Women’s secret sect raided after follower dies in savage beating

Source: the times

Police raided the headquarters of a secretive, female-dominated cult yesterday after one of its followers was beaten to death, allegedly for failing to carry out a group ritual properly.

Detectives believe that about ten followers of the Kigenkai cult subjected Motoko Okuno, 63, to an hour-long ordeal of kicks and punches, and there are fears that the cult may have carried out more violent attacks in the past.

Four hundred police officers raided several of the sect’s premises and hauled in for questioning more than 20 of its leaders - all women. Several of those led away from the cult’s compound were teenagers.

Detective initially suspected Ms Okuno’s husband, daughters and son-in-law, who all said that the violence was the result of persistent family quarrels. But when they discovered that the family were all members of the sect, they began to focus their investigation on the cult itself.


Read more: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article2662749.ece

And the next time one of your run-of-the-mill loony violent religious cults is involved in a murder, the media will all refer to the cult as "male-dominated" ...

When a "run-of-the-mill loony violent religious cults is involved in a murder" we all just ASSUME it's a man running the thing, and if we further assumed it mostly a scheme for the male leadership of said cult to get rich quick and have sex with underage girls, we probably wouldn't be all that far off base.

It's like assuming that everyone is white unless it is specified otherwise. Or assuming everyone is straight unless it is specified otherwise. Or assuming everyone is Christian unless specified otherwise. Or calling something a "cult" instead of a "church group."

In the modern usage of the word cult, the reason for assumptions such as being male-dominated are based on past experiences such as Jonestown, David Koresh, etc. To be frank, this should be no surprise, most social structures in society are male-dominated, including most religions and sects, even ones that could be considered self destructive. That's just an example of our patriarchal structure. The fact that there is a sect that may or may not be a self destructive cult that is dominated by women, is therefore notable to the general public. The use of "cult" in this instance is in the modern, pejorative, sense, which could itself be an inaccurate description of the group itself, but I don't think it was used because the group in question is dominated by women, but most likely because their beliefs are outside the mainstream.

As far as your other assumptions, those generally do exist in our general culture, along with other assumptions. Here, I'll give an example, my best friend is named Lanetra, picture her in your head, and describe her in a response to me, and I'll tell you if you are right.

my best friend is named Lanetra, picture her in your head, and describe her in a response to me, and I'll tell you if you are right.

She's a little tiny very pale person with mousy hair who comes from New Brunswick.

Oh. No. That's my old buddy Lawanda.

So hmm. If my old buddy Lawanda commits a homicide, the headline will have to read "White Lawanda Arrested In Savage Beating" ...

Also, as a general rule, you do not mention the name of a suspect in any crime in a headline, excepting celebrities, that's for the article itself, and within such an article it would probably go like this "The suspect, Lawanda LASTNAME, a Caucasian female, was arrested for assault this morning for the savage beating of the victim."

On Edit: Obviously, the LASTNAME moniker is just a placeholder, in addition, I don't know why you were so flippant, my best friend has been fighting assumptions all her life due to her name, and that is obviously a result of underlying assumptions and prejudices in our culture.

it would probably go like this "The suspect, Lawanda LASTNAME, a Caucasian female, was arrested for assault this morning for the savage beating of the victim."

Maybe where you're at. Where I'm at, people's skin colour / ethnicity is not reported by the media unless it has some actual relevance to the story. Also, the media here pretty much know better than to refer to a woman as "a female". Hell, I was in a court about 30 years ago when a judge chewed out a cop for doing just that.

Now, maybe you're saying that the media would say "Lawanda Lastname, a caucasion female", precisely to dispel the notion that Lawanda was a woman of colour, as it might be expected people would otherwise assume? That really is the only way that the tale would be relevant to this situation. And I can only see the media doing that if Lawanda's skin colour / ethnicity were somehow relevant to the story, and, as I was saying, it's generally not regarded that way where I'm at.

So you seem to be making the point several other people have been advancing.

If it is *relevant* that an accused is of a particular ethnicity, then the ethnicity in question might be mentioned -- completely irrespective of whether someone might assume it to be one thing or another, rightly or wrongly.

If it isn't *relevant* to the story, then it doesn't matter a hoot what somebody assumes it to be.

In the Lawanda case, maybe we think the media should point out that not all crimes are committed by people of colour, by identifying Lawanda as caucasian. Just to be good corporate citizens and avoid stereotypes being reinforced in the minds of people who make assumptions?

So in the cult case, maybe we think the media should point out that not all cults are dominated by men, by identifying this cult as female-dominated? And that would be ... why?

As for your friend Lanetra, I assume that what we are dancing around is that she is white, and is constantly having to "fight assumptions" that people make because of her name. That must be really awful for her, to have people thinking she's not white ...


I apologize in advance if there's something I'm really not getting here.

With the inclusion in the headline that the cult was a "women's sect," I became offended knowing that they only included that because of the assumption that all other cults are headed by men. How sexist! I resent that! I demand equality in headlines!

Wow. It's kind of dumb what some people get offended about.

That's amazing, how you can turn a story about an investigation of someone being beaten to death into something about men oppressing women.

That poster said "matriarchy" not "patriarchy".

Whereas, killings and torture that occur within "male-dominated" cults are rarely labeled as such.

And, reading the details of this incident, it's hard for me to see the difference between this supposed "cult" and the sadly common drunken or drug-fueled domestic fights that occur in every county in the U.S. on a regular basis.

Not only is the headline sexist, it is racist.

Women don't seem to have the rooster syndrome nearly as often as men do.

Man, that was perfect.

Perfect timing. Perfect wording.

You have my blessing and personal recommendation if
you ever want to write for The Daily Show.

Seriously. That was good.

You could very well kill me. Or my keyboard. Or my monitor. Or anything else on my desk that shouldn't get wet.

I can't even see where you came up with "racist" at all, and "female-dominated" is just a factual descriptor - it is, in fact, a key descriptor in how this cult differs from even other cults. It is relevant in the fact that the victim was a woman who was beaten to death by other women.

Is there a problem with acknowledging that women can be religiously insane, too?

As others have noted, an all-female cult is pretty rare - enough so to warrant mention just for the "wow, that's strange" factory. And it's a pretty big divergence from the usual "cult in the news" fare which always details the always-male cult leader's "liberties" with the women and children in the group.

Stop trying to pretend this is something that it's not. It's a murder case with an unusual background, not some new front in the "War between the sexes"

One of them does not disappear because of the reality of the other. Reality is complex and many-facteted. This is both a murder, and a glaring example of sexism in the use of language by the media to report this murder.

The headline is needlessly sensationalist, sexist, and racist. So is the tone of the article. I stand by my opinion and comments.

Is that part of it?


Just trying to see if I get what you're saying.

I mean, hey, stand by it all you like. Though stating such pretty much makes a liar out of you being "willing to address" something, since it's kind of like stating "LALALALA CAN'T HEAR YOU LALALALALA!"

The headline is sensationalist. It's a headline. It's how they work. They're an advertisement for the article they head. You should be glad this one actually mentions the content of its article.

Sexist? I have yet to see an explanation on how it's sexist, aside from perhaps the fact it uses the word "woman" instead of "womyn." The facts we have are that a woman is dead, and the secret sect she belonged to - one where only women are in positions of leadership - was raided as part of an investigation into her death. This is reflected in the headline. Now, perhaps if the headline said "Woman killed in catfight, police raid crazy bitches" I could stand with ya on the sexism angle.

Racist? I see no mention of race in the headline. I don't see it in the article itself, either. it does conclude with a rather shitty and halfassed explanation of Shinto, but that in and of itself isn't racist. Is it the "savage" part? I still lack the perception of race there - in my eyes, kicking and punching a 63 year old woman for an hour until she dies is, in fact, pretty fucking savage, no matter who's doing it.

we have cookies,

The fact that it was a female-dominated cult is news. The assumption would otherwise be that it is a male-dominated cult. The description of it as female-dominated is a tacit acknowlegment of the rarity of this type of cult.

For example, compare these two descriptive phrases:

1) Wacko asshole. You naturally assume a male is meant, because almost all wacko assholes are male.
2) Wacko female asshole. You have to specify female if you want people to know you're talking about a woman.

I wouldn't expect anybody to be saying "wacko asshole" out of the blue without giving me some clue as to whom s/he was talking about.

Something along the lines of:

(1) He's a wacko asshole.
(2) She's a wacko asshole.

I just think it would be kinda redundant to say "she's a female wacko asshole".

Kinda like it's kinda redundant to say "he's a male model", "he's a male prostitute", "he's a male nurse". What the hell other kind of model / prostitute / nurse would he be?

But the real question would be, when you say that the assumption would otherwise be that it is a male-dominated cult: why? why would I assume anything about the sex that dominates it, any more than I'd assume anything about what it ate for breakfast? What's the relevance, other than the fact that it's unusual? Their breakfast food tastes might be unusual too.

where patriarchal families who are members of these 'tough love' cults send their children to be brutalized into acceptable behavior.

I can see how that does stand out, but I don't think sexism is the reason it was reported that way.

I don't know how you get that it's racist.

Why is this particular family in a "cult" but other domestic murders are not labeled as such, even when the family members belong to a church? Why is one group labeled a cult and other groups called churches? Take a look at the last names. Where did this occur? Suppose this had occurred in Arkansas and the family's last name was Smith and they all went to the same Primitive Baptist church? Think it would have been called a "cult?"

Seems like you're doing a lot of assuming. Do you know anything about this Kigenkai group? Do you have any reason to think they're being unfairly labeled as a cult, or is this more of a kneejerk-type reaction?

........

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:shrug:

:popcorn: