http://glennsacks.com/blog/?p=2160

"When I was in college 25 years ago I remember my roommate telling me about a recent lecture on "ecofeminism" in his class. The feminist professor's thesis was "just as men rape women, they rape the earth."

So here the male students in the class (the small percentage who make it to college these days) had been listening to this anti-male nonsense class after class and finally did what they should do far, far more often--they challenged it. Rather than engaging in debate, the feminist professor pretended to be a victim, cancelled classes for a week, scurried off to another school to teach, and is now suing her students. It is also quite possible that some of those who rebelled against the feminist professor were female students who've not yet been poisoned with the anti-male bigotry relentlessly pushed in Women's Studies classes."

http://glennsacks.com/blog/?page_id=2455

"One blinder is that women generally use less detectable methods to murder intimates than men do. One of the most popular female methods is to poison the victim, and these poisonings are often mistakenly recorded as "heart attacks" or "accidents" instead of murder.

Another blinder is that women are much more likely than men to use "contract" killers, and contract killers often disguise murders as accidents or suicides. Even when a paid killer is caught and the truth is known, the DOJ counts the murder as a "multiple-offender" killing instead of as a murder of a man by a female intimate.

Also, men who murder women tend to come from lower income backgrounds, whereas women who murder men are more likely to come from middle-class backgrounds. The financial disparities allow for women to have better legal representation, resulting in more acquittals. According to a Justice Department study, women are nine times as likely as men to be acquitted in a trial for the murder of a spouse, and 10 times as likely to receive probation instead of prison time."

http://glennsacks.com/blog/?page_id=2450

"Unfortunately, alarmist claims of pregnant women being victimized by male partners are not new. For example, in 1993 Time magazine and many major newspapers reported that, according to the March of Dimes, domestic violence was the leading cause of birth defects. This claim was later found to be *!*!*completely fictional*!*!*, and was retracted by Time and others."

pynchme,

'As I said before, how many men live in fear of their female partners? Some, perhaps. What do you think?'
Why does it matter? Are the fewer women who die in war worthy of less attention than the many men?

'Secondly, if men are being victimized (and some are
it's true) in the proportions claimed; then get
busy and open some shelters and take care of those
that apparently are not accessing existing support
services.'

Well if we keep promoting that only violence towards women is a problem, or implying by omission that violence towards men doesn't happen, how many men do you think will think they should expect support when it does happen?

How do you think a guy feels when he has to deal with his drunk abusive partner coming home weilding knives around in a rage and throwing stuff, kicking and punching, while watching adverts that tell him he is the real abuser. What he is experiencing doesn't happen, and society tells him he is less of a man if he defends himself (remember, under no circumstances is violence against women ok), and less of a man if he just cops the beating. No win situation.

Fractelle,

'Another fact is, that the vast majority of men DO NOT behave aggressively to women.'
I think this is a lot of the problem. Maybe the DV adverts should actually recognise this rather than implying that all men are secretly abusers. It's an insidious crime you know, it's everywhere! You're all under suspicion! We're onto you, all you men!

Pynchme, I've read some of Floods work on CTS. There is a paper at the RADAR site by either Straus or Gelles (can't remember which) addressing the criticisms of CTS, talking about some changes they have made etc. I don't have the link on this PC but if you are interested I'll post it when you get back.

The bit that sticks out about the criticisms of CTS is that I've not seen anything which convinces me that the stats used to support an overwhelmingly genderised view of DV are any better. My reading suggests that they often build in bias based on assumptions about power in domestic relationships or ignore social factors leading to different reporting patterns.

I'd prefer to see the "body count" aspect of this debate sidelined unless we are only concerned with the extreme end of DV, the vast bulk of DV does not result in hospital visits or funerals but does involve abusive behaviour that none should be exposed to. I think that the big stuff is built on the little stuff and that we will reduce that body count by reducing the acceptability of lower level abusive behaviours by both genders.

Living in fear - I had only limited physical fear of my ex, I was only really at serious risk if caught unawares or in a bad situation. I did live in almost constant fear of emotional abuse, of having something else I cared about becoming a target because it was another way to get at me. I lived in fear that any disagreement would become a major dispute, I lived in fear that any critical time at work or in my studies would be used to revist old disagreements.

That is a different experience to straight out physical terror, I can't put myself in those other shoes but I'd not lightly dismiss it either.

R0bert

In case anybody is interested in the issues around CTS the material I refered to earlier is at http://pubpages.unh.edu/~mas2/CTS4.pdf

The summary of whats it's about is as follows

"In view of both the wide use and the criticism of the CTS, it is important to have a comprehensive assessment of this instrument. Researchers need to know how to make the most effective use of the CTS, which is not always obvious, and they need to know the limitations of the data generated by the CTS.' To achieve this, the chapter
1. Brings together and evaluates criticisms of the CTS as a measure of violence between couples so that users are aierted to problems and limitations of the instrument. Some of these criticisms will be shown to be correct, and others are erroneous.
2. Describes revisions and supplementary questions that were introduced in the 1985 National Family Violence Resurvey to deal with some of the criticisms.
3. Presents new data on factor structure, reliability, and validity based on the 1985 National Family Violence Resurvey and on data reported by a number of other investigators who have used the CTS."

R0bert

Hiya R0bert,

Sorry I haven't much time, but I'll bb later.

Anyway, I am not sure but I don't think the design and methodological problems of the CTS were overcome. I think your article precedes this one, but in any case - here are some interesting points:

http://www.xyonline.net/Evilmen.shtml

1. I don't see why the worst effects of DV - ie: women who are hospitalized or who die - should be left out. I don't see any reason why their suffering should be excluded. If running a campaign of 'Stop Hitting Women' only prevented one or two deaths - wouldn't that be worth it ?

2. Shove for shove (if under the CTS I shove you; and you shove me)surely the biggest and strongest of the two will do more damage. In fact, being smaller, I might shove you twice; but one shove from you might put me through the wall. So how does one then say that I was more violent to you, or you were more violent to me? Also, I might be heaps bigger or just fitter than you and maybe I could knock you into next week with one tap. Even though as far as we know, men in general out match women, maybe we're wrong. In some cases we are sure to be wrong (you being one example). We can't know.

3. One of the questions the writer in that article (link) asks is why men are seeking gender symmetry in violence, even against all available evidence (hospital admissions; shelter numbers; deaths). Why is it important? Why is it necessary ?

That writer also asks why, if men are concerned about violence against men, they are not expressing concern about the violence committed against men by other men.

For some reason women must be silenced - but men aren't really aiming to protect other men, are they.

I also wonder why men don't have shelters. I know that some womens shelters provide assistance; but why aren't more men turning up? Or alternatively, why aren't FR activists setting some up ?