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Recently in Salon Mothers Who Think

What a few good women can do
On Mother's Day, a million mothers will march for gun control.
By Jean Hanff Korelitz
[03/13/00]

A child shoots a child
It isn't about guns; it's about neglect.
By Beth Broeker
[03/13/00]

My brother's keeper
I have saved him all my life, but now there are too many miles between me and the paraded condoms, the muffled awe.
By Chris Colin
[03/10/00]

"Terminus"
A harrowing poem about rape and murder in the Balkans.
By Nicholas Christopher
[03/09/00]

Witness for the persecution
Croatian novelist and journalist Slavenka Drakulic tells a story of breathtaking brutality. We interview her about her new novel and her experiences.
By Kate Moses
[03/09/00]

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Much has been made of the fact that, in the past 20 years, the number of homicides in the United States has sharply declined. That is good news, especially for abusive husbands, who, statistics show, are living longer because their wives and girlfriends are taking advantage of shelters, hotlines and other services for battered women. In other words, feminists have invested decades fighting domestic violence as part of the battle for women's rights and their work has paid off -- by keeping batterers alive.

But there is bad news too. Only one category of homicide has failed to decline at the same rate as the rest. In fact, in some regions, it has not declined at all. It is "intimate homicide," in which a man kills his girlfriend or wife, often murdering the rest of the family too. In about one-quarter of the killings, the man then kills himself.

While psychologists, social scientists and historians have various explanations for the stubborn nature of this gruesome trend, most agree that feminism, or at the very least what it is seen to represent, plays a role in the motivation of men who commit intimate homicide or familicide. And when it is not a motivation, it is frequently an excuse.

"Batterers are very into making excuses and presenting themselves as victims. They really see other people, particularly their partners, as abusing or attempting to control them. It's the way to rationalize, minimize or deny their own behavior," says David Adams, co-founder of Emerge, one of the earliest treatment centers for battering men, in Cambridge, Mass. "They see women's gains as being at their expense."

Though we assume that attitudes toward women have changed dramatically since 1976 -- when authorities began to keep detailed records of "intimate" homicides -- the number of murdered wives and girlfriends has not changed much since then. On average, the rates have been going down 1 percent per year, from 1,600 in 1976 to 1,307 in 1998. That year, 32 percent of the 3,419 women murdered in the United States were killed by "intimates," according to the FBI, which reported that just 4 percent of male homicide victims in 1998 were killed by intimate partners.

In a majority of incidents in which a man kills his wife or girlfriend and children, familiar motives are cited. The killer might believe he has lost control of his partner and needs to reassert it. Or he fears losing his partner, upon whom he is deeply dependent. This confusing feeling evokes intense rage in those threatened by it. Usually such men are consumed with anger and a desire to blame as they kill.

Just last year, one man strapped his 3-year-old daughter and 2-year-old son into their car seats and shot them point-blank after his wife took out a restraining order against him. Another pretended that his 3-year-old son had been kidnapped by someone who would not return him until he, the killer, married his girlfriend. Eight days later, the boy's body was found in a black plastic bag. The crime, the murderer confessed, had been an attempt to coerce his girlfriend to marry him. In July, one week before Atlanta day trader Mark Barton killed nine people and wounded 13 others in his shooting spree in two brokerage firms, he killed his wife and two children in a classic case of familicide.

Barton blamed his wife, Leigh Ann, for his troubles, but professed great love for "my honey, my precious love," in his suicide note. The pair had been separated and were attempting a reconciliation, without great success. "She was one of the main reasons for my demise," he wrote.

Next page | Feminism as a rationalization