“Should Nixzaliz Santiago be held more responsible than the man who delivered the fatal blow? Yes. I believe mothers should be held to a higher standard”

being held to a higher standard than murdering a child? that’s precisely the point. she did less than that, right? complicity is not committing the actual crime. while she sounds like she’s pretty messed up, too, the irony of this statement is compelling. duh.

this verdict drips with biological determinism and woman hate.

and btw, being held to a higher standard than men? that’s pretty much anything, right?

We claim that we put motherhood up on a pedestal

We do put motherhood on a pedestal. Mothers on the other hand – as you say – despite (or more probably because of) that, are slammed as unworthy because of every real human quality they have.

Right after you give birth the hospital hands you parenting magazines and how to guides as though you can raise a child by a book. There is instant discipline on your decisions…and this never ends from the moment you become a mother.

It is quite easy to see how this came to bear on this womans sentencing. We claim that we put motherhood up on a pedestal, but actually we spend more time controlling it and letting women know when they mess up our idealized version of what the long suffering, ever nurturing, perfect cook and cleaner should be.

Anyway, I want to address this quote:

Ms. Mullin said. “We subscribe to these biblical ideas of instinctual mothering.”

First of all, WAY to combine two highly manipulated “sources” of popular “knowledge”–we have the “biblical” (the whole Judeo-Christian, handed down from God argument) meeting “instinctual mothering” (the whole evo-psych, pop-science argument). Genius! I mean, seriously. You’ve got your Fundies and your Libertarian/faux science nerds on board, and of course everyone who thinks very little about science or the complex history/context of the Hebrew and Christian bibles.

Its quotes like that that remind me daily to thank the Goddess for the gender challenges the idea of same sex marriage poses. Particularly when same sex marriage isn’t framed in a “top/bottom” or “butch/femme” construct.

The fundamental argument for this woman’s disproportional punishment is that she didn’t act naturally. It is natural to be a good mother and unnatural to be a bad mother. The whole “natural” argument, whether it is grounded in biblical interpretations (probably of Genesis–boy do they get a hell of a lot of traction out of Genesis for all kinds of wack job ideas) or evo-pscyhe (pseudo science that tries to justify how we live today and inequality as “natural”–its pseudo science because it precisely looks for ways to confirm existing biases and maladaptive social traditions to fit in with the Patriarchy). Back to the original clause (I lost the stream for a minute) ….the “natural argument” is both the easy route to indict women for every crime or social ill they might commit (like, abusing drugs during pregnancy, for example)…gee, every woman wants a baby and if she is a drug addict and homeless while pregnant, she’s choosing to hurt that innocent, wanted child…blah blah blah. Or, how about simply giving custody of your children to your spouse? You get a divorce and the mother says, you take the kids, I’ll pay you child support, and I’ll see them every other weekend. How many hawls from the peanut gallery would that particular woman get? Yet, fathers do that ALL THE TIME. Gee, but its natural for her to nurture and for him to sew is wild oats, I guess.

Obviously, the torture and death of a child do not make for sympathetic fodder. But, it is precisely because of these objectionable arguments for “naturalness” that allowed for this situation to arise. The father/owner paradigm as natural, the mother nurturer/submissive paradigm, and the child as property have all been argued as “natural” by the forces of gender-conformity and oppression.

Same sex couples offer us a reminder that biology is not destiny–one does not simply become the primary care giver/maid/cook out of genital imperative. Same sex couples negotiate these chores (not roles, chores–they are fucking chores people).

If something like this case happened in a same sex couple, the nature argument would probably still be invoked–though in order to condemn their “lifestyle” and the unfitness of all same sex couples to raise children. So, lets hope that such a case doesn’t arise in the near future. But, my thankfulness for same sex couples isn’t to grant an exact case by case analysis, but rather thankfulness because the more same sex couples come into the consciousness and the popular culture, the more the gender divide of things such as household chores and child care, will be in flux. Same sex couples are exactly what the feminist movement needs as allies to demonstrate that the “naturalness” of our oppression and the unfair burden of labor and social responsibility foisted upon women for all things family is bullshit and culturally constructed to serve the Patriarchy. So, thank you same sex couples–keep on showing up to those company picnics in matching sweater sets and challenging the ideas of the heteronormative veneer of “naturalness”–and please, when some idiot asks, “whose the boy and whose the girl” say “neither” or “we both are” or “we’re partners” or something way more clever but to the point. You do this, and I’ll be your ally.

Peace

As as for he stepfather was also guilty of assault – notwithstanding what he was accused of doing to Ms Santiago, the murder is hardly the first time he assaulted Nixzmary.

Ms. Santiago was the “one person” who the little girl should have been able to count on.

Shouldn’t she have been able to count on her stepfather to not beat and kill her?

In this country, women have the right to decide if they want to bear a child

Even by Genia’s own logic, this fails. Santiago chose to become a stepfather – it’s hardly as if he didn’t know about Nixzmary when he married her mother – he had that right, and he had the right to choose otherwise, so doesn’t responsibility come with it?

Of course killing his stepdaughter probably rates in some minds as him exercising his right to choose otherwise.

Because while she may have been able to defend her daughter, and while she may have even encouraged her beatings, she didn’t kill her.

Neither did she die in her defence, and that I suspect is a big part of why she’s being punished. Because she failed to die first.

Um yeah, seeing as how he was accused in court of beating her for years, tying her to chairs, forcing her to use a litter box as her rest room, holding her head under water, leaving her naked in a cold room, and starving her, I’d say that he should have been charged with assault. Please read up on the case, as I did, before commenting on it and telling me I’m wrong.

Also, no one has accused her of being a “mastermind” until just now. They accused her of egging the abuser on. Hugely different things.