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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
Whoever gave sclatter a red star for her statement that women hitting men is an expression of powerlessness ought to be ashamed of herself!
sclatter gave an excuse on the order of "I didn't rape her, she was asking to be fucked."
Shame on you!
City of a little over a million.
Number of secure women's shelter beds: about 140
Number of secure women's secondary housing units: 80 (one, two and three bedroom apartments)
Capacity I am contracted to deliver for men fleeing abuse: 3 units/15 beds
Usage of domestic violence women's shelters over the last year: about 135% (ie children and women sleeping on floors)
Complete and total usage of our male abuse victim spaces OVER THE LAST FOUR YEARS: 0
Professionally, I absolutely do not deny the abuse of males by females, I have direct knowledge of a number of cases. But please cut the bullshit about the inequities of the shelter system, it is an absolute load of unadulterated HORSESHIT.
Your Canadian horseshit anecdote doesn't apply in the least to California, CB.
What Mary Winkler claimed about the baby was that earlier the same evening, her husband had tried to quiet the baby by putting his hand over the baby's nose and mouth.
I don't believe this ever happened. The reason is what she says she did next. She says she and her husband had an argument about "Why he was so mean to her all the time." If my husband tried to smother my baby, you can guarantee we'd be arguing about him smothering the baby, not about him being mean TO ME. Not to mention that this alleged smothering wasn't something Mary mentioned in her confession, when she said that Matt had never abused the children. Mary's testimony does not hold together.
I do believe Mary's testimony that her husband asked her to wear clear plastic platform heels and a wig during sex, and that he sometimes watched internet porn. Gosh, let's kill all the husbands who sometimes look at internet porn and like kinky sex! Will anyone be left?
Regarding how hard or easy it is to punch someone to death. Based on how own somewhat limited experience working with battered women, I'd say that a lot of severe injuries during fights aren't caused by fists, but by the person falling. Falling into a window or mirror is bad news. So is cracking a head on a floor or the corner of a table. It's far too easy for what seems like a harmless shove to turn into a murder case if the person being shoved falls and hits her head. There is no safe level of hitting someone.
I don't think I agree that humor today is meaner, just directed at different targets. When I was growing up, racist jokes were common. Now I hardly ever hear them.
The story about the two people in the park is horrifying. Am I supposed to be sorry that the people who watched someone die and didn't do a thing have difficulty getting over it?
I don't know, maybe not. What's your point?
OK, I admit utter defeat. I have been crushed by your logic and impeccable statistics.
Canadian women must just be more docile than the Californian-She-Devils you have to live with. You have my fake sympathies.
Maybe you should emigrate?
Wow! As Drunkistan does it almost all of his posts, he makes the logical fallacy of assuming that everyone is like him, that he is the center of the universe, that his experience is universal.
No way Drunkistan that the different laws, the different demographics, the different sizes of the communities, the different resource allocations, any of that stuff could lead to different outcomes.
As usual Drunkistan, I tip my hat to the leadership you provide to the cirrhotic community.
It's late for you though to be posting isn't it? I mean Happy Hour is almost over?
The California Research Bureau reports that nearly 10% of people who seek domestic violence shelter services are men, and that one Los Angeles shelter in a predominantly gay/lesbian neighborhood reported even more male victims than female victims.
See www.library.ca.gov/crb/02/16/02-016.pdf.
That is without any outreach to men and without referrals services sending men to the shelters. We believe it would otherwise be much higher.
California Health & Safety Code Section 124250, which funds the DV programs in California, defines DV so only women can be victims. Male victims are literally shut out of state-funded and other services throughout the State including hotel vouchers, counseling, shelter and legal advocacy. The only known exception is Valley Oasis in Lancaster, where men travel hundreds of miles for shelter because nobody else will help them.
Declaration by former Valley Oasis' former director www.ncfmla.org/pdf/overberg.pdf
October is the seventh annual Domestic Violence Awareness Month, when activists and the media focus the nation's attention on violence against women. However, October's events only tell half the story. Why? Because the research on domestic violence overwhelmingly establishes that domestic assault is not a crime committed by men against women, but instead one committed by both men and women. By using weapons and the element of surprise, women are abusing their male partners as often as vice versa.
For example, veteran domestic violence researchers Richard Gelles, Murray Straus, and Susan Steinmetz, who were once hailed by the women's movement for their pioneering work on violence against women, have repeatedly found that women are just as likely as men to physically attack their spouses or partners.
Studies conducted by the Family Research Laboratory at the University of New Hampshire in 1975, 1985, and 1992, found that abuse rates were equal between husbands and wives. In fact, the evidence suggests that abuse of wives by husbands is decreasing, while abuse of husbands by wives is increasing.
Cal State Long Beach professor Martin Fiebert has compiled and summarized 117 different studies with over 72,000 respondents that found that most domestic violence is mutual and, in the cases where there was only one abusive partner, that partner was as likely to be female as male.
Studies by researchers R.I. McNeeley and Coramae Richey Mann show that women are much more likely than men to use weapons and the element of surprise. These weapons often include guns, knives, boiling water, bricks, fireplace pokers and baseball bats.
Neither male nor female domestic violence can generally be dismissed as self-defense. According to Straus, for example, roughly 10 percent of women and 15 percent of men perpetuate partner abuse in self-defense. Dr. David Fontes, the director of Stop Abuse for Everyone (SAFE), has also found that only a small percentage of female abusers are acting in self-defense.
Crime statistics do indicate that women are more likely to suffer serious injury in domestic violence than men are. But such statistics are misleading because surveys show that an abused woman is nine times as likely to report abuse as an abused man. Many men hesitate to call the police because they assume, often correctly, that the police will automatically treat them as if they are the perpetrator.
Nor do husbands murder their wives significantly more than wives murder their husbands. A 1994 Department of Justice study analyzed 10,000 cases and found that women make up over 40 percent of those charged in familial murders. As crime journalist Patricia Pearson explains, because women who murder their husbands tend to use less detectable or traceable methods--such as poisoning (which are often ruled "heart attacks") and hiring others to do the killing (which usually aren't counted as "murders by wives" in official crime statistics), these murders are far less likely to be noticed than murders by men, which are usually committed with guns.
Mainstream feminist organizations, however, have steadfastly maintained that women are only victims of, but rarely perpetrators of, domestic violence. As Pearson points out, such organizations are not doing women any favors. By denying the existence of female batterers, abusive women are not getting the treatment and counseling services that they need. Worse, by allowing them to go unpunished, they are encouraged to believe that they can get away with their abuse indefinitely. This frequently results in escalating abuse of men (and children) and, sometimes, abuse of women when men finally strike back.
Pearson also notes that because feminists deny woman's capacity for violence, the serious problem of lesbian battery--which research clearly indicates is at least as common as heterosexual battery--has been swept under the rug. Sociology professor Claire Renzetti, author of Violent Betrayal: Partner Abuse in Lesbian Relationships, says that lesbian batterers "display a terrifying ingenuity in their selection of abuse tactics, frequently tailoring the abuse to the specific vulnerabilities of their partners."
The list of prominent feminist and female dissidents who are demanding acknowledgment of, and accountability from, female batterers is growing. They include: Canadian Senator Anne Cools, a former shelter director and a pioneer of the battered women's movement; author/activist Erin Pizzey, who set up the first battered women's shelter ever in England in 1971; Cathy Young, author of Ceasefire: Why Women and Men Must Join Forces to Achieve Equality; Donna Laframboise of the Canadian National Post; author and columnist Wendy McElroy, founder of Independent Feminists and herself a former DV victim; Patricia Overberg and Carol Ensign, former and current directors of the Valley Oasis Shelter in Lancaster, California, one of the few domestic violence shelters in the country which accepts men; Christina Hoff Sommers, author of Who Stole Feminism?, which details how feminists obtain inflated domestic violence numbers by lumping "shouting" and "slamming doors" with real domestic abuse; former Women's Studies professor Daphne Patai, author of Professing Feminism; Pearson; Steinmetz; and Renzetti. Recently both the American Medical Association and the Center for Disease Control have issued statements acknowledging the need for attention to male victims of domestic violence.
Familial violence by and against both men and women is a serious problem in a violence-wracked America, but it is a problem for which both men and women share responsibility. Over the past 30 years, feminist activists have justly called abusive men to account for their despicable actions. It's now time to do the same for abusive women.
Much of the initial coverage about Fort Hood turned out to be wrong. Is there anything wrong with that?
The accountability imposed by another country for the CIA's kidnapping and torture reveals much about our own.
Fox News' morning show plays to type, talking about whether Muslims in the Army should face "special debriefings"
The survivor and author is upset about comparisons some on the right are making to genocide
Once seen as a lunatic fringe, reactionary anti-women groups are courting respectability
Salon headlines in your mailbox
