Call to action: defense fund needed!

Some poor woman has been charged with torture for cutting off her husband's penis and then putting it in the garbage disposal. Where's the justice? This wrongly demonized woman has a very clear justification for her actions. "He deserved it," she said. That's good enough for me.

Though the Associated Press story on this incident chooses to quote a female representative of the district attorney's office, it's quite clear a penis-wearer initiated these charges. I have feminist Facebook friends. I know we've been beaten down by our patriarchal overlords. I know he deserved it. She didn't even have to say it.

Much has been made of the racial divide in how Americans viewed the verdict in the O.J. Simpson trial. Different life experiences of different groups caused people to look at the exact same set of information and come away with completely different truths.

Very early in an upper-level college course on terrorism we dealt with the definitions of "terror," and "terrorist," and contrasted those terms with "crime," "freedom fighter," and the like. We were given a list of acts and told to label and discuss which were acts of terror, which were crimes.

One of the cases on the list was Lorena Bobbit's surgical alteration of her husband's genitals. Approximately 80% of the females in the room said, "neither." Approximately 100% of the males in the room cringed at the very mention of her name and looked very nervous as they realized that the educated, usually rational women in the room were totally serious. 

It's easy to say, objectively, that it's probably wrong to take a man's best friend away from him with a knife, or scissors, or chain saw, or bolt cutters, or slowly with a thin string tied very, very tight or with any of the cool, specialized tools a Google Images search of the word "castration" shows.

Women should probably worry a little about the details of just what the guy supposedly did to deserve a little snip, snip.

But we don't.

If anyone gets word on where we can contribute to this woman's defense or general welfare, please let me know. After all, it's not like she just threw the thing out the car window.