Elizabeth Sheehy is a respected law professor working at the University of Ottawa, and on 15 December, UBC press will publish her recent book, Defending Battered Women on Trial.
The thesis of the book, stated explicitly in the final chapter, is that murder should be legitimized for women who kill their spouses or partners.
Yes, you read that correctly.
She told The Ottawa Citizen that “battered women can justly kill abusive partners ‘because a woman in that circumstance has already lived in captivity’”
Setting aside, just for a moment, the depravity that a Canadian professor of law is publishing a book arguing for the legalization of murder – specifically of men – we must wonder how someone this rabid can be “respected”.
Sheehy argues that women, unlike anyone we might think of as adults, or even as “people”, are so weak, so infantile, and so free of self-actualization, will, or personal volition that when they suddenly find themselves (as if blown by the wind) caught in a dysfunctional, abusive sexual relationship they are incapable of leaving.
Women, apparently, are merely the possessed dolls of their spouses or romantic partners. A woman in an abusive relationship, mystically becomes incapable of finding her shoes and walking out the door, dialing 9-1-1, contacting the police, or locating a publicly-funded shelter.
According to Stats Canada, in 2010 “there were 593 shelters for abused women operating across the country”. However, because Sheehy finds women so completely incompetent, incapable, and feeble, hundreds of shelters, relief organizations, government and non-government agencies, specially trained police departments, gynocentric courts, and twenty four hour support services are inadequate. The legal murder of a sleeping partner must be added to the options.
It reads like a hoax.
Remember that this murder-advocate is a professor of law at a major Canadian university. In a secondary article, The Ottawa Citizen even characterized Sheehy’s work as “rife with trenchant observations” after informing us that she is the recipient of “a prestigious award from the Canadian Bar Association for her scholarship on” none other than “women and the law.”
In Sheehy’s asinine fantasy world, she likens women in abusive relationships to prisoners of war. “We would never say of a prisoner of war that it’s not just that she or he kill their captor to escape. It is just to kill to escape that kind of enslavement.”
While the Canadian public understands that prisoners of war are generally kept in actual prisons – the kind with locking cells, guards, and layers of razor-wire topped fences – some Canadian lawyers are unclear on the difference. Civilians in Canadian society, even those with abusive or violent partners, tend not to live in guarded, secured prison facilities. They live in houses or condos or apartments.
The only person actually needing this to be pointed out is one sociopathic academic in an ugly dress: Elizabeth Sheehy, professor of law at the University of Ottawa.
Sheehy appreciates that previous experience of violent abuse (or simply the claim of such experience) is already recognized as a legal defence for murder in Canada. She was “pleasantly surprised by the higher-than-expected number who were either acquitted or had charges dropped. But she said it was ‘disappointing and worrisome’ to see how many women had pleaded guilty.”
Her solutions are to refine the definition of “excessive force” so that battered women can claim self-defence, give women a “statutory escape hatch” so they have no mandatory minimum penalty if found guilty, and only charge them with manslaughter so they aren’t afraid of fighting it in court. Why? Because Elizabeth Sheehy thinks charging battered women with murder is “so arbitrary”.
I think Sheehy has a different definition of “arbitrary” than the rest of us do.
Laws, as a professor of law should know, are not whimsical. A legal defense in one instance becomes applicable to other, similar, situations. For example, if a woman can use past abuse to reduce a murder charge then, if your son is bullied at school, he can legally bring his dad’s glock to school the next day and gun down his bully. Oh, whoops, no he can’t.
Let us not forget that men are roughly half the victims of reciprocal domestic violence, and are MORE than half the victims of adult, non-reciprocal domestic violence. However, a man abused in a violent relationship can not use past abuse to lessen the legal penalty of murdering another human being.
Here’s an alternate solution: If your spouse or partner hits you or abuses you, DON’T MURDER THEM, STUPID!!! You are supposed to remove yourself from that abuse – like a fucking grown up!
But according to Sheehy:
“While the legal system sometimes excuses battered women who kill abusive partners by accepting a verdict of manslaughter on compassionate grounds, that does not go far enough”
She absurdly argues that it is “unfair” to call women first-degree murderers because “[m]en can kill women with their bare hands, and they do. Women almost never kill men that way. They can’t”. Apparently, Sheehy seems to think we should forget there was a weapon used because women have trouble killing without one.
But she’s not really talking about fighting for your life against a violent aggressor in the heat of a desperate struggle. She’s defending the murder of a sleeping man, rather than simply using the opportunity to get the fuck out of the house.
And that is what UBC Press is publishing.
What level of blatant, depraved and malevolent corruption is required before a “respected” academic is treated correctly by the public as an evil and violent sociopath? This murder advocate, Elizabeth Sheehy, should properly be persona non grata in any area of civilized society but, instead, she gets a book deal.
When, three years ago, I posted a satirical article on AVFM announcing a new tourist industry for women traveling to Canada – namely, murder-tourism – I did so not expecting to be right.
Normally I like to be right.
