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.
Justin,
A lot of us were too lazy to provide citations because we’ve been over this so many times. It is a myth that family courts are biased against men.
From the New England Law Review http://amptoons.com/blog/files/Massachusetts_Gender_Bias_Study.htm
When fathers seek custody they usually get it. You can not put all the blame for fatherlessness on women. That’s misogynistic. Usually when MRAs whine about being oppressed by the courts it turns out that they had a history of abuse or had not been the one caring for the child.
Who initiated the divorce is irrelevant. You also are ignoring the fact that sometimes women initiate divorces because their husbands are abusive.
By focusing on divorce, you ignoring the children of never married. Pretending that there aren’t dead beat fathers is beyond ridiculous. I’ve known many people whose fathers refused to be part of their lives. I even have friend whose father took her mother to court to get a DNA test. This was in the early 80s and DNA tests weren’t so easy and fast back then. When the court confirmed he was in fact her father, he still refused to be part of her life.
You’re also being very heteronormative. I’m so shocked by that! s/
Kids do better in two parent than single parent households but the gender of the parents is irrelevant. Lesbian couples don’t raise kids that are broken due to fatherlessness. Their kids do just as well as kids with a mother and father. http://thinkprogress.org/lgbt/2013/06/05/2106751/same-sex-parenting-study/
There was one story that showed differently, but it was widely debunked because the methodology was terrible.
I’ve also noticed that you are providing statistics, but not their sources. Until you link to those sources, they’re difficult to take seriously. For example, did any of those studies find a causal link between fatherlessness and propensity to rape? Or was there something else going on there. Say poverty. In fact, the research indicates that poverty causes fatherlessness and lack of marriage. Not the other way around.
http://www.csmonitor.com/Business/new-economy/2010/1118/Between-rich-and-poor-a-marriage-gap
http://www.forbes.com/sites/trevorbutterworth/2013/06/25/whats-behind-the-us-decline-in-marriage-pragmatism/
“The refined divorce rate – the number of divorces per 1,000 married woman – includes only those people at risk of divorce, so social scientists and demographers see it as preferable to the crude rate. Using this routine, the divorce rate ranged from a low of 14.3 in North Dakota to a high of 34.5 in Washington, D.C., for a national average of 19.4, according to National Center for Family and Marriage Research. Using this regime, in 2008, divorce fell from a rate of 17 divorces per 1,000 married women in 2007 to 16.9 per 1,000 married women.”
That 50% thing? Comes from taking the number of marriages in X year and dividing by the number of divorces that year, which is not particularly useful for the question at hand. citation
Also, women are more likely to abuse their children because women are more likely to be the primary caretaker. It doesn’t mean that women are inherently more abusive to children than men are.
FTR — yes, that method excludes gay couples, but doing that for both men and women would result in unresolvable overlap. Second, 40%~ of kids have parents who’re divorced // will before they’re 18, given current rates (looks like about 25% of kids end up with step parents though, so don’t go all “see, 40%!” Cuz nope, more like 15% for what you’re claiming)
Now I’m off to find the stat I was looking for!
Well, my sons should be just fine – they have TWO fathers! I’m sure Justin approves.*
*Not that that is a goal of mine.
@justin
“Let’s have a real debate. If this website is any less rhetorically self important than the MRAs it claims to parody that would be in order.”
It is really, really annoying to see the same bs debunked time after time after time because you guys seem incapable to get your head of your ass long enough to learn anything. You are not only intellectually lazy, but you are incapable to debate in good faith. Each time one of your clones post here, I have the feeling its because even subconsciously, you realize in what kind of moral and intellectual manure pit you are waddling every day, and bringing stuff here is an attempt to gain respectability and exposure. This reminds me that guy years ago, who had that stupid idea in an area I happened to be an expert. As a rule, I always give the benefit of the doubt. So, at first, I listened, I was polite, took time to explain him why it was not working, even dig some literature for him to review. But the twerp would not give up. He was not after the truth. It was all to prop his ego while wasting my time. He was after proving he was right and was putting on me the onus of disproving his bullshit way passed the point the issue would have been settled by any reasonable and fair people. From all I have observed from the MRM, that is their modus operandi,
I googled Justin’s statistics, all of them, at least once. So far the only things that pop up on the first two pages of each search are father’s rights organizations. Some of those results lead to sites that replicate the same stats and list really general sources (aka, US Dept. Of Health/Census, but not publication number or a link to a website), but further searches for those has turned up zilch. It might just be that the sources are publications that aren’t available publicly online, or not available online at all. I don’t have access to any databases for peer-reviewed journals, so I can’t look there. I also live in a place where libraries are closed on Sunday, I can’t obey the command to hie myself to the book depository, either. Oh, well.
I have to go put dinner on the table for my children AND their father/my husband of ten years (who’d a thunk it? A married feminist!). Then we might take the dog for a walk. Have fun chewing this one everybody!
Flying Mouse,
Why am I not surprised Justin’s stats are made up?
You’ve gotta love (no you don’t) those trolls who think they can fool us into thinking they’re neutral and above the fray and just happen to be shocked by our appalling behavior.
They don’t realize just how many tells there are. I’ve only been here six months and I can’t spot those phonily neutral trolls a mile off.
I mean can, not can’t ^
“That would be in order?” What, is Justin a mid-level bureaucrat in a totalitarian nation?
@Flying Mouse
“So far the only things that pop up on the first two pages of each search are father’s rights organizations… but further searches for those has turned up zilch.”
Honestly, the shock if you had find any different would probably have killed me. But thanks for taking the time and to all the others who are patient enough to do the fact checking and rebuttal. I tend to treat those guy posts like the infamous Nigerian scam emails.
You first. Seriously, don’t have a post with ZERO citations and then demand other people counter your unsupported claims with research. Also, how about you stop pretending you aren’t a MRA, you don’t win points for denying it and a little intellectual honesty can only help.
If I went to AVFM or some other MRA site and posted some obviously wrong and offensive statement with made up statistics about how men are always responsible for all violence against them, do you think they would calmly and politely provide me with logical counterpoints? (Note: I’m not really going to do this, just wondering)
Long post is LOOOOONG
TL:DR — 7.5% of the kids in the study were ever incarcerated, though 60%~ committed some sort of crime. No further math is done on the latter number. Youth without a father ever being present had the highest odds once everything else was controlled for, followed by all other sorts of arrangements where the kid wasn’t living with the bio-father (e.g. single mother, stepfather, etc). Much of the increased risk was accounted for by other factors (e.g. race, teenage motherhood, etc). Single mother risk < risk with remarriage. Live-in grandparents helped reduce the risk. Bias in the criminal justice system does not appear to play a role in terms of bias against father absence, but may in the racial differences (too few divorced whites to be sure that there wasn't another factor at play besides that one, like the remarriage rate for example)
Long: read it anyways — only studied men/boys, was longitudinal (w00t), looks like father and stepmother is barely better than mother and stepfather. Spousal conflict, DV and child abuse are more common in stepfamily living arrangements. No accounting was done for DV/child abuse in the original living situation, though they did say it should be studied (logic based on previous studies of DV and child abuse says it would play a factor)
Citation — http://www.ric-fish.com/strengthenamerica/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/C3_father-absence-and-youth-incarceration.pdf — yep, that's an honest to goodness article published in an honest to goodness journal.
Take home point, 7.5% of the male children of divorced parents end up in jail at some point, versus…
Rough math —
http://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/RL32701.pdf page 19 of the PDF — looks like maybe ~22,000,000 boys aged 5-14 (add 3 years for 8-17 for use in the next data point)
Of whom, ~82,000 had a stint in juvie in 2003 (closest year to the study) — http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Youth_incarceration_in_the_United_States
Works out to about 3.7%, which, conveniently, just about half of 7.5%. So boys in households without their biological fathers stand about twice the incarnation risk. Much of that risk, however, stems from factors that make fatherlessness more common, not from the fatherlessness itself.
/stats
One more, much shorter, one.
“In addition, although the differences were not large (and not always statistically significant), children of unwed parents tended to fare worse than those with divorced parents, even after taking into account differences in basic demographic characteristics such as race, sex, mother’s and father’s education, number of siblings, and residence. For example, although the risk of dropping out of high school was 31 percent for children whose parents had divorced, it was 37 percent for children whose parents were unwed; similarly, although the risk of a teen birth for children whose parents had divorced was 33 percent, it was 37 percent for children whose parents were unwed.30
With regard to mechanisms, McLanahan and Sandefur found that income was an important explanatory factor for the poorer outcomes of children in single-parent families (but not for children in stepparent families). On average, single-parent families had only half the income of two-parent families, and this difference accounted for about half the gap between the two sets of children in high school dropout and nonmarital teen birth rates (in regression models that also controlled for race, sex, mother’s and father’s education, number of siblings, and residence).31 The other important mechanism was parenting. When McLanahan and Sandefur entered parenting into the regressions (instead of income), they found that the poorer parenting skills and behaviors in single-parent families explained about half the gap in high school dropout rates, but only a fifth of the gap in teen birth rates (again controlling for race, sex, mother’s and father’s education, number of siblings, and residence). Because the authors did not control for income and parenting in the same models, the question of how much overlap there was in their effects remains.”
http://www.futureofchildren.org/futureofchildren/publications/journals/article/index.xml?journalid=73.&articleid=532§ionid=3661
A factor in 71% of dropouts? But at most fatherlessness increases the risk two fold? So half of 71% + 71% = more than 100%. Your stats fail the face value test, congrats.
Argh, stat fail, 11% dropout rate on average. And that, and the general incarceration rate, both include the boys with divorced parents. There’s no good way to control for that, stats on intact families seem to be lacking.
My response:
More math —
If 20% of kids are boys with divorced parents, assuming 50/50 gender split. Children of divorced parents have a 37% drop out rate, assuming gender is not a factor (it probably is, give me a minute) that works out to 9.8% — of 100% of kids, 9.8% of them are boys with divorce parents who dropout. Before trollboy screams, if divorce wasn’t a factor, and the dropout rate had an even gender split, then 2.2% of dropouts would be boys of divorced parents.
Now, let me check whether gender is a factor in dropout rates.
Looks like the gender split is closer to 57/43, but I found male specific stats — 8.5% of boys dropped out in 2010. Given that, you’d expect the dropout rate among boys with divorced parents to be 3.4%, seeing how it works out to ~21% of sons of divorced parents drop out! that’s about a 6 fold risk. Which does not, remotely take into account all the other factors involved in either divorce, or dropping out. For example, poverty definitely increases the dropout rate, and single parent families are more likely to live in poverty. No clue if remarriage, which has a lower poverty rate than single parenthood, also has a lower dropout rate.
Or would that count as having a father? Even though a stepfather’s presence doesn’t lower the incarceration rate? Pick one, either stepfathers are, or are not, fathers.
Wheee doggies! My brain needs that after All The Maths.
Well fuck, two threads infested with this troll? I’m gonna stick to the other one, marine biology is way more fun than this.
Go Argenti!
@WWTH and Isabelle – I knew I shouldn’t give Justin the satisfaction of wasting my time, but I was curious where those big, scary, accusatory numbers came from. Turns out their origina is a well-kept secret, with tantalizing clues left like gold dust glimmering along riverbed in the ravine. If only I had the heart, I could follow the trail of the loaded question, collect the bits and pieces of the lost straw feminist, wind my way along the path of circular reasoning, and then finally find The Mysterious City of Bullshit.
Yay Argenti!
@Flying Mouse
I really appreciate good rebuttals like what you and Argenti did. Its more constructive and effective than “grumble, grumble, grumble, what a load of crock, grumble, grumble, grumble”….Just getting older, crankier and less patient as time goes by here. lol @ ” If only I had the heart, I could follow the trail of the loaded question, collect the bits and pieces of the lost straw feminist, wind my way along the path of circular reasoning, and then finally find The Mysterious City of Bullshit.” This made me think of this:
I should try watching Labyrinth again. I remember trying to see it when I was kid and being scared to death of David Bowie.