I left this comment on site in response to a man hater, see below, spouting the most infamous of the Victim Feminist Stats.
Not a Hater: You destroy your credibility by pulling out all these Victim Feminist factoids that aren't supported by peer reviewed studies. Most of them originated in the Liz Library the propaganda warehouse of victomology's specious arguments. Given single parent females are by far the largest predatory killers of their children and perpetrators of child abuse one could then turn your argument around and state those who would abuse and kill children will also do so to their intimate partners. That argument is as fallacious as yours. The current DV industry is a self feeding female centric operation that requires a steady supply of reported victims to keep getting its funding. If the problem was finding a solution think of all the unemployment and loss of income for its parasitic apologists and hangers on. Its a human problem involving both genders and will not get resolved without changing paradigms. I use sugar free cool aid - keeps me from getting hyper. :)MJM
July 20, 10:22 AM · Trudy Schuett - Domestic Violence Examiner
These are very strange times we live in. On one hand, we have the murder of a high-profile sports figure virtually ignored by mainstream media, since the apparent perpetrator was a woman; on the other, we have somebody like Cathy Young speaking out in the Boston Globe on behalf of the large – and growing – number of domestic violence victims who are male.
While a nominee for the Supreme Court gets away with expressing an obvious bigotry against white males, in San Diego County efforts are being made to correct the damage done to its citizens by that same kind of bigotry.
In the comments section here, I’ve seen readers (both male and female) express a surprising degree of hatred against men I haven’t personally witnessed in years. One man even expressed a notion I’d thought had long ago been debunked – that anyone showing any sympathy for male victims of DV must secretly be supporting the patriarchy in their efforts to systematically beat women down. Talk about old-hat conspiracy theories! I figure the guy has an org to support and needs the attention.
Another commenter (a girl this time) suggested I only need to read some feminist blog to see the evidence of the evil men do. Sorry, dear, but 57 years of living with and around actual men, (three of those years spent around Marines) tells a quite different story. Many different stories, in fact; when the feminist blog has only one, repeated time after time, often with facts altered to suit the running narrative.
At some point the idea of causing as much damage as possible to half the members of society on ideological grounds must be recognized as damaging for society as a whole. The troubles in Ireland, Protestants vs Catholics, were certainly not progressive or healing, neither were the clashes between Serbs and Croats in eastern Europe. While the current war against men has not resulted in open conflict, with bombs and active combat, there are still casualties, with deaths, physical injuries and unlawful imprisonment among them.
Dragging people with serious troubles in their relationships into a war not of their making, forcing them to become supporters of a political cause, is not only dishonest but immoral.
If you believe that the current DV industry has any kind of mandate to provide realistic help for battered women or anyone else, you need to read and comprehend this statement made by Barbara Hart, professional victim and divorce lawyer, whose lucrative legal practice was for many years run on referrals from the Pennsylvania Coalition Against Domestic Violence, until somebody noticed that might be inappropriate.
She says:
As long as we as a culture accept the principle and privilege of male dominance, men will continue to be abusive. As long as we as a culture accept and tolerate violence against women, men will continue to be abusive.
All men benefit from the violence of batterers. There is no man who has not enjoyed the male privilege resulting from male domination reinforced by the use of physical violence . . . All women suffer as a consequence of men's violence. Battering by individual men keeps all women in line. While not every woman has experienced violence, there is no woman in this society who has not feared it, restricting her activities and her freedom to avoid it. Women are always watchful knowing that they may be the arbitrary victims of male violence.
This outrageous and entirely unsupportable statement was featured on many state coalition’s websites, including that of my home state of Arizona for some time. Almost any woman can negate or disprove this statement from her own experience, yet this is the basis on which most of today’s DV programs were founded, and continue to operate, using your tax dollars to do so. It is little more than a conspiracy theory, with more than a dash of hate in the mix.
Try this alternate statement:
As long as we as a culture accept the principle and privilege of female dominance, women will continue to be abusive. As long as we as a culture accept and tolerate violence against men, women will continue to be abusive.
All women benefit from the violence of batterers. There is no woman who has not enjoyed the female privilege resulting from female domination reinforced by the use of physical violence . . . All men suffer as a consequence of women's violence. Battering by individual women keeps all men in line. While not every man has experienced violence, there is no man in this society who has not feared it, restricting his activities and his freedom to avoid it. Men are always watchful knowing that they may be the arbitrary victims of female violence.
In 2009, the second statement makes somewhat more sense, as in a way it depicts the direction things are headed, but it is still divisive and does not actually address the issue as experienced by the vast majority of today’s couples.
Those currently running the DV industry benefit directly from keeping the status quo. Many whose jobs are in the industry only have degrees in women’s studies, which are virtually useless in the job market, and therefore would not have jobs otherwise. Others have spent years building careers on the feminist philosophy of DV and would not last long in an industry based on DV as a human, non-gender-related, apolitical issue. Still others have simply become addicted to the power and control their positions give them over women and their families.
Consequently, they will continue to misrepresent the issue, even when that misrepresentation directly violates concepts such as gender equality and peace they claim to support.
It is true that partner abuse is an uncomfortable, complicated, subject. However, to continue to allow those claiming expertise, while only operating out of self-interest and bigotry, to manipulate and control the fates of thousands of families every year is something we cannot allow to continue. It is up to those of us who do not directly benefit from the industry-implemented war against men to point out the many weaknesses in the industry, among them the fact of little or no return on investment, or the fact that no appreciable change or progress has been made in this industry in decades, while nearly all other human services have evolved and advanced.
We owe it to ourselves and our neighbors: we need to stop hating men, as it will never be enough for those who live on our hatred, and benefit from the misery it causes. We need to realize only those with an agenda say we should hate and despise half our world, while ignoring the needs of the other half.
http://www.examiner.com/x-12866-Domestic-Violence-Examiner~y2009m7d20-When-will-we-have-hated-men-enough
And men walk around covered in armor, right? I know this goes against their rape-culture metanarrative, and I am sorry to muddy up a perfectly good victim fetish, but anyone not intoxicated on Women's Studies courses knows that innocent men are victims of violence far more often than women. There is no dispute about that whatsoever. You can even consult sources that feminists would consider unimpeachable: "Yes Means Yes: Visons of Female Sexual Power and a World Without Rape," by Jaclyn Friedman and Jessica Vallenti (2008) at page 23: "Men are 150 percent more likely to be the victims of violent crimes than women. . . . Men are more likely to be victimized by a stranger . . . ."
Tell me: which is the more egalitarian approach, yours or ours?
(odd, I was still within the 1000 character limit, yet it cut off the end)
So why not have a violence against women AND MEN movement instead? What people like you don't understand is that intimate partner violence - regardless of the gender of the victim - is wrong. What you likewise don't understand is that women can be just as likely (by some research MORE likely) to be violent has men. Here's a fact to drink with YOUR coolaide:
"In nonreciprocally violent relationships, women were the perpetrators in more than 70% of the cases." (see www.ajph.org/cgi/content/abstract/97/5/941 for more).
For more egalitarian-minded research, see:
www.mediaradar.org/research.php
What you - and people like you - don't understand is that we are in favor of is equality treatment for ALL victims of DV (whether the victim is male or female). If women should be treated as equals in every other sphere, why not this one?
Tell me: which is the more egalitarian approach, yours
Can you give us the source of your stats? They sound like feminist factoids. You seem to reflect the standard attitude of many in the DV industry, which is: ignore or minimize the seriousness of female perpetrated domestic violence against men and children, and treat DV as a gender problem rather than as a human problem. I suspect that you are part of the problem, not the solution.
Incidentally, great opinion piece, Trudy. Thanks for being a voice of reason and sanity.
rebukingfeminism.blogspot.com
Clinical & Research News
Men Shouldn't Be Overlooked as Victims of Partner Violence
By Joan Arehart-Treichel
Psychiatric News August 3, 2007
Volume 42, Number 15, page 31
© 2007 American Psychiatric Association
Women commit 50.3 percent of domestic violence.
DISABUSING THE DEFINITION OF DOMESTIC ABUSE: HOW WOMEN BATTER MEN AND THE ROLE OF THE FEMINIST STATE Florida State University Law Review: domestic violence is equally the province of women by LINDA KELLY:
Florida State University Law Review
REFERENCES EXAMINING ASSAULTS BY WOMEN ON THEIR SPOUSES OR MALE PARTNERS:
This bibliography examines 249 scholarly investigations: 194 empirical studies and 55 reviews and/or analyses, which demonstrate that women are as physically aggressive, or more aggressive, than men in their relationships with their spouses or male partners. The aggregate sample size in the reviewed studies exceeds 241,700.
Lupe
23, Garden Grove
Funny, that's exactly the speech I was given as a man. Men are far more likely to be the victims of violence (from both men and women). So of course I was told to be careful. I was also told to take responsibility for my own choices.
It is a well regarded feminist belief that men are told to go out in the world, but every man I know was told - in some form or another - to avoid the dark ally, the nutjob woman, or the crazy friend with the drug habit. Bad things happen to good people regardless of gender. It is time to realize that women don't have a monopoly on victimhood.
Excellent question. Her misandry was exposed when she stated:
Daphne: "I am very representative of those of us who work toward ending violence against women, and I won't apologize to you or any of your readers for caring about a problem that affects way too many people, men included. "
So she is against violence against women, but then she adds men as an after thought. I can read that one of two ways. Either men can be included as victims or as perpetrators. Which does she mean? DV affects men because men are perpetrators? Or DV affects men because men are victims? If she means as victims they why not say: "...those of us who work toward ending violence against women and men...."? Answer: she doesn't really care about male victims & she only added them here to make herself feel better. That is a example of misandry. If I were to say I was more concerned with male victims, I'm sure she would say I am a misogynis
Once you finally treat men as equals, you will certainly have my respect. Until then you are nothing but a Lifeboat Feminist: women and children first (and let the men come along if there are enough open seats...but don't count on it).
Why should my tax dollars be going to support such hatred of my gender?
I don't know a single woman who has never adjusted her behavior, in major or minor ways, to protect herself from sexual violence. The standard "going off to college" (or, more recently, the "going off to a high school party") speech is very different for women than it is for men, and includes things like using the buddy system at parties, never leaving a drink unattended, and don't go home with someone you just met. The reason? People view that as rape prevention. They don't give that speech to men.
@windu: What, exactly, in Daphne's post portrayed misandry? She offered a perspective that challenged the notion that all dv providers hate men, which the title of this post clearly implies. Taken in context, I would assume that she listed her education to challenge the statement that many dv service providers have degrees in women's studies and would be unemployable outside the "industry."
While more of the physical scars were from Mum's boyfriend, the story was always the same - mum egged him on, mum looked the other way, mum got drunk and beat me up.
We forget that domestic violence towards a partner will be repeated against the child and with the same incidence. By portraying only men as violent the female DV industry is selling out our kids. Bigtime. We need to protect kids from all violence by acknowledging the truth in DV - that both genders commit violence equally.
I was brought up in a violent home in a violent neighborhood. In adulthood I worked teen girls in a treatment facility in Hawaii and lived and worked with teens in a group home in Colorado for 25 months with their families.
I spent years in police and prison work and I have taught self-defense to women and men. I spent two years working with seniors and their families. Because I had a twin sister and studied gender issues for decades - and was the primary caretakers of my son and daughter from infancy to early teens I have more background related to gender issues than 99.9% of feminist women. I thought of all the families I have known where there is abuse and all the families where there is love as I read your column today - I KNOW that you are on the right track. The feminists who attack you for speaking the truth about "gender violence" are no different than the KKK and the Nazis in their hearts. Those who hate any group will protest those who won't join them. SD
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