I would like to ledge a formal complaint about the entire of the so-called journalist class in Australia, and the evil misreporting of the murder of Lillie James.
I shall not go into the specific details of the case because quite frankly I do not know anything other than what the media has told us; but I do take issue with the way that this has been reported and the language used.
Everything that we believe about how the world works, is shaped by the use of language and stories. I absolutely reject the notion that anyone is areligious for instance, because everyone without exception believes something about how the world works and has a set of practices based upon that belief set. In the broadest sense, everyone has a belief set and everyone has a religion of sorts.
Everyone's internal belief set and religion is based upon the information received by the individual. News media outlets, whose job it is to collect and report on what has happened, are generators of a lot of the information received by the individual.
This means that the stories and language employed by news media organisations, has an outsized effect on what the general public at large believes and what they then do. Very clearly, media organisations in the broadest sense shape peoples' belief sets and their religion. The Australian newspaper used to have a statement on its website that its purpose was to shape the national converstation, or something to that effect; this says to me that news media organisations are keenly aware of their position in the kosmos and as for-profit-organisations have a vested interest in making sure that the general public at large believes certain things.
What does this have to do with "violence against women"? Simply, the reportage of this is very much a protection racket for the powerful and often rich people) who desire to get away with it, so that they can continue to be powerful and rich. If a poorer person were to do these things, then the story reported would look quite different as they are an acceptable target and can be demonised (justice is sometimes acceptable if the target is orthodox); which makes the media organisation appear in a better light.
The broadest of facts in the case of Paul Thijssen murdering Lillie James, are that this happened inside St Andrew's Cathedral School. What we have here is a private school, in the centre of the city, with a lot of richer and presumably more powerful people's children attending. This case has been generally reported that Paul Thijssen had a psychotic episode; who suddenly flipped out one day. He was even reported as being a "good man"; which is also a common trope which is used to whitewash over murder.
I am not a clinical physician. I am not a psychologist. I am not qualified to make a statement for which I would appear as an expert witness in court. However, I have been in and around the courts, both as a recorder in civil and criminal cases, including ERISP (Electronic Recording and Interrogation of Suspicious Persons), and in a forensic accounting firm in many Family Law cases for more than 20 years. Take what I am about to say as some times Forensis Amicus.
Psychotic episodes do not just appear. No story is told or exists in a vacuum. Ask some really really basic questions. What is more likely?
Is it more likely that someone with no history at all of psychotic episodes just happened to have his very first one immediately just after buying a hammer and arranging to meet his ex-girlfriend? Or, is it more likely that a man who was raised and continually washed in an environment of entitled masculinity, then played out an all too familiar trope of a murder-suicide act?
Do you see the problem here? This is not a case of "violence against women". Any and every claim that this man had to be a "good man" was instantly dissolved by deliberate action on his part. Including if she was awful to him, murdering her is not commensurate to what she has done. There is not just a passive victim here. There is an active murderer.
This is something that makes me quite angry with the news media in this country. The way that news media organisations report things, is also a deliberate use of language. We talk about how many women were raped last year; not about how many men raped women. We talk about how many women were sexually harassed at the workplace; not about how many men harassed women. We talk about how many teenage girls got pregnant last year; not about how many men and boys impregnated teenage girls.
Use of the passive voice in terms of tense and verbage, has a very obvious political effect. Not only does it shift the focus away from men and boys who perpetrate rape, harassment and violence, it shifts that focus onto women and girls. Even the term "violence against women" which is a passive voice construction, is evil. There is no agent in the term. This is just a thing that happens against women but within in the confines of the term "violence against women", nobody is actually doing it to them. Men who do this, are not named and within the confines of the term not even named.
Of course this is exacerbated when news media organisations have the convenient legal responsibility to report that a rapist, murderer, or harasser has the legal position of being innocent until proven guilty. In certain high profile rape cases, where news media organisations have connections to the accused, they can and do run screen for them.
In this case though, where the murderer has murdered, the various news media organisations still want to paint this in the passive voice. The only conclusion that I can come to is that the news media organisations think that sexual harassment, rape, and murder, is both morally acceptable because it happens against women.
Why are sexual harassment, rape, and murder, morally acceptable by the various news media organisations in this country? Because they are run by powerful and rich men, who not only want to get away with what they do but they have a vested interest in making sure that you believe certain things.
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