Monday, October 10, 2011

A Suburban Stabbing



deeply shocking event here; deep in quiet suburbia, though if it had been a middle aged woman cyclist killed by lorry everyone would have queued up to blame the victim, I'm sure.
What is shocking I think is firstly the location, it is unsual. I lived in Camberwell up until 3 years ago and stabbings/ shootings were almost a weekly event for a short time. There was a recent stabbing of a young man in what had been my back garden! At that time I remember very little concern or sympathy even though a young man had been killed over the theft of a watch, apparently. He was just trying to get his watch back when someone killed him. The boy was not in a gang and nor was he acting in a criminal manner, as if that is any sort of justification for writing off a young life. It's not! But I digress. Victim blaming is becoming increasingly the norm in our society and so here's a killing where I think even the biggest c*nt posting on the internet would be unlikely to blame a suburban middle aged woman for her own random stabbing by another, younger, woman.
Also - it was a woman who did the stabbing, with a stolen knife. and it was - apparently - random.
All deeply disturbing I feel. But one wonders at the blood shed if we'd given in to the gun lobby in this country, Would this have been a US style shooting incident? No - I know, it's not right for me to be posting up conjecture; and I'm not, just trying to explain my initial feelings about the case. No doubt the young woman's state of mind will be examined in almost infinite detail over the next few weeks, and titalating details will be drip fed to tabloid readers as the whole family are dragged through the sh*t. But I won't be going back to it.

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