Originally writen on Substack, published on September 22, 2026:
I had a notification pop-up on Facebook last week that rattled me. It was a birthday notification. This is not something that should normally rattle me, or anyone for that matter.
Except that it was a birthday notification for someone that had passed. Someone that was murdered by her own son. The woman, let’s call her Loretta, was my mom’s best friend in the United States. She had one son and raised him on her own, let’s call him Frank. It’s public record now, so I’ll just use his real name. Loretta was murdered by her own son.
My Substack publication is named ‘The Rose Robe’ after the satin robe Loretta gave me years ago. I loved it so much I brought it to France with me when I moved from California. I wear it all the time at home; I cook, clean, and paint in it. I read poetry in it, as seen on my TikTok. I wear it so much it’s become synomous with who I am. Loretta, my mom’s best friend, was killed by her son two years ago.
It’s been less than two years from when she passed. And it seems like there’s no one to take down her Facebook account. But who would take down her account? Her son is in jail. And her daughter-in-law also passed away months after being stabbed by her husband.
Frank was a nice guy. His mom was a community pillar who helped anyone and everyone—on account of her very strong; albeit, very conservative, Christian faith. When the interviewer claimed he might have ‘snapped’, she explains it that way because any other explanation wouldn’t make sense. These were not violent people, they weren’t involved in nefarious activities, they didn’t use substances. Jesus was nonviolent, so they believed in nonviolence too, hypothetically.
So then, how does a nice, Christian guy succumb to murdering his own mom? The answer may be a lot more insidious than we realize. And a lot more common.
The family may have been Christian, but evangelical Christianity has a lot of toxic theology that I’ve experienced first hand. Part of that toxic theology includes patriarchy, misogny, oppression, and violence that’s baked into the fabric of the holy book evangelicals claim to live their life by.
Deuteronomy, for example, demands a death penalty for any married or engaged woman who’s raped (unless of course, she cried out and was heard). Exodus features a genocide against first-born Egyptian children that God endorses. And in the New Testament, Paul tells Philemon to return to his slavemaster. Verses also attributed to Paul tell women to be quiet in church, to not teach or preach, and to not assume authority over a man.
From a contemporary standpoint, we can claim that a lot of these laws and ideas could have made sense for the time period (although keep in mind that Hebrew woman had the least amount of rights compared to their Canaanite counterparts, so even for the time period and region they were very harsh). However, maintaining a fundamentalist interpretation of ancient texts does pose a societal problem in the 21st century.
They reveal the spiritual-bypassing that evangelical Christianity has been doing for centuries. Namely, ignoring oppressive and violent parts of the Bible for fear of what could happen once people begin questioning the whole institution of Christianity itself. But what we don’t question, lives in a dangerous silence among us.
false prophets
Religion taught me to
fear demons and
dragons and leviathans and a
devil that might
corrupt my soul,
never showing me
that the real
evil was the one that crept
in the dark crevices of
a man’s heart. Often in
those same men
teaching you those stories;
those same men,
sworn to protect you. - a poem from my upcoming poetry book.
But there was more to Frank’s case than just conservative Christianity. There was also a failed healthcare system, and a family history of mental health issues like bipolar disorder and/or schizophrenia. A good friend of mine recently reminded me that biology loads the gun, but culture and circumstances pull the trigger.
I remember exactly where I was when my mom called me on the phone to tell me. I had been avoiding her phone calls for weeks (needed a break from her maganess). When she told me she had bad news, that was the last thing I was expecting.
Loretta had passed away. That would have already been tragic, but no, she was killed by Frank. He covered her face with a pillow and slit her throat. Told her he couldn’t take care of her anymore. Told her she needed to be with Jesus. Then he drove to the hospital where his sick wife had been staying for months. There, he stabbed her and then stabbed himself. Also told her she needed to go home to Jesus. That he couldn’t pay for her hospital bills anymore. Both were rushed into emergency surgery; both survived. He confessed to killing Loretta when he woke up.
I wish this story wasn’t true.
I wished it wasn’t true back then on the phone when I was listening to my mom tell it. And I wish it wasn’t true now, as I sit here typing it on my laptop two years later.
I wish it wasn’t true; and yet, this story has happened time and time again. In the U.S. alone, male family annihilators commit their heinous acts of violence every 5-7 days.
(This fact has been recently circulating the internet, in response to intense public discourse about the Lindsey Clancey trial, who herself has become a conservative scapegoat for all things evil. As tragic as her case is, the reality is that woman family annihilators are rare—so rare that their cases become salient enough to become part of the cultural zeitgeist. Men on the other hand, commit familicides at least once a week.)
I was reading bell hook’s The Will to Change at the time of Loretta’s murder. It was a surreal experience, because what unfolded in my personal life was being explained to me by the very pages within the book.
For those of you that aren’t familiar with her work, bell hook’s book is about how the patriarchy oppresses men, and how they can change. She writes about how cultural expectations of masculinity expect men to cut themselves off from their emotions, which is a deeply anti-human act. She writes about how the only acceptable emotion from men is anger, and how men externalize that anger onto everyone around them.
I remember listening to this book thinking, if I was forced to suppress every single emotion I’ve ever had since I was a young kid, why, I’d be crazy. I’d be livid. And, I’d probably be very violent.
Well, it’s no wonder we look around society today and see a lot of angry men. A lot of violent men.
She writes about how governments benefit from a large group of young, emotionally cut-off, angry men. This is how armies are supplied. As such, there is no government incentive to change how we shape masculinity as a society. No matter that a masculinity centered around power, dominance, and control leads to gendered violence. No, it benefits those in power.
She also writes about how single mothers tend to be deeply patriarchal, often passing on those same, rigid patriarchal norms that imprisoned them onto their sons and daughters.
I was reading this when my mom called to tell me that Loretta was killed.
Loretta, a woman I once wrote about in my novel. A woman who loved Jesus and loved people and showed that not just with her words, but with her actions. But also a woman deeply entrenched in the conservative theology and politics that so often accompany American evangelicalism. A conservative theology that’s built on systems and beliefs of hierarchy and oppression. A conservative theology that I rejected in my early twenties, because I did not believe it reflected the values of Jesus.
But most Christians didn’t think that deeply, and when the older, more conservative folks brought up their own theological arguments, well, I got the worst case of silent, fuming thoughts.
Because they were wrong, but they didn’t know it.
Like Loretta was that day at the all-you-can-eat buffet. I sat there and I listened, and I raved on the inside.
“All these hurricanes and earthquakes, they’re because of abortion, homosexuality, all that sin…” my mother’s friend told us, mentioning Hurricane Harvey and Irma, with a thick Italian gargle in the back of her throat.
Loretta was one of the kindest women I knew. She never stopped, this woman. Never stopped giving, never stopped praying for others, never stopped loving. She was the most like Jesus out of anyone I knew. Except for that thing that just came out of her mouth. Because she too, was succumb to the same Fox News poison that had seeped its way into white-American Christian interpretation. And it couldn’t have been more wrong. - an excerpt from my unpublished novel.
Loretta, a woman who left a violent marriage to raise her son alone, but raised him in an evangelicalism steeped in complementarianism. Women must submit to their husbands. Women are subservient. Men are supposed to be providers.
Men are supposed to be providers.
Notice Frank’s justification for murdering his mom: I can’t take care of you anymore.
Notice his justification for trying to murder his wife: I can’t afford these hospital bills anymore. He was only a blue-collar factory worker after all.
I can’t provide for you anymore.
Can you imagine a world where we don’t force these very-rigid-and-demanding-too-much-responsibility-on-one-person gender roles on men?
(Also, side note, the healthcare system in the U.S. is fucked and had he been in another Western country he would not have been subject to exorbitant hospital bills and/or been left with the sole burden of taking care of two sick family members on his own).
Maybe Frank wouldn’t have snapped.
Because that’s the thing, feminism is for men too. That was bell hook’s whole point. The patriarchy is harmful to men because 1) it causes them to cut off their emotions 2) this causes them to be angry, which is the only acceptableemotion we can see from them 3) it forces performative roles onto men which they sometimes cannot fulfill.
The patriarchy strips men of their humanity.
Because what happens when they can’t fulfill these roles? What happens to their senses of selves, their identities? What happens when capitalism and a lack of socialized health care causes people to go into debt to pay off their hospital bills? What happens when they can’t provide?
Well, violence. But in this case, sadly, it wasn’t violence against the state. It was violence against his own family.
Forced gender roles are bad. A lack of socialized healthcare in the Western World, also very bad. Predatory capitalism that exploits workers and leaves them with pennies, very bad.
Loretta had a history of mental health issues. Bipolar disorder, maybe schizophrenia. I can only imagine that Frank might have inherited something too.
But here’s the thing, it’s really easy to blame mental health issues. And I’m not saying that’s not the cause. Plenty of men are in the exact same position as Frank and don’t murder their moms and attempt to murder their wives.
But we can reshape our idea of masculinity, so that male identity isn’t just centered on men providing monetary value for their families. We don’t have to teach theologies that claim men are superior (aka dominant) to women. We don’t have to force men to suppress all their human emotions except for anger. We don’t have to use state funds for the military and weapons, instead of using it to fund nation-wide healthcare coverage. We don’t have to prioritize shareholder profits over living wages for workers.
These are societal and cultural choices that we either make, or are made for us, but they can change. We can change them.
You see, in Frank’s case, nature loaded the gun (mental health issues), but culture and society pulled the trigger.
A misogynistic society will breed misogyny. It will perpetrate and normalize gendered violence because it requires a hierarchy, which places women and children on the bottom. But, I don’t believe misogyny is inevitable. I don’t believe human violence is inevitable either.
However, until the United States (and its popular religions) takes a good hard look at the type of masculinity it preaches and demands from men, until it looks at its health care system, until it provides adequate mental health services, there will be a dozen more Lorettas. There will be more Mikas. And there will be more Franks, killing their families, once every week.
Because gendered violence comes for us all.
