Club Jacobin

Ugh looking up statistics for the discussion in that last post is the most depressing thing I’ve done in a long time. When you see a chart like this one here you just… ugh.

A woman in America runs a greater risk of being killed by her husband or boyfriend than a woman in Pakistan.

How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love Feminists. (via popmuslim)

A woman in America runs a greater risk of being killed by her husband or boyfriend than a woman in Pakistan.

A woman in America runs a greater risk of being killed by her husband or boyfriend than a woman in Pakistan.

A woman in America runs a greater risk of being killed by her husband or boyfriend than a woman in Pakistan.

(via silverqueen)

Let me reiterate that for you all …

A woman in America runs a greater risk of being killed by her husband or boyfriend than a woman in Pakistan.

A woman in America runs a greater risk of being killed by her husband or boyfriend than a woman in Pakistan.

A woman in America runs a greater risk of being killed by her husband or boyfriend than a woman in Pakistan.

(via dank-potion)

I think you’ve missed a crutial point though, let me point it out:

A woman in America runs a greater risk of being killed by her husband or boyfriend than a woman in Pakistan.

A woman in America runs a greater risk of being killed by her husband or boyfriend than a woman in Pakistan.

A woman in America runs a greater risk of being killed by her husband or boyfriend than a woman in Pakistan.

(via themindislimitless)

Sorry but no. I really appreciate the point about the use of a term like “honor killing” — it is pure imperialist arrogance and chauvinism to use terms like which turn domestic violence into something barbaric, savage, “other” rather than recognizing that it is part of the daily routine in civilizations across the world, including the most “modern” or “advanced” societies of all. Anyone who talks about “honor killing” without addressing violence against women and domestic violence more generally within developed capitalist countries should be smacked about the head with a book. (Maybe Fanon or Lenin.) And I strongly support and admire people in the developed world who make a point of combatting this chauvinism and fighting patriarchal violence within their own societies.

But you must not do so with an argument that rests on such a horrendous misuse of statistics. The claim made here goes as follows:

1. Partner killing in the US happens at the rate of X.
2. Partner killing worldwide happens at the rate of Y.
3. Because Y is lower than X, partner killing in Pakistan happens less frequently than it does in the United States.

When it’s put that way the logical flaw is quite apparent. No wonder that OP does not try to support this statistical claim, in an article which is otherwise pretty well-sourced. I did a bit of digging around to try and find numbers to answer this question. Unfortunately I couldn’t find any precise comparisons on this point between the United States and Pakistan, but we can do our best. The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan reported 791 murders “in the name of honour” in 2010. Out of a population of 173,593,383, that works out 4.56 * 10^-6 percent. Using the numbers given by OP, that is similar to but higher than the rate in the United States, which comes out to 3.99 * 10^-6 (given a US population of 296 million in 2005). Put another way, the rate of such murders in Pakistan would yield a little over 1,348 murders at the population level of the United States, against the 1,181 cited by OP.

(This is of course also assuming similar gender breakdowns and other relevant demographic similarities between the countries. Feel free to correct me as I’m very open to the facts pointing the other way. My fundamental point is that we should rely on evidence wherever possible.)

We can also get a sense of the more general state of affairs by looking at Ali, Asad, Mogren et al.’s article “Intimate partner violence in urban Pakistan: prevalence, frequency, and risk factors.” (International Journal of Women’s Health, 2011) You may need an academic login to read the whole article, but just in the abstract we have these findings:

“Self-reported past-year and lifetime prevalence of physical violence was 56.3 and 57.6%, respectively; the corresponding figures for sexual violence were 53.4% and 54.5%, and for psychological abuse were 81.8% and 83.6%.”

Those numbers all appear to be substantially higher than similar rates in the United States (e.g. the often-quoted statistic that one in four women will be a victim of domestic violence in her lifetime.) Again we need many caveats here - we can’t simply compare numbers from one careful study of a single town in one country versus a general and less clearly supported statistic referring to another country as a whole. But we do see that the facts don’t appear to support the claim from OP that was repeated here by all of the posters above. If the original claim is true then the evidence supporting it needs to be brought forward.

tl;dr = Tell no lies, claim no easy victories.

(via malheureuxmarxist)

chileanstudentmovement:

“Woman: Don’t Let Them Come At You With Fables. Your Body Is Yours”

International Women’s Day, Santiago

MUJER QUE NO TE VENGAN CON CUENTOS. TU CUERPO ES TUYO!!

(via fuckyeahmarxismleninism)

Wow, I love these. I think it’s Zombie Princess revenge time!

(via meg--anne)

berlinobsession:

These guillotines were all of similar construction using Tobias Schmidt’s principles but maybe not his actual design. They are usually referred to today as “The 1792 Model Guillotine”. Due to the large number of these guillotines manufactured during the years of the great Terror (1793-1794), several machines from this early batch have survived to this day. Among the surviving “1792” machines are the ones displayed in museums in Venlo (Netherlands), Liege and Brugge (Belgium), as well as one stored in Musée national d’histoire et d’art in Luxembourg. This guillotine represents one of the best preserved examples of a 1792 machine.

The photo on the left shows a nearly complete original 1792 guillotine with its integral scaffold. Photo is undated but probably taken around 1918 inside a cathedral in Northern France or Belgium.

The vertical posts were 3.7 to 4.5 meters tall and made of oak. The grooves for the blade were carved into the wood and are not lined. The boards for locking the head in place (the “lunette”) were also made of oak and had no metal liner as on later machines. Even the lunette tracks were just carved grooves in the wood. There was no mechanism to hold the lunette open or to lock it in place when closed. The front and rear support braces were also made of wood and were pinned in place with dowels making the machine very difficult to disassemble. The bascule (teeter board) was shorter than on the modern machine but tilted and slid forward as on the newer version. The slide mechanism was made up of a wood carriage traveling in wood grooves. The triangular blade was secured to a heavy oak block which traveled up and down in the post grooves. The blade was hoisted up with a rope running over two small pulleys lodged in slots within the top crossbar.

(via stalinistqueens)

(Source: fuckyeahmarxismleninism)

talented10th:

Meet Herbert and Zelmyra Fisher of North Carolina. They have been married 85 years (86 in May) and hold the Guinness World Record for the longest marriage of a living couple and get this…. Zelmyra is 101 years old and Herbert is 104.

RELATIONSHIP ADVICE

Wow. May they each live another hundred years!

Hah

(Source: caitdubh, via cuimhnigh-i-gconai)

bidyke:

elfhugs:

thank u free country usa god bless

Too good not to reblog

Sal is a more qualified juror than 2/3 of the residents of Maricopa County.

(Source: toralei, via lajacobine)

Life as a woman