"...it's not the training to be mean but the training to be kind that is used to keep us leashed best." ~ Black Dog Red

"In case you haven't recognized the trend: it proceeds action, dissent, speech." ~ davidly, on how wars get done

"...What sort of meager, unerotic existence must a man live to find himself moved to such ecstatic heights by the mundane sniping of a congressional budget fight. The fate of human existence does not hang in the balance. The gods are not arrayed on either side. Poseiden, earth-shaker, has regrettably set his sights on the poor fishermen of northern Japan and not on Washington, D.C. where his ire might do some good--I can think of no better spot for a little wetland reclamation project, if you know what I mean. The fight is neither revolution nor apocalypse; it is hardly even a fight. A lot of apparatchiks are moving a lot of phony numbers with more zeros than a century of soccer scores around, weaving a brittle chrysalis around a gross worm that, some time hence, will emerge, untransformed, still a worm." ~ IOZ

May 2, 2012

Sparagmos

I wanted to punch the young dude in the face the first time I saw him. It wasn't rational; I didn't have mystical hunches or anything, but I felt a demiurge towards violence. I saw his creepy, vaguely Tartar blue eyes, and I had to choke down a strong, pleasing compulsion to punch him in the peepers until he bled from his ears.*

Lots of motherfuckers could use a punch to the face bones; it's not like I think I'm the one who has sanction to deliver the fist shaped gift.

My wife, upon meeting him several weeks later, told me that she was pretty sure there was something wrong with him. "Dead eyes," she said. "Dead motherfucker inside."

I told the weary boss man, a friend of more than two decades. He chuckled a bit, but I could read the perturbations in his brow. Shut up, shut up, shut up broadcast in forehead wrinkles.

"There's something about him," I said.

"Nah. I think he's a good kid."

"Nope. I'm telling you, he's all bunched up wrong inside."

"Leave it alone, Jack."

"Okay, man, but..."

...Wandered in to work, end of last week, trying to figure out how I managed to get an extra shift on the next few weeks.

Mr. Creepy was off the schedule. Staff talking in euphemisms. I didn't want to know. I don't need clutter in my brain space. I get results on Friday, maybe a death sentence. I don't need to care about why a fish-eyed leerer isn't coming to work anymore. Whole shift passed, and I manage to elude the whispered gossiping.

"Matter of public record," a co-workers tells me, today. I don't normally have to work Thursdays. Was trying to get ahead of the deliveries, figure out what I needed to do different. Mr. Heebiejeebies comes up, 'cause I'm covering a shift for someone covering his shifts.

"I don't want to hear scuttlebutt," I said. "Don't care. Don't want to know." But I can feel it's something. Something which validates the original need to break his face into puzzle pieces of former facial features.

"Matter of public record."

Fuck me. I know I'm going to google-fu his name, the minute I'm told.

I get through my day. Youngest to karate we can't afford. Oldest harangued into playing his instruments. Me, finishing laundry.

All the chores done, kids to bed, wife off her feat and trying to sleep - I sit down to type his name into little window with the magnifying glass, top right on the screen.

Rape. Of a minor younger than thirteen. Forcible rape. Assault and battery. On a child. Rapes which go on for four years. According to the court documents, it takes her a decade to work up the courage to report him. It takes another six years for the case to wind its way through the courts, until a decision is reached which allows him to be prosecuted. Six more months before he has to go home to face his accuser.

Fifteen years. Fifteen years that girl had to wait to seek the pale shadows of justice and make her peace with the leavings left to her.

I'm an anarchist. I don't think in terms of cops and judges and lawyers and calibrated punishment. I prefer the unmediated. The immediate. I reject the sham of justice, the same way I dismiss the damaging fictions of gods and money and the State. Believing them makes material, but that doesn't mean they're concrete.

Fifteen fucking years.

Fuck that. That shit is cruelty made flesh.

Maybe I'm too facile about violence, but fucking aye, I can't help but believe that giving her the space and the acceptance for whatever retribution suits her needs is so much better than sacrificing more than half of her life in the pursuit of a fiction of justice. She ends up the sacrifice, that way. That's the way of justice. To sacrifice the victims again and again, as a justification for the power accrued to those who arrogate for themselves official punishment.

She has had to endure, while he wanders free.

He got fifteen years of respite and reward. She got what?

I know some of what she's had to face. The way it weighs down on the medulla itself. How thoughts and emotions are reshaped around the seed of violation. Living with the death of trust. With the intimate knowledge that nothing is restored. Love transmuted into vigilance. Vigilance always sharing a border with violence. Playful touches faked, because it's all so much labor.

It took her a decade to accuse.

That can't be held against her.

But his fifteen years of unearned life can be held against him. They ought to be. Maybe not with prisons and worm eaten words about justice.

I'm thinking the guillotine. Or a noose. Or being repeatedly run over by a forklift.

Maybe, instead: a sacred place. Made holy by its profanity. A place where victims can bring their violators. Where they can, like Maenads, tear Pentheus limb from limb over and over again. A single Pentheus. A thousand thousands of them.

A whole new religion, even. 

Spreading like spilled wine and wilding fires.



* - in the interests of disclosure, he is belligerently Jewish. You know the type. Militantly Hebrew. With anti-drug paraphernalia on his personal items of clothing. A straight edger Zionist. But that doesn't usually fill me with the need to launch an uppercut. I write about the justifications for violence, but I'm fairly shy, retiring and measured out in the meat life of public existence. Angry Jewishness doesn't offend. It embarrasses, like a bad joke told poorly and with no sense of timing. Comedic schadenfreude might follow, but not violence.

61 comments:

The Red Queen said...

I want to do more than punch him in the face.

High Arka said...

(1) Legal accusations, and American courtroom verdicts, are always accurate.

(2) Internet reporting of such accusations and/or verdicts are always accurate.

(3) You can trust American courtrooms and media conglomerates to properly report the truth.

(4) Wanting to hurt someone because of how their face looks is a good, healthy reaction.

(5) When you want to hurt someone because of how their face looks, you will later be proven justified in that desire.

(6) Jack Crow has no problems with men.

(7) Jack Crow has no problems with violence.

Jack Crow said...

It is interesting how you continue to equate a disgust with rapists and abusers with a disgust for all men, Arka. It's almost like you operate off the epistemological assumption that man = rapist or something.

*

RQ,

Agreed. Fundamentally. It's kind of sad to me that some folks think that a child rapist deserves considerations of humanity, or that from his one case, one should infer that he must be innocent or free of the attainment of his actions, because court systems are imperfect and unjust.

The argument against perfect justice (or hierarchies, even) is not a refutation of the pervasiveness of rape, or the notion of vengeance.

BDR said...

Serenipitously, I just found this, which gives the German word *Backpfeifengesicht* meaning "A face badly in need of a fist." You're welcome!

Anonymous said...

my housemate just got out of 15 days in D.C. jail (wash. d.c.)for a past DWI. the experience nigh traumatized him, listening to the screams of a young man/boy being raped at night, watching people get stabbed, etc., etc.

the guards in on all the horrible shit, making $$ off it.

incl. mr. child-rapey here, an individual cannot commit the kind of crime the state can.

fuck the state.

but jack, you keep chasin' that white whale of vengeance. The State luvs that shit.

gamefaced said...

i have a similar story jack. i get the rage. i have to view holding on to such abuses as another win for the perpetrator. my struggle is becoming bitter, permanently. i was labeled at a fairly young age as 'oppositional defiant' because i spoke out against the 'good god fearing deacon' eddie humbert - who took it upon himself to hold the door open and demand a hug from all the school aged girls going to sunday school. all the adults trusted him and gave him the benefit of the doubt. years later, when we were in highschool, his own niece dropped the bomb that he had been fucking with her for as long as she could remember. and still, a good 50% of that church membership stood behind him, thought his niece was 'emotionally disturbed' and acting out. long story short, he received six months unsupervised probation.

d.mantis said...

Arka,
1) Learn how to read a fucking anecdote that is meant as a lead-in to a broader discussion.

2) uhhhhh...profit!

I too was somewhat uncomfortable with the setup. However, I pretty much assumed that the success rate of 'gut feelings' was the same for all human beings (hovering at best shy of 50%). But I also assumed that Mr. Crow's gut feeling wasn't the fucking point in the first goddamned place.

d.mantis said...

Jack,
In your view, are there any restraints placed on the victim's use of retribution directed at the perpetrator? Is there such a thing as a disproportionate response?

Jack Crow said...

d.:"In your view, are there any restraints placed on the victim's use of retribution directed at the perpetrator?"

As a function of the cosmos? No. As a natural order of society? No. As on ontological given? No. As a duty-imperative? No.

Functionally, because life is contingent, imperfect, conditioned, material, mortal and brief? Yes.

d.:"Is there such a thing as a disproportionate response?"

Eye of the beholder. But, personally, yes. Quite a few responses are disproportionate.

Perhaps the follow up question is: who cares? I don't mean to be callous or casual, in asking the question, d. I mean, literally, who cares about proportionality, and why? What's the what for of an insistence on the "proportional response"? Whose purposes does it serve?

*

d.:"...But I also assumed that Mr. Crow's gut feeling wasn't the fucking point in the first goddamned place.

You assumed correctly.

All things being equal, though, I think that the non-verbal interplay between persons should not be neglected. Before a person, the body-ending-at-skin, enters a room, he or she launches wave fronts of reflected light, sound and odor on the air and space between skin and others. The non-verbal probably doesn't get the attention it deserves in our Word/word fixated culture, so that we as a matter of learned habit underestimate and ignore so much that we are equipped to pick up.

Jack Crow said...

anonymous,

I counterpoise vengeance and justice. I would argue, in fact, that they are mutually exclusive.

game,

Maybe it sings true for any number of people that "holding on" to the memory and scars of abuse preserves the original violation power dynamic, giving it renewable life in the matrices of recollection. I believe that is a body-truth for whomever says it applies to his or her self. On the other hand, there are those of us who are and were victims, for whom this is not a truth.

Jack Crow said...

BDR,

I. Am. In. Your. Debt.

What a mouth pleasing word.

regards,

Jack

gamefaced said...

jack - in my own experience only of course, the acts of eddie have far less effect on my being than the reactions of family. same sentiment from his niece.
suppose in general, i'm a realist of escape with a nihilist baseline and i'll only never have myself to contend with.

High Arka said...

Cuh-rist, that hurt. Had to dip the keyboard in lysol. How can you TYPE that stuff through and through, and MEAN it?

anne said...

"I too was somewhat uncomfortable with the setup. " , so was i ..( i see that you have addressed again pen j. ..a bit ..as i quickly look over the comments ..but still .. ) . ..and i'm someone that makes others shiver with how much i see in their faces , noted by them ..with out words spoken . ..

Anonymous said...

High Arka, what makes you think you can airily dismiss the testimony of a survivor of rape and sexual assault out of hand? Why are you in a better position than Jack to rate the life history, the guilt or innocence, the character of a man he knows personally, and you know of only theoretically and second hand? Why do you persist on believing you know better than everyone else their own life experiences?

You've a very one track mind, and while you make the correct gestures towards other forms of oppression, you have a serious and blinkered problem with women or anything related to women such that you come across like a lunatic. That the best you can offer as a defense for a man you don't know is that the justice system that convicted him is, by definition, corrupt (therefore bitchez b lying), and that all your sympathies automatically align with a man's (and not a female child's) speaks volumes.

High Arka said...

Here's what was said:

(1) Legal accusations, and American courtroom verdicts, are always accurate.

(2) Internet reporting of such accusations and/or verdicts are always accurate.

(3) You can trust American courtrooms and media conglomerates to properly report the truth.

(4) Wanting to hurt someone because of how their face looks is a good, healthy reaction.

(5) When you want to hurt someone because of how their face looks, you will later be proven justified in that desire.

(6) Jack Crow has no problems with men.

(7) Jack Crow has no problems with violence.

Here's what was not said:

(1) This particular guy was a good person.

(2) This particular guy did not commit the crime about which he had been googled.

The terror in Jack's story is his righteous certitude before he knows anything, where he judges a book by its cover and loathes someone to the point of violence for their looks. Even if the guy is guilty, Mr. Crow and his looks-based hate is not the kind of person I'd want my five-year-old, or any other young man, around, knowing the kind of repressed psychosexual violent fantasies that are running through his mind to his ecstasy.

gamefaced said...

wow.

Jack Crow said...

"Looks based hate" is an incorrect reading, Arka. It saddens me to have to point this out.

High Arka said...

I wanted to punch the young dude in the face the first time I saw him...I saw his creepy, vaguely Tartar blue eyes, and I had to choke down a strong, pleasing compulsion to punch him in the peepers until he bled from his ears.

...?

Also, what if my best friend's kid has blue eyes, and is the sweetest little angel you ever saw? It's not very reassuring to think of him growing up in a world where someone might see his face and have the reaction you did.

gamefaced said...

crow wouldn't have chosen brown eyes if that had been the case?

Jack Crow said...

Arka,

I'm not sure why you insist (although I have a hunch) on focusing upon the lead up, and drawing from that introduction final conclusions which it does not communicate. If it entertains you to do so, I am glad to be of service, all the same. If mischief is your game, that is well, as well.

game,

You rightly surmise that the details of his appearance don't really matter. I wrote them, because I remembered them. What I attempted to convey was my reaction, far more than his appearance.

I had a gut feeling about his wrongness. A feeling - despite Arka's worst efforts to mistranslate to the contrary - upon which I did not act, because I'm of not of the mind, habit or temperament to waste my working shifts picking fights with creepy dudes nearly decades my junior...

Jack Crow said...

"Repressed psychosexual fantasies" amuses me, Arka.

This bemusement follows from your willfully ignorant attempt to pigeon hole an assertion that a rape victim ought to castrate her or his violator, if the need arises from the original act of violation, into a repressed desire to see all men transformed by "psychosexual"' magic into wandering Farinellis.

For starters, I am rather blunt and forthright about my prescription for rapists, and rapists alone. And secondly, there is nothing particularly concealed, repressed or hidden away about my singular anarchist opinion of future anarchist violence.

If the guillotine were to make its return, and the board members of the various corporati strongholds be introduced to the french doctor's remedy, I would of course approve, with the caveat that those who did the killing have no short or intermediate term business being involved in the reshaping of society that might...just might...follow.

Unlike the silly little lightworkers and crypto-Christians who tend to populate the leftmost reaches of insurrection, agitation and critique, I am not only accepting of chaos, misrule, disorder and human frailty...I'm a devotee.

There isn't enough Kali in the world, yet, Arka. Not by a long shot, a stretch or the distance it takes the guillotine's blade to fall and claim its rightful due.

High Arka said...

Here's the breakdown:

1) Crow sees Person A.

2) Crow feels he should hate Person A due to appearance.

3) Internet records of State legal proceedings make Crow feel validated in hatred of Person A.

The problems lie in (2) and (3).

As to (3), feeling validated in your Dubya-esque "gut" because of State justice records is highly problematic. For example, as Mr. Trovillion pointed out, Ms. Albright recently won the Presidential Medal of Freedom. By contrast, Bradley Manning is under indictment for major crimes.

You don't know personally anyone involved in the case, but you've trusted the official government facts of the matter, as well as the corporate internet presentation thereof, to validate your feelings. There's a chance you're "right" and that this guy happened to have been guilty of some variant of the legal crime for which he was punished, but it's equally possible that, even if all the state facts and Google facts are being reported accurately, there are 976.2 hidden personal circumstances behind what happened.

Your (2) is different, and perhaps scarier on an immediate, personal level. Many people regularly get angry at the appearance of others, but your particularly violent, heated prose, past and present, is more troubling than the ordinary kind.

More than that, though, the fact that you use your "turning out to be right about the guy" (which may or may not actually be the case, from a metaphysical morals perspective; see [3]) to validate your (2) lends itself to more easily coming to (2)-like conclusions in the future.

This is how isms are built. Anger--perhaps even justified, real, fair anger--becomes the basis for a pattern-recognition theory. Your prose over the past several months demonstrates a frightening hostility toward male humans, and the more "proof" you see of that hostility's rightness, the more danger that it becomes such a component of your character that it will be harder (or impossible) to shake it.

And each new time, when an unrestrained _________ harms a __________--which will inevitably happen in any system--it will be a validation: a proof that you were right all along about the _______ies, and they were against you and everything good and decent, and you just can't trust ______.

It seems laughable, perhaps, that the "underdog" of femaleness that you're currently fighting for might later become the oppressor, but Roman soldiers did once rape, rob and kill Normans, same formula British, same formula Americans, et cetera. It never seems possible until it's happened.

Don't be part of building the system that is going to screw over the next underdog hundreds of years from now. This is what it looks like in early metastasis.

anne said...

g'faced , ..".. have far less effect on my being than the reactions of family... " .. of a mother turning a blind eye to what she can not deal with , .. of an infant child going on to live a life with no trusting at all .. .

anne said...

le , arka, .. i'm reading just a little again , not enough to really know you well, in this way of knowing ,of your writing on your own , and in other comments ,of your comments here now .. i have read through this morning , at ..6,17 ,,best to say ta ta crusty blue .. . they don't see what they are doing with poorly written ..of telling , of pen jack and his .. . in other ways , other than what they are addressing ,in those other ways of addressing something else about his writing , you are confusing them here , making them feel that it's not of what comes through of something of one's character, that goes with behavior , they are not knowing that you may be addressing something else as well .. / i'm reading,seeing a wide variety of quirks in your writing ,of on ioz in little bits ,and of your own as well, and seeing what might get lost in the complexity of .. . , she is more than mischief pen j. ,

Jack Crow said...

anne,

You may be right. I'm just not willing to arrogate that judgment to myself.

Arka,

Women are not in a position to become future Norman conquerors. It is almost laughable that your "what if" proposition, in reply, is a nearly impossible future where women manage to conquer the whole planet and decide to put men to paid for it...

anne said...

just out of tub,.. with clothing still on .. to wash as well, / pen jack, .. i am not familiar with the word arrogate .. in that way , . ..and mostly poor at communicating with most.. with all of my odd refiguring , i am , .. i know something of those feelings that you have as a man , in seeing it in other men around me here , in their male ways, male instincts, of how they play out in males .. of wanting to look after and protect , compared to how someone very feminine like myself hands of a cradling protect, of all that are more innocent , , ..and in being very feminine ,and seeming younger than i am ,like something of a child still ..i have many looking out for me ,and being there at the oddest times, of looking out for , /also my face is not as stoned, chiseled as it looks in my photo , there is another reason for my using it there for now , i know that it is not flattering ..with no smile , i smile a lot, more than most ,and very loving and gentle in living , ..now off for dandys and something of paint for some signage ..,

High Arka said...

It is always laughable, Jack; that's the only way that it happens.

Imagine, those puny little pink-skins making us go extinct! What are they gonna do it with? Their flat teeth and frail limbs? Hahaha!

Imagine, a queen ruling this country and sending strong-bodied men off to be hanged for disobeying her sheriffs! Women don't have the guts for that?

Imagine, a darkie as president of a world hegemon, ordering assassinations of anyone he likes and making thousands of white people do his bidding? Darkies can't hardly even write!

Even if you are right, however, and women are so weak that they could never become tyrants, oppressors, military leaders, American congresspeople, etc., it's still wrong to marginalize and pre-judge a sub-group.

Jews? Run concentration camps? Those Christ-killing gold-hoarders?

Be realistic, man.

Jack Crow said...

A queen is not all women.

Israelis are not all Jews (in fact, they are less than half of the world's Jews).

Hillary - an imperialist if ever there was one - is not every feminist.

See how it works, Arka?

You're leaping from "rape victims ought to castrate their rapists" to "in the future gynocracy, men will be superfluous." It's fucking ridiculous.

High Arka said...

Obama is not all men--nor is Hitler.

Yet they both demonstrate the terrible results of marginalizing a sub-group. It would have been laughable, one day, the thought that someone with Obama's appearance/DNA could be a genocidal tyrant overlord. His attainment of that role is possible, and terrible, even if he is not representative of "every liberal."

Are people of African descent superfluous now? Of course not! That idea is, as you might put it, "fucking ridiculous"! After all, one of them is so powerful and many people of African descent live prosperous lives and operate the machinery of the world hegemon.

And yet, there exists what is currently called Somalia--to choose just one place.

It is possible--not "fucking ridiculous"--for someone bearing violent prejudice to gain power and to then use that power, be it men, women, pacific islanders, blacks, etc. Even against their own kind: slave foremen, prison trustees, sheriffs, pontiffs, congresspeople, and any other authoritative role you'd like to imagine.

This history suggests that it is possible for an ideology of "I can tell when men are worthless and dangerous by looking at them" to become a new, generally-accepted cultural fact. That's what many people feel about, say, "Black men." Or "Muslims in Islamic wear."

Posit that, instead of regularly discussing how you've hated various men and how their genitals should be mutilated, you were discussing how you hated various women and their genitals should be mutilated. How would you objectively analyze such an essay, or such a series of them?

You'd say--as would any feminist, divorced from the context of "this is Jack Crow who must win an argument against High Arka"--that "this individual bears a deep hatred of women that could manifest as violent behavior at any time. This individual's fixation on genital punishment suggests that the individual's anger may have a sexual focus."

High Arka said...

Imagine that Mitt Romney gave a speech at a men's club about some chick he heard about on the news, and suggested that if anyone saw her, they should "cut her fucking tits off so she learned."

What would your reaction be? You'd be horrified; you'd cite it as an example of not just sexism, but of how dangerous Romney is, and how deeply our culture accepts violence against women.

Mitt defends himself: "But I was only talking about this one woman, Jack! Don't be fucking ridiculous!

You're really just reading too much into all of this. People don't ever feel that way. It's ridiculous to think that men could ever be discriminated against.

anne said...

le, arka , ..i've just come in and i'm starting to look at your response to jack here , .. .i've tried to question this.. with you before ,i did so poorly , and i may be doing this poorly again of my wording , ..has it ever been suggested that you don't pick up on something of the character of others that is given away in body gestures and more ? .. like justin who is well known here ,i think that i'm the only one here that knows him .. in a.. in person way , he has difficultly picking up on subtleties that show ..of character ,and in behavior .. .

High Arka said...

Le, dear anne.

This one may not or may be guessing right about Jack's sexual issues with men, but while that may explain his motivation, it's irrelevant to the question of whether or not his regular expressions of violence against [one particular socially-constructed human gender subclass] are good.

anne said...

that is not what i was addressing arka,.. and the le was of what you at times put at the end of a comment on ioz,

anne said...

arka did you understand that i was putting that question to you . .."arka, i've tried to question this.. with you before , i did so poorly , and i may be doing this poorly again of my wording , ..has it ever been suggested that you don't pick up on something of the character of others that is given away in body gestures and more ? .. like justin who is well known here ,i think that i'm the only one here that knows him .. in a.. in person way , he has difficultly picking up on subtleties that show ..of character ,and in behavior .." .

High Arka said...

If you're suggesting that conversation in this medium is limited because we cannot communicate via bodily appearance and gestures, you're accurate.

That raises the question: "If Jack had been chuckling merrily while sharing the anecdote about how he wanted to attack someone based on their looks, would Arka have understood it was meant as a joke and not been concerned?"

Possibly. There's always the option of Jack (or the person in his role) saying, later on, "I was merely jesting," or something to that effect, at which point we might discuss the issue of whether a preponderance of jokes about a certain pattern of violent behavior indicated something more than just random jests.

Was that where you were going?

anne said...

it's not based on their "looks ", or it is if you mean looks as a verb , of what is coming through of ones character , those with something of high functioning autism don't read faces and gestures well, i'm asking you if anyone in your life ,that knows you in person has ever suggested . .. / you're still not answering the question that i am putting to you in trying to understand why you are reacting to p. jack in this way ..

High Arka said...

This one reacts so to Mr. Crow because it's sad to see someone wanting to hurt another person because of how that person looks.

Jack Crow said...

It's unfortunate, HA, that you confuse imagery with action.

High Arka said...

You really wouldn't have a problem with Mitt Romney suggesting that some uppity cunt get her tits cut off to teach her a lesson? It would just be "imagery" to you?

Jack Crow said...

Arka,

You are confusing the imagery with an action. Also, I did not describe the rapist in question as "uppity."

I merely reported my visceral reaction to his presence, a reaction which was not followed by a punch to the face. From that, you lept to tired, uninspired rants about me actually causing harm to poor, benighted menfolk living under the cruel female gaze, in thrall to the awful feminist future.

d.mantis said...

Arka,
It is perhaps a vile trait of men (which I have exhibited on more than one occasion) to exaggerate especially concerning violence aimed at protection when retelling a story. This feeds directly into the genetic makeup of males across the animal kingdom. We human males rarely get to execute it so we recount with geat detail certain violent acts aimed at someone whom we had later discovered to deserve it.

But Jack didn't even do that! He merely stated that he had the urge to violence and it was not necessary for him to carry it out! He was willing to be democratic in the infliction of violence (very un-macho man retelling if you ask me).

I took it as something about the guy triggered the violence aimed at protection part of Jack's animal brain.

Then, when he finds allegedly damning evidence, he NOWHERE says this justifies his reaction. Thats not how I read it. It was a way to show his initial violent action should be directed at this fucktard BY THE VICTIM.

Fuck missing the forest for the trees. You're at the Visitor's Center arguing with the ranger about the big green blob on your hiking map!

d.mantis said...

Jack,
As to your answer on disproportionate response: thanks.

Currently constructed, laws bound behavior and upon their violation garner a response by the system. This system definatively has interests being served that dictated the 'accepted' response. Interests that are always wrapped in subjagation and sustaining hierarchy.

I had a great TA in graduate school. The guy was funny, brilliant and an amazing educator. He was from Syria.

When discussing our latest blood-lust over that country, I often ask people do innocent individuals like my TA deserve to die a horrible incinerating-of-flesh death because some fuckhead in D.C. calling himself my 'leader' disagrees with some shit-licker in Damascus? Talk about disproportionate.

d.mantis said...

*subjugation

Jesus, I gotta get more sleep...

anne said...

d. man' , ..i disagree , this is a macho telling ,/ .. of arka going off the tracks in her talking here .., it's something else ..

d.mantis said...

Anne,
Perhaps its a matter of degree. In my experience the telling of such a situation is much more personal bravado as opposed to a general violence as Jack describes.

Nevertheless, I think we agree on my main point in the second to last paragraph of 11:09am, no?

anne said...

more than degree, ..it's of the .. varying of .. macho ..of each person being different , so how it comes out is different , ..i'm thinking of a few things that i've noted in reading a few of pen jack's post over the last months .. / on first seeing the first woman's comment here at the top , and the stance of what i see of the tiny photo with the comment .. i was seeing another.. varying.. of macho , / and yes something of on your last comment .. .

d.mantis said...

Anne,
Fair enough...thank you for the explanation.

High Arka said...

d.mantis, I think you've gotten it right after all... People do sometimes exaggerate about violence (women, too--here is a Hillary link and a Thatcher link), but those things are just idle talk that help us channel negative biological energy outward in a socially acceptable way, so that we never have to actually commit any of the acts we might feel a desire to.

I think, in polite society, that most of us are reasonable enough to state that--even if we have such inappropriate urges--we pray that it's not necessary to carry them out! It has to be a "last resort," or the least liked of the options on the table. We can't, as you mention, help it if we get a "trigger" of such inappropriate thoughts aimed at a person (or persons, as in the links), but we all have the protection part in the animal brain, and the best way to deal with it is probably to react the way Jack did.

Jack Crow said...

Karl's post glorifying rape and casting aspersions at women who get abortions has been deleted. I've now deleted five posts total, over three years, four of which belong to vulgar little Karl/Oxtrot.

High Arka said...

Oh, please please please don't use the memory hole. If your assessments are right, then at least maintain the historical record of what happened, so that all can discover the truth and learn from it. If you're right, and Karl was really glorifying rape (he wasn't, but let's assume), then leaving the post up is the perfect way to have a link to proof, right under his name, that he expressed such a sentiment. Now it's gone, and we have only your word. You've destroyed a primary source and left a questionable secondary source in its place.

If we deleted all holocaust memoirs describing the brutality of Nazi camp guards, those memoirs would no longer be there to teach us that something had gone wrong. If all instances of sexism are deleted, how will later generations learn how to identify it and combat it?

Should they just learn to believe their elders when they say, "Trust us, this is how it is, so this is what you should think"?

This is how patriarchy survived. Show me the proof and meaning of Eve's sin--well, there is none, outside of the Bible's hearsay. So I'm unlikely to accept that story.

On a side note, calling someone "little" when they do something unpleasant is the little person equivalent of calling a woman a "slut" or a "cunt" when she does something unpleasant, or of calling a homosexual person a "fag" when they do something unpleasant.

(If Karl IS a little person, and you two have some sort of understanding, apologies for not knowing about it. I'm unfamiliar with the social context here.)

Jack Crow said...

Arka,

Karl is not welcome here. He's the only respondent not welcome here. I don't care if he believes strongly that all women are whores who deserve what they get. This isn't the venue for his rabid misogyny. He's got his own blog if he needs to create rape fantasies.

And "little" does not mean "fag" or "cunt." It means "little."

anne said...

he pens jack , .. i don't know either of you beyond your wording addressed , and words left unaddressed here and there .., , but aren't you redirecting something of this by suggesting misogyny of he pens something else .. , said still here .. . , why is someone who can talk in a fairly level headed way on law .. so ..out of his something ..on this with you .. .

Jack Crow said...

Anne,

He wrote a rape fantasy. How else to characterize that?

anne said...

you have no idea why he has been directing all that he has been directing at you ? ( there is nothing , not a hint of truth in any of it, of what was just above and other ? ) /, when he has been really on this roll out of some control over the last months , and i have noted some of in just reading a bit here and there .. , ..and at the same time as when i have been talking with john, justin and a few others closer to the two of you ..so i have said something in the midst of our talking by mail ..of what is that all about .. none of them have known , .. i've looked at some of his other comments on other things and they seem thoughtful and well reasoned , ..why i have to wonder is he so out of his something on this whatever it is he has with you .. .

Jack Crow said...

I don't know. I don't care. I wrote a post about abortion. Karl/Oxtrot changed his tune shortly thereafter. Abortion is his hot button? I don't know. It's not really worth my mind-space, Anne.

High Arka said...

(Jack, are you really IOZ? Just curious.)

anne said...

( " nothing is real.. . , straw berry fields forever .. . " , )

juan said...

H-Arka -

''Imagine, a darkie as president of a world hegemon...''

i haven't heard the word 'darkie' used since my gm died more than two decades ago but she was from anin va and it may have been common there.

as an aside, i can guarantee that some women are superb guerrilla fighters.

High Arka said...

Juan, that quote would be what a presumed Civil War-era southerner might say, in response to the idea that we might have a president of some comparatively recent African descent such as Obama.

Now, Obama has more current Africans murdered than Bush did, and he does it far more effectively. We should be able to understand that having a person of any given caste, real or illusory, occupying a position of authority does not in and of itself solve whatever problems we were worried about.

We should also be able to understand that it is possible for members of a group viewed as powerless to become not only powerful, but as horribly powerful and evil as any other tyrant--or even moreso.

Jack mocks the idea that "women" may "one day" (Thatcher, Clinton, etc.) oppress people, or treat "men" horribly, simply because they're women. But they might, and they already do.

The "powerlessness" he perceives in women--inaccurately--would, even if he were right, not mean that women could not someday turn bigotry and hatred into institutionalized violence against men. It's not laughable, but very real. Just as a "black" man is now able to starve and murder Caucasian Persians using the most advanced military on the planet.

Ergo we should not dismiss the idea that bigotries adopted by those who claim to be "feminist" might one day become actualized policy horrors.

vos-rok enterprises said...

It would be quite instructive if Jack Crow would show us the alleged rape fantasy that this "Karl/Oxtrot" person supposedly posted.

What a curious thing, to be able to define and describe something not there. We might be cautious and sufficiently skeptical to think perhaps Mr Crow didn't see any rape nor any rape fantasies, but for some strange personal reason (such as long-standing animosity against this "Karl/Oxtrot" character), chose to try to destroy someone's reputation by accusing him/her/it of "rape" and "rape fantasies."

It makes one wonder who exactly harbors the rape impulse and rape fantasies. Could it be Mr Crow, could he be projecting? It would indeed be a shame if Mr Crow were a rapist pretending to be a feminist, but it would not be unprecedented. We might even want to ask Hugo Schwyzer for his views on the subject.