The Domestic Violence Industry’s War on Men
The industry that has grown up around domestic violence (DV), or, as it is more precisely situated these days in research circles, intimate partner violence (IPV), began in good faith decades ago as a legitimate campaign to help women trapped in abusive relationships.
Over the years, as the triumphalist feminist revolution’s long march through the institutions of the West proceeded with eerily unchallenged vigor, DV emerged as a highly politicized touchstone justifying women’s entitlements — legal, economic, familial — at the expense of boys’ and men’s human rights.
A tipping point in the DV chronology, when the focus amongst militant feminists shifted from helping individual women to the more totalitarian ambition of reducing the male population to cultural dhimmitude, can be traced back in time to December 6, 1989, and in space to a school two miles north of my front door.
December 6, 2009, marked the 20th anniversary of a unique tragedy in Western history, the systematic massacre of 14 women engineering students, with injury to 13 others, at Montreal’s École Polytechnique by a lone young gunman, Marc Lepine, who killed himself at the end of his shooting spree.
As an act of violence against women, the Montreal Massacre had no prequel or sequel. Lepine — his real name was Gamil Gharbi, but Lepine chose to identify with his québécois mother rather than his brutal, misogynistic, Algerian-born father — was a sociopath, unaligned with any faith, political movement, or identity grievance group. He was no jihadi. Although one could argue that the massacre presented elements of an honor killing, Lepine’s crime was essentially sui generis.
Ironically enough, if he were a jihadi, feminists would have been stymied in their rush to collective judgment, for the standard reflex following jihadist incidents is to repudiate any linkage of the act with Islam and to warn against expressions of Islamophobia.
But in the case of the Montreal Massacre, a diametrically opposed instinct prevailed. Because Lepine’s only distinguishing feature was his maleness, the tragedy sanctioned unbridled hostility toward all heterosexual men. Indeed, for elite feminist apparatchiks, then in their most muscular and misandric phase, bliss it was in that bloody Montreal dawn to be alive.
Brazenly, without bothering to adduce any substantiating chain of evidence, there being none, feminist spokeswomen linked the horrific crime of a lone sociopath to the general phenomenon of domestic violence against women. Marc Lepine “became” all men who want to control women — eventually all heterosexual men — and December 6 achieved instant sacralised status as a day of national mourning that, for fevered rhetoric and solemnity, eclipsed even 9/11 memorials.
As I wrote in a December 2007 National Post column:
By contrast [to Americans’ lessening interest in 9/11 memorials], the Canadian public never seems to weary of the annual December 6 tribute to the 1989 Montreal Polytechnique shooting massacre of 14 women. Indeed, 12/6’s branding power burgeons with every anniversary: The theme of violence against women dominates the media; new physical memorials are constructed; additional programs decrying domestic violence against women are entrenched in school curricula; masses of white ribbons are distributed; more stringent gun control is more strenuously urged. Their cumulative effect is to link all Canadian men to a global conspiracy against women of jihadist proportions.
Feminists everywhere in the West appropriated its emotive themes to lend greater credence to an already widespread pernicious tripartite myth: namely, that all men — the “patriarchy” — are inherently prone to violence against women, that all women are potential victims of male aggression, and that female violence against men is never unprovoked, but always an act of self-defense against overt or covert male aggression.
The unspoken corollary to these falsehoods is that violence perpetrated against males, whether by other males or by females, is deemed unworthy of official recognition or more than minimal legal redress, and that while female suffering must be acknowledged as socially intolerable, male suffering may not make a parallel moral claim.
In fact, as any number of peer-reviewed research and government statistics make clear, although women are far more likely to report domestic abuse, equal numbers of men and women experience some form of DV during their lifetimes; men and women initiate abuse in equal measure; and far from any inherent “patriarchal” instinct to control women, DV — in Judeo-Christian culture at any rate — is almost always attributable to individual psychological dysfunction (see citation for Abusegate RADAR report below).
I am familiar with the Montreal mass murder you mention, and I think that it is important to mention some other facts too. While in and of itself a truly horrifying event, this massacre had an even more disgusting and shameful element, that is that the men who could have and frankly should have at least tried to protect those women, when ordered by the gunman to leave the room and the women behind, like cowardly sheep, did exactly that. Indeed, even when those men knew that Lupine was murdering the women, not one of those so called men even tried to stop him. And when Lupine finished off the last of the women and walked out of the hall, not one of those men tried to stop him.
You talk about men being unfairly accused of most domestic violence against women and how this is an attempt to dhimmify us. I am afraid that most men have already accepted this reduced status by the femiNazi movement. Like those so called men in Montreal, we are afraid to protect our women and because of the femiNazis, many of us no longer care to.
The domestic violence industry is part of a continuum of groups, policies and academic disciplines designed to replace the family with the state, as part of the continuing socialist plot. The raising of false consciousness concerning domestic violence is one method designed to generate a rationale and therefore political support, for a campaign to neuter and defraud men. Since women got the franchise a majority of women have voted money from men’s wallets into their own purses. This is the origin of the welfare state. The single mother surrounded by siblings fathered by a variety of babydaddys minimally surviving on state benefits is where we are headed. If we let it happen that is. The alternative is a rediscovery of the real differences that exist between men and women. Until women figure out what men have, that we are indeed in this together, rather than being adversaries, more and more men are going to avoid marriage and family, because frankly, its irrational to so commit.
Why isn’t Tiger Woods’ wife in jail? She beat the hell out of him with a golf club and no charges were filed.
Reverse the sexes and see how soon the husband gets thrown in the slammer.
Why wasn’t Tiger’s wife arrested? For the same reason Rihanna wasn’t and why Mary J. Blige was not arrested.
Domestic-Violence Crusader Mary J. Blige Sluged ger husband at a party because she thought he was looking at another woman. She pushed another person out of the way to get to him and she drew blood. This should have gotten her arrested for TWO counts of assult, one for pushing that other person out of the way and another for domestic violence against her husband.
Ms Blige has opened a women’s shelter so should she not be held to the same standard she holds men?
Pastor Ken Deemer Director Shattered Men
deceiver.com/2009/12/24/domestic-violence-crusader-mary-j-blige-slugs-husband
The fact is that many of authorities will not proscute women for domestic violence. I even had some state attorney generals tell me they will not proscute women for domestic violence.
Where is the equal protection that the law is suppose to give everyone?
I was in Dallas during the massacre and it made all the front page news. Every year the Toronto Star (very liberal newspaper) pays some homage to the killings and shows women on the front page waving candles and crying. What happened 20 years ago was terrible and tragic for sure. What is happening today with daily honor killings is no less brutal, but I never see or hear about candle-light vigils in memory of those victims. For every man who abuses a woman, there will be double that who will defend and protect her.
A very wise man once taught me to follow the money.
My guess is that this (long overdue-and to late for me personally) counter pendulum swing is the result of the militant feminsits’ discovery that having an entire workforce of women who are financially supporting the country (and the men in their lives) is not at all what their vision of a feminist utopia was about.
When we as a nation create a class of people (men) that you can persecute and criminalize into subjection just by accusation……you had better be very very careful-you might just get what you deserve. There have to be millions of us out here now who make up this group and no longer have fulfilled lives of potential because of these policies. I’m wondering if there is a tipping point somewhere?
There is a war against men being conducted in homes. It has become acceptable for mothers to make anti male statements in front of their sons. I have heard such remarks on several occasions. I have heard mothers deride the interest that their boys have in trains and cars, dinosaurs and lions, rockets and stars.
Boys are told that they must treat women with deference, but they are not taught that the woman owes them anything in return. They are being trained to accept a one sided relationship where they are submissive and insignificant, more so than women were in the West, in the pre-fem days. I have seen many men who are submissive to their wives and afraid of them. Contrary to what femnazis tell us, women have not been like that. Alot of the justification for feminism was based on made up “facts.” It is not true that women were slaves to men or afraid of men or without power or that most of them were abused. This was not the traditional life of women.
The process by which the american woman decided that she was abused just like blacks by whites or jews by christians is fascinating. It is a remarkable story of falsity and a movement actuated by lies. Not only did the woman want the jobs of men, she wanted to continue to be privileged in the historic manner that women had been privileged, and she decided that the entire culture was evil and oppressive towards her.
This hostility towards boys and men cannot end up in a good result. It will unsocialize and uncivilize them. There seem to be two choices for men whose male roles are taken away. They become submissive and lazy and unwilling to work or brutal and violent. Either way, it will not be good for women. In the end, the women will call on men to protect them from other men. A strong and invasive police force will be needed to watch out for the uncivilzed me.
Western women look at the incredibly tame and civilized western male and decide that is nature and that they can impose on him even more. They don’t realize that civilization is the result of training, the training that they are doing away with.
Perhaps we can learn from looking at the black community. One lie that we hear is that black boys are spoiled and loved too much. The truth is, many of these boys are unloved by their single mothers. Without the father, the mother abuses her power over the boy. One day she may be almost seductive and tell him he is her little man. The next day she tells him he is no good. When the father is there, the mother’s tremendous power is checked. Often the boy stands for the men that disappointed the mother. There is a reason why these boys cannot wait to leave home and hang out with gangs. Home is female dominated. I could write a book about this. I predict we will see the same kind of thing happening with white males.
RKV’s comment is well stated and entirely true. This is leftism at its core and what it bodes is nothing less than remodeling American society leftward…often times with the help of the ostensible right.
Yet this is the leftist Cloward-Piven strategy worked by the gargantuan Department of Health and Human Services in it’s many welfare guises. Title IV-D is where to start your research if you’re interested and you need to be interested.
In this age of competing narratives, truth is the first casualty. The feminist narrative must be viewed through the lens of power and control (a do most grievance based narratives). The feminists see any sort of opposition to their narrative as a violation (violence). Thus to quell the violation, radical egalitarian ideals are asserted (provoked self-defense).
This is why non-physical threats can be claimed as ‘hate’. At its most benign a simple disagreement is now grounds for sensitivity training. At its worst it has been codified in law which the Human Rights Commission of Canada seems to be the most blatant abuse.
http://www.abanet.org/domviol/statistics.html
http://www.rileycenter.org/domestic-violence-myths.html
Reduced status for men? Scared to protect your women because of feminists? I can’t imagine anyone stopping me for any reason if a loved one, male or female, was being attacked. It’s instinctual. What a load of b.s. Don’t know what kind of feminists you’ve been hanging out with. Also, father’s lie and play just as dirty in divorce as mother’s. It’s all about control and revenge and both genders are guilty.
Nice to see you writing here, Barbara Kay.
In many jurisdictions, Canadian and American, the discretion of a police officer to investigate and lay charges according to their discretion has been removed by order of their overseers.
Consequently they are required to lay a charge against a male where a woman makes a complaint. Issues of evidence are strictly restricted to the courtroom where the presumption of innocence is stronger. Some divorce lawyers will tell you that their unscrupulousm colleagues will advise their clients to lay a charge against a husband to assist in custody and child support claims.
Thanks for this article. It seems that every few years I hear a horror story involving an obvious abuse of domestic violence laws. Nice to have an article with solid facts explaining this increasingly surreal world.
Your links are junk hyperbole, vic, the kind repeated for rote by the mythmakers. Stats show otherwise.
“Why isn’t Tiger Woods’ wife in jail? She beat the hell out of him with a golf club and no charges were filed.”
That is because she used a 5 Iron. If she had used his putter, she would have been charged, and rightly so. Tiger Woods’ putter is blessed by the Gods.
Actually, the second link is junk, refuted by the first. DV is virtually gender-neutral.
As an act of violence against women, the Montreal Massacre had no prequel or sequel. Lepine — his real name was Gamil Gharbi, but Lepine chose to identify with his québécois mother rather than his brutal, misogynistic, Algerian-born father — was a sociopath, unaligned with any faith, political movement, or identity grievance group. He was no jihadi. Although one could argue that the massacre presented elements of an honor killing, Lepine’s crime was essentially sui generis.
Lepine may have rejected Islam, but Islam certainly seems to have had its influence on him anyway.
My sister was brutally beaten by her first husband and threw his daughter against the wall when she attempted to protect her mother. This of course was after the systematic mental abuse inflicted upon her to the point where she gave up. She had to leave the state to escape from what would probably have resulted in either her death or grave injury. She could not have done it alone, and needed family and supportive laws to escape.
My son’s have been victims of a double standard where girls were free to carry out horse play with boys, but boys were not able to retaliate and would be admonished for touching a girl after they were touched. I knew of a case where a young female falsely accused another young boy of exposing himself to her when it looked as if she would get in trouble for misbehaving on a school bus.
I see both sides of the story and unlike the author of this article and most of the commenters so far, do not lump all men into one group, nor do I lump all feminists into one group.
The cycle of whining, and the cycle of violence, and the cycle of injustice goes round and round because each refuses to take responsibility for their behavior and those who seek power take advantage of the finger pointing to further their agendas.
#5 Traveling-
You miss out on the fact feminazi’s HATE men. they would be happy if men were nothing more than sperm donors for female children. they celebrate the college educated women who have children and NEVER GET MARRIED.
Sometime, go look at the greeting card aisle. I wanted to send a funny card to my homesick college student daughter. ALL of them were of a kind – men were the butt of jokes (pay attention to advertising today and how many ad’s follow the same formula – white males especially.), or sex. I know too many “I’m not a feminist” women who laugh at that crap. They are all offensive to me, a woman with three sons.
#17. You are right. Just look at so many commercials on t.v. Women deriding their husbands in public, their sons when they spill on clothes or furniture (it’s always boys who make the mess) and now there is a trend to portray hapless white men as bumbling idiots who are corrected by their black bosses and colleagues. They are an insult to both sexes and all races.
The Domestic Violence Industry’s War on Men
Key word “Industry”; If the economy, and
unemployment, do not improve, financial need
will overcome PC DV attacks on wage earners.
Very good article, and also comments. Thank you all.
For supplementary reading that will make your hair stand on end, I highly recommend Dr F Roger Devlin’s excellent article Rotating Polyandry and its Enforcers. Download the PDF and spread it around.
A related, and to my mind even better, article by Dr Devlin about feminism and the family is Sexual Utopia in Power.
Both longish reads, but well worth it. You’ll want to read them over and over.
To commemorate the Polytechnique massacre is right. But to make it an amblem for all violence to women to just stretching it too far. Women do need to be protected when in danger and the appropriate means for protection now exist for anyone who calls for help.
The importance of domestic (women and children) violence has been far overblown for many years. I am not justifying it in any way. But now the bias of police intervention is automatically against the man involved, just in case that there could be a risk for the «victim». similarly, the bias of divorce courts forces men to demonstrate that they are a good father, whereas women always get the benefit of the doubt that they are a good mother. Women claim that they want to be treated equally. Thenm why is there a tax provision allowing the party claiming a raise in divorce alloance? How many man can take advantage of a such a deduction for their lawyer fee?
The sad irony is that there is one danger which, as far as I know, is very real but doesn’t get mentioned at all: A non-parental, non-spousal male living with a woman and her children greatly increases the likelihood of child abuse.
Often abusive men will attempt to isolate the woman from friends and family in order to gain access to and dominance over the woman exclusively. She will become isolated from those who care for her and often she becomes ashamed of her relationship with the perpetrator of violence, embarrassed at the part she plays or the blame placed on her by her violent partner and her own growing lack of self confidence in her rights to be treated with dignity.
Many in society will downplay violence against women perpetrated by their sexual partners and often will ask the woman what she did to make the man so angry at her. Feelings of guilt, embarrassment, and shame will contribute the the cycle of violence continuing. The situation becomes worse when children are born into these violent relationships, and often they too become the victims of this violence, passing the behavior of victim and perpetrator on to the next generation. Many victims who started the relationship with love and a natural inclination to nurture feel obligated to give the perpetrator one more chance especially when they so often return with postures of sorrow, apologies and even overtures of getting help for the violent behavior.
Pretending the problem does not exist or is exaggerated or “overblown” is a cowardly way of confronting violence against women and children often times condoned or at the least ignored, and in some cases tolerated by society, religion and as we are now learning even permitted by Gods and prophets who claim to speak for the Almighty claiming physical punishment is permissible if a woman does not obey. Embarrassment with the uncomfortable thought that mankind s’s inhumanity to mankind is a everyday occurrence especially toward those who one claims to love is something society does not like to face.
This conversation will continue to skim the surface when so-called feminist paint all men with the same brush and authors who claim to speak with authority paint feminists with the same broad brush she accuses them of practicing. It only allows those who have their own selfish agenda more opportunity to take advantage of a tragedy.
Ked;Re17,
As a man and a casualty of this domestic violence industry double standard I am very much aware of the hatred by the radical feminists and loath the fact that in America, males (particualry white middle aged…possibly “christian” males) are the only class of people that it is politically correct to demonize today. I too, hear and see this all over the place. That said; I would remind you that it is hard to even be a sperm donner (or much of a hero/savior/defender to any woman) when you’ve been nutered by the feminist courts.
#23, Lynn:
Right on schedule, a feminist turns up to recite all the old anti-male propaganda.
It’s starting to wear a bit thin.
We can generalize this a bit. I think the left is overall composed of passive-agressive people who seek to band together and use government to oppose the power of alpha males (and females like Palin and Bachmann).
You will see a hostility toward plain speaking, clear thinking, action-oriented people who are willing to make tough choices and demand that others do the same. The leftist male is the omega male. Look at how obama bowed to other world leaders–just being a liberal…
Everyone,
Who here is old enough to remember the old feminist line “nobody ever raped a .38″? What happened to that?
Simple…
Money…political power…control.
PC-ism/Domestic Violence is a male biased money machine for the State. Judges and local/county officials will use all the “mandatory” arrest/court ordered Domestic Violence retraining to profit the bloated systems on the backs of (predominantly)suburban men who MAY have shouted a bit too loud after getting a look at the credit card bill for shoes, shoes, and more shoes. (Ladies stay with me now!!!)
All those fines, all those expert shrinks, counselors, special courts, judges… all that OVERTIME for the cops who cover the shift while others go for “special training”, Intrusive firearms confiscations rules on mere ACCUSATIONS….Its a win/win for the State…Suburban guys with houses, children and jobs to lose if they dont pony up the cash and worship at the altar of the modern “victimology” church…
As long as their is cash (and verified subservience) to the State, the State is happy, and as a bonus, comes out smelling like a rose to all those “guilty liberal” suburban females who VOTE.
But what about (see! I told you to stay with me!!) the REAL women who NEED protection, from REAL abuse, from REAL scumbags with rap sheets a mile long
For them, The State could care less.
Multiple restraining orders violated? Come back tomorrow
The guy doesnt show in court? Ummmm….we’ll put an EXTRA SPECIAL asterisk in his file.
Left you bloddy, and is who-knows-where at the moment?
Well, we let him out for a MURDER ten years ago, we did what we could.
Thses situations are too difficult for them, as they prefer the easy money parking/seatbelt/DUI check points
They tell you to get another piece of (state-issued)paper, as if it will magically stop bullets or knives from penatrating your vital organs the NEXT time he gets mad.
The State believes in speaches, make-work administration, cronyism and symbolic horse-feather gestures, not in Justice or decisive action. Oh yeah, and they are PROFOUNDLY against any effective form of self defense for we, the little people.
We get P/C lip service, and of course, THE BILL
Challenge to all: When you read this post, see if you can go LESS THAN 5 DAYS before you read/hear of another woman(unarmed of course) being killed by her multiply convicted violent felon significant other, while SIMULTANEOUSLY having several “violations of orders of protection” against him.
And ask the modern day Big Government Anti-Gun Feminists what ever happened to:
“nobody ever raped a .38″ ?
Regarding the comments about abusive men. Sure they are beasts, but they are a small minority. The sin of feminism is painting all alpha male behavior with the brush of abuse. Women who have been abused, women who seem to unerringly form relationships with abusers, fail to see that they have been living in a tiny slice of the universe. They fail to see all the good men around them that they have never hooked up with.
They are victims who we can have compassion for, but we cannot let them define the world based on their individual life experience.
The hate-men industry is not much different than the pro-abortion industry. That is take an issue that has merit and blow it up to gain political power and obtain funding; one is at the expense of men, the other at the expense of the unborn. These bitter old gals and their women-studies acolytes are a joke and should be marginalized. Most women I know also think these prunes are a joke. They like and respect men and raise their kids accordingly. This is a small group of crones who played off a legitimate issue to empower themselves. What an unhappy, miserable bunch. I pity the poor bastards who hitched their wagon to these gals.
I told a friend of mine that I thought he was henpecked. He said he would ask his wife if she agreed.
Tiger’s wife isn’t in jail because Tiger didn’t press charges. The State cannot press charges for crimes against a person against the victim’s will. Only if the victim is dead or incapacitated can the State press charges without the victim’s consent.
To lynn 16
“My sister was brutally beaten by her first husband….”
and
“She had to leave the state to escape from…her death or grave injury”
Tells me someone from her “supportive” family should have arranged an “attitude adjustment” for this fella.
1st rule in family protection is to ACTUALLY PROTECT THE FAMILY….Sometimes that means “pre-emptive action”.
FYI there are groups of forthright men available who can arrange it on a Pro-bono basis if you know who to talk to. I have participated in several “advice sessions” for gentlemen who needed “information” and our results (like with most bullies) are effective once they “understand”
Remember, paper dont stop bullets
18. Toronto Girl:
#17. You are right. Just look at so many commercials on t.v. Women deriding their husbands in public, their sons when they spill on clothes or furniture (it’s always boys who make the mess) and now there is a trend to portray hapless white men as bumbling idiots who are corrected by their black bosses and colleagues. They are an insult to both sexes and all races.
YES
but when sharia law comes into effect it will reverse again
It is unfortunate that a call to change a law now up for review was not written in a rational fashion but rather in a way to evoke an emotional response. VAWA should certainly evolve into a gender-nuetral VAPA, Violence Against Persons Act. Of this there is no question. Public policy discussion can become somewhat dull but that is no reason for Ms. Kay to write like this.
The obvious difference being that one is a organized group of activists, the other a demographic. Apples and oranges.
“By painting all males as brutes….”
Your straw is leaking out at the seams, Barb.
Watch the Disney Channel. Every show has the following: 1) smart, fast talking kids that can solve all the problems that the adults cause, 2) bumble-headed male adults, who are either total morons or ‘evil’ businessmen out to destroy the environment. Adult males are always seen in a bad light. Male boys are, more often than not, portrayed as slobs. The networks are not only training our population subliminally, they are blatantly shoving it down our throats.
Don’t get me started. I’m so sick of every domestic violence shelter catering to the women who have been terrorizing their husbands in some cases. For over 15 years, I’ve talked to the female emptyheads at every table at every community health fair, handing out brochures about “the poor abused women” and I have asked them pointblank what kind of help they provide to men who are victims of domestic violence, partly because they don’t dare protect themselves in their own homes. Well, like I said, do NOT get me started. Just don’t…..get me started….with facts….details….court episodes…..do not get me started.
even the neanderthals on tv, don’t get a break. we are all Homer Simpsons. it isn’t Alpha males vs beta males competing, its the game we play and the rules of engagement that we have to work with. women want a nice guy to marry but they keep giving the bad boys play.read that, women’s vaginas keep them sleeping with scumbags, because its exciting to do it. i think the article in the futurist breaks it down the same way. women are no longer the auxiliary breadwinners, yet men are culturally programed to be the provider and protector,and they get hammered in the courts. men end up subsidizing womens life style of looking for alpha males. now more men are playing the alpha role, its like the phase of women liking men in pink so all the wannabe players had their little pink shirts. what do i have to do to attract a woman? whats attractive to a woman and that’s what i’ll be. yeah i know i have to be a scumbag but thats what they sleep with. nothing is uglier than a middle age man on the dating scene, except a cougar. maybe that’ s a reason to get married and stay married?
I cannot completely agree with this article. I’m not sure if VAWA is the best way to protect women. I’d have to look into it more before making a decision. I do not believe in male bashing and I cringe at having to agree with the ACLU on anything. I worked at a safehouse and the people who worked there, for the most part, had views diametrically opposed to mine on most issues. But it is not true that there is equal participation in domestic violence for women and men. That sounds a bit like the feminists’ argument that men and women are exactly the same. Also men in much greater numbers inflict much more serious pain and damage on women than the reverse. If a man attacks a woman and she fights back, the law reflects that they were both violent. Because men usually make more money and women usually are awarded the children in a break-up, women struggle financially much more often than men after a separation. Things are still stacked against women in DV more than men.
“The State cannot press charges for crimes against a person against the victim’s will. Only if the victim is dead or incapacitated can the State press charges without the victim’s consent.”
You obviously have no idea what you’re talking about.
Parabellum:
“Why isn’t Tiger Woods’ wife in jail? She beat the hell out of him with a golf club and no charges were filed”
Because tiger woods decided not to press charges, that’s why.
“Reverse the sexes and see how soon the husband gets thrown in the slammer.”
Ha! Yeah. Right.
The majority of the women (and some men) who identify as feminists that I know of generally take great care to make sure they don’t categorise all males – and all females for that matter. So far, in my experiences and observations it is only those that vehemently deny affiliation with any sort of feminist type thinking or actions that consistently accuse feminists of lumping “all men” as abusers, as the patriarchy, as controllers and generally as male people who aren’t much good for anything. This article does that. It accuses feminists of being narrow minded, rather ignorant, definately uninformed, and outspoken on topics that they really know nothing about. It also accuses them of obtaining power in politics, usually by brainwashing the powers-that-be with falsities about what is happening in society. In this respect, the article has given itself permission to have it’s cake and eat it. On one hand, feminists are uneducated and uninformed (read stupid and unintelligent) hoardes while at the same time attributing them with the capability to wield enormous amounts of power. Is that how our society really works? That those who are uninformed can actually do this?
It has been my experience to observe that those who identify as feminists are the ones who are more educated, informed, broad-minded, flexible, tolerant and the most accepting of diversity.
When I read articles that ooze the attributes that it accuses other people of doing, I often consider what the hidden agenda is behind the words. Hidden agendas result in inconsistencies and explores irrelevant arguments, such as asking a group of feminists to “explain why men on the Titanic gave up their lifeboat seats”. Gotta be clutching at straws with that one, eh?
For those commenters that have observed that white males are painted as buffoons in the media. That is a correct observation. It’s been happening for quite some time. Most of the time they are depicted in this way in a domestic setting. A lot of the time, a woman will come to their aid and fix the “domestic” problem too, thus reinforcing that women are more domestic-minded than men. You may also notice that in the past 5 years men are increasingly objectified in the medias. IMHO, this can’t be good.
#32. Goose
“1st rule in family protection is to ACTUALLY PROTECT THE FAMILY….Sometimes that means “pre-emptive action”.
Which is precisely why my mother did not tell me that my now ex brother-in-law had threatened my sister’s life until way after the fact.
Thank you for your effort, but the damage is irreversible and final.
It can’t be undone for many generations.
Thank a woman for that.
When someone in your family is a victim of domestic violence often thoughts turn to one’s own relationships with the opposite sex. Children will often settle arguments or force dominance by using physical violence and parents cannot be everywhere at once to stop all fights, so children sometimes resort to abusing each other both physically and mentally. It seems to be a part of growing up.
I have two memories of walking down the street and in both cases an unrelated male began to harass me and started to slap my face. I think I was about eleven or twelve at the time when these incidents occurred, and they were perhaps a couple of years apart. The boys eventually stopped and I did not fight them back so I don’t know what would have happened if I had not just kept walking, but had stopped and fought back.
The strange thing was that I never told my parents about it and I can’t think why not except perhaps sensing that I would be in danger of losing my freedom to walk in my neighborhood alone.
There was another incident when I was a teenager and driving when a group of girls went hiking in the woods. When we returned to the car a group of boys had broken into my car, opened the hood and disabled it. It was very frightening and one of them finally reconnected the spark plugs and we drove home. I never told my parents about that incident either perhaps for the same reason, fearing I would lose my freedom.
I didn’t hold it against men but it only made me more cautious in my relationships. Maybe it’s good that it happened when I was so young, so had a chance to sort out what kind of relationships were healthy and which to avoid.
It is out there and we have to face it. When I watch news stories in the Middle East is strikes me as so peculiar that in the public square females are absent or covered up as if they don’t exist or they are God’s shame. The photos of this country with men and woman all working and living together seems so normal.
Woman are capable of both great good and great evil just as men, and painting us with this broad brush as damaging our society beyond repair is in my opinion a grave error and back to the old ways where one is brought higher by pushing another down.
Another area where males are demonized by radical anti-male feminists is the subject of sexual molestation. For decades now the myth has been spread that child predators are overwhelmingly male. But now that the social taboo surrounding female sexual abuse of underaged males has somewhat fallen in the last few years we’re seeing huge increases in the number of cases where female teachers sexually molested their students (it’s almost become an epidemic) and mothers sexually abused their own children. I can speak from personal experience on this matter since I was sexually molested several times as a child by female authority figures in my life. First by my teenage babysitters when I was still in elementary school and then by my middle school and high school teachers. Yet I never said anything about it (and still haven’t beyond this comment) because I was ashamed and because our society doesn’t think it’s possible for a male to be raped by a female or for a female to be a child molestor. And you see the same double standards being played out in the media and in the courts when a female or male adult sexually molests a child. The male predators are protrayed as monsters who should face the death penalty or be kept away from the rest of society while the female child molestors are protrayed as “naughty” (as if it was sexy) and rarely serve serious jail time if any at all. The case of that young blonde teacher in her early 20s is the perfect example. Essentially her defense was “but I’m too pretty to serve jail time…” And it worked! A good looking male sexual predator would never be protrayed in such a disgusting way.
Interesting, though the following is not true: “the Montreal Massacre had no prequel or sequel.” The Pittsburgh gym attack is just one sequel. Several mass murders have targeted women or predominantly women. And there’s really no reason to discount serial killers who gender-select.
But I certainly agree that the non-service provision wing of the domestic violence movement, and the sex crime movement, too, are far more interested in promulgating ideology and spreading blame than identifying and prosecuting real offenders, and this activism is underwritten by VAWA. This is especially true of the movements as they arise in academic settings.
Ironically, activists who choose to blame all men are usually the same ones who otherwise ideologically oppose strict enforcement of the law. Given the choice between advancing an agenda that blames all men (dominant culture men) or punishing actual wrongdoers, they choose the former and leave those really in need to struggle through a system that does a good enough job failing to discern real harm even without the ideological input from feminists.
But each side of this debate overlooks reality in an effort to make ideological points. I’d be perfectly happy to see the end of all VAWA funding for things like campus activism, billboards denouncing men, television campaigns, professional activism, etc. But would you wish to see the end of funding for the S.A.N.E. nursing programs, which trains ER nurses in forensic evidence collection? I wouldn’t. We can thank S.A.N.E. for putting a good many serial rapists and child molesters behind bars, where they belong, because teaching nurses to collect evidence makes for better prosecutions. Would you wish to see all domestic violence shelters shut down? Of course there is a need for them, whether or not activists behave in good faith.
And one good reason for the shelter system is this: many children have been saved from abusive households (not just abuse by fathers/men) in shelters. Insufficient or dangerous female guardians who show up at shelters are being observed, too. Things certainly don’t happen in a vacuum; all abusers are not men, and if you think shelter workers are so blinded by feminist dogma that they don’t see this and act on what they observe, you haven’t spent much time around shelter workers.
So de-funding VAWA would result in more female offenders getting away with violence, too. And male victims, particularly male victims of rape (male on male rape is not much publicized but far more common than most know), would lose those services and prosecutorial assistance too. Most rape crisis centers regularly treat male victims.
People who actually provide services have little time for ideological dogmatism. 90,000 reported rapes a year is a hell of a lot of serious crime, most of which wasn’t efficiently processed through the courts prior to the many resource systems installed in hospitals, crime labs, and prosecutors’ offices with VAWA funds; lots of men’s lives have been saved by a call to the cops or by separating women and men by shipping the woman and kids off to a shelter, because women do batter men, too. Activists on the right should neither deny or minimize the existence of real, documented violence in their race to pick fights with activists on the left, however legitimate their ideological disputes may be.
If this is the shooting I think it is, the killer was using a Ruger semi auto rifle with a 5 shot magazine and had to keep stopping to reload his magazines. I have always wondered why some one did not charge him, they could have taken him down at that point.
As to the ladies, well, you girls are now in charge so the next time you have a problem, handle it.
@ Ole Sarge # 49,
Seems like one of them would have been able to return fire while he was reloading, except that’s not allowed?
Fellas, it’s really pretty easy. If you’re not acting like a dick, you got nothing to worry about.
Well here in Ontario, I was had a pivitol role in rolling back the nonsense.
I had been separated for some time, had moved and my X would come by, break in, vandalize and steal. The Police ehen contacted blurted out nonsense such as “she has as much right here as you. I endeavered to get a RESTRAINING ORDER and in time succeeded.
With the restraining order at least the police attended and gave her a ride to her mothers.
Then one night, she broke in and assaulted me….inflicting a defensive wound…..took my cordless phone and fled. SHE summoned the police who aware of the restraining order—arrested ME and left her in possession of my home.
It seems the Police had a standing order that if attending a “domestic”, where a restarining order was involved—to ALWAYS ARREST THE MAN.
Things went sideways for the Police when I made it clear that they had denyed medical attention…..then were flabbergasted when I declared my intent to cite them for violating a restraining order, false arrest, various firearms violations(no reasonable cause)……
Then within a week, a similar incident occurred in the town nearby…
The STANDING ORDER TO ALWAYS ARREST THE MAN was ended by an ORDER IN COUNCIL.
It’s not that I am a whimp it’s just practice that ya can’t even hit back….which emboldens certain females….
It is a start but much bias remains in practice as well as statute…..certain feminists make a living from this.
I love skeeziks, never afraid to display his/her ignorance. Rather like a sort of emotional exhibitionist.
6. Minda’s post is profound in its truth and is absolutely consistent with my own observations. It’s the carefully denied neon elephant in the room.
I was an engineering student at Toronto when the Montreal Massacre happened. A large assembly of feminist protesters descended on our main engineering building (not the university student center) and spoke at length about the hatred supported within the students and faculty.
At the time I felt violated, but as it became clear what had happened I felt more like an accused. Simply for being male and studying engineering I was being accused of supporting a mass murderer. I will never forget that day.
Who do you think made this statement?
It may surprise you when you find out.
“In my house, being raised with a sister and three brothers, there
was an absolute – it was a nuclear sanction, if under any
circumstances, for any reason, no matter how justified, even self-
defense – if you ever touched your sister, not figuratively,
literally. My sister, who is my best friend, my campaign manager, my
confidante, grew up with absolute impunity in our household. And I
have the bruises to prove it. I mean that sincerely. I am not
exaggerating when I say that.”
“And I have the bruises to prove it.”
The author? None other then Senator Joe Biden…the originator of
the Violence Against Women Act. Umm wouldn’t ya think he would
know better then most that women can be violent too???