![]() |
-- explore the new feminism -- introduction | interaction | information |
ifeminists.com > introduction > editorials |
While this paper
cannot be a definitive guide to the nature of the abuser, the
victims relationship with the abuser and society's part in
encouraging gender bias, I hope it will add to the pool of
knowledge. It is my hope that, at least in a small way, this paper
will be an aid towards helping us all understand the nature of
domestic abuse and those who perpetrate or encourage it. First and foremost
abusers are actors. It makes no difference what gender the abusive
personality is, their primary skill is to emulate normal behaviour
in order to disguise their own condition. I
have spoken to many victims of abuse who say that the person they
met and fell in love with “gradually changed” into a
monster. This is often one of the most confusing and distressing
aspects of abuse from the victims point of view. It is also a
situation that the abuser will exploit with varying degrees of
vicious skill. While it is impossible to be specific on these
subjects in every case, careful observation and research have
uncovered certain general consistencies I want to discuss here. The
question is; what is going on in the abuser's mind that causes them
to suddenly, or gradually, become abusive to their new partner? It appears that the
abusive personality has learned, by observation and by mimicry of
those around them, how to give every appearance of normality and
stability for often quite extended periods of time. This means that
they are able to convince new partners that they are really
charming, wonderful people who should be trusted and are worthy of
love and care. This act is easy to maintain in certain social
situations and where the abuser has minimal contact with others in
an average day. For example, in a work situation where he/she will
be in contact with others for a maximum of eight hours per day.
Another social situation may be one of casual friendships made in
pubs and clubs. Under these conditions the actor (abuser) need only
be convincing as a normal person for a minimum amount of time. This
is why many friends of the abuser find it hard to believe that the
person they think they know could be capable of such barbarity
within a long term relationship. In the case of female abusers, this
difficulty is compounded by social and political myths that see
females only as victims and not as perpetrators. For
the abusive actor, maintaining the act of normality within a long
term relationship is almost impossible. The intensity of the time
spent in the company of the victim means the emotional strain placed
on the pretender, by their need to hide their true selves, becomes
too difficult to maintain. The act breaks down and the real
personality disguised beneath it rushes to the surface. To the
victim, the sudden outbursts of aggression from the previously
“loving” and “charming” personality they
fell in love with, is both mystifying and deeply confusing. The
victim, often still in love with the abuser, begins to make excuses
for the abusers behaviour. Mentally sweeping it under the carpet and
falsely believing that things will get better in time. This is not
difficult to understand. Anyone who has fallen in love knows the
huge investment of trust, emotional/mental commitment and
selflessness it takes make the relationship work. It is natural for
the victim to assume that the other person has made the same efforts
as they have and this primes them to accept the abusers excuses and
rationalisations of their behaviour. An
abusive personality is fundamentally one of self loathing and even
self hate. However, this self disgust is too painful for them to
accept. Desperate to “fit in” with everyone else they
justify the abusive behaviour they cannot avoid and deny the rest.
The denial can be very profound and will drive their negative
feelings about themselves very deeply within their tortured psyche.
Many abusers are deeply frightened and horrified by their violent
outbursts but their denial prevents them from dealing with the
feelings that cause them. Therefore, when they lose control and
abuse another, there often follows what looks like deep and sincere
repentance and begging for forgiveness, only to sink back into the
same patterns again later on. Given enough time, even these feelings
of regret and remorse will become buried and their emotional
attitude to their abuse of others will harden into a cold uncaring
outlook. For this reason, I believe it is vital that treatment be
applied to the abuser while they still own feelings of remorse and
regret. Treatment of the abuser will become progressively more
difficult over time as the abuser will lack the necessary need and
drive to want to reform. In order to avoid
owning up to what they feel about themselves the abuser will project
their self hatred onto their victims. Where this occurs it sets up
the classic abuser/victim relationship. I will expand upon this
relationship later in this document, but for now I wish to return to
the abusers view of themselves and its consequences in their lives. We have seen how the
abusive personality often feels about themselves but why does this
self hatred come about? There may be myriads of reasons but there
are some common threads that I have noticed in my studies, my
experiences of abuse and my observations of abusers. Many of those
who become abusers report that they have grown up in abusive homes
themselves or, have experienced abuse later on in their lives. When
probed about how these experiences have affected them, almost all
report feelings of anger and even intense rage that they themselves
are frightened by. To
a child growing up in an abusive home, even though the behaviour
they are witnessing and experiencing from others deeply disturbs
them, they consider it to be “normal.” It's all they
know, so for them, this is what normal family life is all about.
However, the deep fears and anger raised in them by their abusers
have little or no avenue of expression within the home. To become
angry, or even show dissatisfaction with their treatment, may very
well lead to an escalation of the abuse against them. This fear of
retaliation drives the feelings they naturally have about their
abusers deep within themselves. The only way to cope with the
feelings of fear and anger is to deny and bury them or take them
outside of the home in anti social behaviour. * When the abused child
becomes an adult, if they have not dealt with these feelings of rage
buried deep within themselves, they are almost certain to resurface
within their adult relationships. Adults
have a tendency to recreate what they considered normal in their
early life at home, within their own adult relationships. If they
grew up in a chaotic and fear filled environment it is natural for
them to feel at home within that kind of family dynamic.
Subconsciously they may well be building relationships they feel are
well known to them and no matter how painful those relationships
are, they feel “normal.” Some abusers are
simply psychopaths. They enjoy the feelings of power they have over
the victim and may well go on to kill them if early intervention is
not forthcoming. Other abusers simply
come to hate their partners over time and instead of leaving the
relationship, set out to destroy the other person (and sometimes
other people) within it. All
abusers enjoy the feelings of power they have over their victims at
some level, but not all abusers are psychopaths. Abusers are often
deeply selfish individuals who live in a “me me” world
where only their own feelings, needs and desires are important. When
the abuser expresses love for the victim it is often not because
they feel that love, it is often because they want
something from the victim that threats will not get them. My own
abuser, for example, would become tender, gentle and kind whenever
she wanted me to help her with something she could not manage alone.
Afterwards, my efforts to help her would be ridiculed as inadequate. Some abusers will
abuse others by proxy and this seems to be a predominantly female
trait. I have received calls to my help line from men who have been
beaten up by other men when their abusive female partner has told
another man that her victim had expressed a desire to sleep with the
attackers infant child, for example. Other forms of this abuse
include making false allegations to family members or the state
authorities in order to have someone else attack or arrest the
victim. Another form of abuse
by proxy is to withhold contact unreasonably from a parent with
his/her child. In such a case, the abuser is using the state
apparatus to continue abuse after the relationship has ended. This
constitutes abuse of the child concerned and the adult denied
contact. I also consider false rape allegations that can utterly
destroy a persons life to be abusive behaviour that is all too often
unpunished by the state. For
those who have experienced abuse in later life but who had
relatively happy childhoods there may well be a subconscious
element of revenge in their subsequent abusive behaviour. In the
case of the female abuser this may be hugely reinforced by articles
in women's magazines that portray men as nothing but bad, soap opera
stories, dramas, movies, press stories about female abuse victims,
and the constant and relentless pressures on women by radical
feminist groups to see all men as dangerous and who paint men as
predatory violent animals and women as poor victims being preyed
upon. Even advertising on the television that portrays men as
useless and stupid may reinforce her hatred of males and feed her
feelings of the need to take revenge against all men for what
one man has done to her.
Such thoughts and
feelings are covered by the umbrella term, Misandry. A misandrist is
a hater of men. There are many more of these people around than is
popularly believed. Many of them are writing the things referred to
above or are part of the organisations promoting hatred of men in
our society. Such
a scenario is also possible in the case of a male abuser who resents
being typecast in these ways by “evil women” and sets
out to justify his violent behaviour by seeing himself as some kind
of avenging angel. His thoughts and feelings of hatred and
resentment towards women are embraced by the term, Misogynist. It is
well known there are many of these men around, however, criticising
female behaviour is not the same as hating females. An
important distinction needs to be made between the two for any
rational debate on these issues to succeed. ** *
It is interesting to note that over 90% of males
in prison come from broken homes, yet societies in the western world
actively promote single motherhood as a virtue while discouraging
marriage. That this is
creating a huge problem for the future and singularly lacking any
kind of wisdom should be obvious to all. **
A common defensive ploy of radical feminists is
to paint any and all criticism of females as hatred of them and, by
so doing, pressure people (chiefly men) into regarding a counter
argument as mysoginistic in origin and therefore worthy of being
ignored. The victim and the
abuser have a complicated relationship that is difficult, at times,
to define in simple terms. I will do my best here to look at the
most common traits of that relationship as I have understood them. Initially,
as stated above, the victim will often have no idea their partner is
abusive. (Those who do, and remain in the relationship, may well be
attempting to “help” the abuser and this is a very
dangerous thing for those with little or no knowledge of abusive
personalities to attempt. It is difficult enough for a professional
to help an abuser, it is certainly not something an amateur should
attempt). As the ability to maintain the act of normality
under the constant scrutiny of a close partner breaks down, so the
real and disturbed person beneath the act will emerge. The first
signs that all is not well may be anything from a slow escalation of
irritable behaviour to a sudden explosion of violence.
It
is important here to make another careful distinction. Not every act
of irritable behaviour or sudden aggression means a person is
automatically an abuser. All of us get out of bed on the wrong side
sometimes. The key indicator is the frequency with
which the behaviour occurs.
The most common
indicator that one is living with an abuser will be that individuals
need to control everything about the victim. This need to control
will become all consuming over time and is common to both male and
female abusers. * This need to control others seems to stem from
two strong desires within the abusive personality. The first, is a
desire to remain hidden and the second, is a desire not to feel
inferior. In order to understand these two desires it is important
to realise that abusers are deeply fearful people who are terrified
of the strong and overwhelmingly powerful feelings raging within
them. It is this fear that drives their need to bury those feeling
as deeply within as possible and then to deny them when they rush to
the surface. Let us look first at
the desire to remain hidden. Within
a close personal relationship it is perfectly natural for both
parties to closely examine each others personalities and to explore
each others feelings. This examination is what the abuser fears
most. To the abuser, such a close look at who they are becomes
deeply threatening. They spend their wholes lives hiding their true
selves both from themselves and from society. They loathe themselves
and often fear their capability for violence. They cannot bare
coming under scrutiny and this innocent searching by their partner
can often be the trigger for their abusive reactions as they try to
halt the exploration of their deeper and hidden selves by using
intimidation and/or violence. Yet their need to appear normal
drives them to seek out a partner and have a “normal”
relationship. **
The desire not to be
inferior stems from a different set of unconscious dynamics. We
all remember the bright kid in school who was always picked on for
being “the teachers pet.” That child stood out in the
crowd and by virtue of the fact the he/she was smarter than the
rest, made the rest feel inferior. By picking on the bright kid the
others were trying to pull that child down to their level in order
for them to lose their sense of inferiority. Unmerciful and constant
teasing and/or bullying can force the bright child to conform
to the wishes of the rest, and those bright kids who join the pack,
quickly find the persecution stops. In a similar way, the abuser
tries to drag their partner down to their level. This can be
achieved by constant bullying and by a technique I have dubbed,
verbal machine gunning.
To
machine gun verbally means to fire a constant and rapid stream of
accusations and insults without ever giving the victim time to
answer any of the points made. These insults will often be
projections of how the abuser really feels about themselves.
For example; if the abuser feels strong feelings of jealousy towards
the victims friends and associates, then the abuser accuses the
victim of being jealous of him or her. Again, the abuser may feel
inadequate in the kitchen, or driving, and so accuses the victim of
being a crap cook or a lousy driver. Whatever the accusations are,
they will often be delivered at high volume and in such rapid
succession that the victim will be both terrified, confused,
outraged and hurt, and with so much going on at once within them,
feel totally unable to respond. A sort of mental and emotional
paralysis ensues that may eventually lead to the complete collapse
of the victim. At this stage the abuser is almost drunk on the
feelings of power over the victim and if violence is to occur it may
happen at that moment of evil euphoria. Victims have told me that
they have seen the abuser “smiling down” at them with
sick delight as they have folded beneath such onslaughts.
The
reasons why the abuser does not want to give the victim time to
answer are twofold. Firstly the abuser has absolutely no interest in
the thoughts, concerns or feelings of the victim and secondly, the
abuser is not interested in dialogue, but only in control over the
victim. In the abusers world view, life is all about the great “ME”
and not the little “you.” The extent of control
over the victim can sometimes be very far reaching indeed. I have
spoken to many male and female victims whose abusive partners have
chosen what food they eat and when. What clothes they wear and when.
What times they are allowed out of the house and when to come home.
Who they are allowed to be friends with and who they must never see.
What time they are allowed to sleep and when they must wake up. When
they can see their children and when they cannot. What relatives
they can visit and those they cannot. What music they can enjoy.
What purchases they can make. How much of their own money they can
spend. And on and on.
Abusers who fear a
partner may be about to leave them will often run up huge debts for
their partner. Some will slander their name in the local community
in the hope of stopping anyone else being interested in them. Poison
the victim. Send abusive text messages to their phones. Stalk the
victim or damage the car to prevent them leaving. Keep the victim
from his/her children. Threaten suicide. Accuse the victim of rape
or sexually molesting children. Make threatening or silent calls
late at night. Destroy his/her property. Keep him/her at home
against his/her will. Increase the level of violence. Threaten to
kill the kids if she/he leaves. Try to ruin his/her reputation by
spreading lies about him/her to his/her family and friends. Threaten
suicide. Turn the children against the victim. Find and attack
him/her in her/his new home etc.,. All of this behaviour
is about control and dominance over the victim. All of it is
negative and destructive behaviour. It is unlimited in its creative
evil and the two lists above are by no means extensive and neither
are they mutually exclusive. Each gender is as capable of these
things as the other. * Indeed, so prevalent
is this trait that careful and informed questioning by police
officers called to a domestic abuse incident may well quickly
illicit who is the real abuser and who is the real victim. Something
that many police officers need to understand if they are to ever
stop making the wild assumption that all abusers are male and all
females are victims. ** This may be why
many abuse victims are kind, gentle, loyal and deeply loving people.
Most abusers will not seek confrontation with people who may fight
back. They want easy targets that they can dominate. For the male
and female abuser that will often mean a passive personality type is
sought as the next victim. The co-dependancy
(co-alcoholic) idea was first developed to explain other family
members reactions to living with an addict and the harmful effects
of those reactions. It is an entirely reasonable idea based on sound
research. However, during the 1980`s the definition of codependency
was expanded beyond all reasonable bounds, by people looking to make
quick money by selling cheap books, to include virtually any form of
caring for another. Simply put, this means that any and all caring
behaviour is a form of psychological illness unless the person being
cared for is the self. It could almost have been written by today's
radical feminist element who advocate blaming others for the way we
feel while accepting no responsibility for our own actions. The pushers of the
modern codependency therapy system of mock psychology will tell you
that as a victim of abuse your feelings of caring for the abuser are
wrong. (In fact, they will tell you that almost everything you feel
about other people is wrong.) But caring for others is not a
pathological condition. My advice is to avoid these peddlers of doom
like the plague. Being a caring person is not wrong but, excessive
selfishness is, and in fact, is one of the symptoms of the abuser. Robert
Westermeyer, Ph.D. Has the
following to say about the current codependency “fix all”
sweeping book shops and chat shows on both sides of the Atlantic.
“Why
would a psychologist wish to criticize the codependency idea? Many
people claim to have been helped by codependency books and
codependency self-help groups. I don't wish to take away anyone's
belief that they are better for having integrated the codependency
idea into their lifestyles. But it definitely isn't for everyone.
Codependency is a nebulous idea, born not of science but of the gut
feelings of counsellors and frustrated lay people. Its black and
white requirements for recovery, though seeming reasonable on the
surface, are not in line with empirical research and have dangerous
implications with regard to the most human of attributes, caring. My
two primary concerns with the codependency idea are:
The Codependency
Idea Pathologizes the Natural Tendency to Care for Others.
He
goes on: “A case
from several years ago comes to mind involving a caring mother who's
27-year old daughter had been abusing prescription opioids and
benzodiazapines for ten years. The daughter finally made the
decision attempt a methadone detox, following two months of
methadone maintenance. The MD at the methadone clinic recommended
that she taper the benzodiazapine, which was Valium (methadone
doesn't cover non-opiate drugs). The mother was very invested in her
daughter's change efforts and subsequently flew in from out of state
to live with her while she detoxed. She agreed to dole out the
Valium because the daughter felt that she could not do it on her own
without relapsing. The mother hid them in her car and stood watch
over her daughter during the first three weeks of her transition.
The patient voiced that her mother's presence was imperative for
relapse prevention at this time. The mother voiced that it made her
feel as though she was finally doing something to help daughter
which was panning out. She felt so good about her efforts that she
went to an Al-anon meeting. She was literally attacked by three
attendees who deemed her behavior enabling and, in addition to
deeming her responsible for her daughter's enduring problems with
substances, instructed her to go back to her home immediately and
let her daughter grapple with her troubles on her own. One said,
"She's an adult, and a time comes when you have to let them
leave the nest or you're just perpetuating the illness."
Thankfully,
this woman had enough conviction and confidence in her values to
blow off the advice. Many people don't have this much tenacity to
their standards. Many are given such guidance and are left in a
complete quandary. The mother's contention was that her daughter was
completely responsible for her choice to use or not use. She
recognized that her daughter had crippling problems with anxiety and
panic and had used the drugs to medicate these states. Though her
daughter made the choices, she felt that there was a way she could
help her daughter follow through with her motivation to better her
life. She knew that if she went back home, her daughter would
relapse and that relapse at this point would be devastating to her
daughter, who had tried just about every method of quitting
imaginable. She fathomed that her daughter might discount the whole
methadone choice and revert to prescription drug abuse again.”
With
attacks like those above on a mothers need to be involved in her
daughter's recovery from drug addiction, it makes one wonder at times
if the psychopaths are running the asylum!
It
is a pervasive and disturbing view that relies more on “feelings”
than serious research and it is to the medical and political
establishments shame that these views have found any credence at all
within today's society because they have kept silent in the face of
such popularist, false and dangerous ideas. Nobody in their right mind likes to see themselves as a victim but the truth is, that until you have broken free from the relationship and overcome the effects of the abuse, a victim is what you are. Once you have overcome the effects of the abuse -- and with the right help, that is almost always possible -- you become a survivor. The ease of transition from victim to survivor will depend entirely upon yourself, the quality of the help you receive if any is needed and the extent to which you were abused. If you wish to cut down on the time needed to recover and be your old self again, leave the abuser as soon as you possibly can. Gender bias in the abuse industry and societyThe domestic abuse industry is saturated in gender bias as any examination of the literature it produces will show any reasonable person. From the thousands of so-called “studies” carried out by special interest groups, to the leaflets and advertising surrounding the abuse phenomenon, it is obvious that society has blinkers on when it comes to thinking about who perpetrates the abuse. The questions are, why has this bias come about and who are the victims of it? Answering the second question first, the answer is simple: Men! Answering the first question is very complex and beyond the scope of this paper to examine in great detail. However, I would like to touch upon the more obvious examples. At the risk of being accused of misogyny (woman hating) for daring to criticise anything the “fairer sex” does or says, I am nevertheless going to do so. First of all the domestic abuse industry is run almost entirely by women. Many of these women are themselves victims of abuse or have worked closely with female victims of abuse. This, I submit, tends to give these women a skewed and deeply prejudicial view of men. At their most harmless these views will be shaped by the experiences these women have suffered and make them tend to be suspicious of anything men may do or say about abuse. At the worst, these views may lead to a pathological hatred of men and a deep desire for revenge. I suggest that both of these views are common within the abuse industry today. What is more, I suggest that these are the reasons why the female dominated abuse industry is almost totally unable to even countenance that women can be abusive also, irrespective of the evidence we might show them to prove otherwise. Their minds have become set into two broadly entrenched positions: 1. Men abuse women and women do not abuse men. 2. If women abuse men then men deserve it. That these prejudices have been taken up by western political thinkers is beyond dispute. It is also increasingly evident that police forces, the medical establishment and the media as a whole in the western world, have also adopted these bigoted and dangerous attitudes towards male victims and female perpetrators. The message sent out by these attitudes to female abusers is, “do what you like.” This “woman as victim and men as perpetrator” mind set is not only deeply offensive to all the male victims out there, it is also dangerous for society as a whole. Like all prejudice it has implications for the future that are horrifying to contemplate but, the implications for today are also deeply worrying. For example; when we allow one gender carte blanche to abuse another we are failing to consider the innocent victims of that abuse. The children, grand parents, brothers and sisters who witness the destruction of a loved one or (in the case of kids) learn to become abusers themselves, as well as the victim. We have seen how a women, subjected to non stop terror and violence in the home, can snap and kill her abuser. Yet, we do not afford the same damaging effects on a male victims emotional life. In fact, if he snaps and kills his abuser we victimise him all over again by vilifying him in the press and locking him up in jail. Personal abuse is not enough, it also becomes political and legal abuse if you are a man. Is it just the abuse industry that generates this prejudice? The answer to that question is, no. The abuse industry perpetuates these myths of man=bad, woman=good but there are other roots in society that also need to be cut out once and for all. As an example of the extreme prejudice aimed at men throughout society lets look at a T Shirt on sale here in Britain. The T Shirt has a cartoon of a young boy emblazoned on the front. A rock is seen heading for the young boys head. This picture is set beneath the words, BOYS ARE STUPID....THROW ROCKS AT THEM. Anyone viewing this T Shirt would probably smile and say, “Its just a bit of harmless fun.” However, if we reverse the gender and make it a little girl cartoon and change the words to read, GIRLS ARE STUPID....THROW ROCKS AT THEM. Suddenly it becomes an incitement to hatred. Further examples of this selective politically correct thinking can be found in almost any of the modern women's magazines. Articles describing men in general as anything from stupid, unthinking animals, to downright dangerous, predatory monsters can be found in almost any of the thousands of periodicals on sale in British newsagents. Hundreds of books have been written that do nothing but portray men and boys as complete idiots or dangerous sexual beasts. However, were men to begin writing about women in the same terms, the outrage and protest would be massive. Prejudice, it seems, is fine if you are a female but offensive if you are a male. Perhaps the most suprising thing about all of this is that many men buy into it. Not only do they buy into it but they become advocates of it. Its almost like black men joining the Ku Klux Klan and helping to rid the planet of those “stupid niggers.” It astounds me that some men have done this and lived up to the “men are stupid” stereotype many radical feminists have portrayed them as for 40 years. It also demonstrates the incredible power of media led brainwashing! Many women, who know very well what other members of their sex get up to in terms of violence and the emotional abuse of others, are probably the most guilty of all people in society. By their cowardly silence they give a nod and a wink to their “sisters” to continue the abuse of children and men. The politician, the policeman and policewomen, the General Practitioner, the journalist and the lawyer are all guilty of the most astounding double standards and extreme prejudice when it comes to even looking at the evidence for the existence of male victims. Even our social scientists baulk at the idea of a man being a victim of female abuse, yet the reasons they give for their prejudice are -- like all reasons for prejudice -- laughable in their demonstration of inept thinking. Policemen who have had to call for help while struggling to load a drunken and violent female into the back of a police van on a Friday night will still say, “Well, it stands to reason that a women who is half the size of a man cannot do much damage to him.” The politician who has to ensure the safety of their citizens from the threat of a female terrorist with explosives strapped to her body from wiping out dozens of people will still say, “It goes against the instincts of nurturing in women to kill others.” The journalist filing a story about females who kill, injure or maim others (including children) will still say, “Women are incapable of inflicting much damage on people.” Likewise judges, who sit daily and listen to horrifying stories of females abusing kids or making false rape or sexual molestation charges against men will still say, “I do not believe that women are naturally capable of violence or deceit.” Such stupidity in the face of huge evidence to the contrary is mind blowing to me, yet it is so common it appears everywhere. The mind that is soaked in prejudice truly is a swamp of contradictions and blind brutal dishonesty. How does all of this affect the male abuse victim? The answer is as simple as it is direct... No one believes him! From the household's family doctor who refuses to “get involved” when the man says he is being abused by his wife; to the nurse at the hospital all to willing to probe the cause of suspicious injuries on a female patient but whose mind is as closed as a steel trap when the patient is male. From the police officer swayed by the “victim act" of the sobbing female abuser and who then arrests the real victim; to the lawyer who talks the man out of applying for the restraining order because “the judge will not believe you.” From the male victims “friends” who ridicule him when he asks for help; to the men's movement leaders too stupid to realise the implications of this policy of denigrating males. All are equally as guilty as each other of ignoring deep and real concerns and the evidence of their own eyes. All, by their complicit silence, are as guilty of abusing that man as if they wielded the pan of boiling water she threw over him themselves. A few facts and questions.In great Britain, at the last count, women had 423 refuges. Men have 3. Women's groups receive over 30 million pounds per year from government and police sources. Heterosexual Male support groups get nothing. Scientific studies from all over the western world have shown again and again that domestic violence against men occurs equally to domestic violence against women, yet western governments have actively suppressed these facts, preferring to use instead, the wildly inaccurate “reported crime statistics” method of determining the prevalence of domestic abuse against the two genders. At the same time, the British government, for example, publicly acknowledges that “most men DO NOT report domestic abuse against themselves.” Therefore, if the government acknowledges that most men do not report the abuse they suffer, why do they insist on using reported crime statistics (which they acknowledge are inaccurate) to influence funding decisions while, at the same time, ignoring the evidence from their own scientific studies? * Men and boys are subjected to massive amounts of prejudice in everything from education provision; medical cancer research (breast versus testicular for example); housing provision; Divorce; the right to bring up their children alone; hugely insulting articles; newspaper stories and books; job security issues as a result of so-called “positive” discrimination; discriminatory advertising on the television; hate speech; political discrimination; legal rights and censorship of the male point of view in the media. If men complain about this they are ridiculed and called whiners sometimes by other so-called men in the media but, most often, by radical feminist media spokesmen. This prejudice has led to an explosion of single mothers and the most confused and damaged generation of children our country has ever known. Will someone please tell me the benefits of this utopian radical feminist, left wing view of modern society? * For a great cautionary tale of statistics and their manipulation go to this page on the Web: http://www.ifeminists.net/introduction/editorials/2004/0324.html
|
ifeminists.com > home | introduction | interaction | information | about |
ifeminists.com is edited by Wendy McElroy; it is made possible by support from The Independent Institute and members like you.