RADAR Alert: Congress Stalls on VAWA Approval - You Can Still Make a Difference

The Senate and the House have each passed bills to reauthorize the Violence Against Women Act, but Congress has not yet formed a conference committee to reconcile the bills. Although the House version of the bill contains a statement that the bill is gender-neutral, the bill is still seriously flawed.

Click "Read more..." for more.

It has been said that when the only tool you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. And that's especially true of the approach taken by VAWA-funded shelters that, as Phyllis Schlafly points out in http://www.mediaradar.org/Schlafly_on_VAWA.pdf, treat even the most trivial disputes between partners as life-or-limb endangerment and promote arrest of the man and divorce as the only solution. This encourages law enforcement and the judicial system to violate men's civil rights, and tears families apart.

VAWA funnels a billion dollars a year into battered women's programs, but even with the gender-neutral language added by the House, it still denies funding to programs that focus on male victims of domestic violence. The bill makes special provisions for underserved populations, but doesn't consider the 835,000 men victimized per year to be underserved.

VAWA is based on the false premise that in virtually all disputes between men and women, men are batterers and women are innocent victims, in spite of 174 scholarly investigations over the past three decades (http://www.csulb.edu/~mfiebert/assault.htm) that show that women are as physically aggressive as men.

The bills as currently written also contain "gatekeeper" provisions, preventing funding from going to new organizations unless they are willing to partner with women's organizations currently receiving funding, thus perpetuating the "man bad/woman good" ideology.

This week we're asking you to contact your Representatives and Senators to make sure they know we haven't forgotten about VAWA. Tell them that the conference committee, when it is formed, should fix VAWA so that, at a minimum, the bill clearly states that men are frequently DV victims, and so groups that are not hostile to men receive appropriate levels of funding to service male victims.

1. Please contact both of your Senators and your Representative.
2. To find your Senators' contact information, go to http://www.senate.gov/ and enter your zip code.
3. For your Representative's contact information, go to http://www.house.gov/ and enter your zip code.
4. Call and ask to speak with the Legislative Assistant who deals with family issues.
5. Explain that there's an important article you want to send, and ask for their fax number.
6. Download Schlafly's report by right-clicking on http://www.mediaradar.org/Schlafly_on_VAWA.pdf and selecting "Save Target As". Save the document to your desktop, double-click to open it, and then print a copy.
7. Fax a copy to the Legislative Assistant.
8. Repeat for both your Senators and your Representative in the House.

As always, be courteous in all communications with your legislators' offices.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Date of RADAR Release: November 1, 2005

Respecting Accuracy in Domestic Abuse Reporting (RADAR) is an organization working to assure fairness and balance in the domestic violence issue: http://www.mediaradar.org/.

NOTICE: This story was migrated from the old software that used to run Mensactivism.org. Unfortunately, user comments did not get included in the migration. However, you may view a copy of the original story, with comments, at the following link:

http://news.mensactivism.org/articles/05/11/02/012239.shtml