Casey Penaluna
Assignment 2
PART 1
Argument/Counter-argument
Pathos: The heading of an article written by Glenn Sacks in 2001 and printed in the Pasadena Star News is a clear indicator of his personal pathos in regards to an upsurge of sensationalized newspaper articles in regards to parents (namely women) killing (or attempting to kill) their children.
The title of the article? Female Murderers Seen in a Different Light: Society Prefers to View Violent Women as Victims
Reading this article it is clear that Sacks believes that the mother who attempted to drown her 6-month-old son in an apartment pool, the woman who asphyxiated her three children with car fumes and the woman who drowned her five children in a bathtub, are not, nor should not be seen as victims. Even though (upon further investigation) the mother (Elsie Lazaro-Louis) who attempted to drown her children was found to be delusional and suicidal – having cited that she sold her other two children to The Salvation Army – when in actuality they were away at summer camp. And the woman (Andrea Yates) who drowned her 5 children was found to be suffering from extreme post-partum psychosis.
Sacks accomplishes pathos through the use of statistical information in regards to gender and punishment when it comes to the crime of parental murder.
Apart from the small vignettes which I reproduced from his article above he foreshadowed his use of statistics with the following verbiage:
All of these crimes shocked the nation during the past week. But
should we really be so surprised? The truth is female violence in
American families is anything but rare.
Ethos: Sacks’ ethos expands into his use of statistics in regards to the increase in female perpetrated violence as recorded by The World Health Organization (which attributes the majority of infanticide to mothers), the police and various academics (whom believe that at least 15% of all SIDS deaths; roughly 7,000/year; are caused by mothers smothering their babies), the Department of Health and Human Services (who published results that custodial mothers are five times more likely to kill their children than are custodial fathers), and the U.S. Department of Justice (which has documented that 70% of confirmed child abuse cases and 65% of parental murder is perpetrated by the mother).
For good measure Sacks adds one more statistic which illustrates that between the years of 1980-1999 female crime increased 200% while the violent crime rate for the rest of the nation was declining. However, he does not list a backing agency to this particular statistic.
Sacks is smart in this article to have found a female, Patricia Pearson author of When She Was Bad: How and Why Women Get Away With Murder, to quote who shares his same views on the injustice of women being given a “free pass” when it comes to the punishment phase of trials. Sacks and Pearson both contend that just because a woman is a mother does not instantly translate into that woman being good and caring and maternal. She can be just as callous and cold-blooded as any man and should be held to the same sentencing standards as a man – instead of disproportionately hospitalized or even as they put it “getting away with murder.”
Logos: Sacks and Pearson take issue with the enablers of these women – the judges and defense attorneys – who insist in coddling these violent women instead of seeing then for what they truly are – evil. The assertion made in Pearson’s book is that the American public doesn’t want to believe that the historically nurturing figure (i.e. the mother) could have intentionally wanted to cause harm upon her own flesh and blood. So when their attorneys throw out such language as battered wife syndrome, post-partum depression, coercion or mentally incapable of understanding what she was doing at the time they continue to build on societies belief that women are victims, that women are weak, and that women cannot think for themselves in a rational manner.
In the end Sacks makes a plea for society to rethink their attitudes of women (he is clearly writing for a male audience throughout the article) in America. He asks for us to consider this one last point, “Treating the violent woman as if she were a child, insane, or a victim worthy of sympathy – is this the way to protect society and our children from violent criminals?”
Pathos: Friday November 21, 2008 there was a posting by a man named Charles to his blog Heartache with Hard Work. This post came after the culminating article in a long drawrn out trial in the death of 7-year-old Nixzmary Brown. The New York Times article which was published on November 17, 2008 was titled Seeing Failure as Mother as Factor in Sentencing.
Charles’s pathos, unlike the NY Times and Glenn Sacks, is one that would like his readers to sympathize with the plight of Nixzmary Brown’s mother, Nixzmary Santiago. Whereas the prosecution in the case used Santiago’s status as a mother to convict her Charles insists that is the very reason she should have been, if not exonerated, then not so harshly punished.
Charles further establishes pathos by first making a personal comment in regards to the state of our country (Sometimes our country is truly depressing. For example…) and then forges ahead with a slice of supporting evidence from the NY Times article. In this case, his belief that a mother who allowed her husband, Cesar Rodriguez (the child’s stepfather) to beat her daughter continuously until she finally died did not deserve a longer prison sentence than what the actual murderer received.
He shows anger towards the prosecutor who in her final arguments used such inflammatory language as “Mommy”, and further asserting her belief that Ms. Santiago was “the one person that the little girl should have been able to count on”. Charles is further enraged that the female judge imposed a sentence on Ms. Santiago (convicted of manslaughter and two counts of assault) that was 17 years longer than the actual killers because she believed that the defendant had ignored her lawful duty as a parent to try and save the dying child. (Instead she bathed her and put her to bed while a neighbor called the police.) He even has some negative things to say against a female juror who was on the fence about convicting but after deciding that the mother showed intent to kill “by her lack of action.”
Ethos: Charles just seems to slowly fume throughout his blog on the unfairness of this woman’s sentence. He is clearly on her side. However, unlike Sacks who has a ton of statistics and obviously did his homework, Charles’ blog was an emotional “in the heat of the moment” “knee jerk” response to a criminal law issue which he believes did a terrible disservice to a woman, Nixzaliz Santiago.
He states that the killing is a sad thing but that it is only made sadder by the hard ships that Ms. Santiago has had to endure – learning disabilities, an abusive relationship with her father and her miscarriage right before the 7-year-olds death – this has led Charles to assert that any reasonable person would notice these facts and recognize a troubled mind, a woman who needed help. Punishment? He is not so certain “that she, who merely witnessed but did not act, should receive a more harsh punishment than the man who actually killed the child.”
Logos: Charles takes issue with the criminal justice system and societal norms that insist women act as mothers. “In this case Nixzaliz Santiago is being punished for failing to comport with an idealized motherhood…..And the failure of motherhood in this instance makes her equally (in fact more) culpable.”
He wants us to imagine if not believe that there is a world out there in which “real” mother’s can just stand by and let these awful things happen to their children. He doesn’t want us to look further for motivations – because with motivations come punishment - he just wants the reader to accept that many of these mother’s are simply afraid to act.
However, he discounts the intelligence of his reader and I believe sends out mixed signals in his third from last paragraph. Charles wants us to believe that because Nixzaliz didn’t actually do anything to contribute to her daughter’s death (nor did she do anything to save her life) that she does not deserve such a long sentence and in fact due to pre-existing emotional conditions she more than likely should have been hospitalized. Although he artfully skirts the fact that many people, both men and women, are convicted as accomplices in a wide range of crimes because they simply had knowledge of the act (didn’t even have to be there at the time) and did nothing to stop/intervene the perpetrator.
Nixzaliz’s sentence according to Charles was based on “restrictive gender norms and the over reliance on an approach to criminal justice that emphasizes punishment over treatment and rehabilitation.”
Toulmin
Glenn Sacks
1. Claim: Sacks makes the claim that society prefers to see women as victims instead of violent offenders. He introduces his reader to numerous statistics dealing with an increase of violent crime being perpetrated by women over a period of roughly 20 years. These statistics are used not necessarily to put fear into the male population but to make society aware of a trend that is only increasing so that we are able to act and get it under control. Sacks merely wants the criminal justice system and most of America to start punishing these women and stop giving them a slap on the wrist (as he sees it) by advocating an approach of treatment because they have been historically looked upon as the weaker sex.
2. Support: Sacks backs up his claims by offering three short but relevant and timely vignettes of three violent mothers and one wife who murdered their children and husband respectively – these crimes all happening the week before he wrote his article. In each of these cases the woman was portrayed as a victim first murderer second –defenses ranged from suicidal, post-partum depression, and scorned wife. Typically two of these three defenses are tailored purely towards women.
3. Warrants: That even though the crime rate in the U.S. was declining among women it had raised 200% in a 20 year period. However, men are still being blamed for these crimes, especially in the case of Andrea Yates, whose husband Randy was practically crucified for leaving her home alone with five children “in her condition.” Sacks wants his audience to see the facts and reflect on how we are not doing our women or our children a service by treating these violent women differently than a violent man. Sometimes you need more than medicine and talk therapy.
4. No he does not respond to rebuttals.
Charles
1. Claim: That a person who did not commit murder should not have received a longer sentence than that of the one who did the killing. And that if that person has a history of abuse or mental illness that they should be given treatment not a prison sentence.
2. Support: Being a blog the author really did not have any authoritative support of his views. He relied on a more emotional type of connection with the audience by portraying the mother as a victim – even though she may have been complicit in many of the previous beatings and she did nothing to save her daughter’s life. He attempts to show the many female participants in the trial as women who don’t have a heart and who can’t feel compassion. He contends that there are more than a black and white version of motherhood that most of us refuse to see – a version where a mother can just stand by and watch her child being abused because she was afraid to act.
3. Warrants: I am pretty sure that I have already laid out the authors warrants. The only other thing that I would add is his belief that women are victims of outdated societal attitudes in regards to motherhood and his belief that women are unfairly treated in the criminal justice system due to restrictive gender norms and an over-reliance on punishment rather than giving these women the treatment and rehabilitation that they so clearly need.
4. The author does rebut his claims with what appears to be a lawyer named David. David believes the punishment is fair and follows precisely to the sentencing structures that judges are supposed to follow – after all she was convicted of manslaughter and two counts of assault while he was only convicted of manslaughter. But Charles does not give in and continues to assert the claim that she was used to spread a message or to further along the states agenda.
Thursday, January 29, 2009
response to critical space
Jasmine's question 1 has to do with Verderber and the importance of relying on the art of persuasion as an important rhetorical tool. Verderber confounds me to the degree that he wants the audience to follow his rules of thumb. However, those rules are slightly ambiguous. It is only as if he is taking into consideration one side of the coin - or if he has bothered to look at both sides he sees the same thing - basically a double headed coin. I agree with Jasmine and her example of going to an economics speech and in one instance sharing the same views as the speaker and in another instance feeling as if she is being "gently" persuaded/pushed to change her views. I have had several issues with Verderber especially when it comes to his belief that the personality of a speaker makes them more compelling or allows the audience to see them as more knowledgeable than someone with a lackluster personality. I find this hard to believe because then you are discounting the true genius of people such as Steven Hawking - is he listened too, admired, followed, and published because he rolls around in a wheelchair and talks through a computer - or is he truly given credit for his incredible mind? If he walked like the rest of us and talked in a human "robotic" monotone would we still flock to hear his lectures? And what about Bill Gates? He's not much to look at and in any other profession he would definately be on the underdog/outcast side of the fence - but since he broke out with an incredible new-fangled computer software package before anyone else he is someone to be respected, looked up to, and sought out for advice. Dignataries from other countries even go to his house for dinner- how many of us in the personality overload department can make that claim? Is this just a fluke? So I believe everythig comes down to perception just as Jasmine is asserting and no matter how much we try to keep an open mind our perceptions still rule how we act and think.
Monday, January 26, 2009
cmjr205 Verderber questions
1. During Plato's lifetime he asserted that the spoken word is the superior form of communication giving the reason that the written word can not be counted on to give any other explanation than what is already presented on the page - written words "go on telling you the same thing over and over forever."
I don't agree with this particular thought process of Plato's. I believe if anything that it is a bit outdated for the reality which we live in today. Plato's reality included many illiterate peoples who still relied on gaining information and finding out about social norms through oral traditions. Our reality includes the printing press - allowing for mass production of books and in mre recent years the internet which allows for the dispersment of electronic books, newspapers, television transcripts, editorial opinions all within reach of the average citizen. This development not only allows for the dissemination of critical information but also for the public to create an active dialogue with other people (and, in essence, the written work) to change and re-interpret what the written word is telling us.
Plus I believe that if the written word were so inferior to the spoken word than noone would have ever found it necessary to write anything down. History would have been lost. As is, the way things stand, history may have been manipulated to fit the authors perceptions or agenda - but thanks to many unacknowledged active participants (activists, relatives, war survivors) who saved letters and diaries and who had the courage to stand up and challenge the popularly accepted events of history have definatley contributed in giving the written word more weight - it has even allowed the written word to challenge thoughts/ideas which we may have carried with us since childhood.
Plus without the ability of the written word to change there would be no need for expensive new addition textbooks. I am just curious as to if any one else would agree with me?
2. Rudolph Verderber outlines the steps of relevance in a speech. His second step states "a second way of demonstrating relevance is to show that the infomation has a direct impact on a listener's personal space." As I read this paragraph further I came to the conclusion that the relevance is implicit to the speech. My reasoning is as follows: Most of the speeches that people attend have some importance to them already- people go because they are interested in the subject, are fascinated by the person who is speaking or are attending some type of seminar.
I don't know of many people who go to hear a speech by accident or because there is nothing better to do. So since relevance is implicit, in my opinion, why would it really be necessary to (as the author says) "let me bring this closer to home by showing you that..."? The only way that I see bringing the subject closer to home or showing relevance might be if the speaker is trying to change an audience members attitudes towards the subject - such as is happening at this time with the Seattle school closures or the town hall meetings about allowing sex offende housing in their neighborhood.
3. Verderber also talks about facilitating audience understanding or, as I am understanding it from hs writing, allowing people to remain ignorant. Speakers are encouraged to "err on the side of expecting too little knowledge rather than of expecting too much." I find this rule of thumb to be condascending.
I agree with prefacing your speech material but I also believe that many rhetors take this piece of advice too far and end up spoon feeding the audience with all of the necessary information needed to at least follow along with the speaker for the duration of his presentation.
However, I find fault with this approach when it takes away or deters audience members of joining with the dialogue by feeling as if they are not encouraged to ask questions or contribute in some other meaningful manner. The prefacing statements which Verderber uses as examples, ("As we all learned in our high school courses...", "As we have come to find out...", "As you will remember...") shut down a potential portion of the audience who may be immigrants whom didn't graduate from high school, or who may be new to the community. But when you talk to an audience as a collective it does not make for an especially open environment for the exchange of ideas. And nobody wants to stand up in the middle of a crowd and admit to the fact that they are not familiar (a part of) with the recollections (memories/history) of the group. Prefacing allows these people to "act as if they do in fact remember."
I don't beleive that anyone should be talked to in this manner. Some people will go home and look further into the material that they have just received but many more will blindly accept because they have been spoonfed so much during their lives that they either don't know how to think for themselves anymore or even know where to go to explore different views or gain a better understanding of what they just heard.
Does this create a sheep in the herd mentality or am I totally off base?
I don't agree with this particular thought process of Plato's. I believe if anything that it is a bit outdated for the reality which we live in today. Plato's reality included many illiterate peoples who still relied on gaining information and finding out about social norms through oral traditions. Our reality includes the printing press - allowing for mass production of books and in mre recent years the internet which allows for the dispersment of electronic books, newspapers, television transcripts, editorial opinions all within reach of the average citizen. This development not only allows for the dissemination of critical information but also for the public to create an active dialogue with other people (and, in essence, the written work) to change and re-interpret what the written word is telling us.
Plus I believe that if the written word were so inferior to the spoken word than noone would have ever found it necessary to write anything down. History would have been lost. As is, the way things stand, history may have been manipulated to fit the authors perceptions or agenda - but thanks to many unacknowledged active participants (activists, relatives, war survivors) who saved letters and diaries and who had the courage to stand up and challenge the popularly accepted events of history have definatley contributed in giving the written word more weight - it has even allowed the written word to challenge thoughts/ideas which we may have carried with us since childhood.
Plus without the ability of the written word to change there would be no need for expensive new addition textbooks. I am just curious as to if any one else would agree with me?
2. Rudolph Verderber outlines the steps of relevance in a speech. His second step states "a second way of demonstrating relevance is to show that the infomation has a direct impact on a listener's personal space." As I read this paragraph further I came to the conclusion that the relevance is implicit to the speech. My reasoning is as follows: Most of the speeches that people attend have some importance to them already- people go because they are interested in the subject, are fascinated by the person who is speaking or are attending some type of seminar.
I don't know of many people who go to hear a speech by accident or because there is nothing better to do. So since relevance is implicit, in my opinion, why would it really be necessary to (as the author says) "let me bring this closer to home by showing you that..."? The only way that I see bringing the subject closer to home or showing relevance might be if the speaker is trying to change an audience members attitudes towards the subject - such as is happening at this time with the Seattle school closures or the town hall meetings about allowing sex offende housing in their neighborhood.
3. Verderber also talks about facilitating audience understanding or, as I am understanding it from hs writing, allowing people to remain ignorant. Speakers are encouraged to "err on the side of expecting too little knowledge rather than of expecting too much." I find this rule of thumb to be condascending.
I agree with prefacing your speech material but I also believe that many rhetors take this piece of advice too far and end up spoon feeding the audience with all of the necessary information needed to at least follow along with the speaker for the duration of his presentation.
However, I find fault with this approach when it takes away or deters audience members of joining with the dialogue by feeling as if they are not encouraged to ask questions or contribute in some other meaningful manner. The prefacing statements which Verderber uses as examples, ("As we all learned in our high school courses...", "As we have come to find out...", "As you will remember...") shut down a potential portion of the audience who may be immigrants whom didn't graduate from high school, or who may be new to the community. But when you talk to an audience as a collective it does not make for an especially open environment for the exchange of ideas. And nobody wants to stand up in the middle of a crowd and admit to the fact that they are not familiar (a part of) with the recollections (memories/history) of the group. Prefacing allows these people to "act as if they do in fact remember."
I don't beleive that anyone should be talked to in this manner. Some people will go home and look further into the material that they have just received but many more will blindly accept because they have been spoonfed so much during their lives that they either don't know how to think for themselves anymore or even know where to go to explore different views or gain a better understanding of what they just heard.
Does this create a sheep in the herd mentality or am I totally off base?
Thursday, January 22, 2009
Letter to Editor
Patroit Act -
I am responding in regards to an article that was recently published in the Seattle Times. I can really feel for Tamera Jo Freeman who was just trying to perform her parental duties by disciplining her children who were being disruptive to nearby passengers and herself. Now I know that many of us dont condone corporal punishment (i.e. spanking) of children but does her behavior on that flight really measure up to the consequences. I say no! Three months in jail is ridiculous and follow that up with 12 months of probation with no ability to fly back to Hawaii to be with her children (who's foster parents are now petitioning for custody). The fact that she is now losing custody of her children is abhorent. Unacceptable! The fact that the government thinks this is proper punishment is sickening.
I know how trying it is to fly with children, whom I might add get very bored very easily, so of course she felt as if the flight attendant was attacking her when she came over and asked Ms. Freeman to stop disciplining the kids. What parent wants someone else to come up to us and tell us how to handle our own children? It makes me truly afraid to fly with my child. It seems as if the flight attendants have been given carte blanche to harrass and mete out punishment to anyone they feel doesnt fit their ideal passenger. And I have one thing to say to flight attendant Amy Fleming unruly does not translate to terrorist - which is the group of people that the Patriot Act is protecting you all from.
I am responding in regards to an article that was recently published in the Seattle Times. I can really feel for Tamera Jo Freeman who was just trying to perform her parental duties by disciplining her children who were being disruptive to nearby passengers and herself. Now I know that many of us dont condone corporal punishment (i.e. spanking) of children but does her behavior on that flight really measure up to the consequences. I say no! Three months in jail is ridiculous and follow that up with 12 months of probation with no ability to fly back to Hawaii to be with her children (who's foster parents are now petitioning for custody). The fact that she is now losing custody of her children is abhorent. Unacceptable! The fact that the government thinks this is proper punishment is sickening.
I know how trying it is to fly with children, whom I might add get very bored very easily, so of course she felt as if the flight attendant was attacking her when she came over and asked Ms. Freeman to stop disciplining the kids. What parent wants someone else to come up to us and tell us how to handle our own children? It makes me truly afraid to fly with my child. It seems as if the flight attendants have been given carte blanche to harrass and mete out punishment to anyone they feel doesnt fit their ideal passenger. And I have one thing to say to flight attendant Amy Fleming unruly does not translate to terrorist - which is the group of people that the Patriot Act is protecting you all from.
Thursday, January 15, 2009
WBCA
As in any other church this one is ripe with hypocrisy. Just look at its founder Fred Phelps; a man, who spouts racist propaganda and pickets against homosexuals yet who has received awards from anti-defamation groups such as the NAACP.
I would never want to sit down and talk to anyone in this group. For the mere fact that ignorance breeds more ignorance and I would not be able to have a civil or educated dialogue with any of its members. I don’t necessarily believe in changing anyone’s world views but for the mere fact that I don’t agree with their belief system and find many of their public acts abhorrent means that I would not even be able to give them one ounce of my attention.
I am not a religious person I do not go to church or read the bible or say prayers but I don’t believe that God is a hate monger. Everything I do know about the lord is that he loves everyone, he created us all in his image, and that as long as you don’t break any of the ten commandments you have a great shot of winding up in heaven.
However, the churches, in an effort to further their own agenda twist bible stories and tragedies into whatever balloon animal works for them. Into whatever they believe their followers will swallow – they spoon feed their congregations little morsels of hate and bile and prejudice until soon enough these people are marring soldier’s funerals, bombing abortion clinics, and brainwashing independent thought.
I would never want to sit down and talk to anyone in this group. For the mere fact that ignorance breeds more ignorance and I would not be able to have a civil or educated dialogue with any of its members. I don’t necessarily believe in changing anyone’s world views but for the mere fact that I don’t agree with their belief system and find many of their public acts abhorrent means that I would not even be able to give them one ounce of my attention.
I am not a religious person I do not go to church or read the bible or say prayers but I don’t believe that God is a hate monger. Everything I do know about the lord is that he loves everyone, he created us all in his image, and that as long as you don’t break any of the ten commandments you have a great shot of winding up in heaven.
However, the churches, in an effort to further their own agenda twist bible stories and tragedies into whatever balloon animal works for them. Into whatever they believe their followers will swallow – they spoon feed their congregations little morsels of hate and bile and prejudice until soon enough these people are marring soldier’s funerals, bombing abortion clinics, and brainwashing independent thought.
part 2 minor analysis
Part 2
Slate magazine writer Dahlia Lithwick postulates about the reasons men and women kill their children. In her article, When Parents Kill, Lithwick looks at several recent cases of parental murder namely, the Andrea Yates case; a mother of five who drowned all of her children in a bathtub and was subsequently hospitalized after a not guilty by reason of insanity ruling.
Lithwick looks at the punishment which mothers and fathers normally face when they have been convicted of this particular crime. Through statistics she finds that men are disproportionately jailed while women are normally hospitalized with some type of psychosis.
She goes on to explain some of the rationales for this disparity and how the media is partially to blame for the circus that most of these cases turn into; i.e. Caylee Anthony.
I disagree with the method of punishment and how it is doled out to both sets of parents. Men it is true are more physically violent when murdering a child but just because a mother thinks that suffocation or drowning are more humane does not make it so - those children are still aware of what is happening to them and they are just as terrified as if they were being bludgeoned to death or stomped on or ran over or thrown off of a bridge.
I do agree with the author’s assertion that we need to stop thinking of children as property. I have personal experience in this area and it does nothing but causes heart break. I believe that if parents could just grow up and think beyond their own selfish, spiteful, hurtful selves that they would truly know what was best for that child and that most of the time a child has no real responsibility for where the court places them – nor if given the chance would they want to make that choice – they are after all children and they love both of their parents equally. Selfishness and revenge is one reported motive of fathers who kill their children. While women are more apt to kill to keep a new lover in their lives instead of just turning over custody to an ex.
Slate magazine writer Dahlia Lithwick postulates about the reasons men and women kill their children. In her article, When Parents Kill, Lithwick looks at several recent cases of parental murder namely, the Andrea Yates case; a mother of five who drowned all of her children in a bathtub and was subsequently hospitalized after a not guilty by reason of insanity ruling.
Lithwick looks at the punishment which mothers and fathers normally face when they have been convicted of this particular crime. Through statistics she finds that men are disproportionately jailed while women are normally hospitalized with some type of psychosis.
She goes on to explain some of the rationales for this disparity and how the media is partially to blame for the circus that most of these cases turn into; i.e. Caylee Anthony.
I disagree with the method of punishment and how it is doled out to both sets of parents. Men it is true are more physically violent when murdering a child but just because a mother thinks that suffocation or drowning are more humane does not make it so - those children are still aware of what is happening to them and they are just as terrified as if they were being bludgeoned to death or stomped on or ran over or thrown off of a bridge.
I do agree with the author’s assertion that we need to stop thinking of children as property. I have personal experience in this area and it does nothing but causes heart break. I believe that if parents could just grow up and think beyond their own selfish, spiteful, hurtful selves that they would truly know what was best for that child and that most of the time a child has no real responsibility for where the court places them – nor if given the chance would they want to make that choice – they are after all children and they love both of their parents equally. Selfishness and revenge is one reported motive of fathers who kill their children. While women are more apt to kill to keep a new lover in their lives instead of just turning over custody to an ex.
minor analysis paper
Casey Penaluna
Minor Analysis Paper
Part One
Introduction to my topic
According to F.B.I. statistics for 2006, the most recent data available, 462 of the 14,990 homicides for which an offender was identified were parental murder. Of these 462 murdered 283 victims were boys and 179 victims were girls.
United States statistics also go on to show that more than 200 women every year kill their children which has helped to lead to an average mortality rate of 3 to 5 children per day.
Statistics can be staggering and in a country where women commit only two crimes as frequently as men; shoplifting and parental murder, in a land where they commit less than 13 percent of all violent crimes, they have found equal footing with men by committing 50 percent of all parental murders.
Many researchers don’t like to talk about the statistics. They are more concerned with the causes than with the aftermath.
What is it that drives a parent to kill their own?
This is probably the most prevalent question in regards to a phenomenon which has been occurring since Biblical times. In the U.S. we are not victims of famine or genocide. We do not live in war torn nations or reproduce knowing there is a cap on how many offspring we are allowed. We do not struggle with life threatening diseases or watch with hopelessness as our family members are stolen away from us and either imprisoned or enslaved. We do not need to save face and we do not consider financial hardships as a disgrace upon which our entire extended family will be shunned for.
So what is it here in America that prompts women to kill their children and in the case of men their entire family along with themselves?
Researchers have split the reasons parents kill their children into five main categories according to Dr. Susan Hatters Friedman, a forensic psychiatrist and a senior instructor at Case Western Reserve University in Ohio. Sometimes, parents are acutely psychotic. They may be schizophrenic or manic depressive or hearing voices. There is no rational, comprehensible motive for this type of killing. Psychosis and severe depression can lead women to believe they are killing their children to end their suffering or because they believe they are demonically possessed.
In other circumstances, classified as "altruistic," parents say they killed their children out of love. They may kill a child who is sick as a form of euthanasia. Or a depressed parent, who could be suicidal and hates the world, might think killing a child gently protects the child from terrible events in the future.
"When you're psychotically depressed the whole world appears as if you're looking through dull gray glass. When you look at your children, you see them through your own suffering and emotional pain and believe they, too, are suffering. You begin to think they and you would be better off in heaven. This is an altruistic delusion. The results are horrific, but it's done in the hopes of stopping suffering," said Dr. John Bradford, head of the forensic psychiatry department at the University of Ottawa.
Another category, experts say, is fatal maltreatment. A parent may be neglectful from the time of the child's birth. This neglect, such as leaving a child unsupervised in a bath, may lead to an unplanned death.
Dr. Paul Appelbaum, a professor of psychiatry at Columbia University, said some men who kill their offspring do so in a continuing pattern of child abuse.
Another motive is termed "unwanted child," where a young mother may hide her pregnancy then kill the baby when it's born because she's ashamed. Children also can be killed because parents decide they're "getting in the way" of a parent's life.
Dr. Appelbaum tends to share the unwanted child theory in his assessment into why women kill their children. He asserts that mothers who kill their children tend to fall into one of two categories. “Immediately after birth, a mother may kill a newborn in order to hide its existence,” Appelbaum said. "Often, that's a young unmarried mother who is in a state of panic and fearful of discovery and takes what seems to her to be the only available option."
On the other hand, mothers who kill older children "typically do so when they are psychotic and out of delusional motivations. They may hear voices, the voice of God commanding them to kill children."
The least common type of parental murder is spouse revenge.
The murder of children is split proportionately between mothers and fathers but the punishment is not.
Doug Saunders observed recently in the Toronto newspaper the Globe and Mail that the media is complicit in treating maternal killers as newsworthy and paternal killers as ordinary criminals.
The reason for this is simple enough. We created this type of thinking our society perpetuates it and any anomaly which threatens that belief is to be dealt with swiftly and punitively. Jill Korbin, a child abuse expert who co-authored a report on parental murder for the American Anthropological Association stated that “we have a cultural view of good motherhood and it acts to the detriment of women and fathers who are having substantial problems parenting.”
Mother love is not universal. The idealization of women as natural loving mothers is a cultural belief that gets us into trouble. "We should detach from the idea of universal motherhood as natural and see it as a social response," Nancy Scheper-Hughes, medical anthropologist says. Women in jail reported that no-one believed them when they said they wanted to kill their children. "There's a collective denial even when mothers come right out and say "I really shouldn't be trusted with my kids."
So are these women ill or are they cold blooded killers having committed a crime against nature? The prevailing thought among feminists and legal researchers tend to claim that such women must be extremely ill. Judges and juries mostly agree, with the result being that women who kill their children in this country are disproportionately hospitalized or treated, while men who do so are disproportionately jailed, even executed. Women were hospitalized 68 percent of the time and imprisoned 27 percent of the time; fathers convicted of killing their children were sentenced to prison or executed 72 percent of the time and hospitalized only 14 percent of the time.
One may ask why men aren’t afforded the same mental health care as their female counterparts. Simple, when it comes down to the central legal truth children are still considered to be the mother’s property. While it is considered crazy to destroy your own property it is labeled criminal to destroy someone else’s. So while a mother can murder her child and basically get away with it by having a nice comfortable stay in the mental hospital the father is more often than not whisked away to a cold hard jail cell.
Minor Analysis Paper
Part One
Introduction to my topic
According to F.B.I. statistics for 2006, the most recent data available, 462 of the 14,990 homicides for which an offender was identified were parental murder. Of these 462 murdered 283 victims were boys and 179 victims were girls.
United States statistics also go on to show that more than 200 women every year kill their children which has helped to lead to an average mortality rate of 3 to 5 children per day.
Statistics can be staggering and in a country where women commit only two crimes as frequently as men; shoplifting and parental murder, in a land where they commit less than 13 percent of all violent crimes, they have found equal footing with men by committing 50 percent of all parental murders.
Many researchers don’t like to talk about the statistics. They are more concerned with the causes than with the aftermath.
What is it that drives a parent to kill their own?
This is probably the most prevalent question in regards to a phenomenon which has been occurring since Biblical times. In the U.S. we are not victims of famine or genocide. We do not live in war torn nations or reproduce knowing there is a cap on how many offspring we are allowed. We do not struggle with life threatening diseases or watch with hopelessness as our family members are stolen away from us and either imprisoned or enslaved. We do not need to save face and we do not consider financial hardships as a disgrace upon which our entire extended family will be shunned for.
So what is it here in America that prompts women to kill their children and in the case of men their entire family along with themselves?
Researchers have split the reasons parents kill their children into five main categories according to Dr. Susan Hatters Friedman, a forensic psychiatrist and a senior instructor at Case Western Reserve University in Ohio. Sometimes, parents are acutely psychotic. They may be schizophrenic or manic depressive or hearing voices. There is no rational, comprehensible motive for this type of killing. Psychosis and severe depression can lead women to believe they are killing their children to end their suffering or because they believe they are demonically possessed.
In other circumstances, classified as "altruistic," parents say they killed their children out of love. They may kill a child who is sick as a form of euthanasia. Or a depressed parent, who could be suicidal and hates the world, might think killing a child gently protects the child from terrible events in the future.
"When you're psychotically depressed the whole world appears as if you're looking through dull gray glass. When you look at your children, you see them through your own suffering and emotional pain and believe they, too, are suffering. You begin to think they and you would be better off in heaven. This is an altruistic delusion. The results are horrific, but it's done in the hopes of stopping suffering," said Dr. John Bradford, head of the forensic psychiatry department at the University of Ottawa.
Another category, experts say, is fatal maltreatment. A parent may be neglectful from the time of the child's birth. This neglect, such as leaving a child unsupervised in a bath, may lead to an unplanned death.
Dr. Paul Appelbaum, a professor of psychiatry at Columbia University, said some men who kill their offspring do so in a continuing pattern of child abuse.
Another motive is termed "unwanted child," where a young mother may hide her pregnancy then kill the baby when it's born because she's ashamed. Children also can be killed because parents decide they're "getting in the way" of a parent's life.
Dr. Appelbaum tends to share the unwanted child theory in his assessment into why women kill their children. He asserts that mothers who kill their children tend to fall into one of two categories. “Immediately after birth, a mother may kill a newborn in order to hide its existence,” Appelbaum said. "Often, that's a young unmarried mother who is in a state of panic and fearful of discovery and takes what seems to her to be the only available option."
On the other hand, mothers who kill older children "typically do so when they are psychotic and out of delusional motivations. They may hear voices, the voice of God commanding them to kill children."
The least common type of parental murder is spouse revenge.
The murder of children is split proportionately between mothers and fathers but the punishment is not.
Doug Saunders observed recently in the Toronto newspaper the Globe and Mail that the media is complicit in treating maternal killers as newsworthy and paternal killers as ordinary criminals.
The reason for this is simple enough. We created this type of thinking our society perpetuates it and any anomaly which threatens that belief is to be dealt with swiftly and punitively. Jill Korbin, a child abuse expert who co-authored a report on parental murder for the American Anthropological Association stated that “we have a cultural view of good motherhood and it acts to the detriment of women and fathers who are having substantial problems parenting.”
Mother love is not universal. The idealization of women as natural loving mothers is a cultural belief that gets us into trouble. "We should detach from the idea of universal motherhood as natural and see it as a social response," Nancy Scheper-Hughes, medical anthropologist says. Women in jail reported that no-one believed them when they said they wanted to kill their children. "There's a collective denial even when mothers come right out and say "I really shouldn't be trusted with my kids."
So are these women ill or are they cold blooded killers having committed a crime against nature? The prevailing thought among feminists and legal researchers tend to claim that such women must be extremely ill. Judges and juries mostly agree, with the result being that women who kill their children in this country are disproportionately hospitalized or treated, while men who do so are disproportionately jailed, even executed. Women were hospitalized 68 percent of the time and imprisoned 27 percent of the time; fathers convicted of killing their children were sentenced to prison or executed 72 percent of the time and hospitalized only 14 percent of the time.
One may ask why men aren’t afforded the same mental health care as their female counterparts. Simple, when it comes down to the central legal truth children are still considered to be the mother’s property. While it is considered crazy to destroy your own property it is labeled criminal to destroy someone else’s. So while a mother can murder her child and basically get away with it by having a nice comfortable stay in the mental hospital the father is more often than not whisked away to a cold hard jail cell.
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
what does the election mean to me
To me the election means a new start. New hope. New blood. It will usher in a man, i.e. a family, who knows what it means to be on the bottom rung of society. Who knows what it feels like to be written off. Who knows what it means to break out of a statistical category. Who truly knows hard work and not the all empowering hand of nepotism.
I feel very optimistic about this new president. Already I have heard him talking about taking control of the bailout money and changing its intended recipients from high powered corporations to the everyday business man. The life blood of our country. This man is made up of more than merely written words and spoken promises. He is not some publicists/lobbyists/oil executives personal juggernaut sent into our homes to spew forth their personal agenda.
He is a man made of substance and fulfillment of not only his American dream but of all American's dreams. He is America's white knight in shining armor come to save a collective Sleeping Beauty from the fire breathing dragon.
I feel very optimistic about this new president. Already I have heard him talking about taking control of the bailout money and changing its intended recipients from high powered corporations to the everyday business man. The life blood of our country. This man is made up of more than merely written words and spoken promises. He is not some publicists/lobbyists/oil executives personal juggernaut sent into our homes to spew forth their personal agenda.
He is a man made of substance and fulfillment of not only his American dream but of all American's dreams. He is America's white knight in shining armor come to save a collective Sleeping Beauty from the fire breathing dragon.
Thursday, January 8, 2009
Graff,Birkenstein vs syllabus
Authors Graff and Birkenstein argue in the introduction of their text, They Say I Say, that the best way to engage in argumentative writing is to follow a tried and true conversational template (i.e. the They say I say model). The authors state that to truly be a master at anything you need to have learned the basics - hence to be a great rhetorician you need to find a way of entering into a conversation with the other persons views (they say) and then tell them how and why you differ or agree (I say) with their opinions.
Our syllabus however, implies that rhetoric invites the average person to take up a platform in any manner necessary to try and convince a person, group, etc. to agree with the speakers opinion. Rhetoric appears to be an either or type of conversation; there is no middle ground and even though the speaker may have looked at the issue from both sides and may have compelling arguments for pros and cons the speaker takes a side and in so doing is asking the reader to share his/her views.
Their is not alot of overlap that I have come across so far in these inital readings except for the fact that both Graff and Birkenstein and the syllabus share the idea of rhetoric and academic writing in the following way:
1. Enter the conversation using what others say as a platform to then assert your own ideas and opinions.
2. The goal is to not only state your own ideas but to listen closely to others
around you - summarizing their views in a recognizable manner - and
responding with your own ideas.
Our syllabus however, implies that rhetoric invites the average person to take up a platform in any manner necessary to try and convince a person, group, etc. to agree with the speakers opinion. Rhetoric appears to be an either or type of conversation; there is no middle ground and even though the speaker may have looked at the issue from both sides and may have compelling arguments for pros and cons the speaker takes a side and in so doing is asking the reader to share his/her views.
Their is not alot of overlap that I have come across so far in these inital readings except for the fact that both Graff and Birkenstein and the syllabus share the idea of rhetoric and academic writing in the following way:
1. Enter the conversation using what others say as a platform to then assert your own ideas and opinions.
2. The goal is to not only state your own ideas but to listen closely to others
around you - summarizing their views in a recognizable manner - and
responding with your own ideas.
Tuesday, January 6, 2009
Michelle Obama
Michelle Obama and the Four Tenets...
Michelle Obama has a powerful presence and comes off as everybody's best girlfriend during this speech.
She takes a perfect starting approach and humanizes herself - she succeeds in showing the audience that she is a down to earth everyday woman. Obama opens with an approach that is near and dear to my heart - and I am sure the sentiment wasn't lost on the multitude of Americans watching - her daughters. She opens up about how her girls are the first thing she thinks about in the morning and the last thing she thinks of at night.
She manages to let the world know that she - like the rest of us- is concerned with the state of the world they are growing up in and she gives us a glimpse of the world that she hopes they will inherit when they are older.
She states how she is adamant about instilling in them the values of hard work not of entitlement. She wants her girls to have a world class education and to grow up in a safe loving environment where they can feel a part of the community and not like an outsider looking in. And not only are these values that are important to her but she believes that they are important to all of us - no matter what community or financial circumstance we may be in- she advocates for every American child to be able to walk down the street unafraid and is adamant that the American dream should be accessible to all.
Michelle also took the time to talk about her role as a daughter and how much she admired her father - who battled MS for much of his adult life - for the fact that he never quit. He persevered through the pain, made slight adjustments to his everyday life so that his family wouldn't see his struggles, and he never complained.
Michelle made it obvious that her father didn't quit and by his example Michelle and her brother didn't quit.
It is obvious by watching Michelle that her love of family is genuine. That she is truly happy with where her life has taken her and given her. She infects us all with her all encompassing smile, her nostalgic stories, and her want/need to lift us all collectively to her bosom and deliver us from our pain, our heartaches, our uncertainties in regards to where we are going as individuals and where we are heading as a nation.
Michelle Obama has a powerful presence and comes off as everybody's best girlfriend during this speech.
She takes a perfect starting approach and humanizes herself - she succeeds in showing the audience that she is a down to earth everyday woman. Obama opens with an approach that is near and dear to my heart - and I am sure the sentiment wasn't lost on the multitude of Americans watching - her daughters. She opens up about how her girls are the first thing she thinks about in the morning and the last thing she thinks of at night.
She manages to let the world know that she - like the rest of us- is concerned with the state of the world they are growing up in and she gives us a glimpse of the world that she hopes they will inherit when they are older.
She states how she is adamant about instilling in them the values of hard work not of entitlement. She wants her girls to have a world class education and to grow up in a safe loving environment where they can feel a part of the community and not like an outsider looking in. And not only are these values that are important to her but she believes that they are important to all of us - no matter what community or financial circumstance we may be in- she advocates for every American child to be able to walk down the street unafraid and is adamant that the American dream should be accessible to all.
Michelle also took the time to talk about her role as a daughter and how much she admired her father - who battled MS for much of his adult life - for the fact that he never quit. He persevered through the pain, made slight adjustments to his everyday life so that his family wouldn't see his struggles, and he never complained.
Michelle made it obvious that her father didn't quit and by his example Michelle and her brother didn't quit.
It is obvious by watching Michelle that her love of family is genuine. That she is truly happy with where her life has taken her and given her. She infects us all with her all encompassing smile, her nostalgic stories, and her want/need to lift us all collectively to her bosom and deliver us from our pain, our heartaches, our uncertainties in regards to where we are going as individuals and where we are heading as a nation.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
