Carey Roberts at PJM: "Domestic Violence Fairytales Threaten Constitutional Protections" (thanks to Trey for emailing the article):
In her book, Violent Partners: A Breakthrough Plan for Ending the Cycle of Abuse,
Lawyer Linda Mills makes the point that domestic violence is a complex story in which both partners often participate in the dynamic of abuse. She also mentioned that more than 800,000 men are assaulted by their intimate partners every year. I bet it's more than that. Why call 911 when attorneys give advice like this (click on report):
Civil rights groups are starting to file law suits on men's behalf. If you are the victim of an unfair domestic violence charge, contact one of these groups and do the same. When the cost of stripping men of their Constitutional rights starts to cost something, it will change.
Like everything in the law, the problem begins with definitions. The Violence Against Women Act, passed during the first term of the Clinton administration, includes a definition of domestic violence that is so wide you could drive a Mack truck through it.
States picked up on the loophole, and now most states include within their definitions of abuse, actions like making your partner “annoyed” or “distressed.”
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) likewise followed suit. The CDC’s Uniform Definitions and Recommended Data Elements declares that partner violence includes “getting annoyed if the victim disagrees,” “withholding information from the victim,” and even “disregarding what the victim wants.”
In her book, Violent Partners: A Breakthrough Plan for Ending the Cycle of Abuse,
Lawyer Linda Mills makes the point that domestic violence is a complex story in which both partners often participate in the dynamic of abuse. She also mentioned that more than 800,000 men are assaulted by their intimate partners every year. I bet it's more than that. Why call 911 when attorneys give advice like this (click on report):“Don’t call 911 unless you are bleeding and she still has a weapon in her hand. Too many men who have called 911 for help have ended up being arrested for DV.”13
—Family law attorney Lisa Scott
Civil rights groups are starting to file law suits on men's behalf. If you are the victim of an unfair domestic violence charge, contact one of these groups and do the same. When the cost of stripping men of their Constitutional rights starts to cost something, it will change.
posted by Helen at 1:38 PM
33 Comments:
The intellectually lazy social service workers believe this stuff without question. Visiting a protective services office once to report child abuse, I picked up a flyer that said 100% of spousal abuse was male on female. I asked the social services worker about it and she said it was true because she had been told that in an inservice training session. 2 minutes of research on the Internet or paying attention to the world around you would tell you that it wasn't true. But, what the heck, fantasy is so much more gratifying.
There are people doing good research on domestic violence and it is not too difficult to find their work. But some people are more interested in victim politics than in actually helping people.
But calling it DV when someone gets annoyed is really moving into the category of a lie. What am I saying, it is a big stinking lie!
Trey
Here is the link to the Intimate Partner Violence Surveillance Uniform Definitions and Recommended Data Elements
http://www.cdc.gov/ncipc/pub-res/ipv_surveillance/Intimate%20Partner%20Violence.pdf
Classifying being annoyed as domestic violence is as wrong as calling it rape when someone regrets who she had sex with the night before. Words mean things, or at least they used to.
Being annoyed is only DV if it's the woman who is the victim and the man who is the perp. A woman can annoy a man all day long, it's not DV. Heck, a woman can tear a man to pieces, and it's not DV. No matter how you write the definition, wide, narrow, what-have-you... it's still only DV if it's being committed by a man.
I've sat in numerous classes, continuous learning stuff, credentialing courses for mediation, etc., as well as grad level psych courses, and the underlying assumption -- rarely spoken, always implied, always understood, is that DV is ONLY perpetrated by men, on women.
I've protested every time I've heard this implied or explicitly stated. The responses I received for speaking up range from being poo-pooed by the instructor, outright challenged, directly told to shut up, to being socially ostracized by my classmates. No one wants to hear the truth about this.
So...if I put the tip of my steel-toed boot in the crack of her ass and kick her to the curb, I'm participating in domestic violence??
I am not sure where many of these notions come from but it was clear to me at least 25 years ago theat there was a good deal of fiolence perpetrated by women against husbands. The explanation often suggested was (1) women instinctly knew that men would probably not hit a woman if she got physical because of male strength and social conditioning, and (2) that men as victims were unlikely to report spousal abuse because it made them seem wimpish...this is hardly a new bunch of ideas.
No, what's new is that these ideas were codified into federal, and later state, statutory law -- writing blatant, rank sexism into the law in the name of feminism. Oh, the irony.
@: "most states include within their definitions of abuse, actions like making your partner “annoyed” or “distressed.”"
___________
If I were a betting man I'd wager:
1. Women do this more than men (not that they are worse, but because they are more vocal).
2. Men would get charged with abuse under this definition more than women, well, because they are men and there is only one other possibility.
I tend to be pretty cognizant of the advantages I have vis a vis women, such as physical size / strength, aggressiveness, and greater propensity to be heard out when demanding the floor. So I sympathize with how they can feel dominated and disenfranchised.
But one thing I've NEVER understood is the concept of "emotional abuse". It's generally described as "failing to meet the emotional needs of another" or "making another feel dependent". Where does THAT come from?
It is things like this that prove to me that a civilization ends exactly 100 years after women get the right to vote.
The first 2 generations of women are good, and vote reponsibly, but by the 3rd generation, they start to get the bright idea of using the voting process to take from men and give to women. By the 4th generation of women, millennia of civilizational conditioning has been lost, and women are no more evolved than they were 10,000 years ago.
A civilization ends 100 years after women get the right to vote. If you doubt me, check back with me about America's condition in 2019.
Where does THAT come from?
You need to learn more about how women think.
Women view Beta males in much the same way that the Japanese view whales - as a resource to be plundered without restraint, rather than as intelligent beings that can feel pain.
Here is a hypothetical situation :
Most women, if told that they can get $300 if they press this button, but some innocent man will die, will first want to see the man. If the man is attractive (10%), he will be spared. But the other 90% of men will find themselves doomed by a woman who would rather take $300.
Because of the heat my mobility is limited. I've been watching more afternoon TV than normal. It's been an eye-opening experience.
I suggest all domestic abuse cases be heard by these TV judges. The minute a couple starts with he hit me-I hit him and talking about verbal abuse the TV judge says the same thing: Grow up, get away from each other and get a divorce if you can't behave. I say that is some pretty good advice.
A biologist named George C. Williams once said that "Dominance struggles are a fundamental characteristic of biological systems". Domestic violence cases seem to be just another example of that. In keeping with the norms of the American Feminazi Police State, women have gone out looking for social allies in the conflict and have found them...big time.
The reason that certain people immediately favor divorce or, at least, an immediate restraining order in any case of domestic violence is that the couple's conflict imposes a cost to society in the form of the chaos that is causes to their social environment and the cost of interceding in the acute stages of the conflict. Ultimately society doesn't care what happens to the couple. They just want to minimize the cost. Cham has one solution for this. Mine is more direct - a dual at 20 feet with matched, loaded .357 magnum revolvers. I'll provide the firearms.
At my daughter's previous school they had a poster that read: "Sticks and stones may break my bones but names will really hurt me."
She goes to another school now.
Trey
The idea behind the initial laws was to protect people from being seriously hurt. That's understandable. However, the way that it was done (must arrest laws, arresting the physically stronger person always, handing out TROs like candy and so on), have resulted in a disastrous imbalance. The official partyline of the feminist DV lobby is that this imbalance, even though it hurts men, is justified because it protects at least *some* women, and if men don't like the way it works, men need to work among themselves to get other men to be less violent -- in other words, it's seen also as a "stick" to encourage men to encourage each other to not be wife beaters. But the problem is that (1) men don't have that influence on each other and (2) the wife-beater types are going to beat their wives anyway, regardless of what the law is or what society is telling them to do.
It's possible that civil libertarians may make some headway with this. We won't make much political headway, however, because any law that purports to protect women from wife-beaters, no matter how draconian and lopsided it is in practice, will, ipso facto, be politically popular both on the left and the right. Protecting the wimminz and all that is politically popular, regardless of the details.
The tide is turning on this, and the more good men and women speak up, the more quickly and dramatically it will turn.
"The intellectually lazy social service workers believe this stuff without question."
Social work appears to be Exhibit A that "the road to hell is paved with good intentions." The ones who don't become calcified apparatchiks of the state have a genuine desire to help needy and out-of-the-loop citizens. Unfortunately, their field is pumped full of so much junk research and political activism they are flooded with factually wrong messages and memes.
They can be long on outrage and short on the truth. I recently argued with a social worker over Arizona's immigration law. She had bought into all the debunked hyperbole about Nazism, checking "papers," you could stop anyone who was brown, etc. She refused to accept basic facts of the case such as the law was a copy of the federal law.
You can support it or oppose it, but there's no excuse for not being informed. It's not complicated. She also tried to tell me Mexico and Nicaragua were in South America.
There's another problem with the DV industry. You don't have to be a white-knighting mangina to be concerned about legitimate cases of relationship abuse; ethical people are always against undue violence and control, just as (to quote Camille Paglia) ethical men have always opposed rape throughout history.
But like has happened with rape politics, activists have borrowed this legitimate concern and co-opted it by sweeping the language over increasingly less-objectionable behavior. Some white-knighters are still on their side, but no reasonable person can construe criticism or annoyance as abuse.
The problem the activists will soon have is that they've gone too far, and so the reasonable people who were on their side when the cases were truly egregious will now say "you can forget my support" even when a real DV case comes along.
"The tide is turning on this, and the more good men and women speak up, the more quickly and dramatically it will turn."
The tide of re-marriage might help. Much of the support for Massachusetts alimony reform comes from second wives, who (a) miss out on the money hubby has to pay to his ex and (b) if widowed, have to pay their dead husband's first wife (!) as the heir of his "debt."
(I'd just like to say it again: alimony is bullsh**.)
As more of the truth comes to light, we may start to see a tide of second wives objecting to the ease with which their husbands' exes stuck them with bogus lifetime restraining orders or sex-offender status.
Needless to say, these are self-interested motivations, but so is all of politics. The "women do not belong in the MRM" guys have another thing coming - we will NEVER get ANY victories unless we can get at least SOME women, preferably high-status ones, advocating on our side.
I don't know if I "belong in the MRM" or not. My own feminist movement -- of which I have been an advocate for over 30 years -- has been hi-jacked by gender feminists who are full of hate. For me personally, it was about equality back then, and it's still about equality today. If that equality is now to be pursued via the MRM, rather than my now-hi-jacked feminist movement, so be it. I'd just love to see a nation -- dare I hope, a world? -- where all people (men, women, old, black, asian, gay, religious, atheist, etc.) are treated equally, and with dignity and respect. Even if there is no hope of ever actually achieving that ideal, I'll put my energy behind the cause the moves us in that direction.
"Much of the support for Massachusetts alimony reform comes from second wives, who (a) miss out on the money hubby has to pay to his ex and (b) if widowed, have to pay their dead husband's first wife (!) as the heir of his "debt." "
_________________
I've heard similar things. Men don't even bother to speak up, because they know no one gives a shit, but things start rolling as soon as the second wife can't get control over his full income.
Pretty sickening if you think about it. The only one who gets traction is the second parasite. The earner is irrelevant.
I hate to say it, but men dig their own grave by refusing to see reality--a parasite is a parasite no matter how pretty the package. Why complain about a life of slavery when you are setting it up yourself?
This comment has been removed by the author.
Second point: Men apparently respected these parasites (the first wives are obviously parasites because they demanded alimony, the second wives because they are pissed about not getting *all* the money), and my question is ... why was there any respect for them in the first place?
I have no respect for women like that, and unfortunately it almost makes me a misogynist because there are a WHOLE lot of women I meet who are like that, they can just cover it up very well to most men.
Why marry a woman who isn't worthy of any respect at all? Her pretty exterior won't last forever, although she may well be gone (with your money) before her looks are gone.
JB,
If you want reasonable relations between the sexes, then you belong in the MRM. Party on.
JG,
I understand your point, but I think it goes too far. I don't think there's anything wrong with a second wife wanting her man to have control of his own earnings and spend it on his new family instead of his ex-bimbo who doesn't want to get a job. Now if she's a princess and expects him to work his ass off so she can have Coach purses she's nuts, but I don't think an income inequality is indicative of a leech per se.
To go back to my first point - maybe it is self-interested, but that's how politics works. There are very few altruistic interest groups. We need to get these groups on our side, and an opportunity to cleave the women's vote into two camps is a double win as it neutralizes the feminist sisterhood herd.
I'm sure some of these second wives would be demanding alimony if they were getting divorced from hubby.
Is it hypocritical? Maybe, but if we want a better society we need to accept the support of people who may not have the purest of interests underneath, and firewall them once their use is done. Every political movement has to do that.
""The intellectually lazy social service workers believe this stuff without question."
Most I come into contact with are not lazy, they are in WAY over their head. They have a BA in a job that at least requires a MA. They get no training about transference and projection and ways to distinguish their own issues from the situation at hand. This means they suck at their job.
Not all of them do, some of them are naturals. But the job is way past an undergraduate's training.
Trey
This comment has been removed by the author.
I think a lot of social workers ARE lazy until they get the chance to take action (like removing a child from its parents) based on their own, petty personal likes or dislikes of people and not based on objective facts. Then they get motivated; otherwise they are like any other state worker, going through the motions.
They are given quite a bit of power, actually, but very little responsibility. They are hardly ever called to account, and that is an environment ripe for producing a petty tyrant.
Here are two groups I've seen among female social workers:
1. One group involves the girls who just majored in the subject in college because it seemed easy, their grades weren't all that good to start with and (at least at my college) it had the lowest GPA requirement to get into the college. She may have wanted to major in nursing but the GPA requirement was too high for her.
This type of female social worker just views it as a kind of hobby anyway. She's not serious about it as a career, because what she's really doing is biding her time until her doctor or lawyer comes along. She may well get an MSW (it beats working) while waiting for her doctor, lawyer or candlestick maker (if he has a booming business).
2. The second type - usually short, fat and pushy - IS in it for a career. But what she likes about it is "getting" people who she doesn't like. She usually doesn't like men, but if a woman rubs her the wrong way, she's going to get toyed with as well. They are happiest when they can play games with people.
kmg-
The first 2 generations of women are good, and vote reponsibly, but by the 3rd generation, they start to get the bright idea of using the voting process to take from men and give to women.
No. From the beginning, women vote to turn government into a surrogate husband/father. The size and scope of government increases instantly after women's suffrage. In the US, States which allowed women's suffrage prior to 1920 started increasing their size of government at a rate exceeding those states which did not; all states started growing after the passing of the 19th amendment (as well as the federal government).
Now as for 100 years? The very fundamental basis of civilization itself is built on traditional male values. When we allow the whole of women to influence government, they attempt to switch out the fundamental rules with ones which are more "female friendly" and it takes some time for the Jenga stack to get wobbly. I, too, agree that it won't be long before the collapse, but I'd have to go research Rome and Babylonia to see if 100 years is the marker.
Topher-
we will NEVER get ANY victories unless we can get at least SOME women, preferably high-status ones, advocating on our side.
Actually, the victory here is simple. Alimony is a violation of the 13th Amendment by making the ex-husband an indentured servant to the ex-wife. Child support is unconstitutional for the same reasons.
It doesn't take women to resolve the issue, it takes those men affected to grab a rifle, sit on the steps of Congress in DC, and state "follow the contract or get replaced." That would work faster than any political movement.
The problem we face is that men are reaching the point where they will no longer deal with Government's violations of men's rights individually. As such, they can be dealt with individually. If the MRM wants success, it needs to stop pussy-footing around and deal with government directly: We've got at least a few million men under child support orders, perhaps a half-million under alimony. If the MRM could get them all to take action at the same time, our government would not and could not ignore it.
Until the point that men are willing to revolt over these issues, they won't be resolved. There are too many women, voting as a block, benefiting from these conditions for the politicians to risk not getting reelected by upsetting them. If you'll notice, the only classes of men they are protecting are those in the military and those in law enforcement... men who can cause serious damage as individuals if they finally get fed up.
JB-
I'd just love to see a nation -- dare I hope, a world? -- where all people (men, women, old, black, asian, gay, religious, atheist, etc.) are treated equally
Give a definition of equality under which those groups are equal and then perhaps we can discuss that possibility.
and with dignity and respect.
This, however, is a possible and worthwhile goal.
Even if there is no hope of ever actually achieving that ideal, I'll put my energy behind the cause the moves us in that direction.
At what cost?
It is our drive for "equality" when there is none to be found which is destroying our civilization's ability to survive.
To Demonspawn:
From the beginning, women vote to turn government into a surrogate husband/father. The size and scope of government increases instantly after women's suffrage. In the US, States which allowed women's suffrage prior to 1920 started increasing their size of government at a rate exceeding those states which did not; all states started growing after the passing of the 19th amendment (as well as the federal government).
I suspect I've read the same study, by John Lott if I recall. I think it is more accurate to say that women hire politicians who hold the weapons at the heads of men while money is extorted from them in the form of taxes (with the benefits going to women and their children) and direct payments to women. In general, American women want to be trusted and thought of as wonderfully caring and giving people while they vote for politicians who make very sure women are are well protected and well paid when they lie, cheat and steal. This is as it should be since, if women didn't manage their social reputations so aggressively, their victims (i.e., men) would largely avoid them.
Helen, you rock. Thanks.
Novaseeker said...
"The idea behind the initial laws was to protect people from being seriously hurt."
Nope. That was what they TOLD you the idea was.
@ALL,
My ex had me arrested and thrown in jail for the night in 1996 for calling her a liar when she lied to me. That the entire argument was held in front of her teen-age children while the little ones were in bed tell you exactly how 'violent' it was. Nope. I was assaulted, quite badly injured and thrown in jail for the night. Not a happy camper. I hired a lawyer who told me the 'new laws' were mandatory arrest law in NSW Australia. I was incredulous as I was very will read and informed and there had not be ONE BREATH of such laws.
Fast forward to 2009. I claim on the Sydney Morning Herald Relationships blog (http://www.smh.com.au/lifestyle/lifematters/blog/ask-sam) that mandatory arrest laws have been in force in NSW since 96. Many call me a liar. So I talk to my scumbag liar/lawyer called Justin Down over at Watts McCray to please pull a copy of that legislation for me because, surprise, surprise, I can't find it on the NSW Guvment web site. Justin charges me $A500 for 'research' this law. One wonders how it can possibly take more than an hour to look up a 'law' that is applied 22,000+ times annually in my home state. He asks me why I want it and I tell him I am going to post it to this blog site. He refuses to hand it over. I pay the $A500 as part of my bill and he still refuses to hand over a copy. In the end? I tell him that I will take him to court over non-delivery of something I have paid for. What does he do? He REFUNDS MY MONEY!!
Yes. A criminal scumbag lawyer would RATHER REFUINF MONEY than give me a copy of a piece of 'legislation' that the NSW Guvment says applies to ALL MEN over 18, about 2 MILLION of them!! And that police officers are quoting EVERY DAY OF THE WEEK.
Does that sound 'fishy' to anyone else? LOL!!
After the last 10 years of litigation, starting less than a month after my marriage to a violent, abusive alcoholic, I've "gone Galt" from the entire dating/ marriage pool. IMHO, the defense of families act screws up from the get-go when it fails to stop subsidizing women to be dependent, single mothers.
There's no way in hell that I would ever consider even co-habitate again, let alone get married. The idea that I can be kicked out of my own house, blocked from my family, incarcerated, and compelled to subsidize an abusive screwup is unthinkable. The idea that it will be presumed to be my fault, regardless of the facts, and usually in outright defiance of the facts, makes me certain that the rule of law is as much of a fiction as the easter bunny.
There is no reason why any sane man should get married. I'm thinking a mass exit from the 'dating' market, including refraining from all of the trappings associated with it (e.g. dinners, movies, cards, flowers, rings) might get someone's attention.
I also think suing cities and counties that receive VAWA funds for malicious prosecution and a conflict of interest.
I think that states that have a piss-poor record of prosecuting women who are delinquent on child support and visitation should be sued under equal protection laws, and denied OCSE funds. Let's stop funding sexism from the source.
Post a Comment
<< Home