Aren’t you from the north? I imagine a northern accent in my head when reading your retorts and it’s just lovely. Keep up the good work.
Since @hearmywordsworld thought that it was unfair to attack feminism over the lack of attention paid to male victims of domestic violence, i thought i’d conduct a little review of the experience of male IPV victims and why their lack of help is directly tied to feminist activism.
Firstly, feminist initiatives such as the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) formed the Office of Violence Against Women, which controls funding on domestic violence programs in the United States. This office has codified bias against helping men and boys.
Domestic violence services are trained off of The Duluth Model for domestic violence. It’s a feminist concocted idea based off of patriarchy theory and the concept of men having patriarchal control being the cause of domestic abuse. It does not have any teachings on male victimization or female perpetration of abuse. In fact they outright state that they do not attempt to address this.
This is what the people who designed the Duluth Model have to say about male abuse:
On the societal level, women’s violence against men has a trivial effect on men compared to the devastating effect of men’s violence against women.
Unsurprisingly, this is what men experience when they call for help from domestic violence resources:
They laughed at me and told me I must have done something to deserve it if it happened at all.
They asked how much I weighed and how much she weighed and then hung up on me…I was told by this agency that I was full of BS.
Twelve percent of the hotlines accused the man of being the batterer or responsible for the abuse. One abused man said:
They told me women don’t commit domestic violence – it must have been my fault.
They accused me of trying to hide my “abuse” of her by claiming to be a victim, and they said that I was nothing more than a wimp.
Of the men who sought help by contacting local domestic violence programs, only 10% found them to be “very helpful,” whereas 65% found them to be “not at all helpful.” One abused man said:
They just laughed and hung up the phone.
They didn’t really listen to what I said. They assumed that all abusers are men and said that I must accept that I was the abuser. They ridiculed me for not leaving my wife, ignoring the issues about what I would need to do to protect my six children and care for them.
Men are more likely to be arrested by the police when they call for help than have their abusive partner arrested. This is because the police are trained in the previously mentioned Duluth Model. They’re also trained on predominant aggressor policies, which is another feminist concoction claiming to address domestic violence, which they call “violence against women.”
Ok, so police need to understand the “dynamics of domestic violence.” Well let’s see what they have to say on the dynamics of domestic violence:
So the “General Information” that predominant aggressor laws are based around starts off with the assumption that women are the victims. I won’t say they deny the existence of male victims but they damn sure aren’t represented, not that I expect it from a “violence against women” site.
So back to the predominant aggressor standards and what they state:
I’ve underlined all the ones that are biased against men in most situations.
Since women bruise more easily and are generally smaller framed, situations where violence is reciprocal, even if the woman is the aggressor, would likely result in her injuries appearing more serious. Also there’s argument to be made that a police officer is also probably likely to downplay the seriousness of a man’s injuries and be more sensitive to a woman’s injuries, even if they aren’t on par with the man’s.
Height and Weight of Parties
This should immediately be obvious how men are more likely to be interpreted as aggressors with this standard.
Potential to Seriously Injure
This again, ties in with size and our impressions of who is more threatening. The man will generally lose this comparison.
Since a man is more likely than a woman to be arrested and convicted when committing the same crime, this also is slanted against men.
Fearful or Controlling Demeanor
This is just a personal sentiment but I feel men are more likely to be interpreted as controlling and women as fearful. In cases where a man is being berated and hit it would be easy for her to put on a fearful and hysterical demeanor for the police. A man calmly explaining that his partner is hitting him might just be interpreted as a controlling man trying to thrown his spouse under the bus.
So far as I can tell (and I’m open to being wrong) there is no effort on the part of feminists to end predominant aggressor standards. As long as it continues there will be male victims who will be brushed aside (and possibly arrested) for seeking help.
Not only is this bias present in funding and training for domestic violence services, it also exists in the feminist-dominated domestic violence research. Psychologist Tom Golden has an excellent video that discusses the erasure of male victims in domestic violence research:
Erin Pizzey, founder of the first domestic violence shelter in the UK, also has spoken at length on her experience with the feminist movement since the 70s and how they targeted her for abuse (including bomb threats) after she tried to expand her services to reach men and boys:
I could see quite plainly that domestic violence was not a gender issue. Both men and women could be equally violent. What I had to say was suppressed. Feminist journalists and radical feminist editors in publishing houses controlled the flow of information to the public. By now the feminist movement had a strangle hold on the subject of domestic violence. They had found a cause to further their political vision of a world without the family and without men. They also had the access to money. The abuse industry was born.
Because of my opposition to the hijacking of the refuge movement, I was a target for abuse. Anywhere I spoke there was a contingent of screaming, heckling feminists waiting for me. Hounslow Council decided to proceed against me in court and I was packed to go to prison for most of the twelve years that I ran my refuge. Abusive telephone calls to my home, death threats and bomb scares, became a way of living for me and for my family. Finally, the bomb squad, asked me to have all my mail delivered to their head quarters. The final outrage occurred when I was asked to travel to Aberdeen University to stand as a candidate for the post of Rector for the University in 1981. I was hopeful that I could have an influence on the young students at the university. At the polling booths Scottish Women’s Aid made it their business to hand out leaflets claiming that I believed that women ‘invited violence,’ and ‘provoked male violence,’ this was the gist of their message.
Exhausted and disillusioned at the growing hostility towards men in the Courts and the lack of support for family life from the government, I went reluctantly into exile with my children and grandchildren. My plan was to go to Santa Fe, New Mexico to write novels. I thought then that I could reach the people who read my non-fiction in my novels. Very soon I was running another refuge nearby and working against sexual abusers and paedolphiles. I found to my cost that Santa Fe was sufficiently lawless to attract these dangerous people. When I returned to England for the publication of my book ‘PRONE TO VIOLENCE,’ I was met with a solid wall of feminist demonstrators. ‘ALL MEN ARE RAPISTS,’ ‘ALL MEN ARE BATTERERS,’ read the placards. The police insisted that I have an escort all round England for my book tour. By then I knew that my position in America could not be permanent. The women’ movement there was even stronger and their strangle hold over the refuges( called shelters) and access to government and state resources was almost absolute. Although I was invited to lecture, every time I did the gender feminists were waiting to invade my workshops and to heckle my speeches. The threats and the persecution began again. Finally, one of my dogs was shot on Christmas day on my property, and I knew the time had come to leave.
In a very informative paper, Thirty Years of Denying the Evidence on Gender Symmetry in Partner Violence: Implications for Prevention and Treatment, Dr. Murray Strauss (may he rest in peace) discusses the tactics used by feminist researchers to erase or downplay male victims and female perpetrators.
He lists 8 ways the evidence of male victimization and female perpetration is downplayed by feminist academics:
Conceal the evidence - When citing figures on domestic violence. A lot of researchers concerned only with women or media outlets reporting on female domestic violence take studies where data is available for both sexes and only reports on the rates of women who are victimized.
Avoid Obtaining Evidence on Female Perpetration - Many feminist researches simply don’t ask women about the violence they commit. Conversely they won’t ask men about their victimization. This obviously leads to a lack of data on male victimization and female perpetration.
Selective Citation of Research - If a single study shows much higher rates of female victimization, you can bet that that study will be cited on domestic violence help websites and “fact sheets”, despite the existence of hundreds of other studies showing equality between the victimization rates.
State Conclusions That Contradict the Data - This one is why you have to be especially careful with feminist studies. Often times the bias is hidden in how they defined the terms and they will group results together and summarize it in ways that is extremely misleading and often flat out wrong.
Block Publication of Articles That Report Gender Symmetry - Time and time again, authors or coauthors will withdraw from a study when symmetry between gender rates is being found. This can be due to personal bias, but more often it’s due to fear of retaliation for publishing controversial results. More on this in #7.
Prevent Funding of Research to Investigate Female Partner Violence - This happens quite easily because often times these funds are controlled by a government office dedicated to tackling violence against women. If the study includes men, then that office deems it to be unworthy of funding. This sort of sexism is standard practice in many modern western countries.
Harass, Threaten, or Penalize Researchers Who Publish Evidence on Gender Symmetry - This one should be quite obvious to anyone familiar with Erin Pizzey’s story. Dr. Strauss also talks about his experiences as well as those of Susan Steinmetz, a researcher at the University of Delaware.
He has far more information and data to back it up in his paper. I highly encourage everyone to read it if they want to get an understanding of the difficulties men face in getting their problems heard by academia and the public at large.
Researchers who have attempted to help men and boys are well aware of the suppression tactics of the feminist movement. (image credit to @franklyno)
“My own experiences [with feminist harassment] have included having one of my graduate students being warned at a conference that she will never get a job if she does her PhD research with me. At the University of Massachusetts, I was prevented from speaking by shouts and stomping. The chairperson of the Canadian Commission on Violence against Women stated at two hearings held by the commission that nothing that Straus publishes can be believed because he is a wife-beater and sexually exploits students, according to a Toronto Magazine article. When I was elected president of the Society for the Study of Social Problems and rose to give the presidential address, a group of members occupying the first few rows of the room stood up and walked out.”
— Murray A. Straus, professor of sociology and co-director of the Family Research Laboratory, University of New Hampshire; Processes Explaining the Concealment and Distortion of Evidence on Gender Symmetry in Partner Violence (2007)
“Perhaps the most physically and personally intimidating behavior was directed at Suzanne Steinmetz, who had first brought the issue to the public’s attention. Steinmetz appeared on such shows as the Today Show and Phil Donahue. Her work was reported in various newspapers and magazines, including a full-page story in Time magazine. Yet, while Steinmetz’s work received some support, the public attack against Steinmetz and her family evidenced the public’s overwhelming rejection of her work. Verbal threats were launched against her and her children—at home and in public. Threatening phone calls were made to Steinmetz and the sponsors of her speaking engagements in order to prevent Steinmetz from further publicizing her work. On one occasion, a bomb threat was called into an ACLU meeting at which Steinmetz was scheduled to speak. Professionally, Steinmetz was also threatened. In an attempt to prevent her from receiving tenure, every female faculty member at the University of Delaware was lobbied by individuals calling on behalf of the women’s rights movement. Academicians also became involved in the personal attack, deriding her work as anti-feminist and simply biased to its funding source. Other social scientists committed to the study of husband abuse and family violence were similarly mistreated. Such tactics seem to have proven effective. Both researchers who were involved in the early projects, and even those who might have become involved, admit that they now choose to give the topic of battered men “wide berth.” Such a commentary is tragic, not only for those interested in female violence, but for all of us committed to protecting academic research and intellectual freedom.”
— Linda Kelly Hill (pictured: Steinmetz), professor of law at Indiana University School of Law; Disabusing the Definition of Domestic Abuse: How Women Batter Men and the Role of the Feminist State
“At the U of Toronto, as I understand it, the organization that sponsored me, called the Canadian Association for Equality (CAFE), had been sponsoring other speakers on boys and men’s issues. The Socialist Workers’ Party’s feminist group apparently did not like that the U of T had anything on campus that supported men’s issues in this manner, and had begun ripping down posters of previous speakers. When I was invited, that was “the straw that broke the camel’s back” and it catalyzed a poster-ripping down campaign like I’ve never seen and a more than 100-person protest that formed a feminist human blockade of the door to prevent people from hearing me. In the past, this had only happened to me once in a much more minor way, when, right after The Myth of Male Power came out, four people protested me outside Town Hall in NYC. I persuaded the organizers to give them free admission, and they became supporters after the talk. This group was not in that league! The police wouldn’t let me near them, and after I saw the videos, I’m glad I took their advice!”
— Warren Farrell, three-time member of the NY board of NOW, bestselling international men’s studies author, taught five different courses at six universities, including women’s studies; I am Warren Farrell, author of Why Men Are the Way They Are and chair of a commission to create a White House Council on Boys and Men AMA! (2013)
“I suppose without sounding too dramatic, my life, my safety, constantly threatened. My dog was shot on Christmas Eve on my property when I was doing some of my work and it was a terrible sight, he didn’t die fortunately but it was terrible with his bleeding and screaming in pain. I don’t know if it was feminists or not, but in any case my books were heavily censored and in the specific case of “Prone to Violence” the feminists in particular tried to censor it and they often made efforts to steal it from the book shops so people couldn’t buy it. It’s about the care and treatment for violence prone women. Feminist editors at the various publishing houses have actually worked to take almost all my books out of print… I had one who told me flat out she hated my books and she had all my books at Harper-Collins remaindered and she pledged that nothing of mine would ever be published again. She was right, nobody would publish my books again in England, until after ten years of working I got Peter Owen Publishers to publish my book, but there were almost no reviews. The feminists who control publishing wanted me silenced. Back in the ‘80s virtually all the publishing house editors were radical feminists, including the men. But there is a much better climate in publishing now.”
— Erin Pizzey, bestselling author and founder of Refuge, one of the first women’s shelters in the world; Hi I’m Erin Pizzey. Ask me anything! (2013)
“Much of the unattractive self-preoccupation and victimology that we find on today’s campuses have been irresponsibly engendered by the inflated and scarifying ‘one in four’ statistic on campus rape. In some cases the campaign of alarmism arouses exasperation of another kind. In an article in the New York Times Magazine, Katie Roiphe questioned Koss’s figures … The publication of Ms. Roiphe’s piece incensed the campus feminists. ‘The New York Times should be shot,’ railed Laurie Fink, a professor at Kenyon College. ‘Don’t invite [Katie Roiphe] to your school if you can prevent it,’ counseled Pauline Bart of the University of Illinois. Gail Dines, a women’s studies professor and date rape activist from Wheelock College, called Roiphe a traitor who has sold out to the ‘white male patriarchy.’ … Other critics, such as Camille Paglia and Berkeley professor of social welfare Neil Gilbert, have been targeted for demonstrations, boycotts, and denunciations. Gilbert began to publish his critical analyses of the Ms./ Koss study in 1990. Many feminist activists did not look kindly on Gilbert’s challenge to their ‘one in four’ figure. A date rape clearinghouse in San Francisco devotes itself to 'refuting’ Gilbert; it sends out masses of literature attacking him. It advertises at feminist conferences with green and orange fliers bearing the headline STOP IT, BITCH! The words are not Gilbert’s, but the tactic is an effective way of drawing attention to his work. At one demonstration against Gilbert on the Berkeley campus, students chanted, 'Cut it out or cut it off,’ and carried signs that read, KILL NEIL GILBERT! Sheila Kuehl, the director of the California Women’s Law Center, confided to readers of the Los Angeles Daily Journal, 'I found myself wishing that Gilbert, himself, might be raped and … be told, to his face, it had never happened.’”
— Christina Hoff Sommers, author, former professor of philosophy at Clark University and scholar at the American Enterprise Institute; Who Stole Feminism? (1994) p. 221-222
“There was some pressure - at least I felt pressure - to have rape be as prevalent as possible. I’m a pretty strong feminist, but one of the things I was fighting against was that the really avid feminists were trying to get me to say that things were worse than they really are.”
— Margaret Gordon, professor of Public Affairs and former dean at the University of Washington; The Blade(October 10, 1993) p. 8
“love the death threats. I think women have vaginas I think you call a person with a vagina a woman. more death threats please.”
— Mike Krahulik, co-author of Penny Arcade (one of the oldest and most popular gaming webcomics on the internet), Penny Arcade Expo or PAX (largest gaming convention in the US), and Child’s Play (a charity that donates video games to sick children in hospitals);@cwgabriel (2013)
With the exception of the very last person, these people have dedicated their lives to helping abused men and boys. They have suffered at the hands of the feminist academic establishment as a result.
TL;DR Feminism harms male victims of domestic violence.
