Feminist blogger Barry Deutsch (aka Ampersand) recently conducted an interview with Paige Flink, the Executive Director of The Family Place, concerning the controversy over their recent ads (pictured above). The ads were placed on 45 Dallas Area Rapid Transit (DART) buses. We conducted a highly-publicized campaign against them last month. I responded to Flink and Deutsch in this post.

Afterwards Deutsch posted another segment of his interview with Flink here. The post below is our response.

Deutsch: Did Glenn Sacks, or any other men’s rights activist, contact you about these ads prior to beginning their campaign?

Flink: No. They started blasting before I ever heard from him.

Sacks: In several interviews Flink conducted before our campaign was launched it was clear that Flink knew the ad would offend and that in her view the ends justified the means. She even specifically said, "I hope you are offended" in one TV interview.

I wouldn't have minded talking to her before the campaign--I've made that type of call before launching previous campaigns in the past, such as with our successful Campaign Against PBS's Father-Bashing Breaking the Silence. However, I can't imagine that it would have ended in anything but either of these two scenarios:

1) Flink denies the ads are offensive

2) Flink acknowledges the ads are offensive and is glad people are offended, as she had already stated publicly.

Even now Flink is still publicly sticking to the discredited notion that women are practically the only victims of domestic violence.

Deutsch: Did Glenn Sacks directly call or write you once his campaign had begun?

Flink: He did call me later, kinda the way I remember it happening, our bus ads had been up for about three weeks, the Dallas news ran an article about it. He [talked about the ads] on a Sunday radio show, and then on Monday DART was deluged with emails. Then I got a call from him the following week. He called saying, and I’m paraphrasing, “I have a way for you to get yourself out of this mess you’ve gotten yourself into.” I did not return his phone call.

Sacks: Flink misremembers or misinterprets this phone call--that is absolutely not what happened. I asked her to talk and "see if we can resolve this" and then complimented her on "the important work you do." I tried to be as nice as possible.

Deutsch: Why didn’t you return his call?

Flink: Well, I didn’t return his call...at that point, we were being attacked. It wasn’t a conversation I had started, and I didn’t feel like my point of view would make any difference.

Sacks: Flink put up the ads knowing they would offend, stated publicly that she hoped they would offend, and now says, "We were being attacked. It wasn’t a conversation I had started."

Deutsch: Does The Family Place provide services to male victims of domestic violence?

Flink: Yes we do. We do. Of course, there’s a huge difference in the number. On an average year we’ll shelter between 700 and 900 women and children, and we’ll council 8-20 men who are victims.

Sacks: Yes, but there are many reasons for this gender imbalance--reasons proven by research--that Flink leaves unstated. Dr. Donald Dutton, author of Rethinking Domestic Violence, explains that this is because men underreport DV far more than women. Men don’t call 911 because they fear they will be arrested instead—with good reason.

Many men feel ashamed. Many others have children and don’t want to do anything to provoke a divorce, because they know they’ll probably lose their kids. Many men know that if they report their wives' abuse, the wife will claim that the husband is abusive, and it is the wife, not the husband, who authorities will side with.

Dutton says “When larger surveys with representative samples are examined, perpetration of domestic violence perpetration is slightly more common for females..." The severity is somewhat less, but research shows that a third of all domestic violence injuries are suffered by heterosexual men.

Flink: We do not shelter men in the facility, but we do provide hotel vouchers. We have a suite we can use. Most of the men who have come to us have been men in same-sex relationships, so we work with the Dallas Resource Center, which provides services for gays and lesbians. And when they come with kids we help them too; we have sheltered men with children.

Sacks: Another discredited feminist notion is that most male victims of domestic violence are ones who suffered at the hands of their gay partners. However, I do commend Flink for the modest services she does provide these men--it's more than most shelters have done.

Deutsch: Would you consider bus ads designed to reach out to male victims of violence?

Flink: We would certainly consider it. This was our 30th anniversary and we had been saving money for a campaign, and we targeted women specifically because our experience has been that when women think about what their children are witnessing, they are more likely to take action. We are ultimately trying to prevent murders, and women are the most likely victims of murder in these situations.

Sacks: As I've previously noted, that's questionable--to learn more, click here.

Flink: It was a small campaign, but we wanted it to be memorable.

Sacks: Well, she achieved that.

Deutsch: How would you respond to a men’s rights activist who said “men aren’t using the services because there hasn’t been enough outreach to men”?

Flink: I would talk about the reality of the person who seems harmed the most, and with limited funds, we have to serve the people who are in the most danger...The women in our shelter usually come because their children have become a target. That is the very specific response we were targeting in our campaign.

Sacks: That's odd, since most child abuse is perpetrated by mothers not fathers. That was another of our stated reasons for opposing her ad campaign. In fact, when I made this point on CNN during a debate, feminist host Jane Velez-Mitchell acknowledged that I had a "very good" point.

To learn more about child abuse, go to our campaign page here and see "The Ads Send the Message That Kids Must Fear Dads, When Most Child Abuse and Parental Murder of Children Is Committed by Mothers, not Fathers."

Flink: We weren’t trying to make a big point about “sexism” and all of those other things — that wasn’t the point. We had a very specific point we were trying to make: There is a cycle of violence. We want to reach the people who most need our help. We want to reach them before they get murdered.

Sacks: That could have been done in a gender-inclusive fashion. In the past, when domestic violence service providers have approached matters in a gender-inclusive fashion, I've been the first to applaud them for it.

Deutsch: What advice would you give a men’s rights activist who is sincerely concerned about male victims of domestic violence?

Flink: I would say, get together another group of men and raise the money to provide the services for the people you say are needing them. And go out there and say “we are the new men’s shelter, and we are here to serve men who have been victims of family violence and sexual violence in their homes.” Do it just the way the women’s shelters stared 30 years ago...Don’t put me down because I’m trying to help somebody. Go out there and help somebody. Instead of bashing women’s organizations, stand up and help somebody yourself. That’s what I’d say.

Sacks: We didn't "put [Flink] down because [she's] trying to help somebody," We criticized her inaccurate and misleading ads, and the overwhelming majority of the public agreed with us. I praised her work on behalf of abused women.

Flink's stand here--that if men are unhappy over the exclusion and/or lack of services for abused men they should go out and create shelters themselves--is a common one in the feminist movement. It was expressed to me directly by feminist California Senator Sheila Kuehl in an interview five years ago.

At the time I rejected this notion but with time I've come to the conclusion that on this point Flink and Kuehl and the feminists are half-right. I'll detail that in a subsequent post.

This entry was posted on Friday, December 5th, 2008 at 10:58 am and is filed under Domestic Violence/DV System, Fathers & Families Advocacy Group. You can trackback from your own site.