Sunday, August 21, 2011

“If Women Ask Equality With Men, They Must Face Equal Penalty for Crime, Mrs. Martin Says” - 1937


NOTE: This article is one of countless examples of how in the 20th century preceding the takeover of the women’s movement by “misandrist” or “Marxist” versions of feminism the authentic voice of “equity feminists” advocated for human decency in male-female relationships and showed no favor towards sociopaths – just because they belonged to their own sex (or “gender,” as the Marxist social constructivists have trained so many of us to say). Indeed, Marian Mays Martin in 1937 offered a fair – and widely agreed-with -- criticism of men who allow themselves to feel “chivalric” by allowing their shallow emotions to be manipulated by predatory females who know how to “push their buttons.”

FULL TEXT: Dastardly crimes are being committed these days. The most terrible aspect of them lies in the fact that they are being committed by women. In New York there is the young mother who murdered her seven-year old daughter and tried desperately to murder her younger son because there was no room for them in her cramped apartment, no room, that is, for her to entertain her lover whom she at first implicated in the actual killing. Later she retracted this, implicated him only as suggesting or plotting the deed.

There is the case of a 17-year-old New Jersey girl who, with her boy friend killed her mother because the mother failed to have dinner ready in time for them to make the first show at the movie.

Added to this take of horror there is the case of another young woman who, with her lover, is implicated in the murder of three persons just for the thrill of it.

~ Women’s Crimes ~

Countless lesser crimes have been committed recently by women, but those listed are more are just as capable as men of evil and can be equally as base.

What the fate of any of these creatures will be at the hands of a mixed or male jury leaves little room for speculation. What their fate would be at the hands of an all-woman jury leaves none at all. It would not be possible to assemble twelve women who had sufficient pity for them to spare them the death penalty. Women criminals do not like to be judged by women.

The day has gone when women who committed crimes were let off with a light sentence. It may go against the grain to sentence a woman to death but men find the courage to do it if and when the crime deserves such a penalty.

I doubt very much if a clever criminal lawyer would even attempt to win a light sentence for a woman charged with murder merely because she was a woman. Women have asked for equal rights and privileges with men and the death chair or rope for first degree murder is a hand-maiden of this demand.

~ Crimes Increasing ~

Death is a terrible punishment, but the crime is no less frightful because a woman committed it. It is, perhaps, more frightful.

In all these cases the sinister shadow of a man appears. In one the woman was so fearful of losing the man that she ruthlessly attacked her own children in order to make way for, as it developed, another woman’s husband.

“The female of the species is more deadly than the-male,” wrote Kipling, and it appears that he summed up the situation correctly.

It is nothing new for women to commit murder but the number of women criminals seems to be increasing at an alarming rate.

Every crime committed by a woman makes the going that much harder for women who must battle their way through life. It’s the grimness that comes from battling forces too strong for them that ultimately over-powers women who are not mentally strong enough for the combat and turns them into hardened criminals.

The type of killer who goes in for robbery or murder for a thrill is a new species and one that interests the psychiatrists most. The motive, or lack of it, is more difficult to understand than when a crime is committed in a burst of passion or even in cold deliberation of revenge.

The old-fashioned girl who used to complain because man insisted on placing her on a pedestal would be very much concerned if she could see how completely pedestals have been kicked from under the average girl of today.

She might even speculate as to whether or not a pedestal was such a bad foundation on which to stand. It presaged a certain amount of protection and provided a good vantage ground from which to see her way.

[Marian Mays Martin, “Modern Women” (column), “If Women Ask Equality With Men, They Must Face Equal Penalty for Crime, Mrs. Martin Says,” syndicated, The Huntington News (Pa.), Jun. 3, 1937, p. 7]

***

For more on this topic, see Chivalry Justice Checklist & Links

***
[523-3/19/21]
***

No comments:

Post a Comment