I’m taking a break from the never-ending thesis revisions to complete an application for a post-doc at a prestigious Ivy League university. This is the last thing I have time for right now, but tomorrow is the last day to apply. I had to write a course proposal, a teaching reflection, etc. etc. I’ve been working on this since 11am and it’s now 10:30pm and I’m still not finished. So…terrific.
At least 900 people will apply for these post-docs (this is the norm). Statistically I have no chance of getting it, but someone has to get it, right? Just like someone has to win the lotto and someone has to be eaten by sharks and someone has to be taken hostage by Somali pirates. You never know if you don’t try! [That's what everyone keeps telling me.] So in a nutshell, I have no chance of getting this, but I’ll spend a whole day working on it anyway. This is not good for morale. What is also not good for morale:
I just realized that all my documents are formatted to A4 paper size, which is what is used in the UK. So I had to change the paper size to US letter size and now my CV has gone haywire and is now 4 pages instead of 3 (not good).
And then I was looking over my writing sample just now, which is 25 pages from my dissertation. I chose an excerpt from my chapter on Fight Club, because that is my strongest writing. Once I was finished editing it and formatting it, I realized that the excerpt contains the word “dildo” 3 times and the phrase “F-ck Martha Stewart” and lots of other f-words because, you know, this is Fight Club. You can’t quote from Fight Club without that kind of language appearing. And now I just don’t have time to put together another writing sample, because I just don’t have time and I’m tired, so I’m stuck sending this potty-mouthed excerpt to the Ivy League.
My 87-year-old grandmother has recently moved over here from Denver. She is obsessed with the Denver Broncos and always has been, but now that she’s living nearby, we have to hear about them all the time. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had to check the Broncos’ website for game times in recent weeks. Anyway, thank you for this, Jimmy Fallon.
Live women in porn being pissed on = sexually arousing
[Of course, the difference is that the women in porn "choose" this and they "enjoy" it. For men, even dead ones, this is humiliating.]
The news that U.S. Marines in Afghanistan pissed on dead Taliban soldiers is drawing comparisons to the torture at Abu Ghraib. In both cases, the soldiers filmed/photographed themselves degrading the prisoners/corpses. This is significant. The term “war porn” was often used to describe what happened at Abu Ghraib, but only in that sloppy way the word “porn” is often used to describe various things (i.e. “food porn”), which is completely detached from all critical analysis and context. Only a few brave writers (mostly feminists) drew comparisons between what happened to the prisoners at Abu Ghraib and to what actually happens to women in pornography every day. [Most commentators on the left-wing remained silent about this aspect, not surprisingly.]
D.A. Clarke’s essay “Prostitution for Everyone: Feminism, Globalisation and the “Sex Industry” [PDF], which I first read in this book, includes an addendum about Abu Ghraib. I thought of this essay today when I read the news about the pissing Marines. I’ve included a few quotes from the essay below, but the whole thing is worth reading:
Our reaction — as a nation and a public — to the use of Iraqi prisoners in amateur pornography shows that we believe this was a deeply humiliating experience for them. Our media have made much of the “special” characteristics of Arabs, to explain why this experience is so very humiliating for them in particular — whereas it is of course perfectly harmless and good for the women and girls spread, splayed, stripped and mocked throughout our commercial advertising/porn media nexus.
[...]
Structural similarities between the documented humiliation of prisoners and the conventions of “normal” pornography are many and strikingly obvious. The prisoners were made to masturbate for the camera; images and footage of women masturbating are a stock theme in commercial porn. The prisoners were made to pose in tableaux suggestive of homosexual activity such as fellatio; a large and profitable subgenre of commercial porn is “girl/girl”, in which (presumably heterosexual) models are posed in tableaux mimicking lesbian sex, or directed to engage in sexual behaviour with each other while the camera rolls. These models usually bear little resemblance to real-life lesbians, being selected (like most porn models) for their conformity to commercial and male-defined standards of heterosexual attractiveness.
In these forms of documentary porn there are surely two gratifications, one overt and one tacit. The overt gratification is the fantasy of violation of privacy, of spying on the intimate and private acts of another person. But the Abu Ghraib pictures should illuminate for us a further, tacit or covert gratification: the gratification of knowing or believing that the persons depicted were compelled or persuaded or paid to submit to a violation of privacy in reality, to strike poses and perform acts in reality which most people would not care to have seen or photographed by others. This is one sense in which this genre is genuinely documentary.
The “kick” of girl/girl porno lies partly in its catering to the fantasy of violating the privacy of lesbians, of making even sex between women — something quite threatening to male sexual prerogative — serve a male agenda; the other, tacit element is the kick of seeing “normal girls” made to emulate lesbian sexual activity. The assumption is that homosexual activity is repulsive, and that therefore the models are disgusted by it and endure it under some compulsion — whether the compulsion of money, force of personality, or physical threat.
[...]
Misogyny drips from all accounts of Abu Ghraib, and from all attempts to analyze it. The outrage of Arab men that the Americans “treated our brothers like women.” The idea that making men wear “women’s undies” is a form of torture. The overarching, stunning hypocrisy of the world’s largest pornography-exporting nation acting so dreadfully shocked when its line troops treat POWs in the same ways that its prison guards and stronger inmates treat weaker men, and that its pornography and prostitution industry treats women, every single day.
For this radical feminist the Abu Ghraib pictures merely elucidate what porn is really about. The essence is not obfuscated for once, because the victims are men, and literally prisoners behind bars and facing guns (instead of behind economic bars, facing hunger/homelessness). Therefore we can suddenly perceive that they are victims, that they have personal pride and dignity which have been assaulted, that they have rights which have been violated. The nameless, traceless women posing for websites like “See Asian Sluts Get What They Deserve” or “Farm Girls And Their Pets” — whether guns are pointed at them in the course of their work or not — arouse no such outrage or compassion.
Taking a quick break from writing to share a few links about the sex industry. Those of you who read this blog know I have strong feelings about it and that the uncritical, neo-liberalistic embrace of prostitution and pornography by so many on the left-wing of the political spectrum (including “sex-positive” feminists, liberals and even so-called progressives and radicals) has left me feeling alienated from people with whom I tend to agree on other topics. I’m not only alienated, but extremely angry and disgusted.
I also want to recommend the Canadian feminist blog called The F Word (not to be confused with the British blog of the same name, which I do not recommend). This blog deals with a wide variety of feminist issues from a mostly radical perspective, including posts about the sex industry. Highly recommended.
Finally, below is a video that shows women being abused on a porn set. Trigger Warningfor sexual abuse. I must stress this — do not watch this video if you are sensitive. I have done a lot of research into the sex industry, yet I just watched this myself and feel terribly shaken by it. If you know anyone who thinks porn is great, send them this video. Of course, any porn apologist will just say these are isolated events, but when you watch porn, do you know what happened behind the scenes? Nope, not unless you were there in person.
Happy New Year, kids! I hope 2012 is a fabulous year for all of you. Amidst all the doom and gloom in the world at the moment, I still think it’s possible to carve out some joy and success. Strength comes from adversity and all that. Yes, it’s true.
2012 is going to be a major year of transition for me. I’ll finish my PhD. And I’ve just started querying literary agents in NYC with my novel, so we’ll see how that goes. It’s finally happening!
I’m also applying for post-docs and scouring the academic job adverts in the US, UK and worldwide. I’m not going to MLA in Seattle this week — I couldn’t really afford it and I didn’t have time to prepare. To be honest, I have no idea what I’m doing in this job search. My university didn’t prepare me at all. I feel at a big disadvantage in the job market because of this. I think I need to pour all my energy into getting published. For me, a job is likely to come from that.
Anyway, I am feeling upbeat, despite having a huge question mark hovering over this year. None of us can predict the future, but I have no idea where I’ll even be living. The US? The UK? Elsewhere? I’m just living out of a suitcase at the moment. If I think about that, and looming student loan repayment, and unemployment, it becomes too overwhelming, so I won’t think about it. I just need to finish this thesis first and then go from there.
Posting will be light around here (or possibly non-existent) until I submit my thesis, which I hope will be the week after next. You’ll know when I’m done — you’ll hear my screams of joy wherever you are in the world. Yes, it’ll be that loud.
It’s been a bookish Christmas chez Anglofille. Of course, since I’m in the final stages of thesis frenzy, I don’t have time to read, but I will soon, just in time for the long winter nights to come. Here are some of the books that I received as gifts, though I should point out that I picked out all these books myself — it would be impossible for anyone to figure out exactly what I want to read. And while I’m mostly linking to Amazon here (since their descriptions are fairly thorough), I don’t buy most of my books from Amazon and try to support independent stores and websites as much as possible.
The first four books represent my female Modernist kick. I have no idea why these books all appealed to me at once. The first two are by Mina Loy:
My beautiful birthday cake! I’ve had a lovely day — breakfast out, dinner out, gifts and sweet messages, and a browse around the Sundance store, where I was bought a beautiful turquoise necklace. Now it’s time to cut the cake (though I hate to cut it — it’s too pretty).
Sorry I haven’t posted since I’ve been back in the USA. Between jet lag, catching up with family, eating all my favorite foods and working on my thesis, my mind has been elsewhere. I hope you’re all enjoying the holiday season.
Me to hotel receptionist (who said he speaks English): “Hi. My room smells like raw sewage. Can I change please?”
Receptionist: “Sewage?”
Me: “Yes, like a sewer. Do you know what a sewer is?”
Receptionist: “Yes.”
Anyway, I’m making my way to Paris CDG tomorrow and flying out early on Friday –> back to the USA on a very long but thankfully non-stop flight to where my parents live in the western part of the country. On my way up to Paris I’ve stopped in Cannes (where I’d never been before) and Avignon (which I visited last year). I’ll share a few photos, but I haven’t taken many. I’ve lost my tourist mojo and have just wandered along the seaside in Cannes, browsed in boutiques and enjoyed the Christmas market in Avignon.
The photo at the top is La Croisette in Cannes. People have compared Cannes to Beverly Hills and I can see the similarities — a lot of snobbish designer boutiques and pretentious rich people whose skin is so over-tanned and leathery you could make a handbag out of it. But the beach was lovely:
Standing in the same spot, looking in the other direction, it looked like this:
It was a Jekyll-and-Hyde sky. The sunny and bright section was such a rich, beautiful blue — I suppose that’s why they call it the Azure Coast!
I took a day trip to Saint-Paul-de-Vence today, which is a windy 5-minute bus ride down the mountain from where I’ve been living. According to Rick Steves, Saint-Paul-de-Vence is the most visited village in France. It’s a medieval village on a hill filled with very narrow and steep cobblestone paths. Let’s just say I got quite a workout today. The town is full of art galleries, shops and cafes, though many of them were closed because this is, according to one shop owner, “the dead season.” This is one interesting thing I’ve learned about the French Riviera. I always thought of it as the Florida of France, where people would flock in the cold months to soak up the warmth and Mediterranean sunshine, but it’s not like that at all. It’s too chilly in the winter to be like Florida.
Saint-Paul-de-Vence is chic and has a history of attracting artists, writers and actors. Marc Chagall lived there. The American writer James Baldwin lived and died in the town (I was too lazy to find his old home, which is apparently dilapidated and for sale). And for horror movie fans: the British actor Donald Pleasance also lived and died in the village. It was pretty deserted for most of my visit, which was nice, I suppose, but then a busload of Japanese tourists appeared to liven things up and spend money. I actually had to translate for a few of them in a shop (imagine that!), since the only non-Japanese words they knew were in English. One guy thought nougat was soap. That was pretty funny.
I’ll share a few photos from today, beginning with a photo of my favorite moment…stumbling upon the Alps!!! This region of France is called Alpes-Maritimes, but I had no idea the Alps were so closeby. From my town, you can’t see them. It was such a thrill to see these snow-capped peaks — and from other vantage points in the village, you can see the Mediterranean sea, so it’s an interesting mix. [I should point out that this photo is through a zoom lens -- the mountains aren't as close as they appear.]
The next two photos are typical scenes in Saint-Paul-de-Vence:
I really loved this house:
A rare flat street in the village — you can see the swarming crowds too!
Sunset from one of the look-out points:
The cathedral:
I loved this scene at the entrance to the village — the whole area is like walking into a postcard:
Autumn vines (and a little kitty if you can spot her!):
Old men playing boules:
A public water fountain, out of which fresh spring water flows — they have these all over the region, in my town as well, though I’ve never seen one this cute:
I got my hair colored today. I just couldn’t wait till I got home — my hair looked, in a word, hideous. I knew the hair colorist didn’t speak English (very few people in this town do), but I stupidly didn’t brush up on hair-related vocab before my appointment. This resulted in some funny miscommunication.
I sat in the chair and she said: “Your hair is clear. Would you like it more French?”
Of course, this isn’t what she actually said, but it’s what I thought she said. I was quite stumped by her assertion that my hair is clear — have you ever seen anyone with clear (i.e. see-through) hair? And as for her question about whether I wanted French hair, I had no idea what she meant.
“Do you want it more French?” she kept saying.
“Well,” I said. ”Ummmm….more French? I don’t know.” I kept thinking…don’t French people have the same kind of hair as everyone else? Then I thought she must have meant a French style. I started to panic, thinking that she wanted to do something cutting edge, like dyeing my hair platinum blonde.
She kept asking over and over again whether I wanted my hair French, until she finally blurted out, in English: “Darker.”
Ah. Turns out she wasn’t saying français, but foncé. I wasn’t familiar with the word foncé and the way she pronounced it sounded exactly like français to me. So of course I felt like an idiot. And she wasn’t saying that I had clear hair, but light hair. I didn’t realize clair also meant light. Thankfully I left the salon with the shade I wanted, which just happens to be trèsfoncé.
Another interesting hair-related word: brushing. In French this means “blow-dry.” I’d love to know how that happened! This word must have been imported from English, but somehow the meaning was changed.
While I was having my hair done, I browsed through a stack of gossip rags. I read one article that said Kate Middleton is undergoing psychotherapy because QE2 fears she’ll end up like Diana. And another that said Demi Moore (and possibly her daughter) are anorexic alcoholics. Apparently, Beyoncé is faking her pregnancy and her father has bought a baby for her. Some of the gossip seemed a bit reckless and what was interesting is that one issue of Closer had a white banner across 1/4 of the cover saying something about how Charlotte Gainsbourg had won a judgment against them for something. I thought it was odd this was on the cover of the magazine — I’ve never seen anything like that before. Usually corrections and things of that sort are buried in the back where no one sees them.
Almost all of the celebrities were American, Canadian and British. I went through an entire stack of trash mags and saw maybe 3 French celebs — and Vanessa Paradis was only there because of Johnny Depp. There were headlines like: “Justin Bieber est le père de mon bébé” and another that roughly translates to “Justin Bieber made my baby in 30 seconds.” There were also photos of Kim Kardashian and other z-list North American and Brit “celebs.” WHY? You French people have let me down again. Resist the evil anglophone empire!
To use a Britishism, I’ve been rubbish at posting lately. Sorry. For the past couple weeks, I’ve been in a writing frenzy. I am trying to complete the revision of my novel and academic work so I can submit my thesis and it is just consuming me. I have found time to go out everyday and walk, drink hot chocolate in cafes and browse the shops, but my life is mostly about writing. I’m leaving my apartment on Tuesday and heading up to Paris for my flight. My time here is nearly finished.
I thought I’d share a photo of what I bought this evening. On my way home from writing in the cafe, I stopped at the boulangerie and fromagerie for an “oh my god I’m leaving France soon” treat. There you can see a baguette and some very soft brie. In the middle there is goat’s cheese covered in dried cranberries (which I just tried — heavenly). And finally a pastry, which was called “sable” with raspberry. [It looks like an enormous pie in this photo, but it's actually a single-serving pastry!] I’ll miss visiting these little food shops, which are an everyday part of life here. In the Anglophone world, we’re mostly stuck with huge supermarkets.
Despite being a small town, there is a big store here that sells books, DVDs, music, electronics, etc. I like to go in there sometimes and browse around. They have some amazing cookbooks that I wish I could buy, including Laduree cookbooks and kits to make macarons. I have also stumbled upon some items that have really made me laugh, such as these two:
La Petite Maison dans La Prairie! I still can’t stop laughing over this.
This American import translated as “Le Bro Code” –
And of course there’s no escaping crap like this:
Ugh. Twilight books and DVDs everywhere. Even the small section for English language books is full of Twilight. [I wonder how Twilight is pronounced in French? Tweee-leeeet?] The store is also filled with Harry Potter and Call of Duty. It’s depressing how much American (and some British) stuff there is. What is wrong with you French people? Resist Anglophone cultural imperialism! Do you really need Le Bro Code?
Happy Thanksgiving to my American peeps! While I won’t be having Thanksgiving dinner tomorrow, I am flying back to the States two weeks from Friday and we’re going to have it on Christmas instead. Whoop!
I went for a walk around town today, my lovely Vence, which I will soon be leaving. These photos are not necessarily up to my normal standard, I don’t think (one of my photos of Paris is on the Travel + Leisure website this week!), but it’s the best I can do at the moment. I think I caught the last of the fall foliage. In most of these photos, you can see the old walled city. Vence is on a hill and I am standing on the other side of a gorge, where the river Lubiane runs through. I have actually been living in this town! It’s hard to believe.
I stumbled upon Villa Lorraine today, which I intend to purchase once I win the lottery or rob a bank. It’s not for sale – some German guy owns it, apparently (and rents rooms in it) — but one day it will be mine:
Standing right next to my future home, Villa Lorraine, there is a view of the Mediterranean Sea (it is there – you just have to look for it):
I am over women getting raped at Occupy Wall Street and being quiet about it because they were protecting a movement which is fighting to end the pillaging and raping of the economy and the earth, as if the rape of their bodies was something separate.
This is from Eve Ensler’s excellent HuffPo piece about rape called “Over It” — go read the whole thing.
After what seems like weeks of soul-destroying rain, the sun was out today. I took a walk with my camera. Sorry I haven’t taken many photos since I’ve been here. The rain is part of it, but also, I’m just immersed in work. My body is in the South of France, but my mind is in New York City, where my novel takes place. Anyway, given that I’ll only be here for another month (sniffle), I vow to take more photos to capture the beauty of this place.
This town has a newer part (as seen in the photo above) and then the old town, which is surrounded by a wall. The apartment building I’m living in is more like the one in the photo above. Below is a photo of the old town. People actually live in all these buildings. There’s a small English-language library here, just behind where I’m standing:
Since this town is on a hill, there are many places with panoramic views:
Burning computer questions of the day: Why don’t French keyboards have the @ symbol? Why do you need to press shift to get a period? Oy vey. Give me Qwerty or give me death.
Anyway, on to the story, though I will preface this by saying that some of my most rage-filled computer-related moments have occurred in France, particularly re: the internet. Ahem. Okay, so I don’t have a printer with me, obviously, and today I needed to print out a chunk of my novel so I could edit it on paper (which makes a big difference). Printing is a luxury, since I don’t have a lot of money and won’t be able to print often, given the cost. But today I reached a point where I had to print. I went to an internet cafe I saw advertised in the tourist office, whose ad has American and British flags on it, which means they speak English. I went there, thinking I’d be in and out the door in five minutes. L’ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!!!!
I opened my email account and attempted to open the docx file I had attached, but kept getting error messages, the gist of which seemed to be that the computer software is so out-dated it will not open docx files. It hadn’t occurred to me that an internet cafe would not have computers capable of opening docx files, so I was surprised. I asked for help and when the guy came to help me, he was immediately dismayed. ”Docx? Impossible. That is a brand new type of file. It originated with Microsoft Office 2007.”
“Okay, but it’s 2011 now, so…it’s not brand new.”
“This is just a trick by Microsoft to make more money. You should read about it online.”
“Yes, I know all about docx files. It was annoying when the change was made four years ago, but the world has moved on, non?”
“I refuse to install it on my computers.”
Me, becoming exasperated: “Okay, then what should I do? I need to print this. I’m in a hurry.” (I actually wasn’t in a hurry, just annoyed.)
He said we would open it in OpenOffice, but when he tried it, it wouldn’t work. “Oh la la,” he said, shaking his head. “You should tell the person who created this document to send it as a PDF.”
“I created this document. I could have saved it as a PDF, but it never occurred to me that you wouldn’t be able to open docx.”
He then went on, rambling about the evils of Microsoft and I’m thinking, I hate Microsoft as much as the next girl, but listen, old man, you own a flipping internet cafe. You have no choice but to accommodate people using Microsoft. Finally, as he rambled, he came out with this little gem: “Of course, I have the new version of Microsoft on my personal computer,” he said, pointing to his desk.
“Okay, then can I email you my document and you print it out from there?”
“Sure.” It then took him an hour to find a scrap of paper onto which he could write his email address.
Cut to him opening my file and printing it. He hands it to me and it’s in an unreadable font, which looks more like Russian than English. I say, “What is this? I can’t even read it.”
“It must have converted your font into something else. You chose a unique font for your document, didn’t you?”
“Yes.”
“See, this is why I tell people to use PDFs.” And then he went on about the virtues of PDFs and the evils of docx. Finally I said, “Docx is normale! In Angleterre, everyone has it!”
He looked at me in disbelief. “No, it cannot be so.”
I knew this printing error was going to cost me about 5€, but I had no choice but to ask him to print it again after changing the font and changing the spacing to 1.5 to cut down on pages. He said he could change it to Times, which I said was fine, then he began to have a meltdown over this because he couldn’t get the font to change. Finally, a female coworker took over, practically pushing him out of the way, and as she’s attempting to reformat my document, the two of them are arguing about who knows what.
In the end, he charged me half price for the screwed-up document, which was good news. The bad news? I have to go back there to do all my printing. There doesn’t seem to be anywhere else in town.
Yesterday, at two different times during the day, someone tried to unlock the door to my apartment. The first time it happened was around 7am, when I was still in bed. I awoke to the sound of a key in the lock and someone inserting and re-inserting it very aggressively. I was about to get out of bed, but then whoever it was walked away. The door has no peephole, so I wouldn’t have been able to look into the hallway.
My first thought was that someone had the wrong apartment. For some reason that I cannot understand, apartments in France (from my experience) are not numbered. The doors have no numbers or letters and even the mail goes by the tenant’s name. I lived in four different apartment buildings in Paris and not a single one had numbered apartments, nor does the place where I’m living now. Does anyone know why this is? I have to say, it makes no sense to me. I sublet an apartment in Paris once and on my first day there, I went out to the supermarket and when I came back, I could not find the door to my apartment. I was faced with about 15 doors, each identical and unnumbered. I had to call the owner! Once they guided me to the correct door, I had to remember that it was the fourth on the left or some such.
Anyway, given this quirk of French apartments, I assumed that someone had the wrong apartment when they tried to open my door. But then, strangely enough, it happened again in the late afternoon. I had taken a nap, which was very strange for me, since I don’t usually nap. I was awakened by the sound of someone trying to open the door again. I was about to get up when I heard a man’s voice say something and then a woman responded. The woman, I think, is someone who lives on my floor. My French is pretty rusty, but I thought the man said something like, “I thought they are only here in the summer?”
I came here to the South of France to “get away from it all” and now the place is swarming with world leaders. Obama, the Chinese dude, the European leaders….they’re all meeting 15 miles from here in Cannes for the G20 summit. A black helicopter just flew over my quaint little village. Blech!
I had actually considered a daytrip to Cannes this week, before I knew what was happening. I have decided against it because a] it’s raining this week; and b] I don’t want to get teargassed.
BTW, for any visiting journalists who might be reading this, I have created a list of G20-related headlines that you can feel free to just copy and paste directly into your articles. No need to credit me:
Greece Has Ruined Everything — Die, Greece — Get the Hell out of the Eurozone, Greece — Get the F–k out of Europe, Greece — Cradle of Western Civilization, My Ass!
I went out this afternoon hoping to find a copy of the latest petrol-bomb-tastic issue of Charlie Hebdo, thinking I could make some money by selling it on Ebay, but it seems that others had the same idea. The lady at the newsstand said the issue was sold out by 8 a.m. Drats!
For those who have no idea what I’m talking about, click here. In a nutshell, the French satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo released an issue this week about the Arab Spring that was “guest edited” by Mohammed and featured a cartoon image of him on the cover. You’d have to have a death wish to do something like that, but Charlie Hebdo did it. You can see the aftermath in the photo above — last night the newspaper’s offices were firebombed and completely destroyed.
In celebration of free speech and the right to blasphemy, please enjoy the following:
Today Vincent Tabak was convicted of murdering Joanna Yeates. This is a case that has gripped Britain, though I imagine most of my non-British readers will be unfamiliar with it. I’ve been following the case with interest and the conclusion of the trial today has really upset me for reasons I will discuss in this post, which is a long one. Beware.
To recap the crime: About a week before Christmas last year, 25-year-old landscape architect Jo Yeates went missing. She simply vanished without a trace. On Christmas Day, her frozen corpse was found on the side of the road by a couple walking their dog. She had been strangled, but not raped. Jo’s 60-something landlord was arrested for her murder, crucified in the press and then it turned out that, whoops, he was 100% innocent. Fast forward a few weeks later and Jo’s neighbor, 33-year-old Dutchman Vincent Tabak, was arrested for her murder. Tabak, a seemingly smart, normal and mild-mannered guy, has a PhD, had a professional job, a live-in girlfriend and no criminal record. You can read a timeline of the crime here. Tabak’s arrest was shocking, since he was not some creepy sex offender type, but just seemed to be a regular guy — the guy next door, literally.
Today Vincent Tabak’s trial concluded. He had already admitted to killing Jo, so there was no mystery there. It was for the jury to decide whether it was manslaughter, as Vincent Tabak claimed, or murder, as the prosecution claimed. Tabak made up some ludicrous story that Yeates had invited him into her apartment, flirted with him, he misread the situation and tried to kiss her, she screamed, he put his hand over her mouth, another hand around her throat and voila…20 seconds later she was dead, all by accident. After this horrible accident, he put Jo’s body in the trunk of his car, texted his girlfriend to say he was bored and went to Asda to buy potato chips. Unbelievably, two complete morons on the jury actually bought this theory that he never intended to kill or even seriously harm Jo, despite the fact that strangling someone takes great effort and determination unlike, say, stabbing someone. Also, Jo had many other bruises and injuries on her body that are not explained by Tabak’s explanation of events. Today’s verdict in favor of murder was actually 10 to 2, but the judge accepted it and sentenced Tabak to “life” in prison, which means a minimum term of 20 years. [Don't even get me started on that.]
The main problem with the prosecution’s case was that Tabak seemed to have no motive. Jo was not raped or sexually abused, as one would expect in a case of strangulation such as this. Tabak’s DNA was found on her breasts, but experts could not conclude what this DNA was from. It is of course strange for someone to go to his next-door neighbor’s apartment and strangle her for no reason, but the prosecution was not required to prove motive and the other evidence was enough to convict him. After all, he had confessed. The prosecution hinted that Tabak may have strangled her because he derived a sexual thrill from it, but they presented no evidence to support this.
After Tabak’s conviction today, literally within seconds of it, the media began to report what they had been barred from reporting during the trial. The judge had excluded evidence that showed Vincent Tabak was obsessed with violent and sadistic pornography. He liked to watch pornography that showed men’s hands around women’s necks — and worse.
Horray ! I actually *like* to continue studying, even more so when I have...
