay." Which he wasn't. But his actual orientation is in a sense irrelevant; what's relevant is that it's being claimed as a justification, that Indiana has not passed any anti-hate-crime legislation, and that this story has been buried. Almost nobody reported on it when it happened. Not nationally; not locally. Just a couple of smaller, more independent papers. But when a ten-year-old girl was killed, it made news everywhere.

Turning to gender, I'm sure many of you read Joss Whedon's . . . I don't want to call it a rant, or a diatribe, because those words invite you to dismiss his words as undirected anger. Nor was it a manifesto, per say. His post -- a bland word -- about Dua Khalil, a young Iraqi woman who was beaten to death in a so-called "honor killing," and about how spectators stood around and filmed her death on their cellphones, doing nothing to try and stop it. (Those videos are online. I have not gone looking for them. I'm sure you can find them if you try.) Skyla Dawn Cameron and others are putting together a charity anthology of essays, short stories, poetry, artwork -- anything relevant to the issues Whedon raised, regarding misogyny and violence against women. I don't think they've specified yet which charity the proceeds will go to, but it's not for profit.

I figure both of these are issues near and dear to the hearts of some of my readership here. Both links contain information on how you can take action. If you're an Indiana resident, you can particularly help out with the Hall case. Either way, I hope these efforts can do at least a little bit of good.

Comments

[d-c-m.livejournal.com]

The men who did the beatings should go to jail for life for killing someone out of total brutality and obviously not in self-defense. Jerks.

[wadam.livejournal.com]

S. and I found the Hall posting on the Bloomington Community and mailed links out to pretty much everyone we knew. Nationally. Including to some people who have the means to publicize it further. And S. wrote to our local and national representatives about hate crime laws in IN.

What angered me, I think, as much as anything else, was the way in which certain people commenting on the posting over there got angry at the writer, calling it sensationalistic and over-blown. Now admittedly, it isn't the most well-written piece I've ever seen. But the fact even I, who live so close to where this happened and keep apprised of current events, didn't know about it means that in whatever form, it was important to get the info out there.

[drake-rocket.livejournal.com]

This sort of event is entirely unacceptable in our society; however, I don't really know that the people who are being raged at are entirely the appropriate ones. This is a product of the anger and evils of two people (and arguably the upbringing/society that brought their evils about). This does not make any of this the fault of the media or law makers. Anti-hate-crime legislation is problematic on a number of levels, not the least of which is morally questionable act of calling a murder for socio/political reasons a worse crime than a murder for other non-self-defense related reasons (I'm not quite clear how murdering someone because they are gay is worse than murdering them because they are a republican or some such). And as for the media, I will make the same comment I always do as someone with a degree in this sorta thing....the media reports what their publics want to hear and won't be angry at them for. An institution like the Herald Times could suffer severely for a story on this that sounded even slightly amiss. While there is this expectation for journalists to be public servants, neither the government nor the people provide them with real funding to be selfless and our laws do not really protect them anymore than they do normal folks. It is more accurate to blame a populace that couldn't handle the sort of impact printing this would have in a rationale way and a pair of sinister men who are really the true villains in this tragedy.