[TRIGGER WARNING for picture of brutalized woman]
If you want to show someone what sort of website A Voice for Men is, have them look at the following screenshot, which I’m putting below the jump because it may well trigger some readers in its depiction of the effects of domestic violence on women:
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The picture, as you can see, illustrates a recent post by Suzanne McCarley, otherwise known on the internet as Driver Suz. (Regular readers of the Man Boobz comment section may remember her as the troll who was the first runner up for Man Boobz’ Special-est Snowflake Award for 2012.)
This isn’t the first time that A Voice for Men has used a picture of a brutalized woman to illustrate a post about domestic violence. The last time, the picture illustrated a notorious post from site founder Paul Elam suggesting that Domestic Violence Awareness month be replaced by “Bash a Violent Bitch Month.”
Here’s a screencap from that post, which I wrote about in more detail here:
In her post, McCarley refrains from this sort of violent fantasy, but her basic argument – that feminism perpetuates domestic violence for profit – is even more insidiously victim-blaming.
McCarley makes it clear from the start that her post will be largely fact-free, announcing plainly that “I’m not going to quote lots of statistics and studies, or variables and technicalities.”
After some rhetorical fumfering, Suz sets forth her basic argument, such as it is:
Without DV victims, feminists would have no rallying cry, and they would lose political power. Here’s how it works:
Thanks primarily to the Violence Against Women Act, DV has become a multi-billion dollar industry. This industry employs many thousands of people throughout the nation, paying them with federal VAWA grant money. And those thousands of people have made relatively little headway in achieving their “goal” of reducing DV. Indeed they perpetuate it. This is by design; if DV went away, so would their jobs.
Every single one of these people would happily give up their job if domestic violence went away.
And in fact, as Suz would know if she had indeed done even a tiny bit of research on this subject, domestic violence has fallen considerably since the early 1990s. Indeed, the Bureau of Justice Statistics, in its most recent statement on the subject, reports that “from 1994 to 2010, the overall rate of intimate partner violence in the United States declined by 64%,” with similar rates of decline for both male and female victims. That’s more than a “little headway”; that’s huge.
Suz continues, oblivious to the fact that the basic factual premise of her argument is dead wrong:
There are many, many factors involved in DV, and it’s no coincidence that feminist policies aggravate nearly all of them, but for the sake of clarity I’m going to address only a simplified but significant few of them here.
Who commits a substantial proportion of DV? Past victims or witnesses of DV. Who committed the DV that they experienced or witnessed? In too many cases to count, it is women. Women commit far more than half of all DV. Among the vast majority of violent couples, the violence is mutual. Additionally, women commit the majority of child abuse. Yes, women are responsible for most DV.
Not true. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, over the period of 1994-2010, “about 4 in 5 victims of intimate partner violence were female.” Numerous other studies using different methodologies also find that women make up the majority of victims. The only studies that find similar rates of abuse – which are also, not coincidentally, the only ones that MRAs like to cite – are based on problematic methodologies that end up essentially equating mild and severe violence, pretending that a slap on the face is basically the same as a severe beating when it comes to determining which gender is responsible for the most abuse. (For more details, see here.)
Next point, what often triggers DV? Stress. What causes women lots of stress? The constant obligations of child rearing. What causes even more child rearing stress? Not having a father in the family. How are so many fathers removed from their families? They are accused of Domestic Violence, whether it happened or not, and whether it’s mutual or not. Disagreements are exaggerated, violence is “invented” or men are blamed for any real violence that does occur.
Suz, naturally, presents no evidence for any of this; she’s simply repeating a basic MRA catechism. Removing violent fathers from the home makes the home less stressful, not more.
The result is that fathers, often the most stable influence in the family, are kicked to the curb and financially bled dry, while mothers are protected and are excused for their “missteps;” this is the unstable – and all too often abusive – environment in which their children are raised.
Violent fathers are not exactly a “stabilizing” influence on the home.
Toss in a few more variables like substance abuse, a string of violent boyfriends, and a bit of poverty, and this process is guaranteed to produce future domestic abusers.
And feminism is responsible for this how?
And this is the process that VAWA has institutionalized. It no longer happens “once in a while;” it is SOP. Was this the intent of VAWA? Who cares? That’s the result.
Well, actually, you just said explicitly that feminists intentionally perpetuate domestic violence in order to make money. You’re moving the goalposts in your own post?
Feminism cares about controlling, dominating, destroying and extorting the men who pay Feminism’s bills. Everything else is window dressing.
Citation fucking needed.
A Voice for Men uses violence porn to fight against those who fight against domestic violence. And Suzanne McCarley is happy to help.
There’s a name for those ‘violent boyfriends’, by the way- they’re called abusers, and what they do is called domestic goddamned violence. But somehow those men don’t count in the MRA tally. They’re hand-waved away, as if the punches they throw don’t count in a discussion of intimate partner violence.
I don’t know how old Suz is, but the suggestion that domestic violence is some new (and usually fake) thing is ridiculous .I’m 57 and domestic violence existed when I was a child. My grandparents’ generation had domestic violence too- they just called it ‘giving her a smack in the mouth’ or wife-beating. No one talked about it because, frankly, it was a man’s own business how he treated his wife and children.
So, pardon me if I don’t feel sad that these guys can no longer assume they can get away with the kind of assault described in that post by Elam. Hey, moderate MRAs? That kind of post is why people believe your movement is a front for abusers.
I’ve got a couple of dandy souvenirs of a past relationship that will probably always ache when it rains. And if Suz wants to try to tell me I deserved it she can go hell, go directly to hell, do not pass Go, do not collect 200 years indulgence.
Nor is logic!
What Cassandra said. There is noplace so low that they won’t go there.
I’m off to go vomit now.
Here’s a cat with a potato:
Some Gal – yeah, I wonder the same thing about driversuz. She made up all that shit about her so-perfect son, who it turns out is … just a person, not the demigod she painted. I begin to wonder if her son has anything to do with her, or if she was such a godawful parent he took off as soon as he was able.
Not that she’s unique, of course, but this is the thing I come back to all the time with MRAs and feMRAs: they seem incapable of love, or have an utterly warped view of it (it’s just them owning and controlling someone else). Affection never enters into it. I’m not saying they’re sociopaths – though some certainly give that impression – but what the hell is going on with their thinking? Why are they so hateful?
(Rhetorical question, repeated from sheer frustration at their willful stupidity, apart from anything else.)
OMG Freitag, I’m glad I’d finished my coffee before I played that video!
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I… But… No, because… I… But the statistics… And how could they possibly?… But…
Hold the fuck up, where is all this sweet feminist dollar I keep hearing about? I been doing it for free. Imma storm in the rape crisis centre and be all “fuck you pay me”.
@somegal has spotted a core fallacy.
Failsuz is arguing:
1. Most DV is committed by women, frequently against their partners
2. A primary driver of DV is stress
3. Women’s stress is mostly caused by child rearing.
4. The women’s child-rearing stress is exacerbated because they are single parents, having thrown out their men.
Urm, so how can all these stressed women be committing DV against their men if they have discarded those men?
(really sorry about the heteronormalising – blame Suz).
Suz is Queen Asshole of Fuckface Mountain. If she’d bothered to do the lightest of googlings, she’d know that VAVA is gender neutral except for the name. But we all know that would get in the way of her ASSFAX and then maybe she wouldn’t be the mostest special snowflake over there.
I wonder if she’ll try to sock her way into this discussion.
The stress of raising children does NOT lead to child abuse. Abusive assholes who CHOOSE TO ABUSE is what leads to child abuse.
Also, they need to get off the “single parents raise criminals” thing. While children who are raised by single parents families at at a higher risk for problems, SEVENTY FIVE PERCENT of children grow up to be well adjusted and contributing members of society. And when you look at the stats, you realize that other vectors such as financial stability, access to resources like health care or schooling or outreach community resources skew the results for better or worse.
Violence Against Vomen Act – omg it’s Transylvanian!
@The Kittehs’
I wonder sometimes if the problem isn’t a combination of really bad writing and a limited sense of empathy (they just can’t care about others in the abstract). So, they fumble their ideas around in their heads and everything becomes abstract enough that there aren’t any real people to care about. It is almost like a thought exercise rather than a political argument. I think this is also why they so often lash out when confronted by real people because as far as they were concerned, they weren’t talking about THEM. (And let’s not forget that they seem incapable of admitting they were wrong, which just makes the whole real person vs. their ideas conflict more vicious and illogical.)
And of course in all the blaming single mothers for everything up to and including World War II, they never, never mention that they might just be single because some arsehole walked out on them. Oh, unless that’s to blame women for not choosing the “right” men, of course.
Kitteh’s: ha! I got so pissed typing skills went right out the window.
What Failsuz says in her article is already disgusting and fraught with problems, but what Elam says in his paragraph is absolutely horrifying. He’s pretty much advocating abuse as a way of responding to abuse, which is like raping your rapist in revenge.
But that’s not the only thing that’s reprehensible. Let’s assume, for the sake of argument, that committing domestic violence in revenge against someone who is committing domestic violence against you is a reasonable and humane thing to do. Let’s say it’s just a form of self-defense. Even so, that he is exhorting abused men to defend themselves without considering the fact that they may not have the ability to defend themselves really show how little he understands the reality of male survivors of abuse. After all, not all abused men are strong, and most abused men aren’t willing to harm their loved ones, even when they are abusive.
It says a lot about how much he really cares about male survivors of abuse.
Hellkell, I’ve read so much bullshit about single mothers this week. I’m so pissed its a wonder I can even think coherently.
Also, numerous women in my family have been beaten by abusive assholes and it makes me ragefroth when I hear that they deserved or brought on their own abuse and the constant terror that next time they’d be dead.
The “Cha Ching” part just makes me think that a big part of the problem with these people, and why they completely fail to connect with a mainstream audience, is that they keep assuming that everyone is as horrible as they are. I mean really, who looks at someone who’s been beaten and sees a business opportunity? Nobody that I know.
I had to stop reading halfway through, and look at puppy pictures, before I could continue. My grandmother was a victim of DV by my grandfather, and she sure as HELL didn’t deserve to be pushed down the stairs while pregnant with their child, or locked outside in sub-zero temperatures while pregnant with another child How can these people believe this shit?
Probably the MRM would argue that these women, once they get out of one violent relationship, know the signs. With feminism’s encouragement, they can keep getting into relationships with violent men, and trigger their tempers, to keep money flowing into the “DV industry”, instead of “getting these men some help”.
I also want my fem’nist guv’mint cheque! *shakes fist*
David did a great job of prying that piece apart.
Sources? We don’t need no stinkin’ sources! And the (precious little, if any) logic that is in this is circular. That whole post is like saying that the malt was purposely left in the house to attract the rat to damage the house that Jack built because Jack is obviously in the business of building and repairing damaged houses and supplying cats to men all tattered and torn and hapless maidens all forlorn who (obviously) beat the cow with the crumpled horn, who (due to stress) tossed the dog that worried the cat that killed the rat that ate the malt that lay in the house that Jack built.
It all makes sense! Damn you Jack! You gave me rats!
@mxe354
I think you really identified the heart of the problem (aside from the major issues with Elam’s violence against women revenge fantasy).
He seems to think that the only consequences of physical abuse are physical*. The men in his disgusting scenario are just guys who have been putting up with, not really suffering from, physical abuse. If this were true, there would be no real reason for the revenge/self-defense except to punish women. Since it is not true, the motivations for the push to “fight back” are even more obviously horrible. Elam doesn’t care about abuse or the abused, he just wants an excuse for women to be hurt (or to imagine women getting hurt).
* For men, at least. It is certainly important to the whole sick fantasy that women suffer both physically and emotionally as much as possible.
Pillowinhell: I shouldn’t be, but I’m always so stunned at FeMRAs complete and utter lack of empathy. Any MRA, really, but the women just gobsmack me. They must lead very charmed sheltered lives.
RE: mxe354
Even so, that he is exhorting abused men to defend themselves without considering the fact that they may not have the ability to defend themselves really show how little he understands the reality of male survivors of abuse. After all, not all abused men are strong, and most abused men aren’t willing to harm their loved ones, even when they are abusive.
It says a lot about how much he really cares about male survivors of abuse.
Yes! This! Thank you! You put it into words so much better than I did. As a male survivor of abuse, it really frustrates me, but unfortunately, the verbal part of my brain seems to die the moment I get that aggravated.
This post makes me sick. I don’t normally feel the need to comment on the load of malarkey that Dave highlights here, but this one turns my stomach. I don’t care whether you’re republican, democrat, feminist, ultra-traditional, religious, atheist, anything… violence against anyone is wrong, those who support it are completely twisted, and accusing those who stand up for victims of domestic violence of using someone’s physical and emotional pain to further some political or ideological agenda is just fucking bullshit. I can’t put it any other way.
Can someone tell me vair the naval base in Alameda is? I’m looking for the nuclear WAWAs.
Brain bleach brain bleach BRAIN BLEACH!!
Big dogs are just as cute as baby cats.
Yeah, it’s obvious that these people are the “voice” supporting abusive men.
http://www.avoiceformen.com/mens-rights/arias-plays-the-vawa-card/
Their stupidity is mind-blowing. It doesn’t sound like they even read the legislation, let alone understand it. I guess one crazy, lying, guilty murderer out there now debases women who actually do experience abuse. Backward “voice for men” logic says that we shouldn’t have laws to protect people against domestic violence because of a pathological liar like Jodi Arias. Someone who is facing death row, and has proven track record that she will say anything to try and save her own hide. I bet these creeps also think that Scott Peterson and Ted Bundy were wrongly convicted!