Update: Jeff provides a link that has more information about “victim-defendents”, i.e. mostly women who respond violently to abuse in self-defense. Women are thrown in jail for slapping men to get them off them, throwing objects at men in order to fend them off as they barrel down to beat their wives again, or other measures that, taken in the context of ongoing abuse, are clearly self-defense measures and need to be understood as such. That victims of domestic violence are being routinely arrested to appease MRAs and other enablers of batterers is the real perversion of the system. The link also indicates that the routine arresting of victims is one reason that the numbers of female batterers seems to have gone up in some places—if you are considered a “batterer” because you kick a man off you as he attempts to rape you, then that would tilt the numbers.
So, Dr. Helen has an interview with Glenn Sacks about how all the problems in the world can be traced to bitches who don’t act right and just do as they’re told. (Via Scott, who is very funny about this.) It’s a truly nauseating attempt to rewrite reality, starting with Dr. Helen’s mind-boggling implication that the accused in the Duke rape case were found guilty of crimes they didn’t commit and are sitting in jail.
Many readers have written in to ask various questions about domestic violence laws, their effect on men and how to find justice for men in the legal system, especially in the wake of the Duke rape case.
Sometimes I think the Duke nuts really do believe that their heroes who heroically wrote things like:
tomorrow night, after tonights show, ive decided to have some strippers over to edens 2c. all are welcome.. however there will be no nudity. i plan on killing the bitches as soon as the walk in and proceeding to cut their skin off while cumming in my duke issue spandex.. all in besides arch and tack please respond
really are in jail. That they’re not is almost an affront to their fans, who are dying for some political prisoners to rally behind. Without them, they are stuck making shit up. Anyway, Glenn, who is admittedly an affable guy, continues his crusade to give domestic abusers a hand now that the government and feminists are making it much, much harder to beat and rape your wife in peace like you used to be able to do.
Oh, I know. We’re not supposed to say that anyone is for wife beating. It’s like how no one is actually a racist, since to be a real racist nowadays, it’s not enough to oppress black people, hang nooses from trees, call them niggers or boggle in amazement that they eat food like normal people. No, in order to be considered a racist in our “I’m not a racist!” times, you have to own slaves, and even then, it’s a safe bet that Michael Medved would defend you against the scandalous charges of racism.
Anyway, Glenn won’t say he’s for wife beating. But as he makes it clear in this interview, he’s on your side if you’re angry that your stupid, broken wife resists your abuse. He condemns restraining orders, because they make it harder to get to your wife in order to beat her, which she really has coming for filing a restraining order against you.
To pick one example, the restraining order issue is a nightmare. The father is booted out of the marital home and pushed to the margins of his children’s lives.
It is a nightmare for a wife-beating stalker to be deprived access to his victim in the “marital home”. I’m sure we can all feel for these guys—what will they hit now? The wall, a tree? Not nearly as satisfying as hitting your stupid wife who thinks she has a right to be safe from you.
But while we can all see how stupid it is to demand that abusers have the right to access their victims so they can beat and kill them, what’s really alarming is that Glenn uses some euphemistic language that’s designed to make sure that women don’t actually take immediate measures to stop violence against them, i.e. defending themselves and calling the police.
The biggest misconception is the woman-as-victim/man-as-perp model. Research clearly establishes that women are frequently the aggressors in domestic combat, often employing the element of surprise and weapons to compensate for men’s strength.
The term “domestic combat” is a deliberate attempt to imply that if a woman tries to save herself from a man, that’s just as bad as instigating domestic violence. It’s true that it surprises a lot of men when women they thought were cowed and broken find some reserve of energy to fight back, and it’s true that women often use weapons to protect themselves. What is not true is that women have no right to protect themselves and must submit to violence.
Here’s an example of these “domestic combat” encounters where the wife doesn’t play fair in the eyes of the MRAs:
One time when her husband, Elston, was beating her, Dolores managed to break away and grab one of the guns that he kept in an open cabinet. Dolores cocked the gun and held it to Elston’s head. While he was on his knees pleading for his life, Dolores told him, “If you ever put your hands on me [again], I’ll kill you.” As Elston grabbed for the gun, it went off, sending a bullet into the floor between them. This roused her father, who lived in the apartment below them. Her father came upstairs to “calm the situation down,” said Dolores.
In the next few months, Elston pistol-whipped his wife, and tried to kill her by running her over with the car. But you see, by the measures being laid out with euphemisms like “domestic combat”, Dolores is just as bad because she defended herself. (From the book Why Do They Kill by David Adams.)
Stigmatizing self-defense by using terms like “domestic combat” to make self-defense sound just as bad (and worse, even, what with the surprise and the weapons) as wife beating is pro-abuse in a number of ways.
- It stops the woman from taking immediate measures to save herself, which supports the abuser’s mission of breaking his wife’s will. If you’ve seen this video, you’ll see what I mean—this woman’s head down, barely moving attempt at acquiescence shows the end product of a reign of domestic terror, which is a woman who puts up no resistance at all. Stigmatizing self-defense assists abusers in this mission.
- It stops women from calling the police. In the “domestic combat” model, if the police are called, the victim is arrested if she put up any self-defense at all. Fearing jail for being abused, women won’t call the police. In the interview, Glenn supports arresting victims of abuse and treating them as criminals if they raised a hand in self-defense.
- It makes it impossible to leave. If you can’t fight back and you can’t call the cops, there’s nothing to stop the abuser from tracking you down, kidnapping you, beating you, or killing you if you try to leave him.
Ironically, for all that Glenn opposes women being able to use self-defense to protect themselves, his activism against the VAWA, if successful, will lead more of the abusers he supports to be killed by women who have no other out from abusive marriages. As you’ll see from this chart, the VAWA helped usher in a freefall of spousal murder:
The rate of women killing men plummeted more than men killing women for a simple reason: Women who used to have to kill in self-defense have other options. They can call the police. They can go to a shelter. All these are things that Glenn Sacks is trying to get rid of to help out his wife-beating fan club, but all it will do is get more of them killed as more of their wives find themselves without any options short of fatal self-defense.
Like I said, Glenn’s an affable guy. But let’s make no mistake about what’s going on here—he’s feeding abusive men stories they want to hear about how the abuse was all their wife’s fault. Yeah, yeah, you beat her, but it was just as bad if not worse that she resisted. (Abusers fill in the blank: And if women just did what they were told in the first place, this wouldn’t happen.) Then he cuts to commercial and it’s one ad after another for lawyers who are interested in taking your money and finding new, innovative ways to sue your ex-wife so that you can, despite the restraining order, get some contact with her and use the force of the law to control her life in ways that you used to be able to do with just your fists.
And yes, yes, yes, I’m aware that a minority of domestic violence cases are true examples of women instigating and controlling men through violence. Even more, there are male victims of man-on-man domestic violence. However, the genuine male victims of domestic violence will also suffer if the reforms that Glenn is advocating—banning restraining orders, giving abusers full access to victims, and criminalizing self-defense—come into play. If you sincerely care about male victims of domestic violence, you shouldn’t want them to be stuck in the hellhole that the pro-abuse men’s rights advocates are trying to recreate for women.
When I worked at County Hospital in LA, one of the female ER MDs tried to put up signs about domestic violence in the waiting rooms. Several of the older male MDs objected because “it might cause stress to the male patients with chest pain”
Really. In the 1990s.
The other comment was always “but what about all the menz”
Which says to me either a lot of men beat their wives, to the point where you can expect a significant percentage of heart attack victims to get stressed out by a guilt-tripping sign about it, or that a lot of men are just invested in the system where domestic violence upholds male dominance, whether you participate in wife-beating or not. Probably a combination. Fucking sick.
My friend’s 12-year-old is the one who finally called the cops when his mother was being beaten up by his stepfather. Does Glenn think it was horrible that this child called the cops, thereby preventing the man from continuing to abuse his wife in front of their three boys?
Don’t answer that.
He probably thinks it’s awful that the cops didn’t arrest her, too. Well, read the interview if you can stomach it. He’d probably say that she turned the children against him.
I don’t see what Sacks is upset about. It’s not like a restraining order will stop a guy who really, really wants to teach his property a lesson about being uppity.
If a restraining order is truly invalid, it’s not that difficult to fight. I know someone who had a restraining order slapped against him by an ex-girlfriend which, by its nature, would have forced him to leave college. His parents helped him get a lawyer and his ex-girlfriend, shocked that he was actually going to put up a fight against being thrown out of school, dropped the effort, because she knew it was bullshit.
By contrast, even when there is good reason for a restraining order, fighting the the order can get it removed eventually, as well, as happened to the restraining order my friend had against someone who raped her. After the restraining order had been in place for a while, eventually it was lifted after repeated overtures by the target of the order to get it removed.
It strikes me that Sacks should be railing against those who disobey restraining orders.
It strikes me that Sacks should be railing against those who disobey restraining orders.
But that would inconvenience men…
“Domestic Combat” Whaaa?!
Is “violence” somehow the wrong word to use when one spouse is beating, shooting, stabbing, or otherwise ummm… inconveniencing the other? Perhaps we should call it “spousal dueling” to avoid the implication that one person is the perpetrator and the other the victim.
He’d probably say that she turned the children against him.
Or that the children only saw the violence because she provoked him in front of them, and she is, therefore, a manipulative abuser of the children who had to see the results of her untoward provocations.
So…what does Glenn suggest that people subjected to violence in the home actually do?
Just wondering?
Thanks for highlighting what makes me feel queasy every time I still hear about the Duke lacrosse case: So many people seem to refer to the case as if it were a landmark case for fixing the ills of the justice system, but it wasn’t at all and I really think that this here is the motivation behind their impassioned outrage.
They think feminism has gotten so out of hand that these poor little white boys were railroaded into jail over a no-account stripper. Never mind those text messages on the night of the party nor that the boys had the benefits of wealth and political clout to have their cases immediately thrown out and have the prosecutor punished. The lasting effect of that case was to fuel these rantings of the “fathers’ rights” crowd and other misogynists like Glenn who think that female abuse victims are making much ado about nothing and are too empowered as it is when they try to protect themselves.
i had a friend whose ex-girlfriend filed a bullshit restraining order against him. frankly, even though it was bullshit, it was the best thing that could have happened because it prevented them from getting back together, but that’s not the point.
i’ve always thought restraining orders are fairly useless and pointless. if someone gets a restraining order for you for a bullshit reason, if you aren’t a possessive, mildly abusive person then it doesn’t really affect you since it’s just making you stay away from someone you were staying away from to begin with. if you *are* a possessive, mildly abusive person, then you aren’t going to abide by the restraining order anyway but at least it creates a police trail suggesting to the court that you have boundary issues.
You know, I heard a rumor at one point that my post-high school ex-boyfriend was going to take out a restraining order against me when I came home from college for the summer, but I have no idea what grounds he could possibly have gotten it on since I’d had no contact with the guy for six months.
I should take a trip through the county archives and see if it ever happened or if he finally realized by the fact that I never came within 10 miles of him that I just didn’t give a shit anymore.
Heg, I think they feel that if a no-count stripper can even file charges when raped, that’s feminism gone too far. Whether or not it actually happened appears to be beside the point for the whiners.
Reporting domestic violence = parental alienation syndrome, which was a crock of shit rejected by family court judges as not meeting any sort of evidentiary standards years ago and is only believed by MRAs?
Will be circle be unbroken?
So what does Sacks have to say when a woman is advised by the police responding to her latest ass-kicking…to get a restraining order?
I get that they are “useless” in any number of contexts…but until people have viable alternatives, we may just have to suck it up.
I think they are particularly useful for anyone not yet paralyzed by fear…and not so thoroughly intimidated that they waffle on the “no contact” issue.
I’ve seen RO’s used effectively in situations where the violence has not escalated to life-threatening, and the women involved were utterly determined to get out.
“The biggest misconception is the woman-as-victim/man-as-perp model. Research clearly establishes that women are frequently the aggressors in domestic combat, often employing the element of surprise and weapons to compensate for men’s strength.”
Clearly women are domestic terrorists, guerrillas in the war of the sexes.
This is a case where it’s definitely helpful to click the link and see the context Amanda removed.
The earliest and possibly most egregious example:
Amanda quoted:
To pick one example, the restraining order issue is a nightmare. The father
is booted out of the marital home and pushed to the margins of his children’s lives.
Amanda then went on to suggest that Glenn supports abuse. The rest of the paragraph reads:
The orders are often based on false accusations, and are used as custody maneuvers or as punitive measures by angry soon-to-be-ex-wives.
Some judges simply rubber stamp protection order requests. One example is the David Letterman case from a couple years ago, where a judge granted a lunatic woman a restraining order against Letterman because she said he was sending her harassing messages through his TV broadcasts. District Judge Daniel Sanchez, who issued the order, explained, “If [applicants] make a proper pleading, then I grant it.” As if what matters is not the accused’s guilt or innocence, but instead whether the accuser knows how to fill out a form properly.
If one parent can be kicked out of their kids’ lives because the other parent can fill out a form, lie, and have it rubber-stamped by an apathetic judge, then that’s a serious problem. Why not work to prevent restraining order abuse?
Research clearly establishes that women are frequently the aggressors in domestic combat,
Note the term, “frequently.” Gives the impression of a lot, don’t it? Now note what term he didn’t use:
“Equally.”
You know, that might tell you something about how often men are abused versus women, when Glenn can’t even be bothered to pretend that the incidence of abuse is comparable.
Observer:
In fairness, all this really proves is that Sacks doesn’t have a problem with lying directly out of his asshole in order to justify his (fairly well-documented) support of abuse.
Observer, that’s not exactly the home run quote you seem to think it is.
Why does Glenn start with one topic — restraining orders being used as a divorce maneuver — and then immediately switch to a completely different topic — crazy people get restraining orders against people they don’t even know!
He’s trying to draw an equivalency and he’s managed to throw you off the scent. He never even bothers to show one shred of proof that he’s right that restraining orders are “often” bogus. He just throws in a barely-related topic and hopes that his readers will jump from A to L without noticing he never bothered to show that B is true in the first place. He’s arguing that his magic rock is what keeps tigers away from Cincinnati.
And yet you bought his bullshit maneuver hook, line and sinker and never even stopped to think about it. Good job.
I dont get it. Who is this dickhead, and why should anyone care what he says, especially when he’s spewing such obviously vile and vicious effluvia?
It’s true, Observer, that he weighs down his arguments with euphemism. However, that doesn’t mean that we are unable to see through his bullshit. Clicking through the link is highly encouraged by me, but a warning—it’s much worse than I explain it here, the unbelievable amount of distortion, lying, misogyny, and blaming of women for the plague of male violence on women.
Like mnem said, his follow-up quote was pretty much irrelevant. Allowing abusers back into the home to beat their wives more (aka, a ban on restraining orders) is another issue from their constant bleating about women who lie. Also, I’m not entirely sure that I’ve ever heard an MRA admit that he did actually beat his wife. By their measures all accusations of domestic violence and sexual abuse of children are lies. The pity party that was thrown for that millionaire dude who shot his wife and the judge that ruled against him is one of the sickest things I’ve ever seen. It’s like the Anita Hill thing—”She’s lying” is shorthand for “women shouldn’t have a right to resist rape, violence, and harassment”.
If one time out of a hundred, restraining orders are bogus, we should make it harder for the other 99 to get them.
Riiiiiight.
My friend’s 12-year-old is the one who finally called the cops when his mother was being beaten up by his stepfather. Does Glenn think it was horrible that this child called the cops, thereby preventing the man from continuing to abuse his wife in front of their three boysOf course — he’s twelve, therefore he should be learning by example how to treat one of those uppity bitches.
Also, firefalluk: Because while MRAs are clearly batshit, the fact that they draw on a large constiuency (embittered, abusive men who are furious that they have lost control of their ex-wives) that has a lot of political power (white men), means that they have a lot of ability to shape the laws to fit their agenda (making it harder for women to escape abusive marriages).
The link I put in the update shows one effect of this problem—nowadays, if a woman calls the police because she’s getting battered, if she put up any physical resistance at all, including pushing and shoving to get him off her so she could escape to make the phone call, she is very likely to go to jail. MRAs have found a backdoor way, with this domestic combat stuff, to criminalize being a victim. They’re also looking for a way to criminalize being a rape victim by seeking to pass laws that make it automatic for the DA to prosecute a rape victim if the state couldn’t put together a good enough case to convict her assailant. The end result/hope is to make wife battering and rape technically legal because victims are too afraid to seek help or justice.
So, we have to pay attention. They want to make rape and DV technically legal again and they have the political power to get there.
Of course — he’s twelve, therefore he should be learning by example how to treat one of those uppity bitches.
Unfortunately, he is. My nephew has witnessed many incidents between his parents and had to call 911 more than once and, surprise surprise, the lesson he has learned is that you can get people to do what you want by hitting them. Right now, it’s his grandfather (my father-in-law), but it’s only going to get worse as he gets older, because he has this huge amount of rage inside and no way to express it.
Have I mentioned that his dad is once again out of prison and once again living with his mother while he’s living with his grandfather because his mother doesn’t understand why the kid is so angry all the time? But that’s a whole different story.
That’s funny. My husband had no problem getting joint custody plus his former wife never accused him of anything abusive. Could it be because he is a great involved father who doesn’t ever hit people? Nahh. That’d be too easy. In fact, the two agreed to joint custody with no court order because, drum roll please, they agreed it would be better for the kids to see both parents as much as possible. When two people can’t do this, it is naive to think that any law is going to be able to make things “fair” to everyone when it is nearly impossible sometimes to deal with the he said she said aspect of domestic relations. The system is never going to be “good” at dealing with a parent who provokes the abusive parent to deflect the abuser’s attention away from the children. I can’t think of any judge who wants to deal with those facts, and I’ve seen judges decide between mom living with a convicted child molester and dad living with his new boyfriend (and this was 10 years ago in the deep south before the Will and Grace effect). It’s just not going to work out perfectly because the facts are bad to start wtih. It’s just not the case that men are showing up in emergency rooms with black eyes and knives sticking out of their caws in droves. It’s too bad that anyone is enabling the perpetuation of this myth.
I have learned of an awesome group locally working to do domestic violence education with various faiths so that the victim is not shunned by the faith community for ‘breaking marriage vows’ by leaving the relationship. The program uses relevant scripture from different religions to show that the marriage vow is broken by the violence, not the leaving. This should help provide more victims with a support network. So there is a lot of good to counteract this bad.
When I did volunteer work at the local DV center, we always hung posters up in the stalls of the women’s bathroom - one place in public a woman could go but an abuser typically wouldn’t follow.
Thank Dog for restraining orders. I am here today because I happened to be living in a place where such things were taken seriously.
I feel like I am reading a painfully re-packaged edition of Wignuttery-Logic:
Women can indeed be just as violent and ruthless as any ‘thug’ of a man. Please refrain from these absurd steroetypes of “all men are bad”. It feels like a femme-Rush Limbaugh is writing much of this tripe. Do you want to sound like that?
I know all too well what it is like to live with a cruel, duplicitous, and violent woman. There were no places for me to go, no “DV-Clinics”, no support groups when I finally escaped. I was raised to NEVER hit a woman (nor another man, without a really good reason). Yet she got even angrier when I refused to hit her back… Try to understand the catch-22 of this, ok? Fair is fair.
DV is an Equal Opportunity Nightmare. Quit trying to paint it otherwise.
Please.
I read through most of your blog entry. There are a few things I saw wrong with it. The major one was your chart on deaths by gender. There’s no basis for the measurements. I read the chart very differently than you explained it. It appears to me that more women as inmates are dying due to homicide than men. And as our prisons are primarily segregated, that would mean that women are more violent than men. I’m sure that’s not the intention you had.
Regardless, I feel women need to be held more accountable and by giving them a blanket law to hide behind or to automatically charge the man as the violent party is careless, sexist, and just plain wrong. We are all humans and quite capable of making the same wrong choices in life. The time is come for us to hold responsible the aggressors and the people who are the ones committing the crimes. Regardless of what sex they might be.
For the record, I am a divorced man and in my previous relationship, only one person was ever violent. And that person was not me.
Ironically when I asked about whether or not I should get a restraining order? My lawyers advice was that it would a bad thing and make it even more difficult for me to see my kids. Go figure.
Okay, so you do concede (briefly in the final paragraph) that there are abused men. The question is what percentage of the population of abuse victims are male. You do try to minimize their plight by implying that the majority of men who were assaulted/abused by their wives got what they deserved. But were you there to make that determination, or do you just reflexively believe women over men because that is your ideology?
The research doesn’t support your implication that men are a tiny minority of abuse victims. In fact, a recent study written by researchers at the Centers for Disease Control found that in relationships where the abuse is one-way, over 70 percent of the time it is the woman abusing the man. Do you care?
You might say that you do care about male victims of female abuse, the tiny minority that you think they are. To help them, you advocate a strengthening of the Violence Against Women Act. Fine then, another concession — strengthen it to the point that unilaterally abused men are able to get restraining orders against their abusive wives. This would mean eliminating Primary Aggressor statutes (which are a phenomenon of the states, not the federal government). These statutes require police to discard their better judgment, and instead arrest the man in all cases. How can this be? Because the criteria for what constitutes the “primary aggressor” is designed to describe the man, such as “the one who has the greater physical posture” (a biological trait). When legitimate male victims call for help under your “strengthened VAWA,” would they (should they) receive it in the form of an arrest and restraining order of the female abuser? Because that is not now the case.
Finally, the video you provided is a textbook example of domestic abuse, and at its beginning it’s very obvious that domestic abuse has a psychological component. Even if no objects are thrown, and no physical contact made, there is a psychological form of violence that goes on in which one partner intimidates another into silence and submission. Your constant reference to abused men as batterers is just one such example of the kind of psychological coercion employed by abusers. Please stop it, and come out from under your rock. There is research to be read; do yourself a favor and become acquainted with it. Women are not fragile little flowers, and they can unilaterally abuse (psychologically for sure, and physically as well) in hurtful ways. I know.
“The term “domestic combat” is a deliberate attempt to imply that if a woman tries to save herself from a man, that’s just as bad as instigating domestic violence. It’s true that it surprises a lot of men when women they thought were cowed and broken find some reserve of energy to fight back, and it’s true that women often use weapons to protect themselves. What is not true is that women have no right to protect themselves and must submit to violence.”
I disagree on this point as well. The violence that occurred in my marriage only occurred on the instances when I left the marital property in an attempt to stem the constant verbal attacks I was enduring. It did not matter if I agreed, disagreed, remained silent, or yelled back. The verbal assaults were coming and I knew it. On three occasions I left the house to stop the attacks and on all three occasions things were thrown at me. The divorce followed the third such incident because I moved out. I choose not to tolerate that.
Women are not automatic defenders, they should not have the right to use weapons to defend themselves, just as men do not have the right to attack women. To allow either party the right to do such things causes a breakdown of civil law. Vigilantism is and should always remain illegal.
Things like shelters that a person can go to are one thing. Protection orders based on legitimate evidence are one thing. Bogus protection orders that are used strictly as leverage in an impending court case should be heavily weight against. For the record, there were no protection orders in my divorce.
“The link also indicates that the routine arresting of victims is one reason that the numbers of female batterers seems to have gone up in some places—if you are considered a ‘batterer’ because you kick a man off you as he attempts to rape you, then that would tilt the numbers.”
That is, of course, a complete load of crap. As I’m sure it’s been explained to you several times, only a couple hundred studies demonstrate that women INITIATE domestic abuse (allow me to translate for you: that means NOT SELF-DEFENSE) against their male partners approximately as often as the reverse occurs. That means that an increase of women being arrested indicates that police are finally beginning to treat female violence against men seriously, not that would-be rape victims are being arrested for defending themselves.
You know if everyone would just stand in the middle for a few minutes, instead of trying to side on one side of the fence or other, maybe just maybe you all could see the reality of Glen Sacks. Yes I am a female, once divorced, twice beaten. So what I have to say is real and not just opinion. Glen is right, there are mothers out there, alot of them that push fathers to the brink. I have seen it, even in some of my own friends and if I had any scrupples; I would slap them myself. You can not taunt a man, treat him like garbage and wave his kids in front of him like they were a flag and then expect not to be beaten. This stupid behavior by lots of women, some of whom I know, is Psychologically detremental abuse to the man. If he doesn’t already have to deal with forking over half his money for child support (which I think is stupid, children require care but not to the extent the law this day requires)but then they must also put up with their ex wives keeping, brainwashing or completely hiding the children from them; yet they expect these men to remain psychologically sane? Give me a break. I am a single parent and dont care for a dime from the father of the child that currently lives with me…I got my butt off the sofa, recieved 3 college degrees and work as a professional. I also have a second child who lives with his father (whom I left because he abused me)that I pay child support too. Instead of crying for help, I left him and moved on with my life and contained a relationship with my son. So I know what is on both sides of the fence. Its simple….if your being beaten in a relationship…Get Out!!! if you remain in it; don’t expect people to feel sorry for you, there are shelters for you. If you are the parent recieving child support…get a job! Just because you have a child with someone and they leave you or you leave them and take the kids doesn’t mean you get a free ride to the market, as a parent you are equally responsible. Don’t expect your ex to do everything for you. We women expect women rights, then act like a women and do for yourself!!! The bottom line is this…everyone has a choice to make, and if they could just stop long enough to put there stupid opinions aside and remember this isn’t about mom or dad, but about the children; maybe we wouldn’t all be so quick to judge anyone else!!!
You know if everyone would just stand in the middle for a few minutes, instead of trying to side on one side of the fence or other, maybe just maybe you all could see the reality of Glen Sacks. Yes I am a female, once divorced, twice beaten. So what I have to say is real and not just opinion. Glen is right, there are mothers out there, alot of them that push fathers to the brink. I have seen it, even in some of my own friends and if I had any scrupples; I would slap them myself. You can not taunt a man, treat him like garbage and wave his kids in front of him like they were a flag and then expect not to be beaten. This stupid behavior by lots of women, some of whom I know, is Psychologically detremental abuse to the man. If he doesn’t already have to deal with forking over half his money for child support (which I think is stupid, children require care but not to the extent the law this day requires)but then they must also put up with their ex wives keeping, brainwashing or completely hiding the children from them; yet they expect these men to remain psychologically sane? Give me a break. I am a single parent and dont care for a dime from the father of the child that currently lives with me…I got my butt off the sofa, recieved 3 college degrees and work as a professional. I also have a second child who lives with his father (whom I left because he abused me)that I pay child support too. Instead of crying for help, I left him and moved on with my life and contained a relationship with my son. So I know what is on both sides of the fence. Its simple….if your being beaten in a relationship…Get Out!!! if you remain in it; don’t expect people to feel sorry for you, there are shelters for you. If you are the parent recieving child support…get a job! Just because you have a child with someone and they leave you or you leave them and take the kids doesn’t mean you get a free ride to the market, as a parent you are equally responsible. Don’t expect your ex to do everything for you. We women expect women rights, then act like a women and do for yourself!!! The bottom line is this…everyone has a choice to make, and if they could just stop long enough to put there stupid opinions aside and remember this isn’t about mom or dad, but about the children; maybe we wouldn’t all be so quick to judge anyone else!!!
Is it still not self-defense if she’s been battered for years? What if he’s screaming and breaking things and she knows that she’s next?
Another problem with the studies from what I’ve seen of their methodology is they don’t seem to have a good idea of what abuse is, and count a playful push or whatever as initiating domestic abuse. My husband and I get playful and push each other and kick and wrestle and all sorts of stuff without hurting each other. I’ve seen a lot of young couples do that. You find enough of those, and suddenly you can say that women are equally guilty of domestic violence without actually looking at any real domestic violence situations.
Find me a study that makes sure to eliminate playing and takes into account context of previous abuse and threats that says women abuse nearly as much as men. My guess is you can’t.
“Another problem with the studies from what I’ve seen of their methodology is they don’t seem to have a good idea of what abuse is, and count a playful push or whatever as initiating domestic abuse. My husband and I get playful and push each other and kick and wrestle and all sorts of stuff without hurting each other. I’ve seen a lot of young couples do that. You find enough of those, and suddenly you can say that women are equally guilty of domestic violence without actually looking at any real domestic violence situations.”
We’re not talking about playful sparring; we’re talking about women who physically attack male partners who have never lain an angry hand on them. They do so because they strongly suspect (sometimes accurately so) that their male partners will never fight back — either because they’re simply pacifistic, are afraid of hurting the other person, or figure that they will be the ones to get into trouble. The woman who beats her husband because “she figures she can” is no more deserving of our admiration than the man who beats his wife because he can physically overpower her. Which means we should be moving to arrest, not lionize, women such as this: http://jezebel.com/gossip/domestic-disturbances/have-you-ever-beat-up-a-boyfriend-cause-uh-we-have-294383.php
Amanda,
I agree almost completely with your article, but I fail to see why you have to drag the Duke case into it.
The 3 Duke students who were indicted really were innocent, really were falsely accused of a felony by a DA who was using them for political advantage, and had the charges dropped only after a year of legal proceedings at the cost of several millions of dollars in legal fees. That email you quote was NOT sent by any of the 3 indicted students, it was sent by ANOTHER member of the Lacrosse team.
The research doesn’t support your implication that men are a tiny minority of abuse victims. In fact, a recent study written by researchers at the Centers for Disease Control found that in relationships where the abuse is one-way, over 70 percent of the time it is the woman abusing the man.
Link, please, to the article on the actual CDC website, not a summary on another website. Otherwise, I call bullshit.
Did you page all the way down to the bottom, Mnemosyne?
http://www.ajph.org/cgi/content/abstract/97/5/941
No sane person can understand why the regulars here refer to anyone who wants more help for male victims as a batterer who wishes women were never granted suffrage.
I could laugh, but this is not a funny matter.
I have seen domestic violence at work, I was a victim of parental abuse by both natural parents. One did so while intoxicated, the other while sober. You could also say, they were abusive to each other in the same process. While my father never laid a hand on my mother, even while intoxicated. Even though everything else was fair game, . . . walls, doors, windows, cabinents, tables . . . me. While my mother had no inhibition, though she drank, she didn’t need alcohol to motivate her to violence. Numerous times I have seen my mother go after my father, verbally and physically. Often throwing items at him, especially when he was intoxicated. At times, when she is upset with me, for various reasons . . . (her favorite reason was that I was a child of sin . . . they weren’t married when I was conceived), she used my father to abuse me, other times she verbally and physically demean me. I was taken to the doctor once because I was mauled by a neighbor’s dog. The dog was put the sleep. But what was never told was that she threw me over the fence where that dog was located.
A couple things I learned from my father, 1) no matter how violent a woman is, never hit a woman and 2) take it like a man. My mother . . . I don’t know, but she is one of the main reasons why I don’t believe in God. Overall, I have a slight phobia of alcohol . . . I don’t drink, because I don’t want to be my father.
Some of you are thinking, that is fucked up. I’m sorry, man. Look I am not looking for any sympathy. I am tired of both Feminists and MRAs, but instead of trying every victim and to find the truth in things. I have seen propoganda spread through the ends of the universe because they just want to hear the sound of their voices.
This is not the end of it, because I sought to escape all this, but it continues. I was a teenage runaway, and I don’t even remember running on that day. The only thing I remember was trying to get away from my mother and getting grabbed by my father and thrown across the table into the china cabinent. I don’t even know how many days I lost, and honestly I don’t really want to remember. But when I came to, I was being attended to by a complete stranger in a motel room, not a hospital. Thing is she was an abuse victim herself, she left her boyfriend with her daughter, because he was abusive.
And Amanda, I take offense with the stripper remark you made (but it looked like you removed it after you made your Update) . . . since the person who took me off the street was an entertainer. For a period of time, so was I. And you have no class, of course, I never knew any woman who actually had class. An entertainer . . . entertains, a stripper usually does whatever to make an extra buck. No one deserves to be raped, even when she is a prostitute, or have a history of it. Why? Because the lady, the angel who took me in, was raped and murdered in our motel room while her daughter and I (I had false papers) was at school. Plus, I have a feeling, just a feeling, when I was out on the streets . . . I don’t know, and I don’t want to know. But, from what I understood of the Duke case, there was no DNA evidence proving their guilt, instead it proved their innocence. Other entertainers who was there refuted her claim, and some of the description she made.
Thing is, I used my career as an entertainer as a stepping stone, to get into college, pay for my tuition and books. And while I was in school, I was contacted by the state. How they found me, I am not 100% sure, but they did. The state was taking custody of my siblings away from my parents. A little over 10 years since I vanish, the state decides to do something. I got a lawyer and fought for custody. After some consideration, I was granted custody of my three siblings, the youngest was barely four years old. I did the best I could, though I knew I was not the perfect parent. Actually, I think I failed because of my brother. My youngest, just finished High School and has just started College.
Thing is, I had many relationship, and many of them was abusive one way or another. I will be honest, I was abusive once through out all those relationships. Not physically, verbally. In most of the other cases, my girlfriends where abusive, mentally, verbally, and physically (especially when they think I was cheating on them), which I deny all but twice. Everyone of them knew I was not monogamous, especially at the beginning of any relationship. (Amanda, before you get on my back for this. At least I give them enough the respect to tell them the truth before getting firmly into a relationship/possible relationship. Many won’t.) Basically, here is what I normally say . . . “This is not a monogamous relationship. It may be later on, but right now, we are still getting to know each other and I am not tying myself down to just one person. I won’t tell you who, when, where, how, or how many times. But I will promise you this, if there is a health concern you should know about, I will tell you. And I expect the same from her.”
Okay, back to the subject, I have many friends, both male and female. Fellow commuters on the train, personal friends, acquaintences, family who have gone through abusive relationship. All in all, from my conversations with them, women are the predominate agressor, especially when it comes to verbal and physical confrontation. If it is just a verbal confrontation, men will usually get physical first about 52%. This is from my friends and family, when they have those episodes, which are rare.
Me, I have respect for Glenn Sacks, I enjoy his columns. Especially when he provides statistical data with it. You, are a great writer and a motivator, but the thing is, you get a little overemotional about things. The DOJ study you mentioned in this entry, has 6 loopholes regarding the male victim. One being . . . if there is no suspect, and he didn’t die of natural causes it is obmitted. True no studies are perfect, even the study in which VAWA was formed, the authors even admitted that not all details were disclosed. Those gaps hurt people.
Glenn have always gone into stating, in many of his domestic violence columns or blog entries: “[Note: If you or someone you love is being abused, the Domestic Abuse Helpline for Men and Women (http://dahmw.org/) provides crisis intervention and support services to victims of domestic violence and their families.]”
Glenn knows there a female victims of domestic violence, and it is not like he doesn’t want them to get help. But when the charge is a legal manuever, then those cases need to be corrected. If the system does a proper investigation, issue a temporary order first, then investigate. If the charges are false, the order should be abdicated. Glenn want charges to be placed on the false accuser, I don’t blame him. If someone had you arrested on a charge you didn’t commit, and you were exonerated, wouldn’t want to press charges against them. I believe so.
(15 more comments were added since I first started writting this)
Good lord it’s getting crowded under the bridge!
Not sure whether we should ask for bunnies for “Robert-a” or just point and laugh at all the stupid that can be packed into a single sentence!
Results. Almost 24% of all relationships had some violence, and half (49.7%) of those were reciprocally violent. In nonreciprocally violent relationships, women were the perpetrators in more than 70% of the cases. Reciprocity was associated with more frequent violence among women (adjusted odds ratio [AOR]=2.3; 95% confidence interval [CI]=1.9, 2.8), but not men (AOR=1.26; 95% CI=0.9, 1.7). Regarding injury, men were more likely to inflict injury than were women (AOR=1.3; 95% CI=1.1, 1.5), and reciprocal intimate partner violence was associated with greater injury than was nonreciprocal intimate partner violence regardless of the gender of the perpetrator (AOR=4.4; 95% CI=3.6, 5.5).
Anyone wanna parse this?
bmmg39,
Random anecdotes on Jezebel aside, the article and abstract to the study they cite doesn’t say what they determined to be domestic violence, so we don’t know if they did or did not count playful sparring. It also doesn’t specify if it took into consideration context such as threats or violence against inanimate objects. Would the Jezebel anecdote about the boyfriend who ripped his girlfriend’s laptop out of her hands and threw it and then she hit him count as violence initiated by her or by him? Reciprocal or nonreciprocal? Another problem is that it didn’t interview both members of each couple, and we don’t know what the gender balance of the people they did interview is. Could the male respondents have downplayed their violence? Could the women have counted things as violent that their partners would have counted as playful? We don’t know. Try finding something online that has those details about a study, and try linking directly to that instead of a Jezebel post about an article about the study.
Snore. The misogynists have shown up to whine about poor, beleaguered batterers. Can’t a wife-beater get a break?
Just last week Michigan had two rallies at the state capital, one asking for more attention of DV, and one asking for clemency for all women convicted of killing their husbands (because they were victims of abuse).
Every one of these women had a shelter she could turn to, and abuse shelters to call on.
Why shouldn’t we, using that logic, grant clemency to the men convicted of murdering their wives?
Obviously they had been emotionally abused by their wives for many years (or did they just wake up monday morning and say “I think I want to kill my loving, supportive, spouse”), and they, unlike the women, had no domestic abuse programs to help them (unless they are charged with DV), and absolutely ZERO shelters to go to.
I agree almost completely with your article, but I fail to see why you have to drag the Duke case into it.
I didn’t. Abuse supporters like Dr. Helen did.
Regarding injury, men were more likely to inflict injury than were women (AOR=1.3; 95% CI=1.1, 1.5), and reciprocal intimate partner violence was associated with greater injury than was nonreciprocal intimate partner violence regardless of the gender of the perpetrator (AOR=4.4; 95% CI=3.6, 5.5).
It means that women are more likely to be seriously injured in a domestic violence incident. Which of course means that men have it worse because, um … well, I’m not really sure why it’s worse for men when women are injured more severely.
No sane person can understand why the regulars here refer to anyone who wants more help for male victims as a batterer who wishes women were never granted suffrage.
If you present us with a sane person who wants more help for male victims rather than a crazy man who thinks that all restraining orders are horrible manipulations by punitive spouses, then we’ll listen. Until then, you’re stuck trying to defend the crazy guy who you say represents your views.
My sister-in-law is deaf in one ear because of one of the beatings from her boyfriend and the father of her children. But I guess she made him do it, huh? She must have deserved it if he was forced to hit her so hard that he knocked her unconscious, which sent their 10-year-old screaming down the hallway for someone to please call 911 because his mom was being murdered.
I guess that’s the price of being an uppity bitch these days: permanent deafness. She should have just done what he wanted and shut up so he didn’t have to hit her, right?
Amanda: again, we’re not misogynists, but rather equal-rights activists — legitimate ones, who wish to see all people benefit. (Please take notes.)
Furthermore, we wish to see tough sentences levied upon all actual batterers. The people we are defending are male victims of violence, just as we defend female victims of violence. If you could just remove your pink-colored glasses long enough to stop playing one gender against the other, you might see that.
Why, Amanda, are you so quick to defend batterers and husband-beaters? Hmmmm?
Ian Mitchell said:
That chart is for women as intimates. Not inmates. Nothing to do with prison.
“I guess that’s the price of being an uppity bitch these days: permanent deafness. She should have just done what he wanted and shut up so he didn’t have to hit her, right?”
Your argument is pure straw. NO ONE is denying that your sister-in-law is a true victim of abuse. But if your brother-in-law were the one abused by HIS partner, there would be people here calling HIM the batterer, simply because he happens to be male.
“well, I’m not really sure why it’s worse for men when women are injured more severely.”
When you focus on the person more likely to be injured in a physical fight, you almost always focus on the woman. But no one, regardless of physical strength, has the right to hurt another person. I’m not a large person, either, but that doesn’t give me free rein to assault people larger than I, and then use my smaller size as a get-out-of-jail-free card.
“Would the Jezebel anecdote about the boyfriend who ripped his girlfriend’s laptop out of her hands and threw it and then she hit him count as violence initiated by her or by him? Reciprocal or nonreciprocal?”
Damaging someone’s property is, indeed, considered a form of domestic violence, although if he threw it in the opposite direction, she’s not acting in self-defense when she punches him. If he DOES throw it attempting to hit her with it, then she WOULD be acting in self-defense.
Interesting that you cherry-pick until you find a case that indicates the male was out of control first. I notice that you didn’t select all of the cases in which the woman popped the boyfriend or the ex because she saw him with another woman or he said something she didn’t particularly like. I guess the man in all of those cases “made her hit him.” Where have we heard that argument before?
Ah, yes, poor abused Tyler Peterson. His ex-girlfriend called him a “worthless pig,” so what other choice did he have than to kill four people and then himself?
And, yes, that was domestic violence. If you go to your ex’s house or workplace and kill him/her, that’s a domestic violence incident. And the last time you heard about a female abuser going on a shooting rampage against her ex was …. when, again?
NO ONE is denying that your sister-in-law is a true victim of abuse. But if your brother-in-law were the one abused by HIS partner, there would be people here calling HIM the batterer, simply because he happens to be male.
Ah, but I didn’t tell you the one detail — when he first hit her during their argument, she hit him back, which was what prompted him to knock her out. So, therefore, according to what you want, she should have been taken to jail first and booked rather than being taken to the hospital for medical treatment, and he should have been released immediately since he was a poor innocent lamb who was just defending himself when his girlfriend hit him after he hit her.
And, again, since in your eyes she’s equally guilty since she has no right to self-defense, you’re saying she deserved it.
More parsing. Along with failing to interview both parties in the relationship…there is no mention of “adjusting” statistics for the rarely acknowleged but well established dynamic of women “covering” for their men by taking the blame for initiation on themselves.
Nor is there any adjustment for the “male denial” factor. (Incidentally, David Spade once did an acid riff on this dynamic, noting that every “Cops” program featured the shirtless, drunk guy claiming he “never touched her” while the bleeding woman is refusing to press charges.)
Quite simply…studies that rely solely on self-reporting of bad behaviors are notorious for their inaccuracies.
“Ah, yes, poor abused Tyler Peterson.”
I don’t remember bringing up Tyler Peterson. Why do you think that cases of abusive men somehow prove that cases of abusive women don’t exist?
“And the last time you heard about a female abuser going on a shooting rampage against her ex was …. when, again?”
Have you heard of Clara Harris? She didn’t go on a shooting rampage; her car sufficed just fine for killing her husband for his infidelity. She went to jail — and then CBS produced a sympathetic Sunday-night movie about her plight. Does that count?
“Ah, but I didn’t tell you the one detail — when he first hit her during their argument, she hit him back, which was what prompted him to knock her out.”
He struck her first? Then he is the aggressor.
“And, again, since in your eyes she’s equally guilty since she has no right to self-defense, you’re saying she deserved it.”
Are you intoxicated right now? My position is that all people — big or small, male or female — have the right to self-defense. It is the view of this blog, however, that men who engage in self-defense are batterers.
More parsing. Along with failing to interview both parties in the relationship…there is no mention of “adjusting” statistics for the rarely acknowleged but well established dynamic of women “covering” for their men by taking the blame for initiation on themselves.
Nor is there any adjustment for the “male denial” factor. (Incidentally, David Spade once did an acid riff on this dynamic, noting that every “Cops” program featured the shirtless, drunk guy claiming he “never touched her” while the bleeding woman is refusing to press charges.)
Quite simply…studies that rely solely on self-reporting of bad behaviors are notorious for their inaccuracies.
We’re going to flood your comments blah blah blah throw up red herrings and lies blah blah blah, all in service of making it harder for women to escape abusive marriages.
God, you people make me ill. Wanting to throw women in jail for getting beaten. Fucking sick.
Amanda: again, we’re not misogynists, but rather equal-rights activists — legitimate ones, who wish to see all people benefit. (Please take notes.)
Note to self: These sick fucks will lie their asses off to make it harder for women to get away from men who beat them. Noted!
Okay, I don’t know how the double post happened. Apologies.
This is what I wrote.
But what if he didn’t strike her. What if he simply uses his physical bulk to prevent her from leaving, blocking the door? What if he quickly wrests her car keys from her hand and refuses to return them, all the while blocking her exit. She hauls off and slaps his face.
Who is the aggressor here?
You’re the one who wants to arrest people (namely men) for being victimized by domestic violence. I belong to two national organizations devoted to protecting both men AND women from abuse. Can you say the same?
I do indeed want men to be arrested when they are “victimized” by the pain of their knuckles smashing someone’s face in. If they don’t want to suffer the nights in jail, the divorces, the loss of custody, they need to start by not hitting women.
Your overwhelming pity for wife beaters is not shared by me. Sorry. You can all rot in hell, honestly.
My question, bmmg39…is whether you believe that a man who uses his physical bulk to control the actions and choices of a woman without ever striking her is the aggressor?
Because this is invariably the scenario of the DV that I’ve been privvy to…woman wants to leave, and the man isn’t willing to let her go.
That chart is for women as intimates. Not inmates. Nothing to do with prison.
This correction is the funniest thing I have read all day.
Arguing with these fuckers in honestly a waste of time. It’s impossible to talk to someone who won’t speak in good faith. You have to judge them by their actions. If people are genuinely interested in helping male victims of DV, they would support measures like the VAWA that help all victims, they would admit that many and probably most male victims are gay, and they would build shelters for men. They wouldn’t attack the system that helps women, they would beef up help for men.
Instead, they attack protections that benefit ALL victims of DV. They try to ban restraining orders. They try to criminalize self-defense. They try to make it harder for women to divorce and escape abusers. They want to deprive women’s shelters of funding.
These are actions consistent not with helping men but hurting women, just as anti-choice actions are consistent not with helping children but hurting women. Judge them by their actions, not their lies. Genuine interest in helping people takes the form of extending help to the needy, not seeking ways to deprive people of help.
Of course, to be fair, depriving women of escape routes, threatening them with jail time for calling the police on abusers, automatic joint custody even for abusers, banning restraining orders, and shutting down shelters are all “help” if you are trying to help batterers. Which is why I call the MRAs who support these measures pro-abuse, because that’s what their actions say.
My sister-in-law is deaf in one ear because of one of the beatings from her boyfriend and the father of her children. But I guess she made him do it, huh?
Yes, she made him do it… exactly as much as Mr. Winkler made Mary shoot him in the back while he was sleeping.
Kinda funny that when a woman hits a man, she has some excuse based on what the man said or did months ago… or her general lack of control over her own actions, but when a man hits a woman, there is no excuse because he’s actually responsible for his actions.
There is no excuse in either direction other than self-defense from an immediate threat to one’s safety.
“Your overwhelming pity for wife beaters is not shared by me. Sorry. You can all rot in hell, honestly.”
I have no pity for wife-beaters, you idiot. How many times need I write that? How poor are your comprehension skills, exactly? You obviously believe that the 50% of domestic violence victims who happen to be male should be incarcerated for their biology. Sorry if I don’t share your sexism, Amanda. Actually — I’m not.
“Because this is invariably the scenario of the DV that I’ve been privvy to…woman wants to leave, and the man isn’t willing to let her go.”
Preventing someone from leaving a room is usually a fault. Of course, if it’s to prevent an intoxicated person from getting behind the wheel, or preventing a person who’s just committed a crime (such as a woman who’s just assaulted someone), then we might have a different story, altogether.
“Instead, they attack protections that benefit ALL victims of DV.”
No, Amanda, we’re opposed to “protections” that merely protect one gender of victims while vilifying the other. We’ll swiftly get behind a Violence Against Persons Act that devotes equal attention to all victims, regardless of race, gender, or creed.
Which were not sent by any of the three indicted Lacrosse players
More than a year later is “immediately”?
I agree with you that it is unfortunate that the misogynist wingnuts can use the Lacrosse case to their advantage, but three innocent men were in fact charged with crimes which they didn’t commit. If their families hadn’t been able to mortgage their homes to raise the millions (literally) of dollars that it took to fight the case, they would be doing hard time. Mike Nifong’s disbarment is thus a great service to justice, because if he tried to do it to these three, you know he has railroaded poor and nonwhite defendants before and gotten away with it, and that he would have done it again and again if he hadn’t gotten caught.
Sick fucks. Control issues—trying to tell women how they’re “allowed” to save themselves from violence. Well, really, by the standards laid out my MRAs, women just aren’t allowed to defend themselves.
How do you get so broken you join up with a pro-wife-beating movement?
bmmg-
My ex used to like to pin me to the wall when we were having an argument. He would hold me there until I gave in. I was always amazed at how long he could hold me there. And when i gave in, the same thing always happened- painful “make-up” sex (though it was more like rape- he only got off if it hurt me).
One day, near the end I had enough. When he went to pin me to the wall I pushed him hard enough to crack his ribs.
Tell me- who was the abuser in that situation? Was he restraining me to prevent me from committing some crime all those times? I was breastfeeding and not allowed to drive our car at the time- so he wasn’t restraining me so that I wouldn’t drive drunk. I had never hit him before that, but I still regularly got pinned to the wall when i disagreed with him.
Your idea of abuse is twisted and your continuing to ignore reality is insulting to those of us who have lived through it.
Yeah, Amanda…I get your frustration. But let us argue so we have it on the record. Apparently, you have no idea how valuable a resource Pandagon is…I’ve archived so much from the site.
I’m twitching here, because the basic debate on DV can never account for what I believe to be the greatest instigator of female retaliation…masculine physical bulk:
My eyes were opened to this common dynamic with a decade old incident in my own family…an argument between my teenaged son and my future DIL erupted when our son simply refused to allow her to leave. (Long story over at TT…with good discussion, and please know our son long since gets it.)
Very quickly, I understood that DV is about more than the violent strike…it is also about physical bulk asserting physical position and dominance, and just refusing to move. (Put this one out there, and just watch what happens…every woman you know will tell you the story of either submitting to the man who wouldn’t move, or picking up a chair and escalating.)
This is such an important element to DV, but few men want to acknowlege that greater physical presence, the determination to control, and a thick hide figures into why a woman will slap a man’s face.
Generally speaking, men do not need to hit women. All they have to do is insert themselves between women and the door…women might well then throw the first strike.
I want to make it clear that I agree with you 100% on each of these issues. I just think you are totally wrong about the Duke case and have been from Day 1.
Yeah, Amanda…I get your frustration. But let us argue so we have it on the record. Apparently, you have no idea how valuable a resource Pandagon is…I’ve archived so much from the site.
I’m twitching here, because the basic debate on DV can never account for what I believe to be the greatest instigator of female retaliation…masculine physical bulk:
My eyes were opened to this common dynamic with a decade old incident in my own family…an argument between my teenaged son and my future DIL erupted when our son simply refused to allow her to leave. (Long story over at TT…with good discussion, and please know our son long since gets it.)
Very quickly, I understood that DV is about more than the violent strike…it is also about physical bulk asserting physical position and dominance, and just refusing to move. (Put this one out there, and just watch what happens…every woman you know will tell you the story of either submitting to the man who wouldn’t move, or picking up a chair and escalating.)
This is such an important element to DV, but few men want to acknowlege that greater physical presence, the determination to control, and a thick hide figures into why a woman will slap a man’s face.
Generally speaking, men do not need to hit women. All they have to do is insert themselves between women and the door…women might well then throw the first strike.
No worries, ahunt. I appreciate you arguing with them. I think a lot of people are suckered in by the “WHAT ABOUT THE MENZ” storyline, just as a lot of people are suckered into “THEY’RE KILLING BAYBEEZ”, and so it’s useful to show how their storylines are full of shit. I’m just adding in that you have to judge people by their actions, especially since right wingers have such a strong, hefty disregard for the truth or the good faith argument.
Really, these dribbling assholes are the more pleasant ones. You should see the real nasty misogynists in the moderation queue. I had one accusing me of violence against him and his ilk because I use “aggressive” language. Tells you a lot about how he justified beating his wife, I’m guessing.
Dr., I think the prosecutor fumbled the case, sure. But no, I’m not interested in persecuting the victim or calling her a liar.
Dr., if you actually do agree with Amanda on the issues, then please focus on them. As she pointed out, Dr. Helen is the one who brought up the Duke Rape Case. Dr. Helen did that because “Duke Rape Case” is the patriarchalist’s current shorthand for “all women who claim to be raped are lying bitches”. In that context, harping on the Duke Rape Case is a troll tactic for arguing the opposite side of the “issues” that you supposedly agree with Amanda on.
Rape almost certainly took place that night. The wrong lacrosse players were charged with it. They got off. The DA responsible has been punished. There are no martyrs here.
People are found innocent of crimes (or, as is the case here, charges are dropped) all the time. Generally, that doesn’t translate into “The victim wasn’t actually victimized” or “the victim is lying”. Unless it’s rape or domestic abuse. Funny, that.
What do you suggest is done about this?
Seriously. These guys have found a loophole. I don’t think the issue’s even self defence - I think you miss the point there - Glen’s talking about agressors. If a women agresses and slaps or pushes or throws a plate at her husband, and then gets beaten to a pulp, so far as I can see the law sees them both as perpetrators of DV. She committed as crime by assaulting him, and then he committed one by assaulting her. It looks to me like this script is followed in a reasonable chunk of DV cases.
He deserves to be arrested and not her. But the victim is technically on the wrong side of the law as well as the perpetrator. I can see where the anger’s coming from because DV law is being used against victims. But is there a solution?
Amanda. Please be kind and remove the double posts. I get passionate from to time to time…but not this much. Please fix it. Then remove this post too.
Re-read my posts here: I never called her a liar, and never suggested she be “persecuted” in any way. (In their recently-filed civil suit, the Duke 3 sued the prosecutor, the police, the City and a lot of other people, but not the accuser.) But I’m not sure I’d call her a “victim,” either. The male DNA that was found in and on her did not match any of the members of the Lacrosse team. So either she was not victimized at all, or is seriously confused as to when and where it happened. The North Carolina Attorney General’s investigation, which concluded that the 3 defendants were “innocent,” recommended that she not be prosecuted for making a false police report, because she appeared to be delusional, not lying.
In any event, my interest in the Duke case has nothing to do with bashing women who make accusations of rape; I am sure most such accusers are truthful. As a lawyer, I have been interested in the case from the beginning because it is rare that we get such clear-cut proof of the way many prosecutors bring bogus charges (rigged lineups, failures to disclose exculpatory lab reports, etc., etc.) These things happen a lot, in all kinds of cases, but rarely get exposed.
If a rape took place, it was not that night and not at the Lacrosse house. The DA took DNA from every member of the Lacrosse team (except the one African-American player), and none of them was a match for any of the male DNA found in and on the accuser.
Yes, Dr. Helen is wrong to use this case to support the “all women lie” meme. As a defense lawyer, I prefer to use the case to support the “many police and prosecutors lie” meme.
On the off chance that’s true, be aware that right now you are helping people whose interest is in bashing women who make accusations of rape. What you’re doing right now is the whole reason Dr. Helen brought the issue up. If you continue, you reveal yourself as just another troll.
That’s what she’s using it for. You’re helping her. Stop.
Interesting. You know, we have quite a few posts on that meme on this site, but I don’t know if I recall you commenting before. Is it because you’re new to the site, or because you’re a troll who just wants to keep the shit flying about Duke?
So, we go from bmmg’s MRA derailment to YET ANOTHER Duke Lacrosse derailment.
Thanks. I hope I live long enough to see a day when no one knows (or cares) anything about this…
You’re right, Mike. Sorry. Will stop feeding the troll now.
Not cross with you, Seraph.
(Sometimes I like to feed them too…)
I’m just tired of the endless stream of people (men) who think every single thread about DV or rape should be turned into a MRA/Lacrosse-fest…
Kinda funny that when a woman hits a man, she has some excuse based on what the man said or did months ago… or her general lack of control over her own actions, but when a man hits a woman, there is no excuse because he’s actually responsible for his actions.
I suppose if you’re really desperate to find excuses for an abuser, you can say that my sister-in-law’s boyfriend saw no reason for her to hit him just because he’d hit her five minutes before. Why would she still be upset about something that had happened five whole minutes ago and why wasn’t she getting him a beer yet? So, clearly, she deserved to be knocked out cold and have her eardrum ruptured because she was holding a grudge for, like, a whole five minutes! Geez, can’t women get over things?
If bmmg hasn’t been banned yet, I’m starting to get curious: why does he think that restraining orders can only be issued by a woman against a man, so therefore they need to be banned? A man can get a restraining order against his abusive wife, too. The issuance of the order is not dependent on your genitalia.
And I would like to mention that a female abuser killing her husband was so unusual that they made a TV movie about it. Tyler Peterson is just another ho-hum domestic abuser. If he’d only killed his girlfriend and not the other people in the house, the story never would have made it out of Wisconsin.
How come women who kill their partners (in self defense or not) rarely kill their children too?
How come men kill their kids and “their” women with such frightening frequency if “men are most victimized”?
I can remember at least two incinerations of women and children this year alone within a 15 mile radius of my home. That’s just the burnings, not the shootings and beating deaths of women AND the children too.
I can’t remember the last time a woman dragged her estranged husband/lover into an elevator and immolated both of them at his workplace. Or burned herself and her kids to death in the parking lot of his workplace.
The extreme differential in the murder of the children along with their mothers is telling, very telling.
Oh lord. Equal rights activists? For batterers presumably. I smell a hell of a lot of bullshit on this thread’s comments. More than the usual number of trolls most definitely.
You know, I keep asking myself what would drive a whole passel of men (and I’m counting the mythical “Roberta”) to come over to a blog thread on domestic violence and insist, against, all known evidence, that men are being oppressed by anti-violence laws in huge numbers and kept away from assistance for their own domestic abuse.
Then I remember, oh yeah; people who abuse others are super-manipulative and like to try to define reality and set the terms of the debate. The psychotic need to control even the *discussion* of domestic violence on a blog fuels their panicked, hostile, and largely nonsensical posts. It must always, always be about them.
Pathetic.
Very interesting debate so far. I read glenn’s site quite often as well as a number of feminist blogs. The reaction to this interview scares me in a way. It seems some of you can only look at things in a men vs. women way and fail to see the issue as a whole.
No reasonable person would deny an abused man or woman any option out there. What Glenn was getting at is that some parts of the system we have put in place are being abused and this must stop. Using restraining orders when there isnt a real need is simply wrong and I see it happen all the time.
I recently separated from the military and in my 9.5 years in I must have seen at least a thousand divorces and had intimate knowledge of about 40. Restraining orders and claims of abuse were used constantly, often brought up when the military spouse was deployed and couldn’t fight it. This has to stop.
As far as reporting of abuse and the statistics some of you have mentioned…..well you also question the validity of these stats. I must say, again based upon personal experience and what I’ve had the chance to research, the person least likely to report abuse is a man. Whether it be rape or domestic abuse in one of the many forms it can be defined as now, the odds a man will report it are much lower and even the chance that he will know it qualifies as abuse will be low.
Educate all people, give options to all people, shelters for men, gay and straight, resources and so on. Put everyone on an even footing and do all that is possible to stop anyone, male or female, from gaming the system. Some of the new laws and ordinances I’ve read (my home state is Maine but I’m now in Georgia) are clearly gender-biased. Yes I’ve seen abused wives but also a huge amount of abused husbands with absolutely no recourse, they dont eventually hurt their wives, they just live as broken men who eventually end up sending 40% of their pay and their kids to the mom’s new house.
Forgive my writing style as this is my first post and I’m not nearly as well-spoken as most of you.
She’s also using the David Letterman case. No one responded by attacking Letterman, and claiming that he is really an abuser. Amanda, quite correctly, pointed out that the fact that one brain-dead judge once granted a restraining order in response to a complaint by a delusional woman doesn’t discredit the very real complaints of women who are really abused. Yet when Helen uses the Duke Lacrosse case in the same bad-faith way, everyone has to pile on to three innocent men with long-discredited claims that they did something wrong. They didn’t. Give it a rest.
The three former Duke lacrosse players should be locked up for rape.
As for DV, when you have people like Glenn Sacks attacking the system (much in the same way other neocons attacked the judges in the Schiavo case), then that makes it 100,000,000 times harder for women who are being abused by men and men who are being abused by women to get the services they need.
Here are the real facts: 23 out of every 25 women (92%) are abused by men — and just 2 out of every 25 men (8%) are abused by women. One stat I find factually incorrect: more men are abused by other men. In fact, men are abused by other men in no more than 1 in every 25 DV cases (only 4%) — meaning that there are more women who are victims domestic violence across the board (regardless of relationship type) than men. And that includes same-sex relationships. There are many more instances of woman-on-woman violence than man-on-man violence.
The 2003 law South Carolina passed is gender-neutral — and for good reason. Spousal murders in SC increased by five for both genders in 2006 from 2005. Forty women were killed by men and ten men were killed by women in 2006, up from 35 women and five men in 2005. These numbers DO NOT include killings in self-defense, as South Carolina stopped including those number in 2004, when the current DV law went into effect. The current law says that the state will prosecute DV case, regardless of what the victim says. What that means is this: a man who is being beaten up constantly by his wife/girlfriend (he never hits her back) all of a sudden call the police — she is going to jail even if he doesn’t want her to get arrested. Of course, this was posted on the Times and Democrat’s blotter back in 2004. The police will do the same thing if a woman who calls the police on her husband/boyfriend and she doesn’t want charges filed — take him to jail even if she doesn’t want to press charges. Of course, this happened to one of Sanford’s former aides when the aide’s wife said that she didn’t to press charges against her husband. Columbia police arrested him anyway. That is why I love the current DV law in SC — wish other states would adopt it.
Here is more on abused men from Dennie Hughes’s January 9, 2005 column.
At least Amanda did acknowledge the no one is immune to DV.
And bmmg is d-u-m-b. He twists the facts instead of giving the reasons behing a lot of the real reasons why people abuse the ones they love. And his absurd remarks about banning restraining orders should make everyone, regardless of gender shudder. I hope that when I here next tiem, bmmg is b-a-n-n-e-d.
It’s not that men aren’t abused, but about 85% of victims of spousal/intimate partner violence are female. Also, men are more likely to do damage because of the disparity in size and strength. Men are the victims of DV, but I wouldn’t call it an “equal opportunity nightmare.”
I have no sympathy for men who abuse women. However, I do have sympathy for men who are wrongfully accused of abusing women. I also have no sympathy for women who abuse men.
It’s interesting that this post came up when it did because we are studying lethal self-defense in domestic violence cases in our Criminal law class today. Self-defense statutes were written by mostly male legislatures and interpreted by mostly male judges from a male perspective and they were designed to keep men from killing other men in male combat situations. The deck is stacked against women because the laws were not written with women’s situations in mind.
For example, the shooting someone while they are sleeping is never self-defense. In a conflict between two males, this is understandable. If one is sleeping, the other can leave. In a domestic violence context, it’s not so simple. Leaving is often the most dangerous time for the woman. When the final assault happens, she is at a disadvantage when it comes to defending herself. Perhaps the only chance she has to defend herself is to kill her abuser when she has the opportunity.
With recent events such as the Duke rape case and the Mary Winkler case, I expect a backlash against women in the courts and in the legislature. The Duke rape case shows that there are serious flaws in our criminal justice system, specifically in that these boys were prosecuted even after it was obvious that neither they nor any of their teammates raped the victim. Unfortunately, what is likely to happen is that the legitimate concerns about the system is rigged to favor the state in all criminal cases will be swept under the rug, and the whole thing will be blamed on a “lying bitch” and a bad apple prosecutor.