Fathers & Families Hosts Debate Between 2 Leading Domestic Violence Authorities (Part VI)
October 19th, 2009 by Glenn Sacks, MA for Fathers & Families
Domestic violence and the DV policies of family courts and law enforcement is a multi-faceted issue that has an enormous impact on American families. Fathers & Families is hosting a debate between two of North America's leading domestic violence authorities, feminist DV expert Professor Evan Stark, Ph.D, MSW, and dissident DV expert Dr. Donald G. Dutton.
Evan Stark, Ph.D, MSW (pictured, right) is a forensic social worker who has served as an expert in more than 100 criminal and civil cases, consulted with numerous federal and state agencies, including the FBI and the Centers for Disease Control, and won a number prestigious awards for his work. 
Dr. Donald G. Dutton, Ph.D. (pictured, middle right) has published over one hundred papers and ten books, including Rethinking Domestic Violence, The Abusive Personality, Domestic Assault of Women: Psychological and Criminal Justice Perspectives, and The Batterer: A psychological profile.
The debate will run in several segments and will be posted on both www.fathersandfamilies.org and www.glennsacks.com. Readers are asked to keep comments respectful and on topic. Our rules of moderation can be seen here.
All of the posts relating to this debate are available here.
In Part IV and Part V, Stark and Dutton sparred over numerous issues, centrally the question of whether the DV establishment's "gender model"--domestic violence is something that men do to women, not vice versa--is the proper way to view DV. Below, Stark responds to Dutton's latest.
Glenn Sacks, MA
Executive Director, Fathers & Families
Ned Holstein, M.D., M.S.
Founder, Chairman of the Board, Fathers & Families
Stark Responds to Dutton:
Dutton bobs and weaves. I won’t respond to his personal stories except to express my sympathy at not being listened to. I know how it feels.
Here, he reiterates his claim that mandatory arrest is racially biased, roots violence in adulthood in childhood profiles of aggressive boys and girls and in “multi-problem” families, shows that the “stereotype” of violent men assaulting “defenseless” women only describes a small proportion of DV cases and joins Linda Mills in arguing that instead of dividing the world into “perpetrators” and “victims” we should be treating these multi-problem families rather than putting a band-aid on the problem based on stereotypes. Again, the villain of the piece is the gender model, but there are some points at which we agree.
On Race
This time Dutton quotes Linda Mills quoting Sherman. I’ve reviewed Mills work elsewhere (Violence Against Women 10(11), 2004. 1302-1330) and won’t do so again. Dutton cites Mills’ thought experiment: if we take results from Milwaukee, l of the 5 NIJ experiments, assume police disproportionately arrest blacks 3:1 and extrapolate, arrest ends up hurting large numbers of black women. Apart from the absurdity of drawing conclusions from a made up scenario like this, if you extrapolated from other NIJ sites with opposite results, you would think arrest made a huge difference. Both exercises are wrong. In fact:
1. Mandatory arrest has reduced racial bias in arrest as I showed in my last comment. Though more black men were arrested after mandatory arrest policies were implemented, their proportion among all those arrested declined to better reflect their proportion in the population. So mandatory arrest is anti-discriminatory.
2. Since the implementation of mandatory arrest, black and Latina women have significantly increased their use of police and other services so that today they are more likely to call police than white women. This is certainly because they have more confidence something will happen when they call—suggesting they do not feel discriminated against by arrest, but favor it.
3. Although many more men are being arrested for DV, they are not being punished. In the NIJ experiments, fewer than 5% of those arrested went to jail and in some cities, fewer than 1%. So arrest policies reflect the worst of both worlds: we arrest abusers, make them mad, then send them home to re-abuse. My solution is to up the ante by implementing punishment to fit the crime. And I would do this for women arrested for partner assault as well as men.
"[A]rrest laws have protected men far more than they have protected women."
4. In fact, the arrest laws have protected men far more than they have protected women, no question, and they have protected black men in particular. For instance, according to the FBI, since l976, when we opened the first shelters and introduced arrest in dv cases, the number of men killed by women in intimate relationships has dropped an astounding 71%, much more than the overall drop in homicides, while the number of women has dropped much less, only 26%. And the drop in the black community, as I showed earlier, is even larger, over 80% in the killing of black men.
According to the FBI, in 2004 1, 596 females but only 385 males were killed by partners. While homicide is a relatively rare outcome in domestic violence cases, this is the same ratio we find in domestic violence cases generally, in domestic violence arrests, in reports in medical clinics, in crime surveys or from the National Violence Against Women Survey and so on, Dutton’s claims aside. So, at a minimum, arrest in combination with other interventions has saved thousands of lives, most male.
"[W]omen tend to kill abusive partners when they see no way out, either in self-defense or retaliation...abusive men kill women when they think they will lose control or do so, due to a separation or divorce."
This strange result reflects the fact that women tend to kill abusive partners when they see no way out, either in self-defense or retaliation. So when they have alternatives, they use them. By contrast, abusive men kill women when they think they will lose control or do so, due to a separation or divorce. So the same protections that help men endanger women. But this not because arrest or shelter are bad, but because we still don’t remove abusers from society in ways that are protective.
"[A]rrest policies in the US discriminate against white women."
If anything, arrest policies in the US discriminate against white women who are the fastest growing group of offenders arrested.
On arrest generally. Dutton wouldn’t decriminalize DV altogether but, like Linda Mills, would use the law to push families into treatment, particularly where violence is mutual.
I don’t dispute that arrest alone leads to only a modest reduction in partner violence, although these reductions are quite significant when arrest is combined with aggressive prosecution, service to victims and community-based supports. As Andy Klein has shown, the men being arrested for domestic violence are typically repeat offenders who have committed a number of crimes against persons and property. So arrest is not going to solve the problem. We know that. But this doesn’t change my major point, that we arrest people not because we believe it helps people to become better citizens, but because we believe that when persons commit acts that offend rights we hold dear, such as the right to physical integrity or to independence, they should be punished and this may include removal from our society for a time. I don’t decide who should or should not be punished by whether they have psychosocial or behavioral problems.
The other key point, to which I will return in the next installment, is that the abuse the domestic violence revolution was organized to stop is a chronic, ongoing course of conduct crime, not comprised of discrete assaults. I would no more expect spot interventions like an incident-specific arrest or counseling program to stop battering than I would expect not eating meat for a week to prevent heart disease. To looking at “recidivism” or “repeat offenders” is barking up the wrong tree. There are almost no cases of abuse where assault is isolated. So we should stop trying to measure of figure out this problem by counting up violent acts.
"Historically, violence against women by husbands or boyfriends was not considered a crime...women’s violence against men was always punished much more harshly than men’s violence against women."
Historically, violence against women by husbands or boyfriends was not considered a crime. (By the way, women’s violence against men was always punished much more harshly than men’s violence against women). But as women gained economic and political status, women’s physical safety in relationships became a litmus test for the integrity of relationships.
Society’s interest in protecting women was no more feminist than the Supreme Court’s wanting blacks to go to decent schools. If blacks aren’t educated, they can’t do the jobs needed to make the economy prosper. If women’s resources and energies are redirected to serve individual men, they can’t fully contribute to the economy, causing the society to lose a substantial portion of its workforce. This is why we criminalized abusive behavior, not because Newt Gingrich became a captive of the gender model.
Though these changes might not have occurred as quickly or in the ways they did if feminists and other advocates had not fought hard for this change, our societies have recognized that our wives, daughters and mothers are full persons and so entitled to the same protections from assault that we men have historically enjoyed. When Dutton wrote the Domestic Assault of Women over a decade ago, he celebrated this change. Not so any more apparently. Like it or not, this change is here to stay, no matter who checks what boxes on what surveys.
"Current law doesn’t go far enough."
Current law doesn’t go far enough. Mounds of research now show that a typical abusive relationship involves coercive control, not merely physical violence. In between 60-80% of these relationships, one partner is depriving the other of basic liberties and autonomy, taking their money, regulating their everyday behavior, isolating them from friends and family members, threatening them in a range of ways, restricting their speech and movement, degrading them sexually through rape and inspections. In most of these relationships, about 80%, the abusive partner is also assaulting the victim.
Instead of punishing persons for assault only, however, we should make it a much more serious crime to deprive partners of liberty or autonomy in personal life, the crime of coercive control. This pattern has a range of health consequences that are exhibited by no other population of assault victims, including women assaulted by men, men assaulted by men, men assaulted by women, etc. At present, the evidence is overwhelming that women abused by men suffer entrapment as the consequence of coercive control. Moreover, as I show at length in Coercive Control, women’s performance of stereotypic gender roles is the focus of coercive control—how they dress, have sex, cook, clean, talk to others, care for children, and so on. So it is not feminists who have made gender the target of abuse, but abusers.
"I believe that coercive control is committed almost exclusively by men because it is rooted in sexual inequality and the desire by some men to preserve the privileges they derive from inequality."
I believe that coercive control is committed almost exclusively by men because it is rooted in sexual inequality and the desire by some men to preserve the privileges they derive from inequality at any cost. Since men cannot be unequal to women in the same way and at the same time that women are unequal, inequality supports men’s capacities to abuse women far more than women’s abuse.
"I do not believe women are any less interested in controlling us than we are in controlling them or less prone to violence or less jealous. I believe battering is a function of opportunity, not just motive."
I do not believe women are any less interested in controlling us than we are in controlling them or less prone to violence or less jealous. I believe battering is a function of opportunity, not just motive, and that inequality provides opportunities for men to establish and defend privileges in personal life not available to women.
"[C]oercive control has been invisible in plain sight precisely because the types of behavior abusers enforce are part of women’s already degraded default roles as housewives, homemakers and mothers."
I believe coercive control has been invisible in plain sight precisely because the types of behavior abusers enforce are part of women’s already degraded default roles as housewives, homemakers and mothers. If a woman is responsible for cooking and cleaning anyway, what difference does it make if I give her a strict set of rules on how to clean? If it turns out that a substantial population of women are depriving men of liberty and autonomy on a substantial scale, I would also favor sanctioning them harshly. But I have treated dozens of men and hundreds of women and worked with dozens of abused males as well as abused females. So, when I say it is a male crime primarily, I am reflecting not merely on the data, but on my experience. But it is equality, liberty and autonomy that I am fighting to protect, not women, because I believe these are basic values in our society that merit defending. The difference is that we now defend these values much more vigorously in public life than in personal life.
A major confusion in much of this debate concerns violence. The battered women’s movement of which I am a proud part is not a movement to stop people from being violent, no matter how desirable this may be. It was a movement to prevent the use of violence, as one among many means, used to dominate women. While I generally oppose the use of violence as a means of addressing national or international concerns, I do not categorically oppose the use of violence in families or relationships. To the contrary, I recognize that violence is often an important tool to settle grievances and resolve conflicts, particularly for folks who are denied access to the other resources like money and professional credentials and lack the interpersonal skills to address these issues in other ways.
"[C]laiming that this stereotype of women as passive and helpless is due to the ‘gender model’ is just wrong, however much readers of this blog would like to believe it."
In my child’s school, if you didn’t fight when called out by another student, girl or boy, you ate your lunch in the bathroom. And even that wasn’t safe. I have spent my life living and working in communities where women are easily as capable of violence as men. So I have no illusions about women’s use of violence. The stereotype of women as defenseless is not peculiar to feminists. Most middle-class men and women hold to it and in an era when women were more dependent than they are now on the male as protector and breadwinner, it probably served us well from an evolutionary standpoint. Dutton accuses proponents of the gender model of denying the significance of women's violence. In fact, the vast majority of research and writing about women's violence against partners has been done by proponents of the gender perspective he attacks and not by Dutton or the survey researchers on whom he relies. So claiming that this stereotype of women as passive and helpless is due to the ‘gender model’ is just wrong, however much readers of this blog would like to believe it.
Dutton claims that abuse is really rooted in early childhood experiences and “abuseogenic” families. Dutton cites several longitudinal studies that track persons from childhood into adolescence and, in some cases, into adulthood. He claims violent adults could be detected early on and preventive steps taken to help them. But what steps? Which children? Dutton’s interest in real science should tell him you can’t generalize from longitudinal studies to general causality.
First, the research Dutton cites does not deal with abuse as it is generally defined and doesn’t deal at all with coercive control.
Second, longitudinal research tracks behavior forward and so cannot tell us anything about the causes of current behavior in general. We have known for decades, at least since Straus and Gelles first surveys, that children raised in the most violent and disturbed homes were much more likely to become violent as adults. In fact, children raised in the most violent homes are ten times more likely to be violent adults, particularly but not only males, than children raised in nonviolent homes. This tells us a lot about why exposing children to extreme violence can be damaging. But it tells us nothing about adult abuse. This is because:
a. Only a tiny proportion of children, fewer than l%, are raised in these most violent or disturbed homes. And a small proportion of current abusers were raised in such homes. So, yes, if you start with disturbed children and moved forwards, they have lots of problems as adults. But if you start where we actually are, with current abusive adults, fewer than 5% have these backgrounds. This conclusion is based on data from the NFVS, so it may not be completely accurate. But it’s the closest we have. This means that 95% of current violence is not caused by these early onset problems. Some estimates are higher than mine. But even the highest show that, at most, 20% of current violence by adults—and almost none of these studies distinguish partner violence from non-partner violence—is explained by childhood exposures and problems.
b. Although many more children from these homes end up in violent relationships as adults, the vast majority, between 70% and 90% do not. This raises two questions: are the children who are abusive as adults abusive because of these early problems or for some intermediary reasons? And, if it turns out that aggressive children become aggressive adults, what should we do about it? Should we be monitoring childhood aggression? Should we be putting aggression probes into the brains of 5 year olds? Since the vast majority of aggressive or disturbed children do not become violent adults, any attempt to identify risk early and intervene (with medications for ADD or MBD, for instance) would include too many false positives to be acceptable.
Dutton repeatedly cites the relative ineffectiveness of current modes of intervention. What he does not share is that studies of mental health intervention show even less success than current strategies, and are far, far more expensive if provided on a general scale even than arrest and incarceration. If he could convince us that some sort of blanket prevention effort with aggressive children could reduce adult violence, I would support it. But who else would? In the U.S., we still don’t recognize health care as a right? Does Dutton really think we’re about to invest billions in dealing with multi-problem, primarily disadvantaged families in childhood?
"Dutton repeatedly cites the relative ineffectiveness of current modes of intervention. What he does not share is that studies of mental health intervention show even less success than current strategies, and are far, far more expensive if provided on a general scale even than arrest and incarceration."
I would certainly join Dutton in saturating our communities with programs to send positive messages about respect and nonviolence in relationships, particularly programs that focus on the performance of gender roles. All the evidence of which I am aware in public health shows that families identified as multi-problem are families who are disadvantaged in employment, housing, income supports, child care, health access and the like. So I would also join him in supporting comprehensive family support programs in this regard.
I would replace the child protection system with a family support system, for instance, exactly what liberals wanted in the first place. It was the Right that opposed the state going into families—for some good reasons, I might add—and we who wanted family supports. Child protection was the fall back position. But this has little or nothing to do with partner abuse, which is common in affluent as well as disadvantaged families. In fact, all of the problems identified with abuse, particularly alcohol and drug abuse, are more common in affluent than in disadvantaged communities. Yet no one is calling these families “multi-problem” or suggesting we probe aggression in these youngsters.
Bottom line: I’m interested in stopping adult “abuse,” the systematic, ongoing exploitation of one adult by another in personal life in ways that subjugate and entrap them and keep them from fulfilling their dreams and life-projects. We may also want to keep folks from hitting each other, make them non-violent. But in my world, simply using force isn’t abuse, not even when someone is hurt. When Dutton and his colleagues point to surveys on which women and men check boxes acknowledging they’ve used force, my response is that’s interesting, but not why I’m here.
"Abuse involves the use of force and other means to establish or reinforce one’s power over another."
Abuse involves the use of force and other means to establish or reinforce one’s power over another. And when this happens, someone is victimized. And when persons are victimized, they reach out for help or consider themselves victims. Interestingly, almost no one in the surveys Dutton cites does this. Of the more than 13,000 monographs published on domestic violence since the late 70’s, fewer than a dozen identify any population of “battered men” seeking help. And, in the one area where they do, arrest, the response has been at least as aggressive as it is when women complain.
"[W]e need to treat exploitation in personal life as a wrong that won’t be tolerated."
Until we have the magic bullet Dutton believes in, we need to treat exploitation in personal life as a wrong that won’t be tolerated. Yes, folks have lots of problems. And yes, these problems can get mixed up with violence in complicated ways. Right now, at the current level of our understanding and capacity, we can’t do much that is effective to stop these problems. And much of what we do makes things worse. But what we can do is change the norms of behavior so that adult abuse is as unacceptable as smoking, or driving while intoxicated, or child abuse, behaviors that cause a lot fewer problems than abuse. And arrest, prosecution and imprisonment as well as general condemnation and re-education is one of the few ways we have to change norms, as ineffective as they are.
"Neither I nor most of my colleagues deny that women can be as violent and controlling as men. After all, if women were passive, helpless and did what they were told, why would we men expend so much time, thought and effort to control and dominate them?"
I suspect many on this blog will not be convinced that the sort of violent acts recorded by the surveys on which Dutton and those who share his views rely have little to do with the abuse that we want to punish. So, in my next installment, I’ll try to address this issue more directly. But let’s get one thing off the table. Neither I nor most of my colleagues deny that women can be as violent and controlling as men. After all, if women were passive, helpless and did what they were told, why would we men expend so much time, thought and effort to control and dominate them?
Among the claims that seem worth answering, or answering again, are these.
"[Dissident DV authority Linda] Mills'...use of evidence is...quirky and irresponsible."
To match Dutton’s personal ruminations, here’s mine on Mills. The last time we spoke together, she wowed the audience by telling how, after he was raped by a male friend, she decided not to call police, but to take revenge by having sex with his best friend. Her use of evidence is equally quirky and irresponsible.
Dutton is wrong about the links between behavioral problems, psychopathology and abuse. But even if he is right, this would not change my opinion on arrest. I certainly favor treating persons who are alcoholics or drug addicts or who are mentally ill. But once they commit a crime against another person and are highly likely to do it again, they should be punished, regardless of the context, unless they are legally insane. If a crook or a kidnapper is drugged or drunk when they offend, we don’t excuse them. We give them substance abuse treatment in jail. So too with DV offenders.
The other point I want to reiterate is that arrest is meaningless if there is no punishment. I don’t know how it works in Canada, but in the U.S. arrest is not considered a punishment, though no one likes to be arrested. In fact, its use as a punishment is unconstitutional. In the NIJ experiments, almost no one went to jail. The solution is to use punishment to fit the crime, not to stop punishing criminal assaults. By the way, I would take the same position on women who assault men. In any case, none of this has anything to do with racial discrimination against black women, which was Dutton’s original claim.
So far as arrest is concerned, Andy Klein has shown that arresting and punishing early on has a dramatic effect on subsequent violence. But again, I don’t really care whether arrest stops crime. What I care about is that we send a strong message that persons who commit certain crimes are removed from our society. I don’t think prison is a good place and I know there are almost appropriate services for men or women in prison these days, since I spend a good deal of my time working with men and women in prison. So if Dutton wants to treat these guys while their incarcerated, I take my hat off to him. But just keep them away from their victims.
[Note: All of the posts relating to this debate are available here.--GS]
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October 19th, 2009 at 10:43 pm
"why would we men expend so much time, thought and effort to control and dominate them?"
Speak for yourself, Evan, as an expert in abusive, coercive control.
"This strange result reflects the fact that women tend to kill abusive partners when they see no way out, either in self-defense or retaliation. So when they have alternatives, they use them."
Yeah, like Mary Winkler. Or perhaps it's just the most convenient "solution". One with little, if any, downside.
"Of the more than 13,000 monographs published on domestic violence since the late 70’s, fewer than a dozen identify any population of “battered men” seeking help."
Notice the fine mincing of words: "seeking help". Would it surprise ANYONE other than Evan that most DV shelters just hung up on men seeking help, that law enforcement offices would first laugh, then hang up on any man seeking help. Gee, perhaps the populations were there all along, but not recorded? Naaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhh!
This part cracked me up: "how they dress, have sex, cook, clean, talk to others, care for children, and so on."
I imagine an explanation WHY it cracked me up isn't required for many, many American husbands.
October 19th, 2009 at 11:36 pm
Stark sure has alot of "I think" 's in there. "I think" this, "I think" that. Where is the empiricaal supprot for all these "I think"s?
Why doesn't Stark back up his claims like Dutton does? The "coercive control almost exclusively male" comment does not coincide with the data, such as Straus' 32-nation study that found women as controlling as men in dating relationships.
October 20th, 2009 at 12:06 am
If you are well documented the feminists and their chivalrists ussually won't come out to debate since you can't prove well documented truths wrong - or many feminists in this situation just resort to name calling, "Oooo he's so ookey, creepy and scary... i can just feeeel that he's and abuser..." or they just make outright false allegations against you - a feminist specialty shared by their chivarists - not hard to defend against and bounce it right back at them with logic and reality once you understand their MO.
A friend and I were invited onto a radio program today for an hour of the program. We had our claims well documented and that may be why we didn't even get the dignity of one member of the DV community calling in to even make false claims or false allegations against us or what we presented. Callers were supportive of what we presented, including the women. More people need to do this. Get your ducks in a row to do it and know what to be prepared for if the DV folks do call in, blog in or make false accusations:
http://kvnuforthepeople.com/2009/10/19/todays-guest-tom-miller-references-for-domestic-violence-against-men/#comments
October 20th, 2009 at 12:13 am
If you are well documented the feminists and their chivalrists ussually won't come out to debate since they can't prove well documented truths to be wrong - resources doing so are too easily proven for what they are - opinions and hysteria. Or, many feminists debating these issues, when proven dead wrong, just resort to name calling or "Oooo he's so ookey, creepy and scary... i can just feeeel that he's an abuser..." or they just make outright false allegations against you - always a best offense or defense, a feminist specialty shared by their chivarists. That's not hard to defend against and bounce it right back at them with logic and reality once you understand their MO. but understand that using logic (truth and reality) is actually in some of their brochures labeled as male abusiveness along with so many other things, but only if a man does them. Ah, yes, their good old double standards (which can only equates to supremacy and abuse). Whoops, there I go being abusive again (using logic).
A friend and I were invited onto a radio program today for an hour of the talk show program. We had our claims well documented and that may be why we didn't even get the dignity of one member of the DV community calling in to even make false claims or false allegations against us or what we presented (DV INDUSTRY Awareness Month). Callers were supportive of what we presented, including women. More people need to do this. Get your ducks in a row to do it though, and know what to be prepared for if the DV folks do call in, blog in or make false their usual false accusations:
http://kvnuforthepeople.com/2009/10/19/todays-guest-tom-miller-references-for-domestic-violence-against-men/#comments
October 20th, 2009 at 12:17 am
Coercive control by women often comes in the form of verbal abuse such as constant belittling, putting the man down in front of others including the children, and unrelenting criticism. When a woman tells a man, despite his good efforts, that he doesn't make enough money or isn't smart enough or doesn't do enough for her, that affects his basic self-esteem. At a real human level, it can take away his sexuality, neuters him. How is that ok?
I'm a woman and I have observed that it goes both ways. We should be teaching our children that relationships are about balance, not about winning.
October 20th, 2009 at 12:36 am
Marc A.,
Straus' 32-nation study actually found that women are MORE controlling and MORE abusive than men in dating relationships (just like marriage DV).
Here's the snippet on this 32 nation dating violence study from Martin Fiebert's site (plus much more was shown in the full study as well):
Straus, M. A. (2008). Dominance and symmetry in partner violence by male and female university students in 32 nations. Children and Youth Services Review, 30, 252-275. (A convenience sample of 13,601 students at 68 universities in 32 countries completed the CTS2. Findings reveal that almost a third of students assaulted their dating partners in a 12 month period. In terms of initiation, mutual aggression accounted for 68.6% of physical violence, while women initiated violence 21.4% of the time and men initiated violence 9.9% of the time.)
Hmmmm, give new meaning to "ladies first."
And, here's the snippet from Dr. Rena Sommer:
Sommer, R. (1994). Male and female partner abuse: Testing a diathesis-stress model. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Canada. (The study was in two waves: the first was from 1989-1990 and included a random sample of 452 married or cohabiting women and 447 married or cohabiting men from Winnipeg, Canada; the second was from 1991-1992 and included 368 women and 369 men all of whom participated in the first wave. Subjects completed the CTS & other assessment instruments. 39.1% of women reported being physically aggressive (16.2% reporting having perpetrated severe violence) at some point in their relationship with their male partner. While 26.3% of men reported being physically aggressive (with 7.6% reporting perpetrating severe violence) at some point in their relationship with their female partner. Among the perpetrators of partner abuse, 34.8% of men and 40.1% of women reported observing their mothers hitting their fathers. Results indicate that 21% of "males' and 13% of females' partners required medical attention as a result of a partner abuse incident." Results also indicate that "10% of women and 15% of men perpetrated partner abuse in self defense.")
Yep, ladies before gentlemen again and again...
Sommer's study also showed that men suffer more injuries from abusive women than the other way around. I'm surprised Dr. Fiebert didn't include that short detail. Many studies and stats on DV injuries are taken by those who are trained by the DV establishment to ignore abused males and downplay them, wiping them from the official stats. ER studies most often show the same because of this - women injured in DV more - but some ER surveys do show the opposite (men injured more by women) and were done without coaching from the DV industry. Could that possibly have anything to do with the skewed numbers in so many ER DV injury surveys (don't count them if they are men or if they are not major enough in your opinion, or if he seemed to "deserve it?" See how that flies when equally applied to women injured from DV...
Boy, how easy most of our very own men's and fathers' advocates ussually go on abusive women, DV injuries and especially the uber-abusive DV establishment, when compared to these examples and so many others...
Men who think their evil, abusive Exes are their main enemy are dead wrong - It's the DV Industry, stupid.
October 20th, 2009 at 12:51 am
"I believe that coercive control is committed almost exclusively by men because it is rooted in sexual inequality and the desire by some men to preserve the privileges they derive from inequality at any cost." Well, I believe that this man has never been to a bar where the sexual inequality and privileges derived clearly favor women...not even close as a matter of fact. And what the heck does this sentence even mean? " Since men cannot be unequal to women in the same way and at the same time that women are unequal, inequality supports men's capacities to abuse women far more than women's abuse."...I think this is not a fair debate.
October 20th, 2009 at 12:56 am
Coercive control is not a male tactic, but is more of a female tactic, only projected onto men by coercive manipulators.
Stark claims that coercive control is a male problem while Dutton and so many others prove by references that coercive control is not a male-dominated problem.
Try: http://www.csulb.edu/~mfiebert/assault.htm
Coercive control is actually predominantly a feminist, chivalrist and DV establishment/industry sociopathology and narcisistic problem - those who get an even bigger free pass on violence than women do, and who profit and gain power from it much more than even abusive women do.
October 20th, 2009 at 1:03 am
Good boy, engineerDon, you pass gender studies indoctrination with flying colors. None of it documentable, just feelings are enough to convict - guilty until proven innocent... Socialists love your "logic" too.
Yeah, it certainly is not a fair debate at all (truth vs lies) since what you so naturally regurgitate is so easily proven wrong dead wrong:
http://www.csulb.edu/~mfiebert/assault.htm
Even women, no, especially women, tell me that women they know are much more manipulative, coercive, controlling and outright physically abusive as well - with their husbands and with their children. Get real, please. Put down the gender studies propaganda books and actually talk to real women about these matters, not feminists and their chivarists getting rewards for selling out their fellow men.
October 20th, 2009 at 1:06 am
I haven't posted here in a while and admittedly have not kept up with the Dutton-Stark debate. But it took me all of about 25 seconds to find a 'flaw' in Starks argument. Below I quote him,
"Mounds of research now show that a typical abusive relationship involves coercive control, not merely physical violence. In between 60-80% of these relationships, one partner is depriving the other of basic liberties and autonomy, taking their money, regulating their everyday behavior, isolating them from friends and family members, threatening them in a range of ways, restricting their speech and movement, degrading them sexually through rape and inspections. In most of these relationships, about 80%, the abusive partner is also assaulting the victim."
Note that practically all these conditions are more typical of women controlling men, not the other way around, except when you get to the "rape" part...which Stark is obviously using to insinuate that all the abusive ones are men. It appears that Dutton is, for the most part, not calling Stark on this kind of b.s. (It's disingenuous for Stark to imply that the man is 'taking the woman's money.')
This is one way radical feminism works - It's proponents hoodwink the public by using sneaky wording.
October 20th, 2009 at 1:16 am
"We should be teaching our children that relationships are about balance, not about winning"
Boys are raised from day one being taught to always defer to the female. This was true long before feminism came along.
October 20th, 2009 at 7:02 am
I'll tell you what I think. The Number one reason for DV is the coercive control resistance.The guy with the male use of coercive as some unequal male priviledge is not a real professional. That is primarily the female way to abuse men. And it continues into family court in divorce. The guy was describing what it was like to be married and then throws in rape. That was pure femminist garbage right there. As long as we keep playing this silly femminist game the problem will never go away.
October 20th, 2009 at 8:54 am
with all due respect ""Historically, violence against women by husbands or boyfriends was not considered a crime...women’s violence against men was always punished much more harshly than men’s violence against women."
Was he HIGH when he wrote this? Punished by who? The husbands or boyfriends? That may make sense. You hit your husband in the old days, they probably gave you good hard smack back. Now a days you just take it, unless you have to go to the emergency room. He certainly can not be speaking about the POLICE punishing women.
October 20th, 2009 at 9:17 am
I have to ask - Is this even an honest debate? I commend him for coming out, but it seriously seems to me as if this man isnt interested at all in equality.
I believe there are very very few men out there that come from from a long days work and beat on their helpless wife. This monster of a man is potrayed in all the movies and media.. but i believe is incredibly rare. WHy - there are consequences to that behavior.
A woman can beat the hell out of a guy and there are NO consequences UNLESS he fights back (assuming fleeing isn't an option). There is no bloody way that I'm the only guy out there that just happens to have lived through this crap, and knows a bunch of other random people who lived through it. I have never even heard of nor met a real live person who beats on his wife. I Have met plenty of women who beat on the husbands at the drop of a hat with whatever object they can get their hands on. (that's all real funny though right? haha).
I come here because i'm interested in equality, not lies and unbalanced hate propoganda.
How about this -
Put in a new law. Any MAN OR WOMAN who beats on their spouce whom does not defend themselves or flees, can be thrown in jails /OR put to death. That should curb it on either side right or at least thin the herd right?
If the men could call and get help, i'd bed I'd see half the women in my neighberhood disapear haha.
October 20th, 2009 at 9:27 am
"I do not believe women are any less interested in controlling us than we are in controlling them or less prone to violence or less jealous. I believe battering is a function of opportunity, not just motive."
ah, there is the root of it, see we do agree on this one.
October 20th, 2009 at 9:47 am
"[W]e need to treat exploitation in personal life as a wrong that won’t be tolerated."
I agree with this one too. THat is why I have such an issue with "www.respectwoman.ca" as it only talks about boys. Boys need to learn this. The truth is, if we taught girls and boys not to hit each other, DV would go down. Instead we only teach boys that it's wrong, and not to hit back. The site is great - i love the section on victum blaming.
I hit her because she had a gun pointed at me officer!
Officer -You sir are a victom blamer.. shame on you. You should have let her shoot you.
October 20th, 2009 at 9:48 am
Stark is bought and paid for by the DV industry. He knows he needs to parrot this crap to bring the bacon home. Just like the police, judges, and politicians: they all know that they can't deviate from the feminist politically correct line, no matter how absurd and ineffective it is.
Compare the number of citations in Stark's piece vs Dutton's. That says it all!
October 20th, 2009 at 10:35 am
"4. In fact, the arrest laws have protected men far more than they have protected women, no question, and they have protected black men in particular. For instance, according to the FBI, since l976, when we opened the first shelters and introduced arrest in dv cases, the number of men killed by women in intimate relationships has dropped an astounding 71%, much more than the overall drop in homicides, while the number of women has dropped much less, only 26%. And the drop in the black community, as I showed earlier, is even larger, over 80% in the killing of black men."
---
Well this is interesting. If laws were instituted that massively increased arresting of men for DV, and we have huge expansion of shelter space for women--then shouldn't WOMEN'S DEATHS BE DROPPING????? Considering that *safety of women* is the target and the end-game, why are male deaths dropping?
The only logical explanation is this: the men being saved aren't men dying from self-defending females inflicting lethal wounds, but rather the men being saved are themselves the victims of female perpetrated DV.
Why kill your husband, when you can have him arrested for DV, take his house, and ruin his life instead?
This shows that male deaths have dropped because aggressing women no longer have to kill their passive husbands to gain vengeance.
This is evident with exparte orders that command a man to leave the primary household to the woman. If her husband was really some psycho-killer don't you think she would skip out of town (like in Sleeping with The Enemy where she fakes her own death & still can't shake her nut-job husband loose). If he's *really* truly aggressive, why would you stay where he can find you?
Exparte orders only work against *passive law-abiding men*. A psycho-killer isn't going to let a piece of paper deter him from what he wants.
The whole DV establishment is based on a mountain of BS. When challenged on it, their response is to *just keep piling it higher*!
October 20th, 2009 at 12:14 pm
Mr Stark starts off with a biased viewpoint, and it colors all of his research, analysis and proposals.
Women *know* they can claim abuse, and there's no follow up, and no consequence for playing that game. It's a fantastic way to get out of trouble, and to retaliate further.
Stark's scenarios do not take that into consideration.
He also doesn't take into consideration that the police have an interest in getting a conviction - and really don't care who it is. They want to grab, stuff, and leave, not spend an hour or more sorting out who did what to whom, or who was doing whatever non-violent, non-criminal behavior. They're taking someone to jail (must arrest policy), and the easiest person to get a conviction against is the man. If they can't decide which one to arrest, and there's kids present, they'll threaten both parents with putting the kids in foster care. They'll do it separately, trying to get one of the two parents to say something that gives them enough probable cause to arrest a specific individual and charge with a crime.
Stark doesn't take this or other conflicts of interest into account on his stats and reporting.
Nice one, Stark, on the "well, we're arresting you for your own good, so the woman that's assaulting you doesn't kill you in self defense" Circular victim blaming at it's best! Now I know why people get graduate degrees!
Women abuse, both criminally and non-criminally, with impunity, and when they need further retaliation, the police and court system are more than happy to help. And don't forget the profit motive!
October 20th, 2009 at 1:22 pm
Mounds of research now show that a typical abusive relationship involves coercive control, not merely physical violence. In between 60-80% of these relationships, one partner is depriving the other of basic liberties and autonomy, taking their money, regulating their everyday behavior, isolating them from friends and family members, threatening them in a range of ways, restricting their speech and movement.
You mean the same way that child support coerces men who don't want to be fathers into changing their entire way of life, by; using the threat of violence and depriving them of their basic liberties and autonomy?
Lets run though a quick child support enforcement checklist:
Governments use of it's legal monopoly on violence? Of course. If you don't believe me then refuse to pay your Child Support and see how long it takes for men with guns to show up at your door to drag you to jail. Check.
Deprivation of basic liberty? Well you are thrown in jail if you can't pay. Check.
Deprivation of basic autonomy? If you aren't ready or able to fulfill your parental responsibilities then too bad. You have no choice. Check.
Stealing of money, income, and assets? Check.
Regulation of behavior? You have to pay so yes. And if you refuse to you go to jail. I'm pretty sure they regulate your behavior pretty tightly in lockup. Check.
Isolation from friends and family members? Of course if you are unable to pay, and in jail. Check.
Threatening them in a range of ways? Anyone who has been unable to pay child support knows about the endless threats that come in the mail, over the phone, and eventually in person when men with guns drag you off to jail. Check.
Restricting movement and speech. If you are unable to pay your child support then your passport is revoked, and obviously if you are thrown in jail that also constitutes restriction of movement. As far as restriction of speech goes try arguing with a judged about his ruling and see how fast he fines or throws you in jail with a contempt of court charge. Check and Check.
So this domestic violence "expert" is agreeing with what I have been saying for years. The child support and the government's method of collecting it falls under feminists definition of Domestic Violence. There is only two differences between this form of domestic violence, and the traditional kind. The female outsources all of the grunt work to the government, and the whole process is not only legal but actually encouraged by the government.
October 20th, 2009 at 3:01 pm
"I believe that coercive control is committed almost exclusively by men because it is rooted in sexual inequality and the desire by some men to preserve the privileges they derive from inequality at any cost."
In one column Stark indicates the psycho babble inherent in the Duluth Wheel of Male Control is ineffective but throughout his discourse he seems to lean more on this ideology than fact. His constant use of "I believe" sounds more like a brainwashed religious ideologist rather than a scientist. To suggest males have exclusivity is to clearly show he doesn't spend much time on studies that show otherwise. Some of these studies have already been referred to prior to this post.
I always wonder what motivates these "White Knight Chivalrists" aside from the amount of money they can muster from the DV Industry. I have yet to read one who hasn't used cherry picked information from one sided studies to try and prove a point. Stark is no exception.
October 20th, 2009 at 3:33 pm
good point Mike.
And Stark doesn't even do that much (using one-sided advocacy research). He just uses "I believes".
October 20th, 2009 at 4:25 pm
Hoo boy. There is only so much of Stark's assertions I can read at a time. This is what came to mind:
"Our world has come to the edge of disaster precisely because of its preoccupation with justice, indeed, often at the expense of truth."
and
"We are threatened not by the absense of justice, we are threatened by the fantastic prevelance of untruth. Our main task ought to be the reduction of untruth, first of all - a task which should have been congenial to intellectuals who, however, failed in this even more than the worst of corrupt clerics. Of justice and truth the second is of the higher order. Truth responds to a higher deeper human need than does justice. A man can live with injustice a long time, indeed, that is the human condition: but he cannot long live with untruth. The pursuit of justice can be a terrible thing, - it can lay the world to waste - which is the deepest predicament of American history."
-John Lukacs , 1970 "The Passing of the Modern Age"
I have a feeling that I am going to be citing this quotation more and more when coming to this end of the 'debate'.
October 20th, 2009 at 5:08 pm
"[W]omen tend to kill abusive partners when they see no way out, either in self-defense or retaliation...abusive men kill women when they think they will lose control or do so, due to a separation or divorce."
It's interesting the way this sentence is worded. they might as well have said "women are justified in their killings where men are merely evil control freaks enforcing their will."
What if instead the speaker had said " Abusive women kill when they think they have lost the ability to control their spouse due to a seperation or divorce...men tend to kill abusive partners when they see no other way to protect themselves and their children from both their spouse and the state (family courts)
I just found it to be an interesting turn of phrase, thats all.
October 20th, 2009 at 5:22 pm
Women do kill when they're losing their ability to control - it's just that they kill their kids...
October 20th, 2009 at 6:00 pm
I will say this about Stark - he may have the gender wrong, but he's certainly correct about abusive people - the abuse increases off the chart when you try and leave.
Unfortunately for men, women continue to abuse through proxy, and the wonderful thing about the police is they will happily deliver their proxy harassment across town for you, at no additional charge (well, that's another female discount). No fuss, not muss, and no substantive evidence. Hell, if they can't bust you on DV, they'll happily stalk you until the can find *something* to arrest you on.
... and don't give me any of that "well, if you're not doing anything illegal, you have nothing to worry about" kind of crap. Just as any prosecutor worth his job can get an indictment on a ham sandwich, any cop can arrest anyone, at any time, and worry about the 'why' later.
The research that Stark relies on has too many people who have a conflict of interest when it comes to being completely candid and honest. The alleged perpetrator, alleged victim, the alleged officer, the prosecutor, the people offering services, etc, all but the male alleged perpetrator have no interest in the truth, really, and only in the continuing perception that the only abuse and violence worth discussing, spending money on, incarcerating people on, creating bad, panic based legislation on, and removing any discretion on - is any thing that inconveniences women, period.
I run into people with Stark's set-in-stone mindset about DV. The problem is, these people have a fair amount of control over my life, and make unilateral and difficult to contest decisions about my my life. Like Stark, they know it all, they've seen it all, and they know just what you need to stop being an evil oppressive man. (We'll start with 30 sessions of 'wife beaters anonymous', at $30 a session, no checks, cash or visa, please). What ever she says is the truth (so long as it's bad about you), and all of those responsible things you were doing were embarassing and oppressing her - yadda yadda yadda.
October 20th, 2009 at 8:09 pm
Good comments 'Offended dad' (above)
Hey guys, watch this little video:
http://jsoltys.wordpress.com/2009/06/30/female-psychologist-advocates-for-mens-issues/
An Australian psychologist advocates for the studying of men's issues.
October 20th, 2009 at 9:06 pm
"[W]omen tend to kill abusive partners when they see no way out, either in self-defense or retaliation...abusive men kill women when they think they will lose control or do so, due to a separation or divorce."
"see no way out" is new speak for "see no way out with full control of the children and the family assets." In my first marriage my wife made quite abit more money than I did. She was a high powered medical doctor who started making a lot of money once she finnished her degrees and became a partner. I was a salesman who worked out of the home. I was the primary caregiver of our daughter. Who do you think had the leverage in that marriage? I did!!!!!!!!! My weakness was my asset in divorce. We lived in California and had a 10 year marriage which meant she would owe me alimony for the rest of my life. The home and her business were half mine.
True, someone who has no marketable skills and does not work is dependent on others.
October 20th, 2009 at 10:14 pm
Offended Dad Says:
"The research that Stark relies on has too many people who have a conflict of interest when it comes to being completely candid and honest."
Exactomundo!!! These people have set themselves up as "experts" in these matters and this is how they make their $$$. They have a vested interest in maintaining the "male is abuser, female is victim" status quo. Just follow the money trail, it will provide the truth.
The DV industry has become nothing more than a speciallized branch of the highly profitable, multi-billion dollar divorce industry. The mandatory arrest policies and unrestrained TROs that these "experts" vigorously support just provide a fast and easy way to remove innocent men from their homes and families without having to deal with nasty little things like proof and constitutional rights.
Fortunately, there are a few places where people are beginning to see what kind of nonsense and hypocrisy these "experts" are peddling. The recent victories in CA and WV are proof of this.
October 20th, 2009 at 11:15 pm
www.respectwoman.ca is a very supremacist web site. Why not equality and purely mutual respect??? And ditch the abusive lies and hysteria. Abusive feminists and their violent chivalrists abusively scream, "No way! No mutual anything! Only double standards favoring girls and women..." Where have we seen this before? Everywhere, littering the landscape of history, everything from witch trials to slavery. The Child witch hunt in Africa right now follows the same exact guidelines and hysteria as VAWA.
Isn't that what this whole debate is about, mutual respect, equal treatment under the law and constitution?
www.respectwoman.ca is absolutely no different than a very racist web site teaching only blacks to respect whites, with zero reciprocity. Yep, back to the days of slavery, teaching the slaves to respect massa, while massa needs respect nobody.
It's identical. I can't believe anyone would dare support such rot under modern day terms.
October 20th, 2009 at 11:56 pm
Dave, it's time to wake the community and chase the snake oil salesmen/women out of town and invite them to drink their own elixirs...
A friend and I were guests on a radio talk show yesterday, for what we call DV INDUSTRY Awareness Month. The host started out skeptical (actually he had us on to shut us up by letting us flop to get rid of us) but he ended by saying his eyes had been opened. Thanks to good, irrefutable documentation and supportive callers, none of whom we had ever talked to before (we ran out of time and put our efforts into coordinating with each other and our reference sources and what we would do and say in various situations, instead of putting any time at all time into contacting those in our men's and fathers' groups to call in to the show for support - random and new support is out there, big time, everywhere, lots of people you've never met, no matter how many you have met and have in your groups already). Then we got inundated by calls after the show as well, mostly by men scared spit-less to call in on the show and be identified and thus further abused by police, agencies, exes, etc...
I stated early in the show that a whole lot of listeners in our community already know someone very close to themselves who has been or is being beat up not just by their ex but even more so by the police, courts and the DV/divorce establishment. These are a very large number of abuse victims who have nowhere to go for help except to be abused even more by those who are supposed to be helping them.
We bashed and exposed prosecutors on the show, because we can, by asking the audience to ask their prosecutors why they outright refuse to prosecute to the full extent of the law the pandemic of false abuse allegations all around us. And then ask themselves, "If our prosecutors are this unethical and lawbreaking in this respect, what else are these prosecutors and all their associates additionally up to?" It's pretty hard for them to come back and attack us for slander after the callers verified what we were saying about the pandemic false abuse allegations, male victims and all.
Not one call came in from a DV industry person. That would have only made them look worse. There is no way that this industry can keep generating more and more fake "victims" (by classifying everything as abuse, if a man does it, and enticing, coaching and rewarding women for making false allegations) and not eventually hit critical mass and implode as more and more people are effected and getting damned mad about it when they finally understand what's really been happening to them and that they are not alone but are in a quickly growing big crowd of victims of the DV establishment.
We simply have to get our ducks in a row and keep hammering away with truth, reality and logic (no matter how abusive feminists and their chivalrists say that is), really know the big picture here, know what we are saying - have it backed up, and educate the public in so many ways, bringing them together so they are not isolated or feeling isolated and powerless to fight back against their abusers. Don't bash women, bash the industry and give kudos to all the great women supporting us who are likewise fed up with the abusive, manipulative, coercive DV establishment.
I reminded the public on the radio show that the men and fathers who felt that their abusive ex was their main enemy were dead wrong - their main enemy and abuser is none other than the DV establishment. I'm small-fry, a nobody, and if I can learn it, rehearse it, back it all up and then do it, you can too. Radio isn't the only means to accomplish reaching the public en-mass. We must keep educating and appealing to the public as the numbers of real victims of the DV industry balloons.
October 21st, 2009 at 1:15 am
As for the claim, "[W]omen tend to kill abusive partners when they see no way out, either in self-defense or retaliation...abusive men kill women when they think they will lose control or do so, due to a separation or divorce."
Hmmmm....
It is men who kill women because they have no way out. Women have a way out, many ways out. Everyone and their dog is out there to help women out... On the other hand, those whom the multitudes of very seriously coerced and abused men are supposed to go to for help seem to only further abuse men and fathers (and their children), non-stop as well. Women do have someone to turn to, lots of someones and agencies, etc. No excuses for abuse (or murder) there? You sure contradict yourself.
The DV industry and women's studies programs are very, very culpable in most divorce murders which are just this - non-stop abuse of the man, ussually father (due to DV industry and women's studies programs agenda and hysteria). This abuse of these men is then assisted by everyone and their dog in the DV industry once he reports the abuse or when she ups her ongoing abuse by making false abuse allegations.
It only amazes me that only about 1 in 1000 fathers abused to this never-ending extent retaliate in this way when they REALLY see no way out. Why do you excuse women who are abused less, who then murder, BUT, "There's NO Excuse for Abuse!" when the man is abused much, much more and then murders with no real way out? These murders of women are directly orchestrated by the DV establishment and women's studies programs for their own selfish fulfillment, empowerment and money - period.
Double standards equal:
1- Supremacy (Do you really support and embrace this?).
2- Abuse (Do you really support and embrace this?).
Many of us have worked very hard to stop abuse of women and continue to work extra hard to stop divorce murders (actually very easy to do if the DV establishment would help do what WILL work, or if they were even interested in either). But, the DV establishment refuses to allow these things to happen via simply using equality and eliminating all their double standards. This says a lot about them and their true agenda.
Anyone who supports this kind of ultimate rot is either very evil or very ignorant. I used to support it just like you, thinking I was doing good for humanity, but in my case I did it for the latter reason - I was very, very ignorant, and very deceived, might I add. I'm making up for that now if you will excuse me.
October 21st, 2009 at 7:08 am
Tom M Says:
"Anyone who supports this kind of ultimate rot is either very evil or very ignorant. I used to support it just like you, thinking I was doing good for humanity, but in my case I did it for the latter reason - I was very, very ignorant, and very deceived, might I add. I'm making up for that now if you will excuse me."
May God bless your efforts Tom. Are you aware of the efforts by Erin Pizzey? She founded Chiswick Women's Aid, the first refuge for battered women way back in 1971. She has always maintained that domestic violence is not a gender issue. This lady is a trailblazer in the fight against DV and she has some real eye opening stories about the history of this fight.
According to Ms. Pizzey:
"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."
As I said, the DV industry does not care about stopping DV.
October 21st, 2009 at 10:53 am
I believe that coercive control is committed almost exclusively by men because it is rooted in sexual inequality and the desire by some men to preserve the privileges they derive from inequality at any cost. Since men cannot be unequal to women in the same way and at the same time that women are unequal, inequality supports men’s capacities to abuse women far more than women’s abuse.
This does not explain how women dangle child custody over men's heads when it comes to control. I'm sure there are a lot of dads here that have dealt with a woman that was able to have her because the threatened to take the kids or cry rape or abuse or something like that. There are parts of the court system that favor women and they know it. I did not contribute to the parts of society where I have privilege yet I still supposedly have it but not contributing to the parts of society that favor women somehow absovles them of having privileges over men?
"This strange result reflects the fact that women tend to kill abusive partners when they see no way out, either in self-defense or retaliation. So when they have alternatives, they use them."
The problem is when people use this to presume before the investigation even starts that when a women kills a man it must have been self defense and the investigation starts at "This had to be self defense and we must prove it." instead of "This man is dead and we need to find out what happened."
"Historically, violence against women by husbands or boyfriends was not considered a crime...women’s violence against men was always punished much more harshly than men’s violence against women."
Yet today female against male violence is being treated like its a phenomenon that just started about five years ago. And why is that? Because there is not much data on it and why is there not much data on it? Because society at large is just getting used to the idea that female against male violence exists.
ClarenceOveur:
Notice the fine mincing of words: "seeking help". Would it surprise ANYONE other than Evan that most DV shelters just hung up on men seeking help, that law enforcement offices would first laugh, then hang up on any man seeking help. Gee, perhaps the populations were there all along, but not recorded? Naaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhh!
Simple when men are underrepresented in something it is ALWAYS because of something men did or did not do and when women are underrepresented in something it is ALWAYS because of something men did or did not do. This is why when men under report abuse its proof men aren't abused that often or that "the system works" but any slight hint of women under reporting is solid evidence that the system must be rigged to silence women.
And is the purpose of these comments:
So it is not feminists who have made gender the target of abuse, but abusers....
The stereotype of women as defenseless is not peculiar to feminists....
to assure us thet feminists have never done anything wrong or something?
October 21st, 2009 at 2:53 pm
Something needs to be done. Here in Florida the judges need to be better trained and held accountable. They serve the public....not just women....or just men....they need to pay attention to detail and judge without being bias or prejudice.
see story below...its outrageous!
courtwatchflorida.blogspot.com/2009/10/injustice-in-seminole-county-courtroom.html
October 21st, 2009 at 6:13 pm
Honestly, something tells me Stark has very little experience with women.