Der Spiegel has an article today on the murder of 16 year old Morsal Obeidi, an Afghan girl living in Germany, who had to die when she came to believe that her life belonged to her, not to the males in her family.  You hear a lot lately about honor killings among Muslims as though misogyny was exclusively a Muslim problem.  It isn’t, as even a cursory glance at the rates of domestic violence here in the United States will tell you.  The problem isn’t religion.  It’s the bitterness of runts. 

When all you have to be proud of is what you physically are, because you never bothered or saw no need to make anything more of yourself then that, the inner void that would have held everything you might have become is filled with resentment instead.  White.  Straight.  Male.  Whatever.  The one who rises above themselves kills you, by leaving you behind, by leaving you all alone with only that emptiness inside of you where a person could have been.

In this new world, the proud men are the first to become losers. They lose their way of life, because in their world their only claim to authority is the fact that they are men and that, as men, they can resort to their one advantage over women, brute strength. They cling to old concepts like honor, because honor is something that even a loser can invoke.

Beware, not the angry man, but the empty one.