#cw: violence against women

[quntress]

Sometimes I feel like I was born to be famous, but because I'm so mediocre in everything I fear that my fame will stem from being horribly murdered.

[intheholler]

the appalachian murder ballad <3 one of the most interesting elements of americana and american folk, imo!

my wife recently gave me A Look when i had one playing in the car and she was like, "why do all of these old folk songs talk about killing people lmao" and i realized i wanted to Talk About It at length.

nerd shit under the cut, and it's long. y'all been warned

so, as y'all probably know, a lot of appalachian folk music grew its roots in scottish folk (and then was heavily influenced by Black folks once it arrived here, but that's a post for another time).

they existed, as most folk music does, to deliver a narrative--to pass on a story orally, especially in communities where literacy was not widespread. their whole purpose was to get the news out there about current events, and everyone loves a good murder mystery!

as an aside, i saw someone liken the murder ballad to a ye olde true crime podcast and tbh, yeah lol.

the "original" murder ballads started back across the pond as news stories printed on broadsheets and penned in such a way that it was easy to put to melody.

they were meant to be passed on and keep the people informed about the goings-on in town. i imagine that because these songs were left up to their original orators to get them going, this would be why we have sooo many variations of old folk songs.

naturally then, almost always, they were based on real events, either sung from an outside perspective, from the killer's perspective and in some cases, from the victim's. of course, like most things from days of yore, they reek of social dogshit. the particular flavor of dogshit of the OG murder ballad was misogyny.

so, the murder ballad came over when the english and scots-irish settlers did. in fact, a lot of the current murder ballads are still telling stories from centuries ago, and, as is the way of folk, getting rewritten and given new names and melodies and evolving into the modern recordings we hear today.

305 such scottish and english ballads were noted and collected into what is famously known as the Child Ballads collected by a professor named francis james child in the 19th century. they have been reshaped and covered and recorded a million and one times, as is the folk way.

while newer ones continued to largely fit the formula of retelling real events and murder trials (such as one of my favorite ones, little sadie, about a murderer getting chased through the carolinas to have justice handed down), they also evolved into sometimes fictional, (often unfortunately misogynistic) cautionary tales.

perhaps the most famous examples of these are omie wise and pretty polly where the woman's death almost feels justified as if it's her fault (big shocker).

but i digress. in this way, the evolution of the murder ballad came to serve a similar purpose as the spooky legends of appalachia did/do now.

(why do we have those urban legends and oral traditions warning yall out of the woods? to keep babies from gettin lost n dying in them. i know it's a fun tiktok trend rn to tell tale of spooky scary woods like there's really more haints out here than there are anywhere else, but that's a rant for another time too ain't it)

so, the aforementioned little sadie (also known as "bad lee brown" in some cases) was first recorded in the 1920s. i'm also plugging my favorite female-vocaist cover of it there because it's superior when a woman does it, sorry.

it is a pretty straightforward murder ballad in its content--in the original version, the guy kills a woman, a stranger or his girlfriend sometimes depending on who is covering it.

but instead of it being a cautionary 'be careful and don't get pregnant or it's your fault' tale like omie wise and pretty polly, the guy doesn't get away with it, and he's not portrayed as sympathetic like the murderer is in so many ballads.

a few decades after, women started saying fuck you and writing their own murder ballads.

in the 40s, the femme fatale trope was in full swing with women flipping the script and killing their male lovers for slights against them instead.

men began to enter the "find out" phase in these songs and paid up for being abusive partners. women regained their agency and humanity by actually giving themselves an active voice instead of just being essentially 'fridged in the ballads of old.

her majesty dolly parton even covered plenty of old ballads herself but then went on to write the bridge, telling the pregnant-woman-in-the-murder-ballad's side of things for once. love her.

as a listener, i realized that i personally prefer these modern covers of appalachian murder ballads sung by women-led acts like dolly and gillian welch and even the super-recent crooked still especially, because there is a sense of reclamation, subverting its roots by giving it a woman's voice instead.

meaning that, like a lot else from the problematic past, the appalachian murder ballad is something to be enjoyed with critical ears. violence against women is an evergreen issue, of course, and you're going to encounter a lot of that in this branch of historical music.

but with folk songs, and especially the murder ballad, being such a foundational element of appalachian history and culture and fitting squarely into the appalachian gothic, i still find them important and so, so interesting

i do feel it's worth mentioning that there are "tamer" ones. with traditional and modern murder ballads alike, some of them are just for "fun," like a murder mystery novel is enjoyable to read; not all have a message or retell a historical trial.

(for instance, i'd even argue ultra-modern, popular americana songs like hell's comin' with me is a contemporary americana murder ballad--being sung by a male vocalist and having evolved from being at the expense of a woman to instead being directed at a harmful and corrupt church. that kind of thing)

in short: it continues to evolve, and i continue to eat that shit up.

anyway, to leave off, lemme share with yall my personal favorite murder ballad which fits squarely into murder mystery/horror novel territory imo.

it's the 10th child ballad and was originally known as "the twa sisters." it's been covered to hell n back and named and renamed.

but! if you listen to any flavor of americana, chances are high you already know it; popular names are "the dreadful wind and rain" and sometimes just "wind and rain."

in it, a jealous older sister pushes her other sister into a river (or stream, or sea, depending on who's covering it) over a dumbass man. the little sister's body floats away and a fiddle maker come upon her and took parts of her body to make a fiddle of his own. the only song the new fiddle plays is the tale about how it came to be, and it is the same song you have been listening to until then.

how's that for genuinely spooky-scary appalachia, y'all?

[halloweenhooves]

I implore you to watch the Sundance award winning documentary One Child Nation by filmmaker NánFú Wáng (王男栿), who was born, raised, and educated (although girls weren’t allowed to go to high school) in rural China under the one child policy, and think more carefully about what it means to search for reasons why an intensely patriarchal state was justified in controlling women’s bodies regardless of their ‘success’ in the end.

You cannot brashly assert that what matters here is only the end result without acknowledging the hundreds of thousands of millions of women and girls whose beatings, forced sterilization, and death were, in that logic, justified and utilitarian.

And it didn’t end neatly in ‘the late 80s’. In the 90s, you could only have a second child if your first was a girl and you paid a hefty fine. There are hundreds of cases of those who couldn’t pay being kidnapped and forcibly aborted by government officials who were not medical personnel, with cases as recent as 2012. And once you change the laws and cultures of thousands of communities through propaganda and state sanctioned violence against women, it’s not as easy as you’d wishfully think to neatly return back to the way things were pre-1979.

“[The tactics necessary to enforce the one child policy] had their negative aspects, as does everything that exists, but were unquestionably correct and progressive things.”

I really don’t know where to start with this. Just read these excerpts from a report by the Washington Post and South China Post:

“In 2005, farmers in the city of Linyi told The Washington Post that local authorities raided the homes of families with two children and demanded that at least one parent be sterilized. Pregnant women who already had two children were rounded up for abortions. If people tried to hide, their relatives were jailed.

My aunts, uncles, cousins, my pregnant younger sister, my in-laws, they were all taken to the family planning office," one woman who was pregnant at the time said. "Many of them didn't get food or water, and all of them were severely beaten." This woman eventually had her fetus aborted. She was subsequently sterilized, too.

Such operations were often carried out by staff members with little or no medical training, leading to various side effects.”

Source: The Washington Post

This was often the case for rural families who were noncompliant with this kind of state control, as their child mortality rates were higher and needed more children to either work the land or send home income from factory jobs in order to have enough to get by.

For those that could afford ultrasounds, baby girls and children with disabilities were frequently aborted. While minorities were not subject to the one child policy, the state is not kind to its minorities who refuse to culturally conform (ex. Tibet, Uyghur Muslims).

I don’t usually make posts like this, but I couldn’t believe what I was reading when OP waxed poetic about the material ends (post capitalist malaise and sexual violence induced generational trauma is better than state induced Great Leap Forward famine I suppose, and definitely the only way the CCP could’ve made that transition) justifying the unspeakable horrors faced by mothers, children considered “undesirable” to the state, families that never moved on from their child’s life being taken from them with no closure, women whose bodies were messily sterilized or underwent botched abortions leading to long term medical and psychological damage, and children that grew up in shitty circumstances either in Chinese orphanages or abroad because their families weren’t allowed to keep them.

Scholars do agree that this was greatly successful for curbing population growth and the immense economic and agricultural strain it can bring, which you are right about. But you cannot describe culling as progressive politics without sweeping extremely serious human rights abuses under a dirty rug.

Source: Settles, Sheng, Zang, & Zhao (2002): One Child Policy

OP sounds more like a loyalist family planning official than an ethics-driven leftist in their reply. Please listen to those whose rights were violated over the state that violated them. Don’t act as though you aren’t cherry picking reasons why authoritarian control of their citizens’ bodies is ultimately a good thing, misinforming nearly a thousand people of its human consequences in the process.

Those who forget this history are actively suppressing the stories of survivors already made illegal by the perpetrating government (Nánfú Wáng’s work is banned in China and has been subject to multiple smear campaigns), and in doing so become far more likely, if not doomed, to repeat it.

This is not to say that any other nation is a paragon of human rights. We do not have good examples of modern capitalism-reliant nation states that put their citizens’ wellbeing first in true communist/socialist fashion, and we should say it so we can work to figure out how we can do better. Your response to this ask works to do the opposite, absolving horrible systems of due critique.

The trailer for One Child Nation is below. You can watch it on Prime, or here on dailymotion. It is horrifying all on its own, with or without the frequently racist, high-horse stance of the Western media, and we all need to recognize that.

Is there a story behind China's one child policy that makes it not as horrifying as western media claims?

The defining feature of China's development for the past 70 years has been the urban-rural divide. In order to develop a semi-feudal country with a very low industrial level into an industrialised, socialist nation, it was necessary to develop industrial centres. To 'organically' develop industrial centres would have taken many decades, if not centuries of continued impoverishment and starvation, so programs were put in place to accelerate the development of industry by preferentially supporting cities.

Programs like the 'urban-rural price scissors' placed price controls on agricultural products, which made food affordable for city-dwellers, at the direct expense of reducing the income of rural, agricultural areas. This hits on the heart of the issue - to preferentially develop industrial centres in order to support the rest of the country, the rest of the country must first take up the burden of supporting those centres. Either some get out of poverty *first*, or nobody gets out of poverty at all. The result being: a divide between urban and rural areas in their quality of life and prospects. In order to keep this system from falling apart, several other policies were needed to support it, such as the Hukou system, which controlled immigration within the country. The Hukou system differentiated between rural and urban residents, and restricted immigration to urban areas - because, given the urban-rural divide, everyone would rather just try to move to the cities, leaving the agricultural industry to collapse. The Hukou system (alongside being a piece in many other problems, like the 'one country two systems', etc) prevented this, and prevented the entire thing from collapsing. The 'one child policy' was another system supporting this mode of development. It applied principally to city-dwellers, to prevent the populations of cities expanding beyond the limited size the agricultural regions could support, and generally had no 'punishments' greater than a lack of government child-support, or even a fine, for those who still wanted additional children. Ethnic minorities, and rural residents, were granted additional children, with rural ethnic minorities getting double. It wasn't something anyone would love, but it served an important purpose.

I use the past-tense, here, because these systems have either already been phased out or are in the process of being phased out. The method of urban-rural price scissors as a method of development ran its course, and, ultimately, was exhausted - the negative aspects, of its underdevelopment of rural regions, began to overwhelm its positive aspects. So, it was replaced with the paradigm of 'Reform and Opening Up' around the 1980s. Urban-rural price scissors were removed (leading to protests by urban workers and intellectuals in the late '80s), and the Hukou system, along with the 'one child policy', were and are being slowly eased out as lessening inequality between the urban and rural areas make them unnecessary. Under the new system, the driver of development was no longer at the expense of rural regions, but was carried out through the internal market and external capital. The development paradigm of Reform and Opening Up worked to resolved some contradictions, in the form of the urban-rural divide, and created some of its own, in the form of internal wealth divisions within the cities. Through it, over 800 million people were lifted out of extreme poverty - almost all of them being in rural areas - and extreme poverty was completely abolished within China. 'Extreme poverty' can be a difficult thing for westerners to grasp, wherein poverty means not paying rent on time, but to illustrate - many of the last holdout regions of extreme poverty were originally guerrilla base areas, impassable regions of mountainside which were long hikes away from schools or hospitals, wherein entire villages were living in conditions not dissimilar to their feudal state a century before. These villages were, when possible, given infrastructure and a meaningful local industry accounting their environment and tradition (like growing a certain type of mountainous fruit), or entirely relocated to free government-built housing lower down the mountain that was theirs to own. These were the people the 'one child policy' was aiding, by reducing the urban population they had to support. Again, there were exemptions for rural and ethnic minority populations to the policy.

Even now, Reform and Opening Up is running its course. Its own negative aspects, such as urban wealth inequality, are beginning to overcome its positive aspects. So, the new paradigm is 'Common Prosperity', which will work to resolve the past system's contradictions, and surely introduce its own contradictions in the form of chafing against the national bourgeoisie, as it increases state control and ownership of industry, and furthers a reintroduced collectivisation. Organising a nation of well over a billion people is not simple. It is not done based on soundbytes and on picking apart policies in the abstract for how 'dystopian' they sound. It is an exceedingly complex and interconnected process based on a dialectical, material analysis of things; not a utopian, idealist one. What matters is this: those 800,000,000 people now freed from absolute poverty. The things necessary to achieve that were, unquestionably, good things - because they achieved that. They had their negative aspects, as does everything that exists, but they were unquestionably correct and progressive things.

[ayeforscotland]

This is awful to write about but a couple of days ago 3 women, a mum and two daughters, were killed in their own home by an ex-boyfriend of one of the daughters.

Statistically, a woman is killed by a man in the UK every three days. And that's before getting into domestic violence, rape and other serious sexual offences.

I'm not going to be able to cover everything in a single post, and I don't think any women who follow me need educated on the subject.

But for the guys who do follow me, it's important to be aware of the different types of abuse that can exist within relationships.

When you hear 'Domestic Violence', it's easy to immediately jump to physical assault. But there's other ways it manifests such as:

Financial Control - Controlling how they spend money and restricting them from working,

Psychological Abuse - Putdowns, withholding affection, gaslighting, disrespectful language

Sexual Assault - Rape or other forced sexual acts

Social - Deciding who they can and can't spend time with, monitoring their phone/PC usage

Other Physical Abuse - Destruction of personal property is also considered part of this

There is much more that could be added to that list, but if you have a friend who constantly makes offhand comments about their partner, or who finds anything remotely funny about domestic violence. It is always worth your time making it clear that that behaviour is not acceptable.

And folk will try and wave it off, and say 'Just take a joke' or 'You sound like the Gilette advert' - but 3 people were just killed because a man felt entitled to one of them.

[flymmsy]

You Look Just Like Her

The resemblance to Gortash's lost lover is striking - Tav is the perfect canvas to bring The Dark Urge back to life.

Tavtash noncon with background Durgetash. 18+, 1.6k. Please read the tags, heavy on the angst.

Read it on AO3.

[leftistfeminista]

Misogynists target lesbian in hate crime

The victim testified that when she drove up to her Richmond home after work, she noticed a group of four men—three Latino and one Black—standing near a parked car. After she parked her car, she called her father on a cell phone “[b]ecause ․ I was scared.” While she was talking to her father, and walking to her house, defendant 3 approached, and, in Spanish, demanded money and her keys. The victim told the man she had no money. Defendant grabbed the phone, smashed her head with a flashlight, and repeated “give me everything you have.” The victim surrendered her money, wallet, and keys, but refused defendant's demand that she take off her clothes. After being hit for a second time in the head with the flashlight, she began disrobing.

Down to her underwear, the victim hesitated to go further until defendant “lifted his hand up as if he were going to hit me again if I didn't take it off.” When the victim was naked, defendant ordered her to “get on the ground.” After Gonzalez picked up the victim's clothing, defendant—in the victim's words—“started to touch me from behind.” Defendant then digitally penetrated her anus for two or three minutes, ignoring her protest that it was hurting her. Defendant then told her get up, marched her over to her car, and told her to get in.4

When the victim handed over her car keys, defendant had thrown them to Ortiz. Ortiz stayed in the car with Hodges and Gonzalez until defendant brought over the victim to her car, and commanded Ortiz to start the engine. Once the car was underway, with the victim in the middle of the back seat, defendant told the driver (Ortiz), “Take us somewhere where all of us can have a good time.” Defendant asked the victim “if I liked men.” “I told him yes” because “I thought he would kill me ․” After defendant “asked me if I was sure that I liked men,” he told her “that if I did like men that I needed to show him.”5 Defendant unbuttoned his pants, and said, “Give me some head.”

The victim testified that defendant asked her did she “like dick.” Defendant “grabbed me by the head and pushed me towards his part,” and forced her to put her mouth over his erect penis. “He ․ told me we were going to go to a place to have fun.” Gonzalez heard defendant say “You like it you know. Do you like it?”

After about five blocks, the car stopped at the abandoned home of a Sureno in “a burned-out apartment complex.” After her car had been driven into the carport, defendant ordered the naked victim out. Once out of her car, defendant “told me to bend over,” and then “[h]e penetrated me” “[i]n the backside.” “I yelled, and I told him that it hurt me,” whereupon defendant taunted: “See, you like men. I'm going to set you straight.” And, “You like boys. Tell me you like boys.”

Defendant then ordered the victim underneath an exterior staircase. Again she was sodomized on her feet, while defendant kept asking “if I was sure that I liked men.” While still standing behind the victim, defendant raped her. While doing so, he again inquired “[w]hether ․ I liked it.” Defendant ordered the victim to her knees and to orally copulate him again. His comments this time were “whether ․ I liked men and that I should show him that I did,” and “You like sucking dick, don't you?” When finished, defendant told Gonzalez “It's your turn next.” Gonzalez refused, but Ortiz did not, forcing the victim to orally copulate him. Defendant and Gonzalez drove away in the victim's car, about the time Hodges was forcing the victim to orally copulate him.

The victim's ordeal ended when Ortiz and Hodges left on foot. Disregarding their command not to move, she ran to a nearby home, and police were summoned.

Defendant drove himself and Gonzalez for a number of blocks, when they abandoned the victim's car. Defendant's pants and shirt were soaked in blood. He removed them, and set them afire in the middle of the sidewalk.6 Defendant and Gonzalez were picked up by a cousin of defendant, who drove them away. Gonzalez told the jury that rape was not tolerated by the Surenos: the prohibition against it was almost as strong as the ban on snitching.7

Defendant's DNA was found in swabs taken from the victim. Defendant's fingerprints, and the victim's blood, were found on the flashlight that was found in the victim's car.

[lastdivantruther]

yesterday me and my friend read a book from an esteemed author of my country.

it was talking about a family man and his wife and his daughters and his daughter-in-law.

all the women were emotional, and money-crazed and cunning. together they were destroying their family while the sad father watched, unable to do anything.

we laughed a lot. because it was a silly book written by a silly man nearly 100 years ago.

today i woke up to the news of 4 women brutally killed all around my country.

there has been tens more, some we don't even know this month.

it has been happening every month. some i remember their names, some i remember how they screamed to live as they died.

i remember how they gotten killed.

i don't laugh at silly men anymore.

i am angry. and scared. and so very tired.

every day as i leave my house, i think to myself if i'll survive the day.

or if i'll die by the hands of a man i don't know, because i dressed in a way thay aroused him, because i got his attention, because i was kind to him and he read it as an invitation, because i was in the wrong place wrong time, because

just because.

i'm tired. and i can't stop thinking about the bloody body parts i saw today.

i can't stop thinking.

[behindthescreamz]

marty adams as ivan landsness and director darren lynn bousman filming the “feel what i feel” trap scene - including a group photo of the extras who played ivan’s victims - on the set of “saw iv” (2007)

[wild-wombytch]

People tried to force-feed sufragettes...by the vagina...? What? (CW : torture, rape, violence against women, TW food, ED)

[adelaidedrubman]

dear tumblr. op is tired of fandom only caring about male characters and has put you in their saw trap.

your challenge: name one female character you don’t want to painfully, gruesomely murder with your bare hands or else you won’t get the world’s best feminist trophy. begin

[ayeforscotland]

To be fair if those women lived on a scheme it would make the news. Media cunts like yourself would just be bending over backwards to make it their fault and not the murderers. Like, maybe one of them took a cocodamol once.

You do know I'm not a journalist, right? I despise the way the British media discusses a wide variety of issues. The post wasn't about any reporting on it, it was about domestic violence and the discussing different types of abuse.

I have no idea why you're being such a weird cunt about it. Three women were murdered and you're being a twat about it.

[audible-smiles]

Rest in peace to the spirit of Rebecca Cheptegei, a Ugandan long-distance runner and Olympian who died in a hospital in Kenya recently after her boyfriend doused her in gasoline and set her on fire. Her father insists that he reported the man’s escalating violent behavior to the authorities before her death, but no action was taken. Women in Kenya suffer high rates of intimate partner violence; I���m not informed enough to recommend a particular organization to donate to, but please keep the reality of this kind of violence in your thoughts. We have so far still to go.

[fredhugesfan]

Tue. 5/28/2024

"Women are too emotional"~

I've never punched a wall out of anger.

I've never assaulted someone because I was angry.

I've never hit a woman, man, or child out of anger.

I've never drunk myself into a stupor to avoid processing my emotions.

I've never become addicted to anything because I lacked self-control, used drugs or alcohol to suppress my emotions, or because it 'felt good'.

I've never had gambling or porn addictions.

I've never raped anyone.

I've never been an arsonist.

I've never committed a 'crime of passion'.

I've never taken my own life due to my emotions.

Claiming that women are too emotional is a weak and desperate attempt to undermine an entire gender. This kind of rhetoric is often used to justify subjugation.

Men are not only "just as emotional," but they are also more prone to acting on those emotions with threats and harmful actions.

This is why most domestic violence is committed by men and directed at women.

This is why most stalking is done by men.

This is why most intimate partner homicides are committed by men.

This is why 'restraining orders' are usually granted to women because of men.

This is why 'red flag laws' focus on removing firearms from men, who are more likely to use them.

Men can be extremely volatile. Anger is an emotion.

Men are in no position to use the argument of being "too emotional" to strip women of their rights and freedoms.

If society were to be structured based on emotional control, it would be a matriarchy, and most men would face severe restrictions or punishment.

The issue isn't about being "too emotional." The real problem is that women aren't men. Some men assume superiority despite evidence to the contrary.

When this argument arises, accountability is essential. Men can be just as emotional, and their unchecked anger has caused far more harm to innocent women, children, and society than compassion ever has. Historically, more innocents have been harmed by angry men professing love than by external threats.

When you consider the societal damage caused by men seeking sexual gratification and the resulting sex crimes and industries, it becomes clear that men can be far more destructive to society than women.

I'd welcome any statistical evidence that contradicts this.

[flymmsy]

I might be wrong but did Gortash only torture women? Just thinking that I don't remember there being any man brain in a jar. Must be because of his mom but his father is not innocent either. Very typical to only blame the woman.. Why do I still love him? Like it does not even matter in the end, cause I am so smitten with him.

Actually when thinking about it, the whole dead 3 (kethric not so much, I think?) is a bit misogynistic, very clear with how they treat Orin. Sarevok calling her murders "girly" and that durge did proper murder unlike her, like ok...

We definitely have some evidence in game of Gortash threatening men, and you could argue that The Emperor was tortured by him, but yes - the number of women he tortures is much larger. And, as you said, all of the brains are women - which is definitely pointed.

I agree it’s connected to his mother and I find his relationships with his parents endlessly fascinating - the fact that he seems to torture his father less is 🤯

However I will pause here because it is important to say that it does matter. Violence against women is a very huge problem in our world. We all love Gortash here but it’s important to also understand everything he represents. His existence as a fictional character is the reason we can focus on other things, but we should never wave it away or say it doesn’t matter.

I’m also saying this because BG3 has a wide age range of fans. It’ll come as no surprise to anyone reading this that when I was younger, with the affinity for characters I love, I really could have benefited from someone who made it explicitly clear that you need to accept the terrible parts of an evil character, even if you don’t focus on them. The effect of *you* as a real person ignoring these traits *can* harm you beyond whatever form of media you’re engaging with - in the real world.

TLDR: Yes Gortash is disproportionately violent against women as opposed to men and let’s be sure to acknowledge that. And, if you ever see a man exhibit any degree or inkling of violence against women in real life, run in the other direction so fast.

P.S. - My first playthrough I was actually excited to see Sarevok and thought how cool and then the second he called Orin’s actions girly was the exact second I knew he needed to die.

[gorelesbian]

call me a prude but rbing a fight violence against women campaign onto your kink blog is extremely tasteless