Executioners And Their Assistants

George Junius Stinney Jr. (1929-1944), executed 14 years old for the murder of two young girls in South Carolina. He was the youngest American to be sentenced to death and executed in the 20th century. What ties up the case and gives it its grusome perspective is that nowadays he is considered innocent of the crime that cost him his young life. We may - and should - cry for the boy who was killed by a judicial system that should protect him as a citizen, but which took his life. However, the technical problems of the execution also made me think of something else: How is it to be the assistant of a system which makes it legal to kill someone like e.g. the young and presumably innocent boy George Stinney? Or put another way, how is it to be the one who carries out the orders of someone who deems it OK to kill another person?

I read somewhere that the Nazi scum Heinrich Himmler was worried that those who had the job of murdering Jews and others in the name of an insane ideology of "pure blood lines" and many other crazy ideas would find it too trying. He didn't see the murdered victims as humans, but still, he must have recognized their humanity in looks and behavior even to consider the job of their executioners too psychologically demanding which actually turns his and his fellow Nazis' ideology into an obvious scam: They were murdering people and they knew it. That said it's interesting that to him and the executioners who worked for him and the Nazi establishment the main problem was not the murders themselves, but what they did to those who committed them.

I can't deny that I love the rumor that the executioner of the infamous murderer Ted Bundy was a woman. He himself had murdered about 30 young women and probably even more that we don't know of. If anybody deserved the death sentence it's him and to me it feels good that he may have been killed by a woman. I have no idea of what she felt by pulling the handle that set the electrocution going, but I know that he is someone I wouldn't have felt any regrets of sentencing to death or executing myself. That means that to me some killings are not murder ....

Up through history people have done awful things to each other without feeling any kind of regrets. For instance, the man who cuts open the poor man on the ladder does what he is hired to do. Maybe he hates doing it, or maybe not. We shouldn't be blind for the possibility that being an executioner or his assistant may be the dream job of certain individuals, but in The Middle Ages of Europe many of them were condemned criminals themselves. As to their job the assistants - called "rakker" in the Scandinavian languages - also had to clean up the loos, to remove dead animals, etc., etc. and they were not allowed to live with "decent citizen" who did not have to do the dirty jobs of their society. Without the "rakker" that society would go to pieces in filth and illnesses, but he himself (and maybe also his family) were set apart as "unclean". They were not allowed to live within the walls of the cities, but had to stay outside which to many must have been very scary because of their belief in ghosts, demons, etc., etc..

 

I don't know what the condemned man has done, but in a way both he and those who execute the verdict that put him into that barrel were alike in fate: He was condemned and so were many/most of them ....

 

Wikipedia

 

Jobs of Low Merit

Vintage "dust man"

Up through history there has been loads and loads of hideous jobs. Most of them also were in low merit although they, at the same time, were the most useful in making society run as smoothly as possible. Everybody may have admired intellectual workers like e.g clergymen, lawyers, artists, etc., even though they were expendable when it came to "keeping the wheels running". To get one's fingers "dirtied" by removing and disposing of garbage of all kinds has been seen as humiliating and those who had that kind of jobs had low status. Now we honor these people with yearly national garbage man appreciation days, but I doubt that it's more than a symbolic gesture.

I just love this picture of the three leaders of the WWII world, Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin, having to lift their feet so that the bent and worn charlady may wash the floor. This particular version - and I have seen others - has an added symbolism as her scrubbing brush is formed like a scythe .... Without her the three leaders would have to sit in the dirt and dust that heaps up without somebody like her doing their job. 

Another one who "keeps the wheels running" in a patriarchal society, is the prostitute. Hopefully her job wasn't always as awful as it seems to most of us, but she didn't exactly get honored for it. On the contrary, she got abuse and discrimination for her services: The double standard of the patriarchal society didn't leave much room for her as a citizen. The church raged and condemned her for doing what she was paid to do, and the law was against her and marked her down as a criminal which is ridiculous. In her own way she was another kind of "charlady" as the one in the Yalta drawing above. Prostitution always was a job, but somehow it became seen as a special "female sin". These women were perceived as sinners where in reality they were just business women, earning money to make the wheels of their private life turn around.

 

It's obvious that the intellectual jobs always had status, but the ones that were of a physical nature didn't although they were necessary in all societies. One may ask oneself why this is so, but I don't think there is an easy formula for this discrepancy. At this point we may only start mapping the various ideologies we have inherited from our ancestors, but as we ourselves are part of them it will be very difficult really to see what has been going on for so long.

 

https://www.waste360.com/haulers/showing-appreciation-waste-workers-national-garbage-man-day 

 

Wikipedia

When Men HATE Women: Misogyny revival

Are men animals as this guy seems to suggest? No, no, let's not insult the animal kingdom with that kind of statements ....

Some men really ARE stinkers, I admit that much, but let's not forget that so are some women. The female and the male worlds consist of overlapping as well as separate parts. As most of these parts are entwined they in many ways mirror each other: What's considered a  good and acceptable behavior in the "male part" may be seen as the opposite in the "female part". For instance, we still harbor loads of ideas of former generations, especially about sex and e.g. social status: A succesful Casanova is considered a conqueror, whereas his - more or less willing sex partners - are seen as "conquests" which isn't only stupid, but naive. As it is, some women just wanna have fun as the saying goes, but somehow they are only seen as "prey" or even victims if they, as the sexual legend goes, "surrender" to the male.

Now, WHAT IS SHE DOING THERE????? Well, to me that's obvious: She is staring at a well formed butt, dreaming of undressing it. Surprise, surprise, women have a sexual drive too, even though she may be elderly and not considered "beautiful" by men. That means that she is not what patriarchy - which I often insist on calling "the perversion" - likes her to be, namely a commodity for sex and child birth. She was raised to believe that her status as a woman is built on male notions of her beauty and biological usefulness. 

- Much more should be said on that subject and I will, but not today. For now I want to talk about something else that both I and some other women have noticed: These years we seem to be under an evil barrage of new forms of misogyny. Some even call it "The War of the Worlds", i.e. the male and the female worlds, ideologies, etc. ....

When I visit sites as e.g. Reddit I'm surprised at the blatant misogyny in young men. I've seen it in the older generation, but didn't know that the younger one may be even worse. Now there seem to be a general male  demand for modern women - and that means their own generation - stop their feminism and instead return to the sex roles of their great-great grandmothers: ONE sexual partner - namely them - and they don't lose their so called virginity to anyone else but these male "prizes". Men, on the other hand, should be free to roam the streets of whatever "love city" they fancy. Women should stay at home which may be a bit difficult as these men don't seem to suggest that they (namely the women and the children) will be provided for by male labor. One might try to laugh it off as it really is ridiculous, yes, more or less like child fantasies, but on the other hand it seems to gain acceptance in some circles that ought to know better. Vile creatures like e.g. Andrew Tate, the pussy-grabber, ex-president Donald Trump, etc., etc. sprout up, spewing their hateful, perverted rhetoric against women at the same time as Roe v. Wade is shot down by those who should protect the rights of the female sex. That would not happen if the ideological climate hadn't changed in a sad manner.