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Women Can Be Abusive, Too
Submitted by Scott on Sat, 2007-02-24 15:42
We received the following article submission from Michael Geanoulis, Sr:
A revealing research paper on domestic violence (DV) published in the Florida State University Law Review provides a promising new twist to a thorny problem - assuming, of course, it can overcome stereotypcal attitudes and get the attention it deserves.
According to author and Indiana School of Law Professor, Linda Kelly, women can be batterers. Men can be victims. And abuse by females needs to be eradicated, as well as abuse by males. (Kelly, L, Disabusing the Definition of Domestic Abuse: How Women Batter Men and the Role of the Feminist State; Fla. St. Univ. Law Rev, Vol 30:791)
It will be interesting to see how Kelly's 65 page paper is received, as she treads on ground long held sacred and untouchable by women's rights goups, who, according to Kelly, have been influencing every
states DV policy using double standards and biased data which discriminate against men. (read more to continue...)
As long ago as 1981, Straus, Gelles and Steinmetz discovered some of the data referred to by Kelly, reporting it in "Behind Closed Doors: Violence in the American Family." Nearly 1.8 million American women were assaulted annually by their husbands that year -- shameful data that was elevated for all to see via inciteful ads posted everywhere trumpeting the fact that "Every 17 seconds a woman is assaulted by her husband."
What the general public never saw, though, was the "real surprise," to quote the authors: 2 million husbands (200 thousand more) who were assaulted by their wives.
In what can only be described as a conspiracy of misinformation, the data on assaulted husbands was swept under the rug. No ads were ever produced depicting the average 16 second time span between assaults by wives on their husbands, or the fact that women are hitting men with higher assault rates.
And so it is, as Kelly warns against, with educational seminars like New Hampshire's annual Conference on DV sponsored by the Governor's Commission on Domestic and Sexual Violence which bills itself to "Improve the Investigative, Judicial, Administrative and Community Response."
Efforts to "improve" seems fair on its face -- except that judges who want to "improve" themselves should not be attending DV conferences loaded with sexist half truths, innuendo and special agendas.
The slide presentations of one Mary Bettley provides us with the best evidence of such bias. What judge could be expected to make fair decisions after being exposed to half truths like, "50% of men who assaulted their wives also abused their children"? Shouldn't judges also be taught the rate of child abuse for women who assaulted their husbands? And be made aware that women are twice more likely to assault their children than men are?
Only half the story, furthermore, was given for the cycle of violence: "He (the boy) sees hitting and learns," reports Bettley. Don't girls learn about hitting from their moms when they see it? Was it Bettley's intention to teach the hundreds of judges and criminal justice people gathered to "improve" themselves, that only males learn about, and do the hitting around the house?
Another example of questionable scholarship comes from Dr. James Knoll, who echoed the Rule of Thumb, a damaging bit of nonsense and myth that was debunked long ago as a libelous falsehood by "Who Stole Feminism" author Christine Hoff Sommers. The rule, which serves as an unfair character assassination that refuses to die and which never existed except in the mind set of the feminist state, held that "men could beat their wives so long as they used a stick no bigger than their thumb."
Dr. Knoll seemed loathe to acknowledge that men have a long record of loving, protecting and glorifying the fair sex -- building magnificent temples to honor women and installing them on high pedestals. Apparently it's more PC and profitable to malign men as cruel beasts, especially at federally-financed conferences constructed to teach that only men are responsible for DV.
Noticed for his absence from the conference was Murray Straus, PhD, director of the Family Research Lab at the University of New Hampshire and world class expert on domestic violence who lives and works in New Hampshire. He was not invited. Was this because of his position that female aggression should not be ignored? Or his revelation that men are compelled to stay in abusive relationships for the same reasons heretofore reserved for women? Or that his life might again be threatened for treading on untouchable topics?
Will Kelly be ignored, too?
DV is equal opportunity abuse that should demand all perpetrators be held accountable on an equal basis if only as a matter of safety for women. Let's hope that reasonable and objective people like Kelly and Straus, et al, can be part of the dialogue going forward.
(Michael Geanoulis, Sr. sits on the New Hampshire Commission on the Status of Men. He can be contact by email at geancfc@juno.com)
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Comments
Excellent, but there's an error in the article
Brilliant piece, I'm looking forward to seeing the actual paper, although I suspect it will be conveniently ignored as usual. Feminists have a strangle-hold on the government and tax dollars, and objective reality has never gotten in their way before. The 38% of DV victims who are admitted to hospital and who are male still don't matter. As a Swedish feminist put it: "men are animals", right? The irony is apparently lost on feminists - if we're just animals, and they're not even "equal" to us, what does that make feminists? Insects? Their logic, not mine.
One issue I noticed in the article:
As long ago as 1981, Straus, Gelles and Steinmetz discovered some of the data referred to by Kelly, reporting it in "Behind Closed Doors: Violence in the American Family." Nearly 180 million American women were assaulted annually by their husbands that year -- shameful data that was elevated for all to see via inciteful ads posted everywhere trumpeting the fact that "Every 17 seconds a woman is assaulted by her husband."
What the general public never saw, though, was the "real surprise," to quote the authors: 200 million husbands (20 million more) who were assaulted by their wives.
That adds up to 380 million married Americans who are abused, which would suggest a population of billions of Americans (only a small percentage are abused, not everyone is married or an adult). Clearly there's an error here. Was he talking about global figures rather than American, or is there just an extra zero on all of the numbers?
I wondered the same thing
The population of the United States currently is under 300 million and it was under 250 million in 1981.
It's hard to believe every man, woman, child and newborn infant, plus 130 million unborn fetuses were abused spruces in the United States.
Those numbers must be like MacDonald's "Over 99 Billion served" signs beneath the golden arches - they count people who have eaten there hundreds of times as unique individuals each time they eat there and then round up.
We have to be careful how we represent the truth, because the feminist army will be quick to jump on any errors real or perceived.
Every little bit helps
The Establishment, aka feminism in this instance, will always ignore data which is discordant with the paradigm within which it operates. Almost by definition, such data doesn't exist or must be either wrong or insignificant. That is why the official 'answers' to various contradictions which can be raised always seem so unsubstantial. It is virtually impossible for those within the box to think along the lines of those outside it. We have a distinct advantage because we can think both ways.
Between Straus's work, John Gordon's 1982 book "The Myth of the Monstrous Male", and a whole host of other challenges to feminist dogma, the orthodoxy has proved resistant for a generation now. It's done this largely via personal accusations and psychologizing the messengers as "backlashers", "controlling Neanderthals", and the like. After all, it's not really in a position where it has to take the rabble protesting at the gates seriously.
It will probably take another generation for those who don't get it to die away and be replaced by a younger and better informed (and larger) generation. It took seventy years for women to get the vote in the US, so we might only be in the early or middle innings of trying to get equal respect and civil rights for men, and it could well be worse than this because caring for and protecting women comes so naturally to both sexes.
* MB
Stats Don't Matter to Joe Biden
As long a feminist lackeys like presidential candidate (what a joke!) Senator Joe Biden control the hearings that admit or censor testimony for the reauthorization of VAWA, no objective social science will ever be written into the official record.
I've read the entire paper and it is perhaps the best scholarship on the lies of the DV Industry and its feminist dementia that exists today.
Rest assured it will never land on any Congressperson's desk because to be perceived as being "against women's rights" is the kiss of death for a politician.
You might as well try to run for national office on a pro-incest campaign ...
That's how "taboo" it is to speak about men's "rights" in the totalitarian political matriarchy we inhabit.
That paper is not new
That is an outstanding article, and being published in a scholarly source such as a law review is very significant. However, that paper is recent, but not new. It has been posted at the National Coalition of Free Men, Los Angeles web site for a couple of years to the best of my estimation:
http://www.ncfmla.org/dv_data.html
Here is the actual paper in .pdf on-line:
http://www.law.fsu.edu/journals/lawreview/downloads/304/kelly.pdf
I suspect it's submission to some groups may be new. That paper is actually listed under secondary/other in this lawsuit against the State of California.
http://www.mensbiz.net/subpage%20woods%20neff.html
Here is an article at Ifeminist from March, 2005, quoting that paper:
http://www.ifeminists.net/introduction/editorials/2005/0316blumhorst.html
Linda Kelly, writes in her scholarly research paper, "Disabusing the Definition of Domestic Abuse: How Women Batter Men and the Role of the Feminist State,"
"Defining domestic violence as the abuse of women by men has brought a growing cultural intolerance for wife abuse, while there is reported to be little change in the tolerance of female violence. In very real terms then, the failure to stigmatize or even acknowledge the female abuse of men allows and encourages its continuation (91), Pp.812."
and
"Domestic violence represents the prized gemstone of feminist theory's fundamental message that our legal, social, cultural norms are fashioned in a manner which permit men to engage in a constant and pervasive effort to oppress women by any and every available means. A successful challenge to the Patriarchal definition of domestic violence may thus undermine feminism itself (my emphasis). To remain true to feminist theory, no aspect of male-female relations can be considered without first accepting the male as all powerful and the female as powerless. (119) The gender hierarchy is omnipresent. (120), Pp. 818"
Corrected Numbers
Hi all,
Thanks for your astute number-checking. I spoke with Mr. Geanoulis about the possible error, and he promptly informed me that yes, in fact that numbers were off by several decimal points. The actual numbers are 1.8 million women and 2 million men. I have corrected the numbers in the article.
Scott
Errors around here are rare...
..but thanks for checking it out and updating it, Scott.
We are all only human...
...and not one single human is infallible.
But indeed, thanks for correcting the report Scott! The closer we are to reporting the facts as accurately as we can, I feel confident that the more people will relate to them because they reflect the reality that they see around them.
Kelly is a very brave women (and will get death threats)
The only real solution to the problem, of ideological feminism and it's influence on the state, is not going to come from MRA's, isolated books and papers by people like Farrell and Kelly, etc..it is going to take at least one woman politician in a high place, and of extraordinary integrity, to turn the tide. (obviously not Pelosi or H. Clinton).
Of course MRA's can help put her there, by dispersing information from books, papers, and studies; writing letters of protest; etc. The less ignorant the public is, the more likely they will vote for such a person.
-axo