>
ECHIDNE of the Snakes has written an excellent post titled “Eight Anti-Woman Principles of The Most Extreme Types of MRAs.”
It goes through a number of standard MRA arguments and offers pretty persuasive rebuttals of most of them. Among the topics covered: life expectancies of men and women and why this actually isn’t a feminist plot; higher rate of on-the-job accidents for men and why this isn’t a feminist plot; the higher rate of male death in wars and why this too is not a feminist plot; male prisoners; homelessness; and stay-at-home dads. The post also comments on child custody and domestic violence, but without providing real rebuttals on those two issues.
I’m adding this link to my “further reading” post on general critiques of the MRM.
>Jeezus H. Cornflower. This thread has really attracted ALL the mansplainers and MRA apologists, and concentrated them in one place. It's a munificent collection of nutjobs, a la Alan Colmes' radio show.
>@David– I'm curious about Redtube, which actually is a pron version of YouTube… apparently it must be within the law, or it wouldn't exist. But how exactly does it stay within the law? (other than obvious stuff like, ahem, no minors and the like)
>This is just as typical as the "what about teh menz" phrase. Calling people "mansplainers" simply because they disagree with the almighty feminist stance. Can the bigotry get any more extreme?
>@John Dias,Plain and simple, police are not taught to "arrest the man" regarding primary aggressor laws. They don't make their decisions based on which person is larger. There are many things they take into consideration. Most of the people arrested for dv are not falsely accused. Sit in a dv court sometime and see what really goes on. And the Duluth model has an appropriate place in DV work as many, if not most, dv cases have the elements of control and domination in them that the Duluth model covers. It, however, should not be the only tool used as not all dv cases contain those elements, but are caused by other factors. Some women assigned to those BIP's are victims, some are not. If the instructor of the BIP can see from the woman's history or behavior or from the evidence that she is violent, I assure you, she is not coddled as a victim. The instructors are not stupid.
>Mr. Dias, I am actually on the California Penal Code's website and the law does not reflect what you claim: Peace officers shall make reasonable efforts to identify the dominant aggressor in any incident. The dominant aggressor is the persondetermined to be the most significant, rather than the first, aggressor. In identifying the dominant aggressor, an officer shall consider the intent of the law to protect victims of domestic violence from continuing abuse, the threats creating fear of physical injury, the history of domestic violence between the persons involved, and whether either person acted in self-defense…..To take the apparently equivalent of a slap to a jaw being broken…in the legal scenario here, the policy is to determine the dominant aggressor not the primary.So the couple were fighting and she lost her temper slapping him (causing a bright red mark.) He retaliates by punching her in the face breaking her jaw. Call goes in and the officer shows up seeing this situation-why is it somehow showing favoritism to a woman to arrest the man?
>One thing to add, John Dias, is that in my state and many others most judges refer to anger management rather than BIP's because it is shorter and cheaper, even when a BIP is the more appropriate remedy. Believing one is entitled to rule over their partner is not an anger issue and those who operate that way – anger management is a waste of time. So are BIP's in a lot of cases. I feel sure that most of the male supremacists in the MRM wouldn't change their supremacist views just because they had to spend a few months attending a weekly class listening to someone try to convince them that relationships should be more equitable and that it's wrong to pop your wife around to get her to submit to them.
>One of the most disturbing things about the DV industry these days; a woman can claim rape or any sort of harm to justify serious injury or death against a man. Even without any evidence what so ever.But if a man seriously injured or killed a woman, he can try to claim what ever he wants. He can claim she drugged him and forced a cucumber up his ass. That won't likely stand for a lighter sentence of be set off free.Oh, I am forgetting, males a privileged
>Nick, do you have ANY evidence whatsoever to back that up?Because most women accused of serious aggravated assault/battery and/or murder have an attorney and those attorneys will have to argue that before a jury or judge and I have yet to see some kind of systematic defense argument.
>Or let's say a woman is a big woman, like a bbw who has lots of strength compared to a skinny male. If the male finds some way to win the DV dispute and does more damage, is her injuries more important than the males?
>@John: which states have laws in which police are compelled to consider the size of a person when deciding whom to arrest? I know some do, but generally that is one of a number of factors to consider. And many don't include size at all. New York's primary aggressor laws, for example, don't mention size: When an officer has reasonable cause to believe that more than one family or household member has committed an act of domestic violence, the officer is not required to arrest each person. In these circumstances, the officer must try to identify and arrest the primary physical aggressor after considering: (1) the comparative extent of any injuries inflicted by and between the parties, (2) whether any person is threatening or has threatened future harm against another party or another family or household member, (3) whether any person has a prior history of domestic violence that the officer can reasonably ascertain, and (4) whether any person acted defensively to protect himself or herself from injury. The officer must evaluate each complaint separately to determine who is the primary physical aggressor. http://www.cga.ct.gov/2009/rpt/2009-R-0460.htmIn any case, the fact is that police DON'T "automatically" arrest the men. Somewhere between a quarter and a third of those arrested for DV are women, according to the studies I've seen. The most recent number from this study is 27%http://www.systemdynamics.org/conferences/2007/proceed/papers/HOVMA376.pdfAnd I've seen higher: in this county, it's 36%http://www.criminallawyerwa.com/2010/09/report-of-increase-in-women-arrested-for-domestic-violence.shtml
>@Christine WE:"They don't make their decisions based on which person is larger. There are many things they take into consideration."In states where primary aggressor doctrines are in effect, I know that many factors are weighed, but they do include a person's physical size. There are other factors which essentially guide officers to arrest men rather than women, even if both were mutually violent. These include advantages in size, strength, lower likelihood of being afraid, and access to or control over family resources (i.e. making more money than the other partner). Police are trained to essentially deprioritize such things as who initiated the violence, or who caused injury to whom, and instead adopt these criteria. It all amounts to code for "arrest the man."As far as your claim that I should spend time in a DV court in order to understand that perpetrators are not falsely accused, did you know that many people don't even make it into DV court because they plead out their bogus charges in order to get a reduced sentence? And if primary aggressor laws cause female perpetrators to avoid being arrested in the first place, then of course they never would wind up in DV court in the first place, would they?In terms of the culture surrounding Duluth-inspired BIPs, I had a friend who was an instructor in one such batterer intervention program in northern California. In his facility there were multiple classes in different rooms. He once told me that one day he heard some shouting coming from one of the other classrooms. He thought that it was one of the perpetrators who was shouting, but when he investigated, it turned out to be the female instructor of the class. One of the men in her all-male class of perpetrators alluded to the physical abuse that he had endured at the hands of his female partner. This instructor icily told him that this class was not to discuss one's victimization, and any such talk was off the table. But the man calmly asserted that the woman's physical abuse was part of their relationship dynamic; this only enraged the instructor, who kept repeating that he stop denying his responsibility for her abuse. Eventually the instructor stood hovering over the seated male, screaming at him and demanding that he stop blaming the victim, i.e. the female perpetrator. This is how that class was run. Are you really telling me, Christine, that you can confidently say that in every jurisdiction around the United States, that BIPs are run in a balanced way that acknowledges mutual perpetration and that both partners are held accountable for their violence — as perpetrators rather than victims? If the cause of the problem is considered to be patriarchy, then honestly which partner — the man or the woman — is going to be singled out as the cause for the violence (even the other person's violence)? Men are blamed.
>Elizabeth There is definitely evidence out there from numerous stories to point this very thing out. This will take some time to point this out. When I have more energy to google it all, I definitely will. It won't just be one or a few cases
>There were a couple of comments that got caught in the spamfilter; I've unblocked them. If you're following the discussion you should scroll up to see if you've missed something.
>It better not just be stories-like "wow, there is this one article in a newspaper and that means 987,972,387,429,387,412,987,423 women use that defense."Hard stats both percentage and actual numbers please.
>@David Futrelle:In my state, as of 2004, twenty percent of arrestees for domestic violence are women. In 1980 it was around 1 percent.http://www.dvstats.org/pdf/arrestpolicy/ca/California DV Arrest Data.xlshttp://www.dvstats.org/pdf/arrestpolicy/ca/California DV Arrest Data Report.pdf
>So Mr. Dias-it appears that the complaints that you have are being addressed so why are you complaining still?
>@Elizabeth:"it appears that the complaints that you have are being addressed so why are you complaining still?"Can you be more specific?
>You were complaining that women are rarely, if ever, arrested or held accountable for their violence but by your own stats-the number is rising.In fact, these stats do not reflect the cite and release numbers-which means that women who are not actually arrested but are cited are not being counted in the DV stats. Just because someone is not arrested does not mean that they are not being held accountable for their actions.
>As I have to study that you want adressed which will be time consuming.What's your answer to this"Peace officers shall make reasonable efforts to identify the dominant aggressor in any incident. The dominant aggressor is the persondetermined to be the most significant, rather than the first, aggressor. In identifying the dominant aggressor, an officer shall consider the intent of the law to protect victims of domestic violence from continuing abuse, the threats creating fear of physical injury, the history of domestic violence between the persons involved, and whether either person acted in self-defense."Do you have ANY evidence whatsoever to back that up?
>Elizabeth, the reason why the stats changed was due to warrantless arrest in 1986 and then mandatory arrest in the mid-nineties, which removed a lot of discretion from police to decide on who to arrest. In my state, California, feminists objected to the mandatory arrest provisions that were then in place because this resulted in a higher proportion of women being arrested, and the feminists thought of them as victims (despite the presence of mutual violence). Then in 1997 the state amended its laws to be "pro" arrest rather than "must" arrest, and also implemented criteria to govern the "pro" part. This was the primary aggressor law. Since that time the rate of male arrestees has hovered in the high teens to low twenties. Nothing has been changing. In mutual abuse cases, women more often attack men first, and women attack men more often than men attack women. In unilateral abuse cases (i.e. battering), women attack men 70% of the time compared to 30% of unilateral attacks coming from men. Even so, in my state 80 percent of arrestees are still males despite the higher rates of female perpetration.
>@nick — She's quoting from the California Penal Code. That IS the evidence.
>FYI, here's the source for my above claims that:[1] In mutual abuse cases, women attack men more often than men attack women[2] In unilateral abuse cases, women attack men 70% of the timehttp://www.dvstats.org/pdf/Reciprocal violence AJPH.pdf
>"In unilateral abuse cases (i.e. battering), women attack men 70% of the time compared to 30% of unilateral attacks coming from men."Battering generally refers to severe, continued abuse. The studies I've seen that find that women abuse equally or more than men invariably include less severe forms of violence in their surveys, as well as single incidents of violence; to call that "battering" simply because it it unilateral is very misleading.
>Um Mr. Dias-the law itself says "dominate" not primary. I went and looked up the law as Mr. Futrelle pointed out.Also, again, the statistics do not indicate the number of citations the officers are handing out. A man who gets slapped and then punches the woman in retaliation may go to jail that night but the officer writes them both citations. The woman is held accountable by the officer for slapping the guy but since the guy did more damage, he is taken into custody. She winds up paying a fine and he gets CFTS.
>… and your source, John, shows how misleading it is to suggests that women are doing the majority of "battering." From the results:Regardinginjury, men were more likely to inflict injury than were women (AOR=1.3;95% CI=1.1, 1.5), and reciprocal intimate partner violence was associated withgreater injury than was nonreciprocal intimate partner violence regardless of thegender of the perpetrator (AOR=4.4; 95% CI=3.6, 5.5).