One of the foundational messages of organized feminism is that men are violent. In fact masculinity is a synonym for violence. If you’re male, or have male relatives, you’ll be aware that this doctrine doesn’t correspond to reality, but checking theories against evidence has never hindered the adoption of ideologically driven law and policy making, in education, the courts, law enforcement and government.
There is no evidence that men, as a class, are inherently violent. Nor is there any evidence to support the idea that male sexuality is oriented towards rape, violence, or oppression of women, as organized feminism seems so intent on projecting.
They employ dishonest tricks to suggest that research backs up a claim and then fail to provide direct citation of that research. When you read articles from the camp of radical feminism, I encourage you to watch for that trick. (Studies show that x, y and z, with never a specific mention of what studies) That trick is one of the ways you can tell when people are lying. Murray Straus, an internationally recognized expert on violence and outspoken critic of feminist methodological flaws, referred to this as evidence by citation.
But today, rather than provide further refutation of the feminist lie that masculinity is inherently violent, I’d like to point out something a lot of people seem to miss.
Feminism itself is an ideology of violence.
If you’re anything other than an MRA, that might sound outrageous; even hysterical. In demonstrating that I will not attempt prove that feminist ideology informs policy in the government, the courts, the family courts, direct law enforcement and in the educational system. If you’re unaware of this, then you’re too far behind to be usefully informed by this article, so I’d suggest an intro to men’s rights for you. (see here and here).
Domestic violence incidents in which the police are called, mandatory arrest laws overwhelmingly result in the arrest of men, this is due to the widely propagated myth that domestic violence is a sexually differentiated form of violence. In reality, hundreds of peer reviewed studies show that women are as physically aggressive, or more aggressive, than men in their relationships with their spouses or male partners. [1]
Individuals working within the women’s shelter industry as well as organizations addressing domestic violence have as much access to published, peer reviewed research demonstrating this as I do with a laptop and an internet connection, but produced media on the topic of domestic violence depicts men exclusively as the offenders, and women and children as the victims.
It does not seem reasonable to surmise that everyone working in the DV industry is simply incompetent, and that leaves two possibilities. One, the individuals in the women’s shelter industries producing “educational” media on the topic of DV are all, as individuals, maliciously dishonest. This is possible, but in my opinion, not likely.
The other possibility is that the prevalent ideology creates a cognitive blindness or bias towards men, and the assumption of innocence and victimhood of women.
This ideology also informs the behavior and decision making of subscribing men and women, and it renders acceptable violence against non subscribing men, as well as non subscribing women.
A very small fraction of this accepted violence is direct, such as women striking or slapping men, because both the women committing such violence, and the men in receipt of physical abuse are trapped in a cognitive illusion that women’s smaller size and lesser strength somehow justifies acts of violence done by them against men.
But direct violence, acceptable within the framework of feminism forms the smallest fraction of the pervasive violence justified by this ideology. Most of the violence promoted by, and enacted under the aegis of feminism is done on behalf of women, by proxy, at once or more removed from the instigator of the violence.
I am not playing word games, or being clever, I am being as clear as my vocabulary allows me to be. Women in domestic disputes – and I don’t mean violent disputes but simple arguments – can and do use the police as muscle to escalate a nonviolent disagreement to a violent altercation.
The violence in such a situation doesn’t directly touch the female aggressor who calls in state sponsored muscle in the form of police, but it cannot be disputed that forcible removal by armed enforcers is not an act of profound violence against theman who is removed.
That is one example. Another is the creation and enforcement of protection orders against men, by women. To be sure, in some cases protection orders are necessary and appropriate. Unfortunately, in many cases they are wholly frivolous, but still granted by the courts, without an evidentiary inquiry, simply based on the assertion of a woman that she “feels” threatened. Men have the same rights to protective orders, in law, but not in practice.
Enforcement of protective orders is again the once removed violence of police acting on the behalf of offended females.
Some indirect violence done under feminism’s aegis targets women, as well as men. Laws which de-legitimize and criminalize prostitution do nothing to reduce its prevalence – assuming for the moment that this would be a useful goal at all. But criminalizing prostitution means that women providing sexual services for money must do so as non legitimate practitioners, without the protection from abuse that workers in other jobs enjoy.
The criminalizing of any area of commerce leaves it ripe for exploitation by criminal elements who are free, in an illegal business, to employ brutal violence, as well as addictive drugs to control workers. The illegal nature of a business also makes it much more dangerous for the clients, who may be robbed, assaulted or otherwise injured by service providers. Escalated violence within a sphere of activity is a normal byproduct of rendering a human activity illegal. This is not unknown to proponents of organized feminism seeking to criminalize areas of human activity they ideologically (read: personally) despise.
According to Doctor Kate Shannon at the British Columbia centre for excellence in HIV/Aids research; “while there has been a growing body of qualitative evidence documenting the negative impacts of criminalization of prostitution on the health and safety of sex workers, our study demonstrates, empirically – a direct link between the criminalization of sex work and the increased odds of violence against female sex workers.” [2]
Indeed, escalated violence in prohibited activities is used for victim-assistance fund seeking, and as post facto justification for continued and expanded prohibitions under feminism’s so called “humanitarian mandate.”
Increased harm and human damage is the real product and the real goal of feminism’s abolitionist movements against porn and prostitution, because the harm makes a good story to secure funding and political power.
Bureau of Justice Statistics on violent crime show that for all types of violent crime men are overwhelmingly more likely to be the victims. [3] Despite this glaring fact, the United States enacted a set of laws providing extra protection for women, and shortcutting the track to conviction for men. Men, who you may note were already more likely to be subject to violence.
The reason for this apparent discontinuity between data and policy is that feminism is, as stated, a doctrine of violence. In the case of VAWA laws, it’s the pre-existing violent crime of which men are victims, compounded with the state enacting escalated violence against men through the police, the courts and the prison system.
To make sure I’m clearly understood, locking a human being in a cage is an act of violence. Enforcers armed with batons, guns, aerosols, and manacles enact violence by proxy on behalf of women under VAWA laws. Before VAWA, assault, battery, murder and rape were no less illegal than they are now, but VAWA, and the police policies that resulted from its enactment, is an escalation of violence against the group already most subject to it.
Every woman in a relationship with a man holds a metaphorical gun to his head, whether she chooses it or not. And every man in a relationship with a woman lives under her license until she chooses to exercise her power to destroy him. Recently, in Canada a woman who was in a violent relationship with a man chose to stab him to death while he slept. The courts, informed by a feminist ideology of women’s victimhood and innocence, acquitted her, even after her defense attorney admitted during the trial that she had options other than murder of the sleeping man.
The country’s national newspaper, The Post, published a front page article exonerating the murderer based on her drunken state and her violent history. This outcome is only bizarre when considered outside the light that feminism is in fact, a doctrine of violence.
I realize that to anyone other than a men’s rights advocate – what I’ve just said is going to be a bitter pill to swallow. In fact, I predict that a substantial fraction of the audience or readership of this article will reject what I’ve said here with a fit of outrage, indignation and will self righteously condemn me.
I’m accustomed to that, and I do not care.
Indeed, responses freighted with accusations of psychopathology, delusion, irrational hatred and other pathologies tell me and others that those leveling such ad hominem arguments lack the acumen or courage to actually address the substance of the argument. It doesn’t actually matter if I’m a university professor or a slime mold, my argument stands or falls on its own.
I challenge you to address it.
[1] http://www.csulb.edu/~mfiebert/assault.htm
[3] http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/content/glance/tables/vsxtab.cfm
