Over on the Men’s Rights subreddit, mgriff2k4 is angry that the picture to the right here showed up on his computer screen. Sorry, make that fucking angry. “Did this really just fucking pop up on my news feed?” he asks in the title of his post, adding in a comment: “sorry about the word “fucking” but im really pissed off about this.”
Why is he angry? Presumably, he assumes the statistic is untrue, and that it unfairly paints men as evil murderers.
Luckily, in this Age of the Internet it is trivially easy to find out whether statistics like this are true. It involves something called “Google.” mgriff2k4 did not bother to avail himself of this easy-to-use research tool.
But I did. In less than 5 minutes, I confirmed that this factoid is indeed true, at least according to the most recent figures on gender and homicide found on the Department of Justice’s web site, drawn from FBI data covering the years from 1976-2005. According to the FBI, 30% of women who are murdered are murdered by “intimates.” Roughly 20% are killed by husbands or ex-husbands; 10% by boyfriends or girlfriends. (In the overwhelming majority of cases the murderers are boyfriends, not girlfriends; men are ten times more likely to commit murder than women.)
While four times as many men are murdered than women, only 5% of murdered men are killed by “intimates.” Men kill women more than twice as often as women kill men. Women suffer far more serious injuries from domestic violence than men do; so it is not altogether unexpected that they are also far more likely to be murdered by intimates.
If you want to see what this means on a human level, I suggest you take a look at the excellent if depressing web site Domestic Violence Crime Watch, which links to stories in which men are the perpetrators, and in which men are the victims. There are far more of those in the former category than in the latter.
I should note that (as of this writing) one commenter in the thread also found his way to the DOJ site, and noted that men were more likely to be killed by strangers or acquaintances. But he didn’t bother to tell mkgriff2k4 that the sign in the picture was in fact accurate.
Because he thinks child support is punitive.
Are there currently States in the USAs where the father would, by default, need to proof that the mother is an unfit parent to get a part, even beneath 50% (like, having one in two week-ends) of the custody?
If there are men who want custody but don’t seek custody because they don’t think they’re going to get it, then the MRM could actually help men in this position, simply by not endlessly repeating the meme that men never get custody!
Actually help!
And guess what? Doing so would take even less effort that the “activism” they’re doing now. All they have to do is whine less about this one subject! If the problem is the meme, stop pushing the goddam meme!
What Sir Bodsworth said.
My brother got interested in MRM forums when he was trying to rescue his kids from their (very abusive) mother. These guys sounded like they were all in his exact position. It worked against him because he started talking like the MRM guys. So when he talked to police, or social workers, or the court, they recognised the catch-phrases. They’d heard these words before, always from abusers, so he had to work much harder to explain the awful situation the kids were in.
(Does that make any sense? Not very coherent on this subject, ay.)
Kyrie — I don’t think so, but IANAL. Wiki only speaks of the opposite though, mandatory joint support in NY.
And NWO, much as you may hate it, divorce is a thing in the real world, has been for centuries now. Joint custody is a whole lot better than the kids moving away with one parent never to see the other again — which basically never happens now, and when it does, either the “never seen again” parent chose that, or was so unfit as to be a risk to the child(ren).
Shade, if you’re around, I was nearly late to my psych appt, and I blame Clef for this. (Brain zappingly good, I lost track of time somewhere around “oh gods, not 682”)
NWO: So… abusive parents should have totally equal custody with non-abusive ones? Even if the kids are harmed? When should police/social workers/concerned neighbors be allowed to intervene?
@ Magpie – that’s terrible. It’s bad enough that these idiots only see children as pawns in their ridiculous ideological struggle, when their idiocy affects actual real children, it’s nothing short of appalling. I hope it all works out for your brother and your nieces/nephews.
NWO: Before you say ‘that’s not what I said,’ I shall turn to copy/paste and blockquotes:
Irrevocable for abusers, too?
There’s also the fact that equal (physical) custody isn’t necessarily a very good idea even when both parents are capable for reasons like distance, etc (for example, if the parents live far enough apart from each other, the kid has to go to school at one parent’s home, though most of the couple I know who do this switch in the summer.) Also, I think equal legal custody is default and you have to work really, really hard to lose that even if you don’t end up with joint physical custody.
There are lots of reasons why equal physical custody isn’t always best for kids. One (somewhat personal, the kid involved is my godson) example: When a father’s reaction to his son’t autism diagnosis is: “You mean my son’s a fucking retard?!?!?!” And then said father proceeds to not give the kids his meds on his weekends, refuse to take the training that would allow the kid’s service dog to come along on visitation weekends, and keep unsecured guns in the house and car. This is not a person who should be in charge of a kid with special needs. This is not a person who should be in charge of a houseplant.
@ Sir Bodsworth: The kids are safe with my brother now, but of course all of them have a hell of a lot to recover from. He eventually woke up to the MRM because he loves his children as individual people who were suffering, and (as you said) MRAs see kids as pawns.
@ Magpie – glad to hear it. And I hope you don’t think I was calling your brother an idiot; I just realised what I wrote was a bit ambiguous on that. I was commenting on the quality of advice he was getting, not him himself
Glad your brother was able to get his kids out of a dangerous situation, Magpie. It’s frustrating that the people he looked to for help actually impeded the process, though.
Oh no, I didn’t think you meant my brother was an idiot. You were saying what I was thinking.
Thanks for the kind words, Sir and Cassandra.
I’m sure that I have several posts to respond to by the time I return to this thread, but I do want to get back to this context argument. MRAs believe that the context feminists’ use is that men are the oppressors and women are the victims so the context must support this over riding theory even if the context has to be changed or altered to fit this view. So, in our current discussion, feminists have admitted that they realize that 4 times as many men were killed as women so looking at domestic violence in real terms that would be a ratio of 3:2, but even after this realization feminists continue to want to look at this in terms of percentage 5% vs. 30%. They seem to want to make the argument that if men kill non-intimate men than women ought to be able to kill male intimates. I as I’m certain many people with good conscience find that reasoning to be depraved. Yet feminists still try to frame this in that context leading credence to the theory that the true context that feminists view things is that everything must support the men as oppressor / woman as victim theory and that statistics should be spun to reflect that. That’s easily proven by looking at the subsequent conversations I’ve had with feminists since they themselves came to the realization that the ratio in true numbers is 3:2. I’m still waiting on an answer as to whether this ratio is sufficient to change the context. If you find that 40% male victimization is sufficient to gain equal sympathy for men, reexamine my objection to David’s use of the term ONLY in this context.
The feminists on GMP helped me start to understand the context argument as it related to prostitution. I support the right to bodily autonomy so reasoned consent is key. I don’t see how an exchange of money to secure that consent changes anything. The feminist argument was that economic coercion could negate reasoned consent. On a thread concerning human trafficking, one MRA pointed out that there is a social safety net for women (an argument arises as to whether the same safety net essentially exists for men), welfare and shelters, so women essential have no economic coercion. I think that the standard should exceed immediate survival to support reasoned consent. I still don’t understand how I ended up on the feminist side of the argument.
I do want to understand this context argument better. If you’ve rightly been shamed into not wanting to reply to the context of the 3:2 ratio in domestic violence cases, reply in terms of legalized prostitution. Is immediate survival sufficient or is welfare and shelters insufficient. One former feminist (not quite an MRA, but we’re working on getting him to join the “dark side”), thought that it was access to jobs that is the problem. I agree, but if a woman has to work 80 hours a week to meet basic needs, are the conditions such to negate informed consent? Is the context argument even refined to this point or is it still a crap shoot?
Pecunium says,
“It was a non-sequitor, unless you can show some interrelation between the two ideas.”
I wasn’t debating this merely pointing out that being male is insufficient to negate misandry. You really should work on that reading comprehension problem.
You said
“And before you claim statistics are MISANDRY, modern statistics were invented by a ma”
You imply that statistics can’t be misandry because they were invented by a man. This makes the argument that if a man does something (invent statistics) it can’t be misandry because he is a man. Mo other conditions were indicated in your response. Being a man is sufficient to negate misandry. I took issue with this assumption. Defend it, revise it or retract it. Maybe it’s writing comprehension that is the problem.
I said in reply
“Being a man and misandrist are not mutually exclusive. Would being female and misogynist be?”
Where did I mention statistics? Your problem is probably both reading and writing comprehension.
Re: context, you fail at it, the point was the context of numbers next to each other 30% is large in comparison to 5%, and small in comparison to 70%.
Re: 3:2 — we’re ignoring it because it isn’t actually telling anyone anything. I already did that math, you can find it. Simple question, if the 3:2 has meaning, what’s it 20% of?
“They seem to want to make the argument that if men kill non-intimate men than women ought to be able to kill male intimates. ”
o.O?! No, we’d prefer no one got killed, but are realistic enough to realize that minimizing the numbers is probably all that can be done.
“I’m still waiting on an answer as to whether this ratio is sufficient to change the context.”
Oh read the damned thread first would you?
“If you’ve rightly been shamed into not wanting to reply to the context of the 3:2 ratio in domestic violence cases…”
Just a guess, but the radio silence here has been because I did that math already. It’s a meaningless ratio as anything other than intellectual curiosity.
And if you’re hoping to get a coherent view of sex work from feminism, good luck with that.
Um, that all was me, not Pecunium. And no, I implied that if Arks wanted to discount all the statistics on account of statistics being inherently misandry, I was going to laugh at him. You seem to continue to miss that that was me snarking at the common MRM claim that all statistics are inherently misandry.
Since many feminists on this board insist on supporting gender norms when it advantages women and oppose it when it doesn’t in the context of men’s custody decisions. My brother didn’t originally fight for custody because his lawyer, who had about 40 years experience in family law and was actually a litigator, told him that most judges were biased against men. This was the opinion of a person who actually tried cases. Now, much could change over 40 years, but this was the reality that he faced. He made the decision to go after custody when the pictures appeared because he needed to protect his children from that environment and he felt that it would be siffucuent to overcome the bias in favor of the mother.
It might be easier to look at it in terms of the Brian Banks case. Brian Banks was falsely accused by Wannetta Gibson of raping her. He took a plea deal on advice of his attorney because had he been convicted, he would have had to serve significantly more time. After he had served several years in prison and after she received several hundred thousand dollars from the school district in a settlement, she friends him on Facebook and admits on tape that she falsely accused him. Are you feminists saying that Brian Banks is responsible for his own victimization because he chose not to fight it?
When is a woman responsible for her own rape because it wasn’t worth fighting over? Maybe she liked it and waited to see how good he was before deciding on whether to fight and that whole women don’t report rape thing can’t be a big deal if she didn’t think it was important enough to report. Feminists say you should never blame the victim. What feminists mean is that you should never blame the victim unless the victim is a man.
No.
I don’t know whether you are being willfully disingenous because you hate “feminism” (or rather, what you think feminism is), but it’s clear that you don’t know the first thing about the actual beliefs of people on this board. I would never blame the victim of a rape, no matter what their gender was.
“Maybe she liked it and waited to see how good he was before deciding on whether to fight and that whole women don’t report rape thing can’t be a big deal if she didn’t think it was important enough to report.”
Why is anyone even bothering to engage someone loathesome enough to write this?
@CassandraSays You’re right. I’m disengaging forthwith, as reading that actually made be feel nauseous.
Point 1: Men are screwed in custody disputes in divorce court!
Point 2: Actually, men think they’re going to be screwed in said courts, so they don’t even bother trying!
Point 3: I take no responsibility for point 2, even though arguing in favour of point 1 makes me part of that problem. It was actually all the fault of, uh, my brother’s lawyer, yeah, who… look over there! A false rape case! This has something to do with feminism, probably!
Seriously, if you’re going to go for smoke-and-mirrors, at least learn how to use them.
And John Anderson reminds us why we need feminism.
No shit, that was the fastest transition from “delusional weirdo, sadly common on the internet” to “you are a sick puppy, please get help before you hurt someone” I’ve seen in a while.
Also done with new-troll after that last comment, first though — I’m sorry your brother had a shitty lawyer, and I’m sorry Banks had a shitty lawyer, however that’s where the similarities end.