Episode 54: Oscar Pistorius, the Killer About to be Freed

In 2013 Oscar Pistorius murdered his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp on Valentines Day by shooting her to death as she hid in a bathroom. We discuss our changing perspectives on the trial, his conviction at first for manslaughter and later murder, and comment on the fact Pistorius is due to be released after only serving six years in prison. This episode also includes discussion of wounded masculinity and its close relationship to male violence as a way to regain any perceived lost ground of male dominance. Denial around disability and lack of recognition, and how denial produces emotional repression and in turn that can produce out of control anger. Plus, vulnerable men as not being nicer, kinder, or more complex than less vulnerable men. Guns as phallic substitutes, women coping with male violence against women (including against themselves) by siding with the man, and Jen describes an incident of being sexually harassed by a disabled man at a public political rally.