A Voice for Men uses pic of brutalized woman to illustrate post blaming feminists for domestic violence

[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?