Help End Violence Against Women Now...

[Triana]

One in three women may suffer from abuse in her lifetime. One in three! That is a shocking and disturbing statistic.

Please add your name to the movement to say NO to violence against women.

http://www.saynotoviolence.org/

There is an ever-growing movement of people who demand decisive action on ending violence against women, and you can be a part of it.

Nicole Kidman became the UN Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM)'s Goodwill Ambassador to bring this issue onto public agendas everywhere.

Let survivors of violence around the world know that they can count on us. The UN Foundation will give $1 to UNIFEM for each new person that signs on to the Say NO to Violence against Women Campaign.

Violence against women must stop. And we can all help. Please add your name to the movement today.

http://www.saynotoviolence.org/

[Donnachaidh]

1. K&R! n/t

[Quantess]

2. K & R but I would like to add that most of the time women have a choice to not be abused.

A lot of it is based in self esteem, on the womens' part. You just don't put up with that shit.

Does that sound republican?

[goddess40]

3. Girls have to have a plan before they even start dating

They have to decide that they aren't going to put up with it. Once you're in a relationship and have been slowly groomed to believe it's your fault it's hard, although not impossible, to get out.

[Warpy]

4. It sounds quintessentially male

I've been hit. It's come out of the blue.

I'm one of the women who can't be hit and I've left the situation immediately. I've never been tied down with a child, though, and that makes all the difference in the world. Often the abuse doesn't start until the woman gets pregnant and then it's too late.

Please disabuse yourself of the prejudice that women control that situation. Once there's a child involved, she doesn't. Male violence against women is a MEN'S problem. It's not OUR problem. It's YOURS.

Yes, men are abused in the home, too, at the rate of one to every eight abused women. However, the abuse is not as physically serious and the man generally has the advantage of having the higher income and the ability to walk. His ties are emotional. Her ties are emotional, financial, social. Her worth as a person declines if she walks. She's also 75% more likely to be killed if she walks. Men don't face that one, either.

Violence against women is built into our social system. As long as men consider themselves predators and women as prey, it will continue.

[Easy now]

5. Please help end ALL violence in the home

I strongly support an agenda to stop domestic violence. However, it seems that it has become dogma to dismiss violence against men by women as insignificant or unlikely. However, the best studies done on this has not shown this to be true.
When DV was first starting to get the attention it deserved in the 1970s and 1980s, the initial theories were formed from interviewing women in shelters and the men who assaulted them, asserting that men were attempting to control women through violence. While I will agree that violence is a maladaptive attempt at control in a relationship, I would argue it is not gender limited.
In fact, many studies indicated that women were just as likely, if not more likely to engage in intimate partner violence. The response from those who defend the gender dominated dogma was that women were more likely to be injured, which made sense given the typical size and strength disparity between men and women. Yet the claim became that the difference was around 9:1 to 10:1.
However there are studies that conflict that data and again suggest men sustain at least 1/3 of all DV injuries if not more.
The problem with approaching data of this sort is it's very easy to fall susceptible to confirmation bias, looking for data that confirms your theory, while dismissing data which contradicts your theory. Heck the tobacco companies designed studies that indicated smoking doesn't cause cancer. Previous studies in the 70s indicated that formula was better (or at least as good as) breast milk. Confirmation bias does not have to be an intentional, malicious misuse of data. But, instead a trap that is very easy to fall into in research, especially when you have a strong (and well-intentioned) belief about something.
In addition, some studies indicate that men are nine times as unlikely to report violence due to the shame of failing a perceived gender role (in addition to already present shame that both men and women feel when victimized by violence). This makes it harder for researcher to capture or identify male victimization.
I think the strongest argument falls in mortality data. I would argue that being killed by your partner qualifies as severe violence. The CDC did a study looking at victims of intimate partner homicide from 1984-1997, excluded those that were considered to be justifiable (i.e. self-defense etc). The group most likely to be killed by a partner of the opposite sex was African american men. Overall, women were more likely to be a victim. However the rates were not ten to one, not two to one, but 1.8 to one. This is also in consideration of the fact that a man in 5x as likely to be the victim of an unsolved murder than a women (~7500 unsolved murders for men; ~ 500 men murdered/year by partner), women are less likely to be charged and are more likely to be acquitted.
The CDC states that ~ 1.3 million women and 800,000 men will be victims of intimate partner violence per year. If you want to believe that women are severely injured 8-10 times as frequently as men, in order to reconcile that with mortality data, you'd have to believe that when women are severely violent, they are 5-10 times as deadly as men.
There is also a movement to obfuscate the etiology of violence by women, saying it is either always in retaliation or a pre-emptive strike. In other words, if you pre-label someone as a victim, you can justify their violence by blaming the person they are violent against (a reverse "blaming the victim"). Again, I don't think this is malicious in intent, but instead a visceral reaction to feeling that violence against women is worse than violence against men. I have the same gut reaction, but intellectually know that this isn't true. Police are frequently taught that men don't need protection. I think those dead men would disagree, and men who would protect themselves are likely to find them self in trouble with the law (no allowing for pre-emptive strikes or retaliation here).
I would also reject the notion that men can always leave these situations easily. There is frequently a financial advantage for men (this is not debatable). However, many of the same emotional attachments and issues that keep women in abusive relationships, also apply to men.
I want to emphasize, I'm not here to minimize female victimization. It is a severe problem. However, when policy is formed based on the obfuscation of a significant part of the picture, the legitimacy and justice of the movement is eroded, and those who may need your help will only find deaf ears.
Please, make help make this a movement against ALL violence.
Thank you for reading this and stay safe!

P.S. Batteredmen.com and Mediaradar.org may provide some insight. I don't agree with all of their positions, but it does look at the problem from a different perspective.

[musette_sf]

6. go to a hospital, any hospital

and ask:
how many women have been here this month for injuries received in a domestic assault by a male partner?

then ask:
how many men have been here this month for injuries received in a domestic assault by a female partner?

now factor in:
the fact that the number of women in the hospital being treated for injuries inflicted by a male partner, is artificially lower than the actual number. many of them "walked into a door" or "fell down" etc etc etc, for fear of reprisal and even more injuries from the male partner. so there is only a certain percentage of women who will even admit that the injury came from a male partner's violence.

now please move along from the Women's Rights forum on Democratic Underground, and tell your sad story with its skewed data to your Menz "Rights" Activists friends on the Glenn Sacks website. i think you will find that audience more sympathetic to your sad, sad cut'n'pasted list of skewed data.

[Easy now]

7. I'm not asking you to disregard violence against women.

I'm sorry if that is the implication you got from my message. I abhor violence against women.
What I fail to understand is why it angers you to consider the alternative as a possibility. Why advocate or ignore violence in any fashion? Why let gender be the only factor when trying to stop a horrible crime? How much violence against any gender is OK to ignore?

By the way, hospitals are trained to look for domestic violence in women and to look beyond any superficial excuse for an injury. Men are just as likely to try and make an excuse for an injury, and in part because hospitals aren't looking for it, and in part because men do a lot of stupid things that can result in injury, those stories are not uncovered artifically lowering those numbers as well.

Again, my apologies for any offense.

[lukasahero]

8. Please note, you are in a forum specifically dedicated to Women's Rights

That is why you are not receiving the sympathetic welcome you may have expected.

I would encourage you to consider reading more and speaking less until you understand the dynamic of the forum. Men/male are the default conditions/assumptions throughout the rest of the world. This place is specific to women, women's issues and women's rights.

Welcome to DU.

[musette_sf]

9. you are minimizing violence against women

and trying to build a strawman argument that domestic violence against men by women partners is equal to violence against women by male partners.

male violence against women is a millenia-old problem, and attempting to equate it in some way with female violence against men is what men's rights activists do. again, i refer you to the Glenn Sacks website where you may wail "but what about teh MENZ?" as loudly as you please, and get lots of agreement from your fellow MRAs.

this is the WOMEN'S RIGHTS forum, and we like to discuss Women's Rights, just in case you didn't get it.

[Easy now]

10. I am not saying it is equal

I am just saying minimizing violence in any way is wrong. You probably have never been told by a Safe House they have nothing to offer you.
If your discussions must be limited to those who will agree with you, then I will exit this forum, again with my apologies for offending you. I know this is an emotional subject. Not my intention to minimize or attack anyone.
Good luck with your efforts.

[musette_sf]

11. i am not seeking agreement

actually, it appears that you are the one seeking agreement with a flawed premise, in a forum where your flawed premise is not appropriate as a discussion topic. coming to a Women's Rights forum and posing the premise that female-on-male domestic violence is of equal importance to the millenia-old problem of male violence against women is intellectually dishonest. and that, sir, is what you were trying to do.

your posts were clear in stating a highly exaggerated level of female-on-male domestic violence with questionable data in support of this premise. there are other forums where your flawed premise is accepted as "fact", so you might fare better with your message in such forums.

your attempt to project blame and weakness on my responses to your disingenuous posts, by attributing my argument to the idea that "I know this is an emotional subject", is just more MRA defensiveness. translation: "You women are just too emotional to have enough logic to agree with all the 'facts' and figures I cut'n'pasted."

if bringing an end to all violence were truly your motivation in posting here, rather than what seems to be your real intent -- to amplify a "concern" about female-on-male domestic violence that is not based in reality, either current or historical -- then perhaps the Society of Friends (Quakers) is where your concern might best be brought.

[Easy now]

12. First

I was concerned about the "I know this is an emotional subject" and should have clarified I was including me. It was not to imply that it clouded your judgement because you are a woman. However, given the history of those kind of arguments, I understand you taking issue with that. Point taken and I withdraw (if that's allowed).

As far as your assumption that the data is "cut and paste", I assure you that is not the case, but rather the result of reading numerous studies including raw data. If you wish, perhaps we can discuss why you feel the CDC and DOJ data is highly flawed. I would argue given the sensitivity, shame, and secrecy which surrounds this topic, most of the data is in fact flawed with bias in one direction or another dependent upon the questions you ask, the population you survey, and what you qualify as violence. In fact, I am aware that I could be biased in how I look at the data given my point of view.

Anyway, I was hoping to discuss this with you. I could go to websites that spout the "evils" of feminism, but I don't find that kind of polarizing "we're great, every else is bad" does anyone any good. I'm willing to listen to people who think I'm wrong (kind of an anti-Bushie that way). Maybe I'll learn something.

For now, I have to put the kids to bed. Take care.

[musette_sf]

14. patronizing response,

closed with "now i shall prove my sensitivity by saying i will perform a generally woman-identified task. see how enlightened i am!"

the "enlightened" Concern Troll, DU newcomer who, out of all issues pertinent to the progressive world, makes his debut and only posts thus far to the Women's Rights forum on Oh Teh Poor Menz, to the very end refusing to acknowledge he is barking up the wrong tree.

:crazy:

[hendo]

13. This is such a slow forum..

but wth, K&R