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.

 

Cleopatra's Daughter

 

If modern people were asked about the Egyptian queen Cleopatra VII (70/69 BC–30 BC) they would most likely draw upon the knowledge they gained by watching Elizabeth Taylor as the enticing femme fatale in the movie from 1963. However, there are several other actresses who have appeared in movies about the famous queen's life, like for instance, Vivien Leigh in a movie from 1945. And what's more the histprical Cleopatra was so much more than those depicting her ....

There is a tradition of turning the queen into some sort of sex-goddess who first and foremost gained her fame from seducing the powerful men of her day: Julius Caesar and Mark Anthony. However, much indicate that she was a smart woman who knew more than most Egyptian rulers before her. According to Plutarch she had an aptitude for languages and spoke several foreign languages, thus being able to negotiate, discuss or just talk with people of other countries. As a token of her acclaimed smartness she even saw to it that the belief in her divinity as "the reincarnation of the goddess Isis" was established.  

The most famous movie love couple Cleopatra VII and Roman Triumvir Mark Anthony definitely is Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton. As far as I remember the movie only depicted the young son Cleopatra had by Julius Caesar, namely Caesarion. He is assumed to have been the only biological son of Julius Caesar and that made him an important pawn in the fight for power in The Roman Empire. That fact must be the reason why he was killed by Octavian whom we know as Augustus, i.e. the first Roman emperor.

Caesarion (47 BC-30 BC)

However, Cleopatra had several other children, one of them being her namesake, Cleopatra Selene II, i.e. the daughter she had by her lover, Mark Anthony. After the defeat and suicides of her parents she succeeded in surviving the turmoil of Augustus' rise to emperor and being paraded as a prisoner of war with her twin brother in the streets of Rome. Her survival may have been made easier by her stay with Augustus' sister, Octavia the Younger, who had been married to her father, Mark Anthony. As to her two brothers they "disappeared" from the historical annals and are presumed dead, either by illness or murder.

A Roman bust of either Cleopatra VII or her daughter Cleopatra Selene

Not only did Cleopatra Selene survive, but she also became the queen consort of Juba II of Numidia and Mauretania. As such she had great influence on everything concerning government decisions. It seems that she was especially interested in trade and architecture, making her mark on that part of the country's success.

 

Presumably Cleopatra Selene

When Augustus decided to confer the newly created client kingdom of Mauretania on Cleopatra Selene and Juba II the young rulers renamed the new capital Caesarea in honor of him. Through her granddaughter - or great-grandaughter, Drusilla, the lineage of Cleopatra VII and Mark Anthony was intertwined with the Roman nobility.

Wikipedia

https://movieweb.com/best-movies-about-cleopatra/ 

 

 

Prison And Artistic Fulfillments

 

When I think of what prisons were e.g. in The Middle Ages and then look at something like this "Swedish prison cell" then I get some very mixed feelings: 1) Good that we don't starve or torture inmates anymore (unless it's done in secret ....) and 2) What the HELL is this? Is that supposed to be punishment for crimes that definitely should get punished????? No, it looks more like part of a cosy holiday cottage, and THAT's WEIRD when it comes to crimes and punishments. Some of the most heinous criminals who were caught and sentenced to prison were done so at an immense expense to the tax-payers of his/her country and these law abiding citizen may never even get close to such a nice looking habitat as this prison cell. 

This book - and others by the same author - came into being because he was sentenced to prison. Robert Franklin Stroud (1890-1963) was a convicted - and feared - murderer, but being in prison he gained a reputation as a great ornithologist and became known as "The Birdman of Alcatraz". He had not changed his ways in prison as he, for instance, attacked and killed a guard. However, somehow all his misdeeds were overshadowed of his well deserved reputation as an ornitologist. 

Robert Franklin Stroud

Would he have become an ornithologist if he had not been incarcerated for his crimes? That's not likely as he set out as a pimp and a murderer. In my opinion there are several angles to his biography and that may always be the case of inprisoned criminals who obtain fame by skills they gain while in prison. I, for one, don't want to forget what he did before going to prison over his achievements as a prisoner. He is/was a criminal who got the perfect setting for studies and writings: A prison cell. Without that cell and the sentence that sent him there he would never have achieved anything academic.

Theodore John Kaczynski 

The exploits of the so-called "Unabomber", Ted Kaczynski (born 1942) include bombs that killed three innocent people as well as wounded almost thirty. These crimes go hand in hand with his considerable intelligence as a mathematician. What's also of a considerable size is his narcissistic personality that, luckily enough, made him confess to his crimes so that he wouldn't be declared insane ....  

While in prison The infamous Unabomber has gained new fame with two books he wrote in his cell, one of them is "Technological Slavery", and the other one is "Anti-Tech Revolution". Would he have been able to publish these books had he not been in prison? Maybe, if he had not committed his crimes, but it was the prison that gave him the opportunity when he had ruined his chances of being an aknowledged part of the society.

Dante Alighieri

Neither Robert Stroud nor Ted Kaczynski has written "prison literature", i.e. books or articles about their life in prison. Both of them wrote about subjects that interest them and which they might also have taken up had they never been incarcerated. It wouldn't have been likely, but in theory, it might have happened. They got caught, were sentenced and imprisoned and that was the situation that started their literary career. On some points they resemble a great author like e.g. Dante Alighieri who wrote his masterpiece "The Divine Comedy" in exile. Others, like Sir Thomas Malory wrote "Le Morte d'Arthur" while imprisoned as did several other great writers. One of them wasn't in any way "great", but famous he is and will always be: Adolf Hitler. 

I must admit that I don't like the lack of reason behind some prison sentences, and I do have mixed feelings about prison sentences that give criminals the perfect settings for writing and publishing or painting. Maybe the problem is that these thieves, murderers, muggers, etc., etc., are NOT all that different from ordinary people who don't commit these crimes. Many who toil in low-paid jobs without any status, although they are the ones who make the wheels turn around in our society, would benefit from some time in a modern prison cell like the one above. I'm indignant of such a life being called a "punishment" as it would be a blessing to many good hard working, but under paid people.

https://incarcerationlaw.com/chapter/chapter-6-gallery/ 

 

https://www.nownovel.com/blog/12-incarcerated-writers/ 

 

Wikipedia

 

The Castration Game

 

Anna Bachmeier, what an angel!

This pretty German girl of seven, Anna Bachmeier, had the misfortune of catching the eye of a well-known pedophile and repeated sex offender, namely the 35 years old butcher, Klaus Grabowski. He told her that he had kittens in his home and she, who was a great animal lover, came to see them. Nobody seems to have warned her or her Mom, Marianne Bachmeier (1950-1996), of this sex crazed man who kidnapped, raped and killed the child when she came to see his presumed kittens on the 5th of May, 1980. Sadly enough this kidnapping and repeated rapes are not an uncommon scenery, because it has happened all over the planet, over and over again. Many women and girls have lost their lives because some man had an urge to commit these crimes, but still, this case is in many ways different from most of them as the mother of the victim, 30 years old Marianne Bachmeier, decided to revenge her child. When Klaus Grabowski was put on trial in 1981 she shot him in the courtroom, shouting: "This if for you, Anna!"

The bereaved mother sparked international interest and that may have helped her in her own trial as she only received a conviction of manslaughter and unlawful possession of a firearm. She was sentenced to six years in prison, but was released on bail after three. Many, all over the world, sympathized with her and found this short span of prison time appropriate for a killer like her: The bereaved mother. More came to be known of her life which may also have been in her favour: Her father, who was a heavy drinker, had been in Hitler's Waffen SS and he brought his Nazi brutality into the home of his family. At the age of 16 Marianne got pregnant and had to put the child up for adoption. Two years later the same happened once again, but when she godt pregnant the third time she decided to keep the child, her daughter Anna. 

The father of the child didn't commit to either her or their daughter so she had to do everything herself. The mother and daughter seem to have been very attached to each other even though it can't have been easy to be an unwed mother at that time. However, Marianne managed.

Two people lost their lives because of the sad assault on this child: Anna and her attacker, Klaus Grabowski. However, both might have lived had the sex maniac butcher not dodged the medical treatment he had been sentenced to receive after one of his repeated offences.

He was supposed to take testosterone suppressers, but cheated and even succeeded in getting hormone boosters from doctors who didn't know about him and his previous crimes. Had he accepted the medical treatment he would have been virtually castrated. Actually, Germany is one of the countries which adhere to this treatment of criminals who commit grave sexual offences. Denmark, along with Britain and Sweden, also use medical castrations when it's deemed necessary. Surgical castrations are more rare, but also in e.g. USA there are chemical castration laws, including in California, that's the first state to legalize the measure.  

However, private castrations as a female weapon against men and their various kinds of tyranny when it is at its worst is not all that uncommon. One of the best known cases is that of Lorena Bobbitt and her husband, John Wayne Bobbitt, but they are not the only ones. Women have sought revenge or protection against male assaults by harming one of the most vulnerable spots on their body, e.g. their penis, either by hand or by knife. A swift movement downwards of an erect penis may lead to a more or less untreatable injury that puts a stop to rape for all eternity, but strangely enough a severed penis like in the Bobbitt case may be treated surgically and (presumably) be cured. At least that's the message we get from Bobbitt's porn career after the attack by his wife. He did everything in his power to prove that he and his penis were still functional.

Several of these women who feel that they have to defend themselves by cutting off a man's penis say they did so to avoid rape. There are other ways, like e.g. this gadget: 

Some women who feel very vulnerable to males with criminal sex urges may resort to something like this "Rapex". I bet it works when used, but I doubt it's pleasant to the woman to wear. As to the men who meet a "Repex" or another gadget like it when they feel safe to force their way then I'm sure they will regret their actions ....

The vigilante mother, Marianne Bachmeier, became quite a "celebrity" after her deed

https://www.thenationalnews.com/world/europe/calls-for-germany-to-end-surgical-castration-of-sex-offenders-1.454019 

 

https://www.evidencelockerpodcast.com/transcripts/transcript-68-vigilante-mother-germany  

 

 

https://www.findlaw.com/criminal/criminal-charges/sex-offenders-and-sex-offenses-overview.html 

 

 

https://www.thenationalnews.com/world/europe/calls-for-germany-to-end-surgical-castration-of-sex-offenders-1.454019 

 

 

https://www.oddmurdersandmysteries.com/the-murder-of-anna-bachmeier/ 

 

 

https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/15223029/women-who-chopped-off-penises-more-than-once/ 

 

 

https://nypost.com/2023/02/27/woman-allegedly-cut-off-mans-penis-after-a-fight-about-sex/ 

 

 

https://firstcuriosity.com/featured/marianne-bachmeier-the-woman-who-killed-her-daughters-rapist-and-murderer-in-court/ 

 

 

https://decider.com/2019/02/19/lorena-john-wayne-bobbitt/ 

 

 

Wikipedia

The Emperor's Mistress: A Woman of Influence - or Not?

Marie Łączyńska, Countess Walewska and later on Countess d'Ornano, painting by François Gérard

The Polish countess Marie Walewska (1786-1817) was one of the famous women of European history who earned her fame from becoming the mistress of a powerful man, in this case the Emperor Napoleon I (1769-1821) of France. Rumours had it that he had fathered one of her three sons, namely Alexandre. However, her aging husband, Athenasius, Count Colonna-Walewski, behaved like a true gentleman and acknowledged him as his child, thus ignoring the infidelity of his wife. 

 

One of Marie's sons, Alexandre Walewski, who most likely was fathered by The Emperor, Napoleon I 

 

 

The young Marie

Marie was a lovely, young girl of 18 when she married the count who at that time was 68. It was a marriage of convenience as the Mother of Marie found that she had to sacrifice her beautiful, young daughter to save the family from bankruptcy after some ill-judged political adventures of her by then deceased husband, the father of Marie and her six siblings. However, as we know that was neither the first nor the last one of that kind of marriages so Marie may not have found it to be an unexpected surprise. 

 

Greta Garbo and Charles Boyer in the most famous of the movies about the couple

In the romantic movies about Marie and Napoleon it looks like they are overcome with genuine love and passion, but in reality - or at least according to Marie's memoirs - she had to force herself to get intimate with The Emperor, andf I suppose it may have been the same with her husband. With her husband it was for her family, and with Napoleon it was for her native country, Poland:

"The sacrifice was complete. It was all about harvesting fruit now, achieving this one single equivalence [convincing Napoleon to support Polish independence movement], which could excuse my debased position. This was the thought that possessed me. Ruling over my will it did not allow me to fall under the weight of my bad consciousness and sadness." (Quote from Wikipedia)

Being in for the Polish cause wasn't easy for Marie when Napoleon decided to divorce his barren empress, Josephine, to marry the Habsburg princess, Marie Louise, the eldest daughter of Emperor Francis II of Austria. That means that no matter what her reasons were for the affair with the emperor she had ended up in a tight spot when he decided to divorce his wife, the Empress Josephine, to marry the Habsburg princess Marie Louise for dynastic reasons. Would he help his mistress in her Polish crusade or would he side with his new father-in-law, the Austrian emperor, Francis II?

Marie Louise, the second wife of Napoleon I, born a Habsburg princess 

Of course Napoleon chose the latter over the first one even though that meant that Marie's fight for her beloved Poland would get sacrificed. Even though Napoleon had to leave his Polish mistress he saw to it that her - and their son's - future was assured by the grant of large land estates in The Kingdom of Naples. The home life of Marie was turned upside down in 1812 when she divorced her old husband, the count, claiming that it had been forced upon her. Not only did she get her divorce, but she also got half of his estates. Four years later she married her long time lover, the handsome count Philippe Antoine d'Ornano.  

Philippe Antoine d'Ornano. After giving birth to his son, Rudolph Augustus, in 1817 she died from kidney failure.

To me it's obvious that the fate of this Polish noblewoman mirrors that of many other women both before and after her. They make the best of their situation as "merchandise" in the patriarchal society, and I doubt that they have been too surprised at being forced into marrying 50 years older men whom they didn't love. The new French empress, The Habsburg princess, Marie Louise, didn't chose Napoleon who was the enemy of her people and her father, but she too made it work. Hopefully she didn't suffer too much in her marriage, but I bet she just sacrificed herself to something she considered a "higher purpose" like Marie said she did .... 

 

 

http://www.walewski.eu/upload//File/Journal_de_Marie_Walewska_version_anglaise.pdf

 

 

Wikipedia