WARNING
Contains non politically correct material
Ok everyone, take a DEEP BREATH……………
Gallows humour it seems, is for people who when presented with enough pain and suffering need to just laugh about it. I think I reached this point after one week discussing domestic violence on Feminist and MRA sites. During this time I have been taught that patriarchy and feminism aren’t really about sex or gender but are a way of thinking or a form of system, really? I have been called Mangina(minus the multiple orgasms), a sexist ignorant pig troll, misogynist,feminist and a host of other lovely things. I even got banned from an MRA site(hmm, maybe those guys really did get beat by a woman). All this talk got me thinking about shelters and the need to protect everyone. I know that Feminists have worked hard at getting the government to implement these facilities for women. It seems now that MRA's feel the need for men also. I decided to put together a list for all of us. Afterall if any of us have suffered abuse dont we all need protection too?
Domestic Violence Shelters list for:
1. HETEROSEXUAL WOMEN: Heterosexual men need not apply as you are the reason we are here in the first place. Homosexual women are welcome if you are comfortable with us being that we are women. Homosexual men, sorry, you scare us too, afterall you are a man.
2. HETEROSEXUAL MEN: Heterosexual Women need not apply as they are the reason we are here in the first place. Homosexual men are welcome if you are comfortable with us being that we are men. Homesexual women, sorry, you scare us too, afterall you are a woman. On second thought, homosexual men, you kind of freak us out too.
3. HOMOSEXUAL MEN: Homosexual Men need not apply as they are the reason we are here in the first place. Homosexual women are welcome. Heterosexual women are welcome if you are comfortable with us being that we are men. Heterosexual men, sorry, you scare us too, afterall you are a man.
4. HOMOSEXUAL WOMEN: Homosexual women need not apply as they are the reason we're here in the first place. Homosexual men are welcome. Heterosexual men are welcome if you are comfortable with us being that we are women. Heterosexual women, sorry, you scare us too, afterall you are a woman.
Just as I was finishing my list I heard my barefoot pregnant wife yell from the kitchen, “Honey, dont forget the Transexuals and Transgender people.” Ouch, my brain hurts.
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20 comments:
Which sites did you have the discussion on?
voiceformen and man boobz
I just reviewed your comments (and the replies you got) on avoiceformen. I'd like to discuss the point you raised.
Is this a fair paraphrasing of it?
While there are some men who are physically abused by their wives (to a serious degree), it would seem odd if that weren't pretty rare (compared to the reverse) seeing as how the average man is a good deal stronger than the average woman. Further, I would suspect that men are inherently more violent than women, seeing as how they dominate crime statistics.
h c
Yes I would concur with your paraphrasing. Although I do believe women are probably just as violent as men, it is in the expression of said violence that would be different(on average).
I am going to lay out an argument for the plausibility of female on male violence being non-trivial in rate and severity.
If you live in the same house as someone, does it really matter if they are bigger than you seeing as how they have to sleep sometime?
All you have to do if you want to successfully assault someone that you live with is wait until they fall asleep and sneak up with a baseball bat.
It seems to me that size means nothing and viciousness everything in that situation (once you employ both suprise and weapons). I posit that most people are not vicious, and that those who are, are evenly distributed between the sexes.
In addition, the size and strength argument is widely accepted, so when a woman does assault her husband, it is easy to dismiss the possibility that he is telling the truth. Both sides would instinctively know this, so when a fight broke out, his only winning strategy would be to avoid inflicting any visible harm and merely defend himself.
h c
Here's the thing. Your proposition is equally valid for the male if he is weaker(smaller) than his female counterpart. So in essence that scenario is a wash. So let's say the average sleep is 8hrs, that leaves 16hrs for the dominant aggressor to create an imbalance in the amount and severity of violence perpetrated. And seeing as the average male is physically dominant, wouldnt his attacks be more prevalent in the stats? Would agree with that?
Titfortat:
You are right, a weaker man could use suprise+weapons to attack a stronger woman.
I am not sure why the balance of sleep vs waking hours matters. Even if we only slept 1 hour a day, that would still leave us unprotected long enough for a vicious attack.
Also, there are a lot of opportunities for sneak attacks that don't depend on sleep. Hitting someone in the back of the head with a frying pan, a glass ashtray, ..., when they happen to have their backs to you would work just as well.
Perhaps you are saying that short of killing someone in a sneak attack, retaliation is almost certain to be swift and severe (once the victim recovers), so why would a woman risk a sneak attack in the first place?
I think the societial bias against men attacking women (because of their obvious physical disadvantage) under any circumstances is so strong, that if he retaliated, she could call the police and simply claim that he struck first and would almost certainly be believed. At which point, in the current legal climate, she could easily wrest control of the house and children away from him.
Again, both sides realize this going into any fight, and that confers quite an advantage to the woman (assuming a marriage between two vicious people, which I would think was rare; in the more common case of one vicious person married to one normal person, I think the viciousness is all the advantage needed).
I think the bias is because on average, men do it more often and more severe(at least visibly). I dont know about you, but I have been in or around hundreds and hundreds of physically violent situations. I have encountered only 1 or 2 where the women was the aggressor. The fact is men do it more often and more severe. Now if you want to talk emotional violence then that is a WHOLE other discussion.
Even then, I don't think that makes it OK to simply assume that the man must have been the agressor when the police show up
and there are no witnesses (or compelling evidence). If we did simply assume that, we would be denying men a reasonable presumption of innocence, which is a fundamental right of the accused. You would be giving any woman sufficiently malicious a take-husband-to-the-cleaners card and encouraging them to play it (because they would usually be believed absent any evidence).
I have not been around more than one or two violent situations in my life, so I wouldn't dream of relying on my personal experience to sort a subject like this out.
I am not trying to prove that women abuse men as much as men abuse women, only that you can't dismiss the research that says they do out of hand.
I also can't claim to have done any serious research on the subject of domestic violence, although it's not hard to find studies that show roughly equal violence on the part of men and women.
I would be curious to get your reaction this this intro to the 2001 CDC study (one that showed parity):
http://pn.psychiatryonline.org/content/42/15/31.2.full
While there are some men who are physically abused by their wives (to a serious degree), it would seem odd if that weren't pretty rare (compared to the reverse) seeing as how the average man is a good deal stronger than the average woman.
You know when I think about this and how people say that a man being stronger than a woman on average shouldn't matter in other things like moving furniture and opening old jars I almost think there is a bit of contradiction going on. Its like on one hand the strength difference is not supposed to matter when talking about what men and women are capable of...until we get to DV and then all of a sudden that difference in average strength becomes the center of attention. Like people are trying to be selective about when it counts and when it doesn't.
Further, I would suspect that men are inherently more violent than women, seeing as how they dominate crime statistics.
I wonder about that. Its no secret than there are times when a woman abuses a man the words domestic and violence seem to become Taboo (as in that word game where you have to describe something to your team mates without using a certain set of words, usually words that would make it too easy for to guess). I'm not saying the gap would disappear but I wonder if people actually treated violent women like violent women (rather than victims of some man that made them violent in self defense, or so the common argument goes) would that gap shorten a bit.
h c
I agree that we should be able to look at the facts when there are cases of DV, so if it points to the woman then that is what should be addressed. The police should not base it on what they "feel" is right. My concern for men who have bonafide cases of DV against them is that it will not be taken seriously because of the hyperbole of the MRA's out there. The problem comes from that loud core group that implies that women's physical violence is comparable to men. Because of this, the real victims seem to get lost in the shuffle.
Danny
Youre right about the contradictions. Unfortunately it goes both ways. Many of the same men who complain that physical strength and size shouldnt be the deciding factor when it comes to DV are the same ones who are whining that women dont have the same playing field when it comes to jobs. ie, firefighter, military. I believe the inability of some men to acknowledge that on average we do more and more severe physical violence than women is what damages real DV cases for men. The louder that group is, the less the true victims get heard.
Titfortat:
When the bias against men in the legal system reaches so far that laws are written that *define* domestic violence, for purposes of funding shelters, to only exist if a woman is the victim, then I think there are larger forces at work sweeping male victims aside than some reaction to MRA hyperbole on the subject.
Check out this language from the 2005 California code:
124250. (a) The following definitions shall apply for purposes of
this section:
(1) "Domestic violence" means the infliction or threat of physical
harm against past or present adult or adolescent female intimate
partners, and shall include physical, sexual, and psychological abuse
against the woman, and is a part of a pattern of assaultive,
coercive, and controlling behaviors directed at achieving compliance
from or control over, that woman.
You can find the full text of the law here:
http://law.justia.com/codes/california/2005/hsc/124250-124251.html
Well that was an eye opener. I would agree, there is a problem when there are things written in such a biased manner.
titfortat:
You might find this article, which talks about a challenge to that statute interesting:
http://glennsacks.com/blog/?p=3935
Men who had been physically abused by their wives challenged it on 14 ammendment grounds.
I wonder about the point you raised about hyperbole (that it backfires on the groups who use it).
I submit that it has worked very well for women's groups, and that men's groups who employ it are advancing their cause and not losing ground because of it.
Would Dr. King have been taken nearly as seriously as he was without Malcom X delivering an uncompromising comdemnation of white people?
I don't like underhanded tactics, but if society responds to them, does any rights movement really have any choice but to employ them (especially when their opponents have no such reservations)?
I have noticed a lot of progress in the MRA movement recently (for example, false rape accusers are starting to get jail sentences, instead of getting off scott free), and I have to wonder if it would have happened if many MRA groups had not screamed bloody murder.
I could tell from your participation in the 'avoiceformen' thread that you had written them off as anger filled men not worth listening to. One thing such sites do well, though, is tell the stories of how men are taken advantage of by society. And those have facts in them that can be verified.
You could probably find discussion threads on glennsacks that were as bad as what you saw on avoiceformen. Yet if it werent for his site, I would not have known about the california statute, and the successful challenge of it.
I believe the inability of some men to acknowledge that on average we do more and more severe physical violence than women is what damages real DV cases for men. The louder that group is, the less the true victims get heard.
I'm sorry but I think that is not quite the case. There is also as I mentioned women who will use that to their advantage when it suits them. Which is why you end up with women who will in one breath brag about being able to beat their boyfriends/husbands up and in the next get made because a guy didn't assume they needed help with a heavy object.
And besides if that inability was the problem then how do the laws get shaped as hopeless case points out? There is already a presumption that men do more violence than women (to the point that people think that women are literally incapable of violence unless some man makes them do it). And besides for the various activists and advocates that try to help victims how can they, if they are truly trying to help all victims, be so easily clouded by it?
As for what you say there its not the inability that's causing the problem its overstating it that's the problem that gets to the point where it becomes law and practice. In addition to what hopeless case mentions I've seen pamphalettes for a local DV shelter that dismisses things like "I was abused as a kid." and "One of my parents abused the other." as excuses for men abusing women. While on the other hand when a woman commits DV (that's assuming its called DV in the first place) people reach for anything they can to explain, "what made her do it" in order to give her a free pass. How can you confront DV if the consensus says that the exact same explanation is an excuse when he says it but a reason when she says it?
I think you should be a lawyer...
Just saying!
h c and Danny
I was talking to one of my clients today and she actually had some similar comments to what you guys posted recently. I agree with some of what you guys are saying. Though I will say that I dont buy into the idea that women are capable of the same type of violence as men are(on average).
Lisa
Thanks for the compliment, I think. ;)
I wouldnt make a good lawyer, I am not that diplomatic. :)
Battered women?
And here I've been enjoying mine raw this whole time.
Seriously, to put it simply, if you are violent with your partner, you are an asshole.
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