A few weeks ago, I was emailed by a young man attending university in the United States, concerning a public awareness and fundraising campaign being organized on the campus of his university. He witnessed the same event the previous year, and knew from experience that although this event is promoted as being supportive of a demographic associated with victimization of domestic abuse, the shape this victim support takes is in the public vilification and ritual humiliation of an entire biological demographic, based on a false, but popularized public conception of domestic abuse.
Men, the politically correct narrative tells us, are the abusers, the predators, and the violent. Women, that same narrative states, are the victims. This is the message repeated both subtly and blatantly by professionally produced public service announcements filling media channels on television, radio, magazines, public print advertising, and everywhere else advertising can be found. Men are violent! Women are victims!
This is the message drilled into us until it occupies the totality of our conception of what domestic violence is – just that, men beating on women – and sometimes, men also beating on children.
This message is false.
The majority of valid peer-reviewed research on domestic violence indicates that sexually directional violence, from men to women, or indeed, violence from women to men is false. Domestic violence is not sexually specific.
In domestic violence, women are as violent or more violent than their male spouses or partners [1][2][3][4]. This is universally known within DV reporting and service agencies, because it is clearly demonstrated in the peer reviewed research on the topic. In fact, within the domain of academic and public specializations addressing the phenomenon of domestic violence, there is a culture of ideological bias, manifesting as systematic dishonesty. This was studied and documented by Dr. Murray Strauss, Ph.D. Co-Director of the Family Research Laboratory at the University of New Hampshire in his 2007 paper “Processes Explaining the Concealment and Distortion of Evidence on Gender Symmetry in Partner Violence.”[5]
Erin Pizzey, the founder of the first women’s shelter in the UK stated in 2001:
If you come from a dysfunctional, violent, and sexually abusive family, how do you learn? Therefore, domestic violence can’t be a gender issue, it can’t be just men, because we girls – and I was from one of those families – are just as badly affected.[6]
When Pizzey published this observation, noting that many women emerging from violent relationships were just as violent and abusive as the men they were apparently fleeing – she was blacklisted and threatened with murder by radical feminists who had taken over the shelter movement she started. Pizzey was forced to leave her own country due to persistent threats that she would be murdered for publishing the truth.
Her extensive and direct experience is confirmed by Martin Fiebert’s research at California State University in Long Beach.
“…women are as physically aggressive, or more aggressive, than men in their relationships with their spouses or male partners.”[1]
The advocates, and salaried employees of the domestic violence grievance industry are not confused or mistaken or ill informed when they state categorically that violence is gendered. They are lying. The reason for this lie is that women-as-victims creates a sympathetic story tugging on everyone’s emotions and providing easy access to everybody’s wallets for donations. The more nuanced truth, that partner violence is committed by men and women more or less equally, and that abuse impacts men and women more or less equally, well that doesn’t quite create the warm fuzzy glow when making a donation, or the instant, visceral rage at that mythological evil male – pictured in everybody’s imagination, pummeling some sweetly innocent and decorative feminine victim.
The truth doesn’t make the Domestic Violence industry as much money. In addition, for all those working in this industry, if they actually managed to significantly reduce domestic violence, they’d put themselves out of work. This is why they focus only on the narrative that DV is simply evil men, abusing innocent female victims. However, in the real world, where violence happens reciprocally, where women and men abuse each other within violent relationships, trying to combat domestic violence with a focus on only half the participants is like trying to extinguish a structure fire by spraying water on only the north and east facing walls, and letting the south and west facing walls burn freely.
The DV industry does not want to stop domestic violence, in fact their strategies to reduce it are calculated to foster and continue the problem, because as long as there’s more human damage occurring in the real world, their funding and careers are secure.
That’s why campaigns to “raise awareness” against domestic violence on university campuses – such as “walk a mile in her shoes” are a sham. The event my friend emailed me about is actually an anti-male hate rally. Male students at his university were required to purchase women’s shoes in their own size, and on the day of the event, required to walk a mile across the university’s campus to the laughter and jeering of spectators.
These students at a university, paying tuition to secure their own education, forced by the university to participate in their own public shaming, because according to the accepted narrative, men are violent abusers.
I have written to the school’s administration suggesting that the event be made more inclusive and multicultural. Jewish students could be made to wear a yellow cloth star of David, pinned to their jackets as they marched across campus, and gay students identified by a pink triangle, sewn onto their work smocks as they too joined the parade.
Leading up to this “walk a mile in her shoes” event, a flier appeared on public bulletin boards around the school’s campus, which encouraged men to acknowledge the shared guilt and natural evil of males, and to pledge obedience to the correct doctrine of atonement for violence they might or might not have ever had any part of.
“Are you man enough……
Most men don’t rape, men can help
I pledge to end sexual violence
I understand that rape is about power, control and violence.
I know that if a woman is sending me mixed signals, I should just ask her what she wants.
I am saddened by the fact that more than 70% of rapes are not reported.
I know that the overwhelming number of perpetrators of sexual violence are men.
I promise if I see a woman in danger, I will speak up for her.
I realize that a rape occurs every 40 seconds in this country.
I Pledge:
To never commit, condone, or remain silent about sexual violence
To challenge other men to recognize that they can be powerful without making others powerless.
As a “REAL MAN” I know that it is part of my duty to create a safer place for our mothers, sisters, friends, lovers and daughters. “
I re-wrote this flier, to represent a more realistic view of reality, and emailed the corrected version, to my friend for printing and distribution on campus. My version reads as follows:
Are you man enough…
See that question? That implication that unless you conform, your manhood is in doubt. That is straight-up mind-control being played on you by people with their own interests in mind.
Most Men don’t rape, All men can help
Oh, most don’t, there’s a sop to your ego, you might be one of the good men, not one of those “bad men” But in order to prove to those judging you a “real man” which of these types of slave you are, here’s a list of things for you to pledge allegiance to.
I pledge to end sexual violence. In order to do this, I must pretend that sexual violence is directional. This is the lie regularly sold by the grievance industry, but it’s false, and the experts know it. I must pretend too, to be a “good man”.
I understand that rape-culture is a fiction built to exert shame, control and violence against men. But to be a “good man” I will play along, while I, my sons and friends are criminalized and emotionally extorted.
I know that if a woman sends me mixed signals, I should walk away, refusing to be manipulated by this culturally accepted lack of personal accountability.
I am annoyed by the obvious fraud in the claim that more than 70% of rapes are not reported. Unreported events are unknown and un-tracked, thus claims of their prevalence are pure imagination.
I know the claim that the overwhelming majority of perpetrators of sexual violence are men is fraud, and runs contrary to methodologically valid research on this topic. I also know that women-as-victim is the story generating maximum sympathy and donation, so that remains the approved narrative.
I promise if I see a woman in danger, I will evaluate potential risk to myself before taking any other action, because I am a human being with innate value beyond my disposable utility to a woman as a dispenser or receptacle of violence.
I realize that the claim of rape occurring every [blank] number seconds in this country is pure hype telling nothing of actual rates of criminal victimization, also, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, men are the overwhelming majority of victims of violent crime, and rape and sexual assault are committed at the lowest rate of all violent crimes tracked by the BJS.
I pledge
To not be manipulated into accepting violence against myself, or commit violence on anyone else’s behalf except in defense of myself or my loved ones, or as dictated by my own clear conscience and faculties of reason.
To challenge other men to recognize that they are not evil by virtue of being male, and deserve no shame or mistreatment based on the fabricated mythology of innate male evil and female victimhood.
I am a REAL MAN by my own definition, and nobody besides myself has any right to force another definition on me, or require my risk or sacrifice in service of their agenda.
I know that discussions of my duty are a trap and a sham in this culture which discounts my humanity but values only my utility. I also know that our mothers, sisters, friends, lovers and daughters – if they attempt to use shame to force obedience or compliance or agreement with a narrative of male evil and female victimhood are deluded by a false narrative affording them privilege at the expense of my humanity. I will therefore reject any valuation of myself that discounts my humanity.
Sources:
[1] http://csulb.edu/~mfiebert/assault.htm
[2] Headey, B., Scott, D., & de Vaus, D. (1999). Domestic violence in Australia: Are Women and Men Equally Violent? Australian Social Monitor 2:57-62
[3] Dutton D. G. (2007). Female Intimate Partner Violence and Developmental Trajectories of Abusive Families. International Journal of Men’s Health, 6, 54-71 [7] Archer J (2000). Sex Differences in Physically Aggressive Acts between Heterosexual Partners: A Meta-Analytic Review. Psychological Bulletin, 126, 651-680
[4] http://www.aic.gov.au/publications/current%20series/facts/1-20/2006/3%20crime%20victimisation.aspx
[5] http://pubpages.unh.edu/~mas2/V74-gender-symmetry-with-gramham-Kevan-Method%208-.pdf
