At A Voice for Men’s conference yesterday, antifeminist crusader Erin Pizzey was given “a special award for her tireless work with ALL the victims of domestic violence.” Due to the amazing public relations work of AVFM’s spokeswoman for the conference, I don’t know what the award was called, so let’s just assume it was the World’s Greatest Erin Pizzey Award.
Whatever the award was called, the notion that Pizzey works, tirelessly or otherwise, on behalf of “ALL the victims of domestic violence” is demonstrably false. Indeed, she has argued vociferously against extending DV protection to all victims.
In an op-ed she wrote for The Daily Mail in 2011, Pizzey declared herself “horrified” that the British government would consider extending domestic violence protection to those subjected to “emotional bullying and ‘coercive control’” as well as actual physical abuse.
Her “argument” may be triggering for abuse survivors, so I’m putting all of her quotes below the jump.
Pizzey wrote:
In other words, if you stop your wife using the phone, you could be bracketed with a man who has knocked his wife’s teeth out in a rage.
In the future, couples who row, smashing precious belongings in a fit of anger perhaps, could seek to have their other half charged under domestic violence laws. Thus, too, wives who, for whatever reason, destroy their husband’s fine wine collection, or cut the sleeve off his suits in an act of revenge for some betrayal or slight, may find themselves charged with this most serious of crimes.
Domineering, bullying husbands who shout at their wives but never lift a finger to hurt them would find themselves in court.
Let me tell you: this is not domestic violence. It is an absurd idea to define such acts in that way, and worse, it serves to trivialise genuine cases of domestic abuse.
The new definition, which the government did indeed put in place in 2013, extended domestic violence and abuse to include
Any incident or pattern of incidents of controlling, coercive or threatening behaviour, violence or abuse between those aged 16 or over who are or have been intimate partners or family members regardless of gender or sexuality.
The government spelled out clearly what they meant by “controlling” and “coercive” behavior.
Controlling behaviour is: a range of acts designed to make a person subordinate and/or dependent by isolating them from sources of support, exploiting their resources and capacities for personal gain, depriving them of the means needed for independence, resistance and escape and regulating their everyday behaviour.
Coercive behaviour is: an act or a pattern of acts of assault, threats, humiliation and intimidation or other abuse that is used to harm, punish, or frighten their victim.”*
*This definition includes so called ‘honour’ based violence, female genital mutilation (FGM) and forced marriage, and is clear that victims are not confined to one gender or ethnic group.
There is no question, at least not to anyone who is serious about ending domestic violence and abuse, that “controlling, coercive or threatening behaviour” is abuse.
Why shouldn’t “domineering, bullying husbands who shout at their wives” in an attempt to control and coerce them be prosecuted for abuse? Why shouldn’t wives who do the same be prosecuted?
Pizzey not only argued against prosecuting those who bully their partners into submission through emotional, psychological, sexual or financial abuse. She also argued that most victims of domestic violence aren’t really legitimate victims either:
To me, the definition of domestic violence is quite clear: if you are not in fear of your life, you are not suffering it.
That’s right, the woman AVFM just honored as an advocate for “ALL victims of domestic violence” only considers actual physical violence to be domestic violence if the victim is literally afraid that they will be killed.
She continues:
In all other cases, where the aggression takes only an emotional form, or a few coffee cups have been chucked around, women in modern Britain thankfully have the option of finding a lawyer and choosing to separate from their husbands if they wish to do so.
The obvious point is that there is almost always clear evidence in domestic violence cases — bruises, cuts, internal organ damage or scars. Unless you have seen real, shocking abuse as I have, it is difficult to imagine some of the awful violence that people can inflict on each other in the home. And that’s why I’m convinced that bringing other, lesser, wrongs under this same legal umbrella does a great disservice to the women who really suffer.
How does protecting all victims of abuse do a disservice to those suffering the worst abuse? The police arrest people who assault as well as people who murder; this is hardly a “great disservice” to victims of murder.
Pizzey warns that the expanded definition “will turn millions of us into criminals.” She then makes a startling confession:
[A]fter all, I’ve been known in my time to lob the odd glass of wine in the heat of the moment. Indeed, there is something frightfully satisfying about chucking wine at somebody.
Yep. The woman who is A Voice for Men’s guru on domestic violence likes to chuck wine glasses at people. And apparently thinks this is a perfectly fine way to handle domestic disputes.
At this rate, we’ll all end up under arrest, and that is not a situation that’s going to help the police tackle the cases of true physical violence which must be stamped out.
Needless to say, the new definition, in place since April of last year, has not led to mass arrests of everyone in the U.K. If the new definition has put some wine-glass chuckers in jail, I can’t say I think this is a great injustice.
Pizzey declares that
People behave badly in relationships because we have human frailties. This is not an area in which the State should meddle; leave it to relationship counsellors and divorce lawyers.
Why shouldn’t the state “meddle” in cases of domestic abuse? The law doesn’t end at your door.
Pizzey winds up her op-ed by accusing those working against domestic violence – presumably she excludes herself – of being in it for money and power.
Over the past ten years, domestic violence has become a huge feminist industry. …
This is girls-only empire building, and it is highly lucrative at that. Men are not allowed to be employed at these organisations. Boys over the age of 12 are not allowed into safe houses where their mothers are staying, which I think is scandalous. …
Who benefits from this industry? Refuge has an annual income of more than £10 million from both public and private donations. Cherie Booth is a patron. The heads of these organisations are on very generous salaries.
And they are on a feminist mission to demonise men — even those who never have and never will hit a woman.
It’s appalling that this woman has gotten any kind of award.
I… am glad to know you clarified absolutely nothing. Perhaps you could try researching emotional abuse, how to recognise and combat it, and read up on how courts, prosecutors or DV support deal with abuse in general and emotional abuse in particular?
They should have made that their swag keyring instead of the mutant maple leaf or whatever the hell that thing was meant to be.
Penis lollipop: http://www.bachelorette.com/penpopallday.html
@pallygirl *Snort* well they seem to be envious of everything else.
The swag comments remind me of this particular episode of Open All Hours, I’ve tried to get the start time right in the episode:
http://youtu.be/i23DFWuntFA?t=11m44s
@pallygirl: I admit to having very little understanding of US law and thanks a lot for the links. It turned out that “my safety orders” actually exist in the US, as your first link states:
“OFPs can, for example, allow the abuser to remain in the home but prohibit him from harming his wife and children”
If assault is a form of emotional abuse then I don’t know what assault means in US-speak. Irish law has:
=
(1) A person shall be guilty of the offence of assault who, without lawful excuse, intentionally or recklessly—
(a) directly or indirectly applies force to or causes an impact on the body of another, or
(b) causes another to believe on reasonable grounds that he or she is likely immediately to be subjected to any such force or impact,
without the consent of the other.
=
http://www.irishstatutebook.ie/1997/en/act/pub/0026/print.html#sec2
It looks, from your words and some other sources (yeah Wikipedia), that in the US “assault” is only (b), while (a) is “battery”?
Anyway, I guess I really have to wait a few years until the very recent additions of emotional abuse to laws in some jurisdictions start actually playing out and case studies become available.
The UK case, the one in the OP, is actually interesting in that it seems to rely on intent, as opposed to actions themselves. The clause that I’d expect to get a lot of use is “acts designed to make a person subordinate and/or dependent by… regulating their everyday behaviour”. It’s a 2013 regulation, though (not a aw in the UK case, just a circular letter). I’m very interested in how they get to evaluate and prove this stuff.
/sigh it was supposed to start at 11:41.
/another sigh. A lot of law, particularly criminal (non-traffic) law relies on intent. It is an angle that a defence lawyer will work on.
In other words, there is nothing peculiar about DV type charges having an intent element to them.
If you knew anything about criminal law, you would know this.
If he knew anything about law or abuse, he wouldn’t be here.
@wewereemergencies: “read up on how courts, prosecutors or DV support deal with abuse in general and emotional abuse in particular”
My problem is exactly that I could not find a single case where courts or prosecutors dealt with emotional abuse. I tried, but the things I found were custody cases, and even then there were a lot of complaints that courts do *not” recognize emotional abuse. A thread on the issue: http://www.drirene.com/catbox/index.php?showtopic=55212
I did find some cases where therapists dealt with it, notably this one: http://www.psychotherapy.net/article/couples-abuse-assessment
Do I weep for the jury system that people with such a fundamental lack of knowledge can sit as jurors? TBH, I don’t like the adversarial court systems, I prefer inquisitorial. I would also like more jurisdictions to introduce the verdict of “not proven” as is used, I believe, in Scotland.
Hey, anyone online – is weaseltroll due for going on moderation or a troll challenge? I’m afraid his walls o’text are of the MEGO variety, so I’d be looking for a vote from them as has put up with his shit for the last few hours.
NO ONE EXPECTS
And what does it say about the system that emotional abuse cases aren’t dealt with? Could it be that, like you, many people do not believe emotional abuse is abuse, or important enough to be prosecuted?
At any rate, you seriously need a lot of education and we’re not here for that. Try reading first-hand accounts, and accounts of those who deal with emotional abuse in non-prosecuting situations.
@pallygirl, yep. Or eat some lollies.
@kittehs I’m saying yes, for his complete lack of understanding of emotional abuse. Maybe he has to find and summarize one expert’s views on emotional abuse?
LOL, he’s really boring.
Look, troll, to find cases you need to know the legislation in the jurisdiction you are interested in. In New Zealand, the relevant legislation is the Domestic Violence Act, 1995. All legislation has an interpretation section (otherwise the commonly understood meanings of words are used, except where there is associated legislation that defines the relevant word or phrase). In this act, we see this definition of domestic violence, which includes psychological abuse, see 2(c): http://www.legislation.govt.nz/act/public/1995/0086/latest/DLM372117.html
Notice how the act empowers the courts to do various activities, such as construct protection orders. The court powers exist in the absence of any criminal charges that may be brought against the abuser – which would be under the Crimes Act. And court is defined both as District Court and Family Court – so one would need to know to search both types of court to ID abuse cases.
tl;dr if you don’t understand the way the legislation and courts systems work, you won’t be looking in the right places for information.
I went looking for vagina pasta, failed, but found this instead: http://www.cakewrecks.com/home/2013/10/25/you-want-vagina-cakes-ill-give-you-vagina-cakes.html
****warning**** while these are cakes, may not be for the squeamish.
@ramendik
Either you are naive or disingenuous.
Abuse 101:
Who is the abuser and who is abused is usually fairly clear cut. For one, there is almost always an asymetry of power working in favor of the abuser. That’s how the abuser get away with it. The biggest issue is often not to determine who plays what part in the dynamics. The biggest thing is that the victim is often confused, isolated, scared, disempowered and does not start documenting what is happening soon enough. Emotional abuse is not difficult to identify once people learn to recognize it. The problem is that they minimize it, try to appease the abuser until it gets physical. Most people escaping abusive relationships look back at their experience and realize that all the red flags were there before it became physical. By the time its at that point, their self-esteem is in ruin and the abuser has maneuvered to be in control. Or the law enforcement and other agencies don’t take it seriously enough until it results in serious injuries. Sometimes they don’t have the resources to walk away, either financially or with a support system of family, friends, shelters etc…
One of my friends literally escaped with her 4 yo daughter, 6 months pregnant and a carry-on and crossed an international border. Her parents found her in shock at their doorstep. The asshole had drained all their accounts, mostly her saving money, so she did not even have a penny to start over. The only reason she took off was not for herself, she was fearing for her daughter. She did not press charge, she just divorced. She lost all her assets, had to move to another country, had to rebuild her career, assumed full responsibility for the care of her children and payed over 60K$ in lawyer fees to finally get rid of him. She used the evidence to prove him unfit as a father with no custody and only supervised visiting rights in public places. I am not a lawyer, and I never experienced domestic violence. But I would think that in a court case involving DV, the case is built by establishing a pattern including both emotional and physical abuse. And I would assume that many times, it ends the same way than my friend, by a divorce rather than a criminal case. Many women do not want their kids to live with the stigma of a father serving jail time. Many women need the financial child support to care for the kids, so having the father loosing his job and doing time is not the best option. You seem singularly obtuse to not get these very simple notions.
Poor ramendik. It wasn’t until I read through last night’s thread that I realized the true burden that lies on the rational man. If you’ve got an intellectual puzzle to work out, you must proceed to the nearest mockery blog comment section to share your insights. If you have an argument to make, you can’t let lack of concrete evidence, a complete ignorance of international legal procedures, and real human suffering cloud your beautiful logic. It looks like an exhausting, quixotic quest, being the one charged with going to a comment thread full of people sharing their own experiences of emotional and physical abuse, and telling them that situations like theirs are just too hard to define and too ambiguous for legal protection to be effectively enforced.
This is his struggle. Heavy hangs the head that wears the ironic vintage haberdashery…
I still don’t get what ramen penis is arguing. He keeps saying there needs to be an objective standard but what does he think laws are? Laws are already specific and objective. So what’s the problem? I think he’s trying to say it will disadvantage men but if the laws are gender neutral they won’t. I dunno. I’m confused.
My money is that he is trying to make false equivalency between emotional and physical abuse. “Like, you know: well, sure I broke her arm, but your honor, she has been emotionally abusive for months.” Nope, you don’t get to walk away with physically hurting anybody for any reason when you have the option to walk away at any time. Its what adults do when an argument gets too heated. Abuse is not a score board with a point system where 5 insults can be traded for ramming her in the wall. I know plenty of people who got out of abusive relationships without beating their partner.
“My money is that he is trying to make false equivalency between emotional and physical abuse. “Like, you know: well, sure I broke her arm, but your honor, she has been emotionally abusive for months.”
I tried to stay out of discussion of my motives but have to respond to this one with an emphatic NO.
Rather, if we are to have emotional abuse laws, I want a mechanism in place so that men experiencing continuing emotional abuse can identify it and, if necessary, initiate proceedings, but NOT resort to physical violence. I want the response to be “turn on the dictaphone each time she starts her haranguing” and NOT “sulk and sulk and sulk then lash out physically”. I want a man in this situation to have access to a safety order and to a shelter, rather than face the choice of continuing to endure abuse or having to reduce money spent on children because of paying second rent.
But to have that, one needs more than laws, one needs procedures. One needs to know to use that dictaphone, one needs to know to contact that doctor, etc.
What I don’t want is a situation where laws exist, but procedures don’t. In this case personal biases of the enforcers rule the place. Some may be the “men are always guilty” kind, some may be misogynists, so both men and women are disadvantaged by such a setup.
“I want a mechanism in place so that men experiencing continuing emotional abuse can identify it and, if necessary, initiate proceedings, … I want a man in this situation to have access to a safety order and to a shelter, rather than face the choice of continuing to endure abuse or having to reduce money spent on children because of paying second rent.”
The first thing is in place, plenty of websites exist with info on abuse, including emotional abuse. The second is legal, in a system I don’t remotely know, so I can’t help you there. As for shelter, give me a minute and I’ll see if I can find Irish shelters that take men that you can volunteer at or donate to.
Here’s an Irish DV service for men that might help answer you questions, and allow you to help support abused men — http://www.amen.ie
I would note that before New York became the last state to switch to no-fault divorce, it did have emotional abuse as one of the grounds for divorce. Specifically, the statutory ground of “cruel and inhuman treatment” covered both physical and emotional cruelty. So judges ended up adjudicating what did or didn’t amount to “mental cruelty” in their estimation, which, needless to say, filled the books with some really funky cases and even funkier decisions. (E.g., forcing one’s spouse to live with in-laws or grown children: cruel. Filling the fridge to the brim with junk food that one’s spouse absolutely cannot eat due to a serious chronic illness, while throwing out or hiding healthy foods: not cruel.) What I found really problematic there is that with “mental cruelty”, it is impossible to establish a clear legal standard. Emotional abuse is whatever the judge thinks emotional abuse is, and it’s dependent entirely on his subjective experience and convictions.