Fun!

Elizabeth recommended me for a weekend murder mystery gig. You go up to this weekend resort (upstate, I think) and improv throughout the weekend, having been assigned a character, and interact with the guests. It's almost a paid vacation as you only need to be "on" for like 5-6 hours a day, then the rest of the time you can be on your own and have fun at the resort. Plus the magic words "OPEN BAR." I got the email last night from her friend who runs these, and called him back and we talked about what kind of character I'd be playing. At first I was supposed to be playing a nerd, then he saw my headshot and decided I'd be better as the nerd who morphs into the hot librarian vixen. We leave at noon on Friday and get back Sunday afternoon.

It's basically a zero-sum game, as the money I'll be making is about as much as I'd earn temping on Friday (which I'll have to take off) but it's still a PAID VACATION. Plus a chance to network, have FUN, and get out of the city for two days. Oh yeah, and OPEN BAR.

Elizabeth is awesome. Who knew when we first bonded over the Black Death she'd be sliding gigs my way? She rocketh.

Mothers Who Kill

Andrea Yates is getting a new trial--her conviction has been overturned.

When this first came out, there appeared an article about infanticide on Slate.com which, thankfully, is being rerun now. The article is fascinating--one thing that angers me about the press coverage of this case is that there WAS so much. That is, there was a disproportionate amount compared to say, this guy. Or this guy. How come everyone--everyone--knows the names of Susan Smith and Andrea Yates, and no one knows Marc Wesson's? He killed nine people--more than both Susan Smith and Andrea Yates combined--and some of them were not only his children, he fathered them by his own daughters. So how come the Yates story got so much more publicity? I think there's a deep, subconscious belief that you expect men to do stuff like this--after all, men account for more than 80% of all violent crimes--and therefore it's not news. Whereas when a woman does it, a mother, it's so horrific and unusual, we all know their names. Except that mothers account for roughly 50% of all parental murders. And Marc Wesson's crime is much sicker and more unusual--more newsworthy--than the Yates story--polygamy, incest, mass murder. I of course have a huge problem with this double standard--I think any parent killing their own children is horrific, and I think this kind of

Now, lwith respect to legal verdicts--the Slate article makes a distinction that children are still considered to be the property of the mother, and that mothers who kill are considered to be sick, whereas fathers who kill are considered criminals. I certainly think Andrea Yates was sick (although I have a lot of contempt for her husband who apparently wanted as many kids as he could pump out of her, no matter that she'd had episodes of post-partum psychosis even before Mary's birth, the last one born). However, Susan Yates lied about how her children died, and made up an elaborate story designed to defer suspicion onto someone else, and Diane Downs also lied to throw off suspicion. They knew what they were doing. I sure don't think mothers who kill are automatically sick or not--I think they should be judged from the same set of assumptions and social constructs as fathers who kill.

(Although some of the distinctions are fascinating and perhaps even relevant. I don't know--I just feel there's a reflexive inequity in disparate media and legal treatment of male and female filicides.)

Another interesting thing about the Slate article:

And mothers frequently dispose of the corpses in what researchers call a "womblike" fashion. Bodies are swaddled, submerged in water, or wrapped in plastic. Moreover, the NCMEC study showed that while the victims of maternal killings are almost always found either in or close to the home, fathers will, on average, dispose of the bodies hundreds of miles away. All these behaviors suggest that women associate these murders with themselves, their homes, and their bodies.

And more:

...Studies further reveal that fathers are far more likely to commit suicide after killing their children. Mothers attempt post-filicide suicide but rarely succeed. Some scholars suggest this is because mothers tend to view their children as mere extensions of themselves and that these homicides are in fact suicidal.

Very interesting. I'm glad they reran this article--it really makes me think.