Men's Awareness

Here is yet another blog entry by a male feminist about domestic violence. He attempts to refute the idea that men are equal victims by pointing out some flaws in a major DV study. He may be correct about the flaws and how these studies are not perfect, but he then insists that just because one research method, the CTS, is flawed, that all of men's rights activism is flawed and that feminism is still "correct" on the claim that women are victims of partner violence more often and that they suffer more severe injuries than men. He also does not say exactly where he gets his facts from except for hearsay and second hand information. This is because the Centers for Disease Control, U.S. Department of Justice, Harvard Medical school and the Australia Bureau of Statistics all have done separate studies showing that there is very little difference between male and female victims. Granted, the organizations mentioned could care less about feminists or Men's Rights Activists as they are members of the actual scientific community. As such they most likely have no loyalties to any political or social movements.

Here is a quote from his blog entry: "Men’s rights activists acknowledge that government records such as police reports have found that vastly more women than men are victims of spousal assault. But they dismiss this by saying men would never admit to being abused. As Warren Farrell explains, “male socialization to ‘take it like a man’ makes men the sex more fearful of reporting their abusers.”"

A feminist does not know what it is like to grow up being male and taught to be "tough". How dare he refute this claim? It's "wussy" "wimpy" "gay" "effeminate" "weak" for a man to "complain like a baby" that a woman hits him. A feminist would be too busy justifying her agenda of demonizing men to acknowledge our FEELINGS. An insensitive statement like his would only make it even harder for male victims to speak out or to call the police. Is it really just coincidence that several of these studies show men as equal victims but the police reports show that women are the ones who mostly call the police? For over a decade feminist ideology in books, magazines and women's studies classes have indoctrinated young women with victim fantasies. In this regard, men are socially taught much differently than women. We don't have men's studies class telling us about the issue of abusive relationships, and therefore have not been taught the same ideology as one might hear in a women's studies class. One might figure that since the author is a man he would realize this, but he apparently is brainwashed with anti-male bias and femi-porn abuse fantasies, as are many.

Here is what he writes next: "Men’s rights activists conclude, therefore, that data showing that men are greater abusers is invalid due to male underreporting: fairer studies, in their view, find that men are equal victims, and women are equal abusers. I’m here to examine where that data comes from.

The empirical claims made by men’s rights activists about domestic violence are based on studies using Straus and Gelles’ Conflict Tactics Scale (CTS) (and also from a few studies using methodology very similar to the CTS). When I examined a bibliography of “references examining assaults by women on their spouses or male partners” on a men’s rights website, for example, I found that of 86 prevalence studies cited, 59 (about 70%) used the CTS as a research tool! In order to evaluate men’s rights activists claims of equal male victimization, it is therefore necessary to examine the CTS.

A review of the social science literature indicates that the CTS is, even according to its creators, seriously flawed when used as a comparative measure of male and female domestic victimization (i.e., the way men’s righters and anti-feminists use it)."

Suppose the CTS is flawed. Does this mean that the CDC, Harvard, U.S.D.O.J. and and A.B.S. P.S.S. are fatally flawed and incorrect as well? If they are, too, does that justify a law like the "Violence Against Women Act", also known as VAWA, which does not protect men and can cause male victims to be the ones who are arrested? That is, after all, the real issue MRA's in America have. Another major reason men are afraid to call the police on abusive women is because they are starting to realize that VAWA, which is taken extremely seriously by law enforcement, can cause them to be the one's who are arrested as long as the woman claimed "she felt threatened" before she hit him. This is even true if the man did not lay a hand on her and is the one who called the police on a woman. There is nothing in VAWA about who calls the authorities first, only that if a woman "feels threatened" by a man then he has committed a crime. She is then legally allowed to hit him in "self defense". This is due to the fact that VAWA does 5 things:

1) Makes it domestic violence if a woman "feels threatened". Those are the specific words one would see written in the law should they actually look it up.

2) Allows a woman to use physical violence against a man in self defense if he has committed domestic violence (i.e. makes her "feel threatened" and does not lay a hand on her).

3) Says nothing about who picked up the phone and calls the police first. This means if a man does call the police first, all the woman has to do is lie and say that she "felt threatened" or that he hit first.

4) Allows men who were hit by women but did not lay a hand on her to be arrested because of facts 1-3.

5) Generally discriminates against men and is another reason besides social pressures not to call the police on an abusive female partner.

Basically, when officers show up for a domestic dispute they are looking at the male first! Men are not as clueless and brainwashed as this feminist wishes us to be. More and more we realize we are backed into a corner by legislation that works solely in women's interests.

Here is the part of his blog entry where he conflates concepts the way many feminists do: "Many critics have questioned whether the CTS’s definition of violence can fairly capture the range of marital violence. For example, none of the original CTS’s questions ask respondents about rape or sexual assault - an area in which male abusers predominate. Not asking about rape could lead to undercounting of severe male-on-female violence."

The topics in question are partner violence, spousal abuse and domestic violence, not rape or sexual assault. The latter two are real issues, however even if men are more likely to perpetrate those crimes they have nothing to do with partner violence, which is the particular law MRA's are trying to have changed, a concept the author continues to miss. Rape and sexual assault are separate laws altogether, of which, men are more likely to be falsely accused and falsely convicted than women. Again, thanks to feminist victimology. Smashing two similar but separate ideas together is something feminists do to make men out to be "more of the victimizers". They have to do this to justify the laws they influenced which make the rules for men which we have no say in.

Here is more: "But for most male-female relationships, there’s a big difference in physical power that benefits the male, and it’s pointless to pretend it doesn’t exist.

It’s no coincidence that, even according to the Straus/Gelles study, women are nearly seven times as likely to report being injured as “equally abused” men are."

You can not say that just because a man is bigger that he is more violent or more likely to cause serious physical harm. A major discovery for any man who becomes an MRA and does the research and reads the related news stories is that women compensate for less strength by turning household objects into weapons or projectiles, or using actual weapons. Just look at our compilation of real news stories about domestic violence and black widows. It really is no coincidence that the study shows women are 7 times more likely to call the police than a man. Women in America are constantly sent signals that they are victims and that it is men's fault. Men are not taught anything similar about victimization. We grow up being told the opposite by men who are older than us. Our male role models teach us that part of being male is to suppress our feelings. Not any more, not for me, and that is why I write this blog. The author of the blog entry also ignores the emotional pain that men can go through. It would be inappropriate for women to say men don't suffer as much emotionally. They would not know how it feels for a man to be hit by his girlfriend or wife.

The entry he wrote is rather long so I can not quote all of it, but here is a bit towards the end of the article that struck my fascination: "In the face of strong counter-evidence, and contrary to the opinions of the researchers whose work they rely on, men’s rights activists passionately insist that men are equally victims of spousal violence. What compels them to this belief? Men’s rights activists are at least partly driven by a fear of guilt and shame. Men’s rights activists are attracted to the equal-victimization hypothesis because, to them, it suggests that men are not to blame for violence against women."

I love how the author does not mention VAWA once in the article. The law that discriminates against men and in particular, male victims. Just as women have fought against discrimination, now men have to. Feminists created VAWA and now they lie to sustain it. Furthermore, MRA's do not deny that men are to be blamed for violence against women, as long as it is men who hit the women. Why don't feminists mention lesbian partner violence more often? Because that would put accountability on women and that's their real problem. They are the ones who fear shame and being held accountable for what they do to each other and men.