The old saw that there would be no war if only women were in charge was proven true today by a story coming out of New Guinea. They’re right. If women were in charge there would be no war. There would only be mass infanticide of every male child.
A shocking report out of Papua New Guinea claims that for the past ten years, the members of the gentler sex in two villages have killed each and every male baby born in order to prevent them from growing up to become warriors and engaging in war.
Here are some quotes from the exceedingly sympathetic story from the Daily Mail via Ace of Spades:
“Babies grow into men and men turn into warriors,’ said Rona Luke, a village wife … It’s because of the terrible fights that have brought death and destruction to our villages for the past 20 years that all the womenfolk have agreed to have all new-born male babies killed,’ said Mrs Luke.
So congratulations! You stopped the death and destruction from being visited upon your village. You’ve actually just done it yourself. You’ve made modern day Herods of yourselves in order to prevent violence.
And this one:
‘It’s because of the terrible fights that have brought death and destruction to our villages for the past 20 years that all the womenfolk have agreed to have all new-born male babies killed,’ said Mrs Luke.
‘The women have had enough of men engaging in tribal conflicts and bringing misery to them.’
And presumably this little genocide has been misery free, making the act of childbirth a cliffhanger to see if a birth should be celebrated or mourned.
A resident of Agibu village, Mrs Luke said she did not know how many male babies were killed by being smothered, but it had happened to all males over a 10 year period – and she suggested it was still happening.
Choking back tears she added: ‘It’s a terrible, unbearable crime, but the women had to do it.
‘The women have really being forced into it as it’s the only means available to them as women to bring an end to tribal fights.’
OK. Let’s remember. The women are the victims here.
No word yet on how these two villages won’t die off for lack of males. Oh wait. I know. The moment another village which didn’t kill off all their male babies realizes that there are no men to defend the village they’ll come in and take over. And then there will be babies aplenty. Great job ladies! Brilliant!
November 29, 2008 at 4:09 pm
“Choking back tears she added: ‘It’s a terrible, unbearable crime, but the women had to do it.”
Keep your tears Madam. He was a liar and a murderer from the beginnig.
November 29, 2008 at 4:45 pm
I’m guessing this is hoax on some level. Maybe there is some killing of newborn males in these villages (which unfortunately would not be anything new in this world, except that it would reverse the normal pattern of female babies being the ones killed, at least in less technologically developed societies). However, I doubt anything like what is described here is really happening, for a variety of reasons, including:
1. This is the Daily Mail, not exactly the pinnacle of responsible reporting.
2. Primitive tribes tend to be pretty immediately conscious of the basic necessities of bodily survival in community, because they have to be to last 5 minutes, so it seems pretty unlikely that they wouldn’t see the self-defeating stupidity of this as well as we can.
3. No explanation is offered of whether or how they are getting the adult men to go along with this, which seems like an obvious question any responsible reporter would ask before publishing the story. If this community is really as described, the men presumably would want more young warriors.
4. I don’t know much about Papua New Guinea, but these places don’t seem to be tiny areas with very few people. In Agibu, one of the villages where this is supposedly taking place, the estimated population is 4521, according to this page. Thus, a policy like this would be very difficult to implement universally.
Moreover, this seems more consistent with Western media fantasies that abortion is a “women’s issue” than with what we know about reality. Women are not naturally inclined to kill their own children; indeed, they seem naturally more attached to their newborns than men. I simply don’t believe it would be possible to convince every mother in such a community, or even a large majority of mothers, to kill their newborn babies. I think something like this could only be accomplished by a strong central tyranny with the ability to go into everyone’s homes directly to physically enforce it.
November 29, 2008 at 5:28 pm
True or no, it is a decided non-feminine response (which is not to say it’s a masculine one, just that it’s so contrary to womanhood). Disturbing to say the least, but in this day and age… the only surprise is the gender of the victims. 🙁
~Zee
November 29, 2008 at 6:03 pm
Wait ’til there’s only one man left… and then we’ll see if women go to war with each other.
November 29, 2008 at 6:55 pm
I have worked in the past among many radical feminists…and have already died a thousand deaths — if looks and voices could kill for the crime of being a male…and worse, a white, heterosexual male. Most of these feminists were in the spectrum of progressive Judeo-Christians…who prided themselves on their social justice posturings…and many of them…some of the worse…polyester-clad nuns.
November 29, 2008 at 11:29 pm
“I simply don’t believe it would be possible to convince every mother in such a community, or even a large majority of mothers, to kill their newborn babies.” Alter that statement a bit and the statement could have been made about American mothers-to-be a generation ago,i.e. “I simply don’t believe it would be possible to convince so many mothers to abort their babies.” Yet, voila, here we be.
November 30, 2008 at 12:47 am
Well, we are already basically a generation past Roe v. Wade (and by that time abortions were already pretty common), so you would probably have to go back further than a generation to find a time when that statement would have sounded plausible. Regardless, though, although I take your point, I don’t think that your hypothetical statement is a minor alteration of what I said. It seems to me there is a considerable difference in the level of contradiction of human nature necessary in order to have a minority of mothers aborting some of their unborn children, versus a large majority of mothers killing all their newborn male children.
November 30, 2008 at 1:58 pm
Well Darcy, I don’t know how old you are or what part of the country you live in, but I’m old enough to have been of child-bearing age when Roe was passed, and abortion was definitely not common here at that time. The horror of unconcern or affirmation of abortion is the fruit of Roe, in my opinion. I work with many newborns who could just as easily have been aborted as born into this society, and it truly horrifies me, as much as the male-killing story.
December 1, 2008 at 5:27 pm
How Herodian.
Darcy – Just as an FYI, traditional Papuan culture is probably IMHO one of the most twisted societies on the earth. The separation of the sexes is SO complete that men and women have parallel societies, courts, laws and of course living structures. The women have 100% custody in what happens to the children until about age 8 when the boys are then taken for their initiation rites (you don’t want to know). So, in all probability this could have been going on for years with either ignorance or even sanction from the village men, since under their tribal law, it was within the women’s right to do so.
We must also remember that while there are definitely many traditional Papuan cultures still around, the majority of Papuans are now Christian. Roman, Greek and Norse societies were no more or less brutal before they were Christianised.
December 1, 2008 at 9:48 pm
The women in “Lysistrata” had a better solution for preventing war: they just held out on all the men until the guys were so tired of abstinence that they signed peace treaties.