The Simple Art of Killing a Woman

There's nothing easier than learning to hate women. There is no shortage of teachers. Fathers teach it, the state teaches it, the legal system teaches it, the market teaches it, and culture, and propaganda.

Professions of the accused: soldier, electrician, builder's mate, farm laborer, civil servant, student. You could say that women killing is a democratic sort of crime.

Death has been kind to me, I thought. I haven't been run over by a lorry. I haven't fallen to a stray bullet. I have not been hastened toward death—rather, death has only dreamed of me; it has only knocked at my door. Tap, tap, tap. "I'm thinking of coming for you tonight at nightfall," death had said.

The conclusion I reached by my second week in court was this: we women are dying like flies. You men get hammered and kill us. Men want to fuck and kill us. Men get enraged and kill us. Men want a bit of fun and kill us. Men discover our lovers and kill us. We leave them and men kill us. Men get another lover and kill us. Men come home tired after work and kill us.

It seemed to be raising a piece of me that had been forgotten, something stifled inside me, a piece that on coming free levered up another, and so on and so on, down to the last lost piece, the furthest fallen, as good as buried—the one called "mother.

And the tense little smile that lingered on my face seemed to fire his eyes with a wild gleam, like you see in dogs before they attack. Until that moment, I'd never been hit before.

But there’s nothing easier than learning to hate women. There is no shortage of teachers. Fathers teach it, the state teaches it, the legal system teaches it, the market teaches it, and culture, and propaganda. But the best teacher, according to my colleague Bia, is pornography.

You never imagine that a guy like this, a Wittgenstein reader and yoga fan, will hit you in the face at a lawyers’ New Year’s Eve party. But the statistics show that it happens a lot. And that lots of men don’t stop at a slap. They’d actually rather kill you.

It doesn't matter where you are or what social class you belong to and it doesn't matter what you do for a living. It's dangerous being a woman.

I will never forget the unity maintained by the Ch'aska people, a unity that could never fit with the logic of trample-slash-burn-rob-and-sell—the stamp of every colonized country—and is instead rooted in the pulse of jungle life, in the endless unfurling of the cycles of birth, flowering, and return to earth. This now appeared to me to patently fundamental to any hope of human survival.

It was Alceu who killed Eudinéia & Heroilson who killed Iza & Wendeson who killed Regina & Marcelo who killed Soraia & Ermício who killed Silvana & Creso who killed Chirley & still more, Degmar was killed by Ádila & Ketlen was killed by Henrique & Rusyleid was killed by Tadeu & Juciele was killed by Itaan & Queila was killed by Roni & Jaqueline was killed by Sinval & Daniela was killed by Alberto & Raele was killed by Geraldo and none of these crimes...took any more than three hours of the court's time. ...And one crucial detail: Tadeu acted in self-defense, this must be pointed out. In legitimate self-defense, Tadeu cut off Rusyleid's head.

Professions of the accused: soldier, electrician, builder’s mate, farm laborer, civil servant, student. You could say that women-killing is a democratic sort of crime.

We work all day. We're independent. We have lovers. We giggle loudly. We support the household. We let it all go to shit. The strange this is we don't kill. It's incredible how rarely we kill. Given the stats on how many of us are dying, we ought to be killing more often.