The Other Murder - A Double Standard?

[goofyfish]

Mom kills, dad kills: Two takes on tragedy

from The Globe and Mail
LOS ANGELES -- The case has all the elements of a media sensation: five children dead of asphyxiation; a parent charged with first-degree murder in their deaths; the other parent horrified by the apparent act of homicidal depression that destroyed the family.

But this is not the case of Andrea Yates, the Texas mother on trial for the drowning of three of her five children last year, and who could yet be charged in the deaths of the other two.

Instead, it is the case of Adair Garcia, 30, charged last week with murder in the deaths of five of his six children, who died from inhaling the fumes from a barbecue ignited while they slept.

The rest of the article is worth a read because it compares and contrasts between the Yates case and this one. Do we really take a different view when it is the father who kills as opposed to the mother?

Men are expected to be violent. Women are not. Both the stereotype of the ultra-violent man and the angelic woman are false, but quite pervasive (at least in my experience). Therefore, when a man does something horrible people aren't that surprised. When a woman does - well, that makes the headlines. It's a "double standard" but the strange thing is I can't figure out whom it's against. Women, because their ultra-violent acts get more media attention? Men, because they're sort of assumed to be ultra-violent anyway and so nobody is really surprised?

Peace.