Obama’s domestic violence initiative neglects male victims of abuse

By Caroline May - The Daily Caller   2:34 PM 10/29/2010

In honor of Domestic Violence Awareness Month, President Barack Obama introduced his administration’s new “government-wide” domestic violence initiative this week.

Missing from his words about a renewed focus on victims, however, was half of the population: men.

When looking at violence within intimate relationships, men are often viewed primarily as perpetrators, yet this is not always the case. Martin S. Feibert, psychology professor at the University of California, Long Beach, has highlighted more than 270 scholarly investigations, empirical studies and reviews, “which demonstrate that women are as physically aggressive, or more aggressive, than men in their relationships with their spouses or male partners.”

Equity feminist and Reason magazine contributing editor Cathy Young told The Daily Caller that while the cause was a good one, she was disappointed to see male victims excluded from the president’s equation, for just that reason.

“I was looking at the president’s comments today and one thing that really did leap out at me is that the discussion seemed to be framed entirely in terms of violence against women and children,” she said. “And I think that that leaves out a fairly sizable part of the population that is in danger of being abused. There are men who are abused both in gay relationships and in the heterosexual ones,” Young said.

According to a study, conducted by Daniel J. Whitaker and Linda S. Saltzman at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Division of Violence Prevention, and published in 2007 by the American Journal of Public Health, nearly one in four relationships had some violence, and in 49.7 percent of those relationships, the violence was reciprocal. In relationships in which the violence was not reciprocal, women were the perpetrators in 70 percent of cases.

Despite the prevalence of female violence against their male partners, men were more likely to cause bodily harm.

“Regarding injury, men were more likely to inflict injury than were women, and reciprocal intimate partner violence was associated with greater injury than was nonreciprocal intimate partner violence regardless of the gender of the perpetrator,” the study reads.

Columnist Carey Roberts told TheDC that the reason for the focus on female victims in discussions of domestic violence is the fact that men rarely if ever report such incidents, making domestic violence a widely under-reported crime.

“The Department of Justice does what’s called a National Crime Victimization Survey, NCVS. The NCVS is exactly that, it’s a survey of perceived crime. When a girlfriend slaps a man, he doesn’t think of that as a crime,” Roberts said.

Embarrassment is another reason, as a 1997 ABC 20/20 episode highlighted, in an expose on the realities of “battered men.” One of the victims the show chronicled, David Nevers, explained that he covered up the beatings his wife gave him out of a fear of humiliation. “I was so ashamed and embarrassed about what happened that I told them it was an accident … that I had backed into the door and that’s how it happened,” he said.

Feibert estimates that men are seriously injured in about 38 percent of the instances of “extreme aggression.”

“My take is that women are more likely to be more injured, but not a lot more,” Fiebert told the Los Angeles Times in 2002. “The reason is that women are more likely to use weapons in domestic situations than men — such as guns, knives and rolling pins — and men are more likely to use physical strength.”

Young says that while men may not seem to be hurt in the numbers that women are, that is not a reason to leave men out of the equation.

“Even if you take the lower end estimate, if you say that only 15 percent of domestic abuse victims are male, that is not a reason to completely ignore them,” Young said. “One good analogy: Fatalities in the workplace from job related injuries are almost 90 percent male. I think if the president was giving a speech about safer workplaces and combating fatalities on the job and talked exclusively about men, that would be perceived very negatively. Nobody would say it doesn’t matter because women are only 10 percent of the victims.”

Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2010/10/29/obamas-domestic-violence-initiative-neglects-male-victims-of-abuse/print/#ixzz148Z6xf35

Swiss stage world’s first antifeminism event

This portends good things as it appears some men are actually organizing and willing to take the pillaging which will occur from all the feminist ideologues and their media sycophants. Anti-feminism is not anti-women or misogyny. It is a distaste for the decades of misandry using deceit and lies to portray men as abusive, coercive and evil.  This will spread world wide eventually and I've been willing to put my name out here in Canada as decidedly anti-feminist. They will argue all they are after is equality, but that is pure unadulterated BS.  They thrive on their victimization mantra that keeps the money and sympathy flowing in from gullible politicians.  See here for the various tribes in feminism today, and some of their comments. 

Of note are the feminist spokespersons consulted and quoted by the reporter. Sabin Bieri, of the Interdisciplinary Centre for Gender Studies in Bern is a case in point. She is supposedly in gender studies but who wants to bet it isn't just womyn's studies all gussied up to include Lesbians, Gays, and the other variants of sexuality except men. MJM

Image Caption: IGF founder René Kuhn, pictured here with his wife Oxana, is giving the opening remarks at the meeting (pixsil/D. Büttner)

by Jessica Dacey, swissinfo.ch

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Somewhere in Switzerland on Saturday around 150 men’s rights activists will be gathering at a secret location for the “first international antifeminism meeting”.

Amid plans by feminist activists to hold protests, the venue was changed and the new location kept under wraps until the last minute.

Only those who filled out an application form and paid the SFr55 ($55) registration fee will find out. And around 30 journalists who expressed an interest in attending.

“Even I don’t know where it is being held,” said Ulf Andersson, a member of the Swiss-based antifeminist interest group IGAF (Interessengemeinschaft Antifeminismus) organising the event.

IGAF says “the meeting is an exceptional opportunity of making our concerns known to the public”.

Addressing the day-long conference will be IGAF founder René Kuhn, and speakers from a German gender policy initiative, the Swiss men’s political party, an interest group for divorced men and European and Swiss men’s and father’s rights groups.

Andersson described it as a “very special” and “historic moment”.

“The major goal is not to come to conclusions about anything but mostly to meet like-minded people. As you have seen, there are forces trying to stop us from having this meeting,” Andersson told swissinfo.ch.

News of the meeting was reported in the press and led to a demonstration by 50 feminist activists in Zurich and graffiti was sprayed on a community hall in Uitikon, canton Zurich, where the meeting was planned. Leaflets have also been handed out for a rally to coincide with the event.

“A lot of people have the wrong impression about what an antifeminist really is,” said Andersson. “They believe that an antifeminist is a woman-hater. Not at all. An antifeminist is a kind of peacekeeper who wants to return things to normal. As an antifeminist I believe in true equality between a man and a woman.”

Core beliefs

In a written statement prepared for Saturday’s meeting, Andersson has drawn up five key beliefs of antifeminists: “opposing the feminist hatred of men, valuing the nuclear family, believing in the child’s rights to both its parents after a divorce or a separation, looking at the individual and not judging people by their gender, and accepting that men and women are different and counting that as assets”.

Anderson founded the Swedish father’s rights group PappaRättsGruppen after being prevented from seeing his daughter for six years after getting divorced from his wife. With support from a father’s rights group his situation has since changed and he is now able to see his 11-year-old occasionally.

But he blames “feminist” social workers for his plight. In his eyes, “feminists have hijacked the word equality” and today, “feminist stands for pure evil”. He cites radical feminist organisations who call for men to be grounded at home after 9pm or bear placards calling for “male slaughter, female supremacy”, as an example.

Risk of discrimination

“A totalitarian ideology like feminism draws particularly strong opposition” in Switzerland, said IGAF president Urs Bleiker, explaining one of the reasons why it was chosen as the location for the international meeting. The organisers are Swiss, he noted, but “the Swiss love of freedom” also was a contributing factor in choosing the location.

While the Swiss Federal Office for Gender Equality is not worried about the event happening within the country’s borders, director Patricia Schulz told swissinfo.ch that she was concerned by “this movement’s denunciation of all women who do not correspond to its limited vision of what constitutes a ‘real woman’. There is a very high risk of discrimination in the ideas of this movement.”

She added that the organisers did not appear to be looking to stimulate debate that could lead to solutions to the real problems faced by many men, rather they “seem particularly to want to place the responsibility for its problems on women who can be described as ‘emancipated’, without realising that there are certainly other causes”.

Marginal position

By holding the meeting in Switzerland, the organisers are capitalising on the “current conservative discourse which is very prevalent, and where parts of the agenda put forward by the antifeminists seem to fit nicely”, commented Sabin Bieri, of the Interdisciplinary Centre for Gender Studies in Bern.

“Feminist positions today, although diverse, stand for more justice in our societies, including politics and the economy. This does not mean – and has never meant - a reversal of discriminating structures,” said Bieri.

She said one of the most popular examples drawn upon by antifeminists and more mainstream men’s interest groups is the discrimination of fathers in divorce decrees.

“All I can read from the antifeminist position is frustration, possibly rooted in personal experiences. I think it is a very marginal position with no potential for generating initiatives which would be acceptable for average citizens,” she added.

Jessica Dacey, swissinfo.ch

http://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/swiss_news/Swiss_stage_world_s_first_antifeminism_event.html?cid=28666110

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FOUNDATION FOR MALE STUDIES APRIL 6 CONFERENCE TO FOCUS ON DETERIORATING STATUS OF BOYS AND MEN

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

FOUNDATION FOR MALE STUDIES APRIL 6 CONFERENCE

TO FOCUS ON DETERIORATING STATUS OF BOYS AND MEN.

NEW YORK: The Foundation for Male Studies will focus on the research and programs needed to reverse the downward spiral, which is now affecting virtually all aspects of the lives of men and boys, at the Second Annual International Conference on Male Studies – Looking Forward to Solutions, April 6, 2011.

Edward M. Stephens, MD, FMS’ Founder and Chair says that in addition to the conference’s solution-geared presentations by leading authorities, the Foundation is calling for papers from academics on how to best deal with increasing levels of male unemployment, depression, suicides, dropping out of school and related problems. Marianne Legato, MD and Tom Mortenson will co-chair the conference at the New York Academy of Medicine.

Dr. Legato, who founded and directs Columbia’s College of Medicine Partnership for Gender-Specific Medicine, edited the first text on gender medicine, and founded the journal, Gender Medicine. A widely acclaimed author of works on men’s and women’s health, her most current book is Why Men Die First. Mr. Mortenson is senior scholar at the Pell Institute for the Study of Opportunity in Higher Education and the recipient of major national awards for contributions to educational research.

Others participating in the conference are Gordon Finley, PhD, Professor of Psychology at Florida International University, who will speak on the need for a national policy on fatherhood; Michael Gilbert, a Senior Fellow at the University of Southern California Annenberg School and author of The Disposable Male on coping with the cascading loss of male jobs, Katherine Young, PhD and Paul Nathanson, PhD, both of McGill University, authors of published studies on the origins and implications of misandry – the hatred of men.

Scholars seeking to submit papers for the conference may do so by writing to elfenbein@malestudies.org or by visiting http://www.malestudies.org/events.html by March 15. 2011.

http://www.malestudies.org

Foundation for Male Studies
333 Mamaroneck Avenue - 444, White Plains, NY 10605 | (212) 327-3055 | estephens(at)@malestudies.org | www.malestudies.org

Childrens Aid Society of London financial travails provokes a letter by the Minister Responsible, Laurel Broten

Minister clarifies stance with Children's Aid Society

Your Oct. 27 article CAS hopeful crisis can be averted doesn't tell the full story of our support for the London CAS and kids across Ontario.

The safety and protection of children and youth served by Ontario's children's aid societies is a responsibility our government takes seriously. During the past decade, our investments in the agencies have risen from $500 million to $1.4 billion.

The London-Middlesex CAS has seen a funding increase of nearly 36%, to more than $63 million. The agency received a funding increase of $530,000 in the last year alone. My ministry has been working closely with the London-Middlesex CAS and others across the province to best serve kids and families within their available budget.

The 25% reduction your article references is not related to funding. It is about reducing the number of kids in care, and moving them into permanent, stable homes. We know a permanent home provides kids with the best opportunity to succeed and reach their potential. We are seeing progress: across Ontario, fewer kids are coming into care and more kids are getting a chance to succeed in permanent homes.

The Commission to Promote Sustainable Child Welfare, which we established last year to improve the system, has had more than 2,000 conversations with CAS, foster parents, kids, and front line staff. They are bringing forward creative solutions and recommendations to improve outcomes for kids, including improvements to the funding formula.

We are committed to continuing to work with local CAS and to making sure children are protected.

Posted By: Laurel Broten Minister of Children and Youth Services, london

Posted On: October 28, 2010

Editors Note: As published in The London Free Press on Oct. 28, 2010.

I made a comment posted to the LFP Site:

Broten ignores biological parents

It may slip by those not completely aware of the manner in which this government operates but has any one noticed Broten has completely ignored consulting with the biological parents of the children.

Families are not held in high regard by neo-progressives but to blatantly ignore the real parents in a consulting exercise and only those, save the young children,  with a financial benefit in the outcome is both absurd and damming.MJM

http://www.lfpress.com/comment/letters/home.html

The original article and many comments, some of mine and Mr. Charlton's included are here.

http://www.lfpress.com/news/london/2010/10/27/15845846.html#/news/london/2010/10/27/pf-15845846.html

Brad Charlton has also written a letter to the Minister with respect to her statements.

 

 Title: Permanent, stable homes for children

Hi Laurel,
 
Your Letter to the Editor in today's London Free Press does a real good job of summing up the McGuinty government's opinion on parents. You state:

"The Commission to Promote Sustainable Child Welfare, which we established last year to improve the system, has had more than 2,000 conversations with CAS, foster parents, kids, and front line staff."

It absolutely amazes me that you and your ministry so openly admit that you don't even seek a biological parent's view anymore when making a determination on the welfare of a child. That is absolutely shameful.

I demand a response as to how you can claim justification for omitting the feelings, opinion, not to mention the love and concern, that a parent can contribute to potential CAS reform.
 
Sincerely,
 
Brad Charlton

An all too familiar story of Family Court Dysfunction from Sarnia, Ontario

Does this article sound familiar to a lot of men?  My case went on for over 4 years and I lost everything.MJM

Family court broken, report says

JACK POIRIER
The (Sarnia)  Observer

Sarnia's Jason Morningstar says he's the poster boy for what's wrong with Ontario's family court system.

He's more than two years and $110,000 into a custody battle with his ex-wife.

He's seeking joint custody of their two children, aged five and seven.

"I've been drained financially and emotionally," Morningstar says.


Dozens of similar cases were outlined in a newly-released report commissioned by the Law Commission of Ontario and calling for reform of the family justice system.


The 83-page report, Voices from a Broken Family Justice System, says the system fails to find workable solutions for parents, often pitting them against one another in highly litigious cases that alienate children.
Parents are being driven to the poorhouse by an adversarial family court system that fails to protect the needs of children or find workable solutions for families, the report states.

Based on interviews and consultations with more than 100 social workers, family councillors, lawyers, judges and families, the report criticizes the family law system for not better meeting the needs of families at such a highly stressful period.

The report suggests lawyers sometimes use "delaying tactics" to make money and turn to bullying tactics to paint an ex-partner as an unfit parent.

The report says that's a common theme. Meanwhile, "children want to be heard but they feel they have no voice and no power in relation to adults, including their parents, lawyers, counsellors and judges," it states.
Morningstar's five-year-old son was diagnosed as an infant with an inoperable brain tumour. During a time when both parents should be working to spend as much quality time with their sons as possible, the court wranglings have left them strapped for cash and emotionally drained, Morningstar says.


"I'm living paycheck to paycheck. And the worst part is there is absolutely no one out there that will listen."
Morningstar said he now sees his children three times a week, but that's taken more than two years to get to.
"There's a lot of nasty games. It really doesn't need to be this difficult. I believe my ex-wife and I are good people," he says.

"All I ever wanted was joint custody of my children, and it's going to cost me $150,000 to get it. I've been struggling to keep my son alive and now I'm struggling to keep him in my life ... It's been a nightmare."
Onetime lawyer and former Sarnia-Lambton MP Roger Gallaway has repeatedly called the family law system unfair and biased against men.

Gallaway says little has improved in the system since he co-chaired a joint Senate-Commons committee that spent a year holding extensive hearings into custody and access.


The committee presented its report, For the Sake of the Children, to Parliament in December 1998, detailing harrowing stories of parents who were cut off from their children and driven into bankruptcy and despair by mounting legal bills and an unresponsive court system.

There needs to exist a presumption of shared parenting and equality going into court as it relates to parenting roles, he says.

"It doesn't exist. It doesn't apply in family law."

Gallaway says too often baseless allegations are brought up in court, based on "allegation, rumour, gossip and assumptions" and it is a highly effective tactic in preventing shared parenting.

"The onus should be on the parent who is alleging (the misconduct) to prove it. But courts are making decisions that are not evidentiary-based and that's frightening."

To contact the writer: jpoirier@theobserver.ca
Copyright © 2010 The Sarnia Observer
 http://theobserver.ca/PrintArticle.aspx?e=2786902

Women's 'double shift' of work and domestic duties a myth finds new research

Feminists are wrong to claim that men should do a larger share of the housework and childcare because on average, men and women already do the same number of hours of productive work. In fact, if we consider the hours spent doing both paid work and unpaid household, care and voluntary work together, men already do more than their fair share, argues LSE sociologist Catherine Hakim in a special issue of Renewal: a journal of social democracy.

Until recently, unpaid work such as childcare and domestic work has been hard to quantify and so mostly ignored by social scientists and policy makers. The development of Time Use Surveys across the European Union, however, has provided data on exactly how much time we spend carrying out both paid and unpaid productive activities. The findings show that on average women and men across Europe do the same total number of productive work hours once paid jobs and unpaid household duties are added together - roughly eight hours a day.

Catherine Hakim said: ‘We now have a much more specific and accurate portrait of how families and individuals divide their “work” and this data overturns the well-entrenched theory that women work disproportional long hours in jobs and at home in juggling family and work. Feminists constantly complain that men are not doing their fair share of domestic work. The reality is that most men already do more than their fair share.’

While men carry out substantially more hours of paid work, women will often choose to scale down their hours of paid employment to make time for household work when starting a family. In Britain, men are shown to actually work longer hours on average than women, as many will work overtime to boost family income when the children are at home while wives switch to part-time jobs or drop out of employment altogether.
Couples with no children at home and with both in full-time jobs emerge as the only group where women work more hours in total than men, once paid and unpaid work hours are added up.

The article argues that in societies where genuine choices are open to women, the key driver to how work is divided comes down to lifestyle preference, not gender. Individuals fall into three categories: work-centred, home-centred or wanting to combine work and family (adaptive). 80% of women fall into the adaptive category, Catherine Hakim finds, with only 20% wanting a work-centred lifestyle.


Despite this, most European policies are geared towards full-time worker carers and ignore unpaid work, although there are several countries that are starting to support family work. Finland, for example, operates a homecare allowance system that is paid to any parent who stays at home without using state nurseries, effectively paying the carer for their work. In Germany, the income-splitting tax system for couples recognises the work done by full-time homemakers by aggregating and then splitting the spouses earnings between into two halves, reflecting the idea that both benefit from the home/work arrangement.

‘Instead of looking for the one ‘best option’ policy, governments should offer several’, says Catherine Hakim. ‘One-sided policies that support employment and careers but ignore the productive work done in the family are, in effect, endorsing market place values over family values. But the altruistic and community values embraced by home-centred or adaptive individuals, such as sharing, trust and cohesion, are equally as important to a social democracy.

‘Furthermore, there is evidence that men are beginning to demand the same options and choices as women, with more claims of sex discrimination from men. Policy makers need to be aiming for gender-neutral policies that cater for all three main lifestyle choices.’

(How) can social policy and fiscal policy recognise unpaid family work? by Catherine Hakim is published in a special issue of Renewal: a journal of social democracy, out now.
A copy of the final report can be found here| (PDF).


Contacts:
Dr Catherine Hakim, LSE,

http://www2.lse.ac.uk/newsAndMedia/news/archives/2010/08/domestic_duties.aspx |