Background: Last month feminist bloggers Amanda Marcotte of Pandagon and Jeff Fecke of Shakespeare's Sister vehemently attacked me over comments about the domestic violence issue I had made in an interview. The interview was by Pajamas Media advice columnist Dr. Helen Smith and can be seen at Fighting for Men's Rights (Pajamas Media, 10/8/07), and if anybody can figure out what I said that was so offensive you're a hell of a lot smarter than I am. To learn more about that debate, click here.

Feminist blogger Jeff Fecke and his compatriot Melissa McEwan are on the warpath against me again. Jeff's new attack piece The Tune's the Same, Only the Words Have Changed criticizes my recent blog post Power & Control in the Domestic Violence Industry--a New DV Wheel. In that post I wrote:

"Many readers are familiar with the Duluth Wheel, a visual representation of the feminist view that domestic violence is perpetrated almost exclusively by men and is a function of the patriarchy and men's alleged patriarchal privileges. For three decades, research has shown that this model is faulty, that women are at least as likely to attack their male partners as vice versa, and that a significant percentage of injuries in heterosexual domestic violence are sustained by men. Research shows that women use weapons and the element of surprise to help balance the domestic scales...

"Recently an authority in the domestic violence field sent me and others this new Domestic Violence Wheel which 'visually represents some of the obstacles that reform-minded individuals such as yourselves have had to encounter over the years.'"

Jeff writes:

"Ah, Glenn Sacks. For a guy who says he thinks women should be free and equal, he sure spends a lot of time finding reasons that we should repeal all the domestic violence laws. Take his latest creation, the Domestic Violence Wheel, which documents the massive amount of power women have gained by having legal recourse to get out of bad situations.

"While reading through this little wheel of inanity, it occurred to me that I'd seen this sort of rhetoric before. The complaints about the mainstream ignoring them, anger that ideas had been hijacked. It was all so familiar. And then it hit me: I've seen the same words coming out of the mouths of the global warming deniers and the evolution deniers!

"I don't know what it is about denialists that leads them down the same path, but boy, they sure seem to find it...apart from their rhetoric, these three breeds of denialists all share another thing in common: they're all absolutely, 100% wrong."

A few points:

1) I realize that Fecke compares me to "global warming deniers and the evolution deniers" as a way of discrediting me, but the analogy seems rather attenuated. Worse, he doesn't factually contest what is asserted in the DV Wheel, but instead merely tells us it must be wrong because it's somehow like those who deny global warming and evolution. It's not much of an argument.

Some feminists have a bad habit of doing this--if you're against something a feminist group wants, it's like you're against women voting. If you say something positive about fathers' previous role in society, they say, "People used to think slavery was good."

(As an aside, I believe in evolution, and I think the preponderance of the evidence shows that global warming is real, too. However, I know nothing of science, so I rarely comment on such matters.)

2) Everybody makes mistakes, but Fecke's sloppiness seems to be more than an occasional thing. He calls the wheel "[Sacks'] latest creation," even though it's right there in my original post that the wheel was designed by "an authority in the domestic violence field." This authority currently prefers to remain anonymous, though that may change. I'd happily claim credit for the Wheel, but it isn't mine.

3) Fecke implies that when I and those who agree with me describe the domestic violence establishment as an "industry," we are considering it a "conspiracy." I don't believe the DV establishment is a conspiracy, but I do believe that it's an industry. This doesn't mean that I think the average DV shelter worker is getting rich any more than I think the average oil field roustabout is getting rich. But the domestic violence establishment (and, even more so, the child support enforcement establishment), often do behave like industries or government bureaucracies. They work to protect and expand their funding, they exaggerate and distort problems in order to justify keeping or increasing their funding, they lobby (officially or unofficially), and they work the media.

The DV industry, like most industries, certainly does some good but, like most industries, also does some harm. Society rightfully despises the wifebeater, but the specter of the wifebeater has been used to justify many destructive policies and civil liberties violations. I don't want to get rid of the domestic violence establishment--I want to reform it.

There's a good quote, by Lenin of all people, that the proper way to win a political debate is to counter your opponents' best arguments, not their worst. If Fecke and his friends are interested in countering myself and others who advocate reform in the domestic violence establishment, they'd do better to deal with our actual arguments, rather than painting spurious analogies between us and groups they consider extremist.

Fecke's full post can be seen here.

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 8th, 2007 at 11:33 am and is filed under Feminism/NOW, Domestic Violence/DV System. You can trackback from your own site.