You are an anonymous professional assassin with a perfect reputation. You lead an ordinary life outside of your work. You’ve just been hired to kill yourself.
My first thought is that the middle man I use–calls himself ‘Leader’, real name Brett Thompson, 46, balding, lives in PA–has uncovered my identity. Why else would I be staring down at a picture of my own face? I think it’s a warning, that he knows about the Sanchez job, and I nearly reach for my go bag.
Then I see the client’s name.
Vi Larson, the file tells me, male, 32, computer analyst.
I close the manila folder, tossing it away from me. The whiskey sour’s gone warm in my hand, but I drink it down anyway, eyes distant. I don’t need to read any more of the file. I can fill in the gaps well enough.
Funnily enough, this betrayal is just as sharp and unpleasant as the first one, the one that got me into this business in the first place.
“You at least owe me a crime of passion, you bastard,” I mutter into my drink. I close my eyes and sigh, willing away the stinging in my heart. I knew that my relationship was in trouble, but this is just cold.
In a way, I can’t believe it. Is a divorce really that hard? But, no, I know Vi. He’s methodical, analytical, and competent. If anything, hiring an assassin with a reputation like mine is right in line with his personality. Nothing but the best, even in the murder game.
I should be flattered, really. My rates aren’t cheap. Whatever I did to make him send this in–and he did, there’s his social security, his fingerprint, everything–it must have been killer.
I set my glass down on the counter and tuck the folder under my arm. I need to think and I do my best thinking in the tub. Vi won’t be back from his “business” trip for another three days, during which I’m supposed to kill myself.
As I head up the stairs, I can’t help but laugh. Finally, after three years of marriage, my husband does something interesting. And it breaks my fucking heart.
——————————————
He wants me to make it painless but horrific. There’s a script in the document, something that’s more common than people think, and it’s hard to read it, even surrounded by bubbles and soothing music.
“Your husband sent me. Said he needed to shed some dead weight.” I snort at the pun and close my eyes, resting the file against my face so it doesn’t get wet. Unfortunately, the tears do that anyway.
Working as a veterinarian means you end up doing a lot of work with people. This gives you a lot of opportunity for people watching, and you notice patterns of behaviour. This is useful because it helps you realise what these clients need, but don’t want to ask you.
I’ve noticed that when people start to tell you about their pet’s life story, particularly their origin story, they’re already grappling with the idea that they’re about to lose their pet, even if they don’t know it yet. It’s like they know they’re about to be devastated, it’s a fast attempt to make me, the veterinarian, understand why their pet in particular is so very special to them. It’s a cry for validation that the grief that is about to wash over them is valid and justified.
I already know their grief is real and justified, even if it’s the first time I’ve met the animal and family. You can see it. It might be the family pet, but most of the time that pet has one special human that is their favourite, one human that loves them just a little bit more than the others, and I can see it on their faces.
The origin stories are all the same, and all unique.
“He was the runt of the litter and had to be put on a table so the other pups would stop bullying him while I was there. I went back and had to have him.”
“She was my daughter’s dog, but we started dog sitting when she had her first baby and then she just never left.”
“I’ve had him since he was three weeks old, a tiny scrap of fluff we found under the tomato bush and bottle fed.”
“The cat just walked into our new house like she owned the place, terrorised the dog and never wanted to leave.”
“She had kittens under the chair on my veranda, so I took her inside to make her comfortable.”
They’re all heartfelt stories of beautiful, ordinary moments that make life special, but they’re always told around the time of euthanasia. Some tell them before they’ve accepted the fact that they need to say goodbye, some say it afterwards as they’re composing themselves.
I was working emergency yesterday, a gruelling twelve hour shift on a public holiday. I had several palliative care and complex medical cases on the go from the previous weeks, and because I hate to leave my clients and patients without a plan I had told them which emergency clinic I would be working at so they could contact me if they were unsure about anything. It’s better for your long term sanity than handing out your mobile number to clients, which I can’t answer in work hours anyway.
When I arrive at my emergency shift at midday I find one of my patients waiting for me in a cage, hooked up to pain relief and looking miserable. The hospital vet hands over responsibility for her to me, and I go through her blood results. Pancreatitis and massive inflammation, in addition to everything else she has going on.
The day goes on, crazy busy, and ten hours later she’s starting to look worse. Puffing, ventral oedema and a subtle bruise colour developing on her shaved abdomen.
At shift handover I explain the dog’s story to the night vet at the start of her shift.
“Her owner died a few months ago, and the day of his funeral the patient had her first seizure. Subsequently also diagnosed with heart disease. At 1 month recheck noted weight loss and identified abdominal mass. Wife wasn’t going to put her through surgery, then got an attack of the guilts because her husband would have done anything for this dog. Mass is single lobe of liver, hugely distended, while rest of liver appears normal. Results are most likely liver tumour at base of lobe, undefined. Patient nearly died under anaesthetic but has been recovering well these last ten days until presentation. She’s anxious in hospital and wont eat without her humans around, her favourite is chicken.”
I told her origin story. I really knew, but didn’t want to accept, that my patient wouldn’t be leaving ICU and I put her to sleep a few hours later. Since her owner’s death it seems like she’d been trying very hard to join him, between the seizures, heart disease, liver tumour, pancreatitis and DIC.
I don’t cry over many patients, but I did for her.
And I told her origin story.
Very few things will make me tear up, but this did.
A couple years ago, I ran across this quote in a book called The Thirteenth Tale that has always stuck with me: “All children mythologise their birth. It is a universal trait. You want to know someone? Heart, mind and soul? Ask him to tell you about when he was born.”
We all write our the histories of our lives in the stories we tell. We frame our experiences, our important moments, our lessons, in the ways we communicate them, until those words become our reality. And for our pets, who can’t tell their own stories, we do it for them.
When people tell your the origin stories of their pets, they’re telling you who the animal is, and who it is to them. They’re telling you about the birth of a family.
Do you know how many dogs I’ve met that get scared or anxious around men because in their previous home men hit them? A lot, and they are very protective of the women who have adopted them now.
Men who are violent towards women are often violent towards animals as well. They think we’re all chattel. If a man wants you to choose between your dog or cat or him, dump the guy. Those animals will love you for the rest of your life, loyal and true.
Actually, I have something to add.
The other day I saw a story where a woman was asking why her dogs had suddenly started growling at her boyfriend whenever he was in the same room as her son.
And my immediate thought was ‘that boyfriend has hurt the kid somehow.’
Spoilers: that was exactly the case.
Trust ur dogs when they say something is off.
The first time my sister came to visit, via plane, after I got my dog, pupper growled at her and wouldn’t go near her for the first day. Next visit was by car (two day drive)and pupper LOVED my sister. They snuggled and played and none of us could figure out why the change. We thought maybe the scent of my sisters cat had lingered on her clothes, making that first visit a rough one. Whereas when she came by car, the scent had had time to wear off. Well that was partially true…
Fast forward about six months when I went north to visit my family. My sister walked into my parents’ house and pupper ran to greet my sister. Stopped dead in her tracks and started growling and barking. Hackles raised, full protection mode. My sisters husband had just walked in behind her.
My precious puppy wanted NOTHING to do with him. She barked, growled, ran away, and sat between him and my sister. Y’all my dog had spent maybe a weekend a half around my sister but protected her like this was her flesh and blood.
Eventually, my sister filed for divorce on grounds of “Extreme and repeated mental, emotional, and sexual abuse.” Divorce was final in less than a month because her claims were substantiated.
Trust the dog, honey. They KNOW.
I’ve never owned dogs, but I used to work with horses (which are a lot like big dogs).
There was this one horse I worked with named Tonto. He was a doll. He followed me like a puppy, snuck treats out of my pocket, he was the sweetest thing. We were practically inseparable.
A guy I was considering dating came to visit me one day, and Tonto wanted NOTHING to do with him. Normally well behaved, he shoved himself between us and would NOT let this guy near me. He was stomping, acting really aggressive, and tried to bite the guy. This horse was practically dragging me back toward the barn. At that moment, despite being like, 17, I knew something was up, and ultimately things didn’t pan out for guy and me.
A year later I found out he had lied about his age (he said he was 18 but he was actually 27) he was arrested for sexually assaulting an 11 year old girl.
For months, every morning when my daughter was in preschool, I watched her construct an elaborate castle out of blocks, colorful plastic discs, bits of rope, ribbons and feathers, only to have the same little boy gleefully destroy it within seconds of its completion.
No matter how many times he did it, his parents never swooped in BEFORE the morning’s live 3-D reenactment of “Invasion of AstroMonster.” This is what they’d say repeatedly:
“You know! Boys will be boys!”
“He’s just going through a phase!”
“He’s such a boy! He LOVES destroying things!”
“Oh my god! Girls and boys are SO different!”
“He. Just. Can’t. Help himself!”
I tried to teach my daughter how to stop this from happening. She asked him politely not to do it. We talked about some things she might do. She moved where she built. She stood in his way. She built a stronger foundation to the castle, so that, if he did get to it, she wouldn’t have to rebuild the whole thing. In the meantime, I imagine his parents thinking, “What red-blooded boy wouldn’t knock it down?”
Her consent didn’t matter. Besides, it’s not like she made a big fuss when he knocked it down. It wasn’t a “legitimate” knocking over if she didn’t throw a tantrum.
His desire — for power, destruction, control, whatever- – was understandable.
I know it’s a lurid metaphor, but I taught my daughter the preschool block precursor of don’t “get raped” and this child, Boy #1, did not learn the preschool equivalent of “don’t rape.”
Not once did his parents talk to him about invading another person’s space and claiming for his own purposes something that was not his to claim. Respect for her and her work and words was not something he was learning. How much of the boy’s behavior in coming years would be excused in these ways, be calibrated to meet these expectations and enforce the “rules” his parents kept repeating?
There was another boy who, similarly, decided to knock down her castle one day. When he did it his mother took him in hand, explained to him that it was not his to destroy, asked him how he thought my daughter felt after working so hard on her building and walked over with him so he could apologize. That probably wasn’t much fun for him, but he did not do it again.
There was a third child. He was really smart. He asked if he could knock her building down. She, beneficent ruler of all pre-circle-time castle construction, said yes… but only after she was done building it and said it was OK. They worked out a plan together and eventually he started building things with her and they would both knock the thing down with unadulterated joy. You can’t make this stuff up.
Take each of these three boys and consider what he might do when he’s older, say, at college, drunk at a party, mad at an ex-girlfriend who rebuffs him and uses words that she expects will be meaningful and respecte, “No, I don’t want to. Stop. Leave.”
This is so brilliant. We learn things from socialization process. What our parents, friends and peers do, media and all. I think perhaps rape is because parents think boys will be boys, they bully, fight and destroy things, it’s their characteristics so they don’t bother to stop them. But it manifests in them, knowing or unknowingly, they will just think, because I’m a boy and boys tend to do these, so it doesn’t matter even if the girl hates it, says no, because I’m a boy.
Just reblog this, this message is really powerful. For parents and future parents.
What’s also interesting, is if you frame this as about spoiling your children, and about spoiled children, people tend to agree and get it. They’ll agree that children whose parents lay down no boundaries for them when they hurt others, who let them have whatever they want at the expense of others, and justify away the harm they do, will probably grow up thinking they can do this to others (usually weaker than them, or they perceive as weaker) as adults. But if you mention the word “privilege”, “entitlement” or anything relating to gender, everybody freaks the f- out and will deny up, down, back, forth, and sideways that how you raise a child, what you allow them to get away with, or training them that their hurtful behaviour will always be justified, can affect them at all.
More than 100 gay men have been detained “in connection with their nontraditional sexual orientation, or suspicion of such,”according to the New York Times, which cites the opposition newspaper Novaya Gazeta. The Russian newspaper says it confirmed the news with government officials and an analyst of the region also confirmed the news to the Times with her own sources.
Three men are known to have been murdered, although the real number is likely to be higher.
in almost every genocide, the first “act” is the rounding up and killing of a group of men, specifically.
In “root and branch”
genocides they [”civilian men of ‘battle age’”] are often the first group to be separated out and massacred, paving the
way for the murder of women, children, and elderly men. In more common articulations
of genocide, however, they can be the only group slated for outright massacre, while
women, children, and elderly men suffer a range of alternative fates involving rape, sexual
exploitation, torture, forced maternity, murder, and expulsion.
as the rest of this article explains this isn’t to say that men have it worst in a genocide, but that it’s important when you see a very common red flag for genocide to pay attention to the “conflict” in case any more markers of an impending genocide occur.
the g word is really loaded and i’m not bringing this up because i want to start an avalanche of “CHECHNYA IS COMMITTING GENOCIDE AGAINST GAY PEOPLE” fear mongering (that is the absolute last thing that i want). it’s just not possible to prevent any genocide without questioning whether a current conflict might eventually get there. and i do not think it’s nothing that genocide watch is reporting on this.
Russian newspapers and human rights groups report that more than 100 gay men have been detained “in connection with their non-traditional sexual orientation, or suspicion of such” as part of a purge. Several people were also reportedly feared dead following violent raids.
In a chilling response, a Chechen government spokesperson denied that there are any gay people to detain, insisting that “you can’t detain and harass someone who doesn’t exist in the republic”. The Kremlin denied any knowledge of a purge.
But reports have since emerged that the men arrested are being kept in horrific concentration camp prisons, where violent abuse and torture is common.
Based on interviews with eyewitnesses and survivors, Novaya Gazeta reports that a secret prison has been set up in the town of Argun to detain the men arrested in the purge.
One man who was released from the camp told the newspaper that he was subjected to violent “interrogations” at the camp, as Chechen officials attempted to get him to confess the names and locations of more gay men.
The officials also seized his mobile phone, targeting his network of contacts regardless of whether they were gay or not.
The camp was reportedly set up by Chechen forces in a former military headquarters in the town.
The newspaper reports allegations that the Speaker of the Parliament of Chechnya was among officials to visit the site, though the claims have not been substantiated.
The detainees face electric shock torture and violent beatings, while some of them have been held to ransom and used to extort their families.
Tanya Lokshina of Human Rights Watch wrote: “For several weeks now, a brutal campaign against LGBT people has been sweeping through Chechnya.
She continued: “Law enforcement and security agency officials under control of the ruthless head of the Chechen Republic, Ramzan Kadyrov, have rounded up dozens of men on suspicion of being gay, torturing and humiliating the victims.
“Some of the men have forcibly disappeared. Others were returned to their families barely alive from beatings. At least three men apparently have died since this brutal campaign began.”
She added: “These days, very few people in Chechnya dare speak to human rights monitors or journalists even anonymously because the climate of fear is overwhelming and people have been largely intimidated into silence.
“Filing an official complaint against local security officials is extremely dangerous, as retaliation by local authorities is practically inevitable.
“It is difficult to overstate just how vulnerable LGBT people are in Chechnya, where homophobia is intense and rampant.
“LGBT people are in danger not only of persecution by the authorities but also of falling victim to ‘honour killings’ by their own relatives for tarnishing family honour.”
Alexander Artmyev from Amnesty International spoke to Metro.co.uk.
He said that people who are not in Russia can help by joining the charity’s Urgent Action on Chechnya.
The action encourages people to write in Russian or your own language to Chairman of the Investigation Committee and Acting Head of the Investigation Committee for the Chechen Republic.
Amnesty has also asked the letter, which should ask for an investigation and appeal for protection for LGBT individuals, to be copied into Human Rights groups and diplomatic missions from your country.
I’m probably going to get a lot of hate for this, but here goes nothing:
In the midst of everything going on in the world right now, in the midst of all of the amazingly important fights being fought for incredibly essential causes, can we please, please, please take a bit of a step back from the “future is female” rhetoric, or at least take a serious, hard introspective look at the ways it’s incredibly binary and gender essentialist (and often cyclically misogynist) itself?
It absolutely crushes me that I feel like I’ve had an incredibly hard time participating in recent vital social conversations, but every time I see rhetoric used like “if only girls ruled the world, we would already have world peace,” I can’t help but recoil a bit. If by “the future is female,” you mean that you’re campaigning for a world where we don’t need to even have conversations anymore about equal rights regardless of gender, I am with you more than I can express, and please keep on fighting, and I’ll keep on fighting right beside you even harder. But so often, that doesn’t seem like what’s meant by “the future is female,” or at least it’s not how it’s coming across, always.
“If girls ruled the world, we would already have world peace” is not feminism, full stop. End of debate.
It’s Ryan-Gosling-feminism-lite, where women are special snowflake beings of pure virginal light who no man could ever hope to hold a candle to the moral piety of. It’s a slippery slope to the view that gender roles are essential and innate, so that men can hold doors open for women and always pay the bill at the restaurant out of chauvinistic chivalry. It’s a slippery slope to propping up the white, middle-class, straight, Christian, enforced-picket-fence-child-rearing-nuclear-family-unit kyriarchy just as hard on our side as on theirs.
It’s more of the same “girls girls girls are just the bestest and so soft and sweet and wonderful and made of sunshine and flowers and rainbows and unicorn sparkles and hair braiding while giggling drunkenly in a bathroom at a party” that turns all possible relationships between women into bestie BFF friendship bracelet making therapy sessions, which is especially erasive of the queer female experience, and more broadly, female sexuality, and more broadly even than that, female productive and creative energy in general, and its ability to exist outside of the presence of a man. It’s horrifically TERF-y and makes trans boys and other nonbinary individuals (including all the ones out there in red-state middle America who will never have the words and safe space to say that out loud or to identify that that’s what the unease inside them is) internalize a shit ton of self-hatred that maybe their identity is only a product of their internalized misogyny. It’s horrifically white feminist, see: the white female election vote debacle.
It’s incredibly erasive of the complexity of women as, you know.
People.
Not pure virginal white light vessels or soft unicorn rainbow sparkle hair-braiders or moon children witches with a special connection to mother earth or sassy bad bitches doing it for the sisterhood or whatever other ways we as feminists make ourselves into one dimensional stereotypes all on our own.
Fuck that noise.
Women are humans.
Listen: I’ve unfortunately known a lot of shitty, abusive, toxic people in my life. And a great deal of them were women, since as full and proper humans and not emblems of pure middle-school-BFF white light, women have the capacity inside them to be terrible, or wonderful, or terrible and wonderful all at once. And while our society at large so often excuses terrible men for heinous acts, which is the entire point of so many conversations happening right now, our society also so often pretends that – in ways that all stem back to misogyny just the same – equally terrible women just don’t exist full stop.
And that lets terrible women slip under the radar and hide under the sheepskin of the patriarchy. That allows us, in liberal social justice conversation circles, to decry the actions of a violent abusive man as an emblem of everything that’s wrong with the patriarchy, but too often, when a woman (especially a white, able-bodied, gender-presentation-conforming, physically attractive one) takes equally violent actions, we prop it up as the “sisterhood” finally getting “karmic justice” on the patriarchy, which isn’t any better than female rapists and pedophiles being tongue-tutted at with a wink by grown men as “naughty naughty girls” their fourteen-year-old libidos wish they had as a high school teacher. That allows – in something I’ve personally experienced in my life, and I know I can’t be the only one – for judicial and law enforcement officials, social workers and children’s services employees, and so many others in positions of authority across the country to dismiss cases of female-on-female violence as something that can surely be hugged out over a good talk and a cup of tea.
That so often allows us to not recognize, not even know how to begin to recognize, abusive behavior when it comes from a source with a body our society genders as female. Especially when that abuse is being directed at another person with a body recognized as female, especially if that abuse isn’t the kind we societally gender as masculine (physical force, neglect, aggression) but is the kind we gender as feminine (emotional and psychological abuse, hypersurveillance, gaslighting). Especially if that relationship isn’t a sexual one where someone wears the lip gloss and someone has the buzz cut. Especially when that relationship is a parent/child(-of any gender) one where the “unending purity and graciousness of a mother’s love” allows unfathomable numbers of women to abuse children and get away with it completely unrecognized.
If conceptually reclaiming your womanhood (or, same at you, dude feminists, reclaiming the womanhood of people you love) in some way is important to you and your identity, that’s incredible, and I support you wholeheartedly with whatever you need to do for that. And it should go without stating that I’m 1000% onboard and then some with dismantling the garbage of the patriarchy that got us here to the hot mess that is 2017. And women’s marches and declarations of feminist identity and all are so unbelievably, unbearably important right now, in the face of so many civil rights dangers, and please don’t misinterpret that I’m advocating against them somehow.
But before you tangle up your “girls run the world” rhetoric into fighting this fight we’re right now, please stop and consider all the people who have been abused by terrible women, too. Please stop to consider what your strong independent white feminism is doing to women of color, queer women, the trans/nonbinary community, victims of female abusers, and others whose experiences are too intersectional to conform with a single idea of reclamative womanhood.
If women (exclusively, hierarchically, systematically, in isolation) ran the world, we wouldn’t have world peace – we’d probably be in just as much of a mess, albeit maybe in different ways, than we are right now, because people are people are people, full stop, end of debate.
Let’s all run the world together, please? That’s the only way it’s going to get any better.
So this has been the news of Ireland for the past day. 796 remains of children where discarded and hidden away by the Bon Secours nuns in a septic tank on the grounds of an old “mother and babies” home in Tuam Co. Galway from sometime in the 1920s until the 1960s. These homes were common in Ireland to where unmarried mothers were sent to because they’ve brought shame on their family in the eyes of their religion.
I’d appreciate it if this was spread around on tumblr because many people don’t realise that this was what happened in this country. The General reaction from Irish folk was dismay and disgust and most importantly many were “not surprised” when this report’s findings were released. And The Catholic Church still has a stronghold on the country today.
And in unsurprising news the Irish pro-life groups and infamous spokespeople have been silent so far in condemning the actions and atrocities of the Catholic Church.
I’d add this comment, from a pissed off Irish bloke on fb:
^ these people covered up the deaths of born children in a septic tank but they are the moral authority on whether women can get rid of unwanted pregnancies?
I don’t read the news and I haven’t listened to the radio in the last few days so I’ve no idea if this has been widely reported in the British news, but this is the first I’d heard of it. I’ve done a bit of reading now. My mum grewup in C Cork, near Galway (where the grave was found), and was a teenager in Ireland in the 60s. The thought that getting pregnant, whether consensual or not, could have landed her in one of these places, and my resultant half-sibling in a septic tank grave, is horrifying.
It’s worth noting this is not the first time mass graves have been discovered attatched to former Mothers and Babies Homes and Magdalene Lanudaries. In 1993, 155 corpses were exhumed from a Sisters of Our Lady of Charity home in Dublin. In that case, even as the bodies were exhumed (the Sisters had sold the land to a property developer to recoup losses they’d made on the stock market, yes really) it was not reported. However, as word spread outrage did grow, leading to the enquiries and damning reports into these institutions later in the decade.
In the above more recent case, it was apparently fairly common knowledge locally that the site contained a mass grave since two boys stumbled across it in 1975. It’s horribly safe to assume that these two cases aren’t isolated and that there are many more mass graves in Ireland.
The children died of ‘natural’ causes, but neglect, malnutition and abuse hurried many on their way, or killed otherwise healthy children outright.
Steel Phoenix Studios 