Schlafly, hard hitting article...

[MYSONSDAD]

 

   

http://www.eagleforum.org/psr/2005/oct05/psroct05.html

Time to Defund Feminist Pork — the Hate-Men Law

If Congress is looking for a way to return to principles
of limited government and reduced federal spending, or to
help finance the expenses of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita
without raising taxes, a good place to start would be to
reject the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) sponsored by
Senator Joe Biden (D-DE). It's a political mystery why
Republicans continue to put a billion dollars a year of
taxpayers' money into the hands of radical feminists who
use it to preach their anti-marriage and anti-male
ideology, to promote divorce, to corrupt the family court
system, and to engage in anti-family political advocacy.

Accountability is supposed to be the watchword of the Bush
Administration, but there's been no accountability or
oversight for VAWA's ten years of spending many billions
of dollars. There is no evidence that VAWA has benefited
anyone except the radical feminists on its payroll. The
Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing on VAWA in
mid-July, but no critic of VAWA was permitted to speak.

VAWA was first passed in 1994 after the feminists floated
such bogus statistics as "a woman is beaten every 15
seconds" and "80% of fathers who seek custody of their
children fit the profile of a batterer." Remember the
Super Bowl Hoax, the ridiculous claim that "the biggest
day of the year for violence against women" is Super Bowl
Sunday (an assertion conclusively refuted by the scholarly
research of Dr. Christina Hoff Sommers)?

VAWA was passed when the Democrats controlled both Houses
of Congress and was signed by Bill Clinton in 1994. VAWA
is the biggest legislative achievement of NOW Legal
Defense and Education Fund (which has since changed its
name to Legal Momentum). This tax-exempt organization
brags on its website that it "was central to the crafting
and passage of VAWA 1994 and [its first reauthorization
in] 2000 [and] we are currently hard at work to secure
reauthorization and full funding for VAWA 2005."

VAWA assumes fluid definitions of domestic violence that
blur the difference between violent action and
run-of-the-mill marital tiffs and arguments. Definitions
of abuse can even include minor insults and irritations
that occur in most marriages or relationships.

A woman seeking help from a VAWA-funded center is not
offered any options except to leave her husband, divorce
him, accuse him of being a criminal, and have her sons
targeted as suspects in future crimes. VAWA ideology
rejects joint counseling, reconciliation, and saving
marriages.

VAWA refuses to recognize that alcohol and illegal drugs
are a cause of domestic violence, a peculiar assumption
contrary to all human experience. Numerous studies
demonstrate a high correlation between domestic violence
and alcohol or drug abuse.

VAWA forces Soviet-style psychological re-education on men
and teenage boys. The accused men are not given treatment
for real problems, but are assigned to classes where
feminists teach shame and guilt because of a vast male
conspiracy to subjugate women.

VAWA funds the re-education of judges and law enforcement
personnel to teach them feminist stereotypes about male
abusers and female victims, how to game the system to
empower women, and how to ride roughshod over the
constitutional rights of men.

VAWA encourages women to make false allegations and then
petition for full child custody and a denial of fathers'
rights to see their own children. VAWA promotes the
unrestrained use of restraining orders, which family
courts issue on the woman's say-so.

VAWA-funded centers engage in political advocacy for
feminist legislation such as the "must-arrest" laws even
if there is no sign of violence and even if the woman
doesn't want the man arrested, and the "no drop" laws
which mean the government must prosecute the man even if
the woman doesn't want him prosecuted.

It's time to stop VAWA from spending any more taxpayers'
money to promote family dissolution and fatherless
children.


VAWA Based on Radical Feminist Ideology
The groundwork for the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA)
was laid by Gloria Steinem's nonsense, such as "The
patriarchy requires violence or the subliminal threat of
violence in order to maintain itself" and Andrea Dworkin's
tirades of hate such as, "Under patriarchy, every woman's
son is her betrayer and also the inevitable rapist or
exploiter of another woman."

During the Clinton Administration, the feminists parlayed
their hysteria that domestic violence is a national
epidemic into the 1994 passage of the Violence Against
Women Act. It quickly became a gigantic gravy train of
taxpayers' money - known as feminist pork — that provided
jobs for radical feminists and empowered them to pursue
their goals at our expense.

We have always had laws against assault and battery in all
50 states, but that doesn't satisfy the feminists.
Feminist ideology teaches that domestic violence threatens
every woman because of our alleged patriarchal society and
is of epidemic proportions that demand an expensive
federal remedy.

Feminist ideology teaches that domestic violence is not a
matter of the misbehavior of some men who may be bad
individuals or drunks or psychologically troubled, but
that all men share the blame for domestic violence because
they benefit from a system that empowers men and keeps
women subservient. Feminists staged public tantrums this
year against the president of Harvard University because
he dared to discuss math-aptitude differences between men
and women. But VAWA is based on the unscientific notion
that all men are potentially if not actually abusive, and
that all women are victims or in danger of becoming
victims.

Since 1994, VAWA has dished out massive grant money that
validated a feminist network of organizations called the
National Coalition Against Domestic Violence. The
following passage, taken from the website of the Arizona
chapter, is typical of VAWA ideology:

"Using Male Privilege. As long as we as a culture accept
the principle and privilege of male dominance, men will
continue to be abusive. As long as we as a culture accept
and tolerate violence against women, men will continue to
be abusive. . . . All men benefit from the violence of
batterers. There is no man who has not enjoyed the male
privilege resulting from male domination reinforced by the
use of physical violence. . . . All women suffer as a
consequence of men's violence. Battering by individual men
keeps all women in line. While not every woman has
experienced violence, there is no woman in this society
who has not feared it, restricting her activities and her
freedom to avoid it. Women are always watchful knowing
that they may be the arbitrary victims of male violence."

Your tax dollars paid for a 1993 National Woman Abuse
Prevention Project pamphlet which stated that "society has
accepted the use of violence by men to control women's
behavior."

Not satisfied with getting a billion dollars a year from
the U.S. Treasury, 67 feminist and liberal organizations
supported a lawsuit to try to get private allegations of
domestic abuse heard in federal courts so they could
collect civil damages against men and institutions with
deep pockets. Fortunately, the Supreme Court, in Brzonkala
v. Morrison (2000), declared unconstitutional VAWA's
section that might have permitted that additional
mischief.

However, VAWA's billions of dollars continue to finance
the domestic-violence industry, and there is a deafening
silence from conservatives who pretend to be guardians
against federal takeovers of problems that are none of the
federal government's business. Local crimes and marital
disputes should not be subjects of federal law or
spending. Shame on Members of Congress who lack the
courage to stand up to feminist outrages.

Feminists have always made divorce a major component of
women's liberation and political freedom and they brag
about their role in passing the unilateral divorce laws
that swept the country during the 1970s. When I was
debating the proposed Equal Rights Amendment in the 1970s,
feminists were already propagating the lie that marriage
is an inherently abusive institution that makes wives
second-class citizens. Feminist dominance in the
universities assures that college textbooks portray
marriage as bleak and dreary for women. Assigned readings
are preoccupied with domestic violence, battering, abuse,
marital rape, and divorce.

For three decades, feminists have toyed with the question
that Maureen Dowd chose as the title of her new book, Are
Men Necessary? That's just the latest version of Gloria
Steinem's famous line, "A woman without a man is like a
fish without a bicycle." Currently, the media are
publicizing a ridiculous book called Raising Boys Without
Men: How Maverick Moms Are Creating the Next Generation of
Exceptional Men by Peggy Drexler.

The famous 1965 Daniel Patrick Moynihan report, The Negro
Family: The Case for National Action, warned that the rise
in single-mother families was not a harmless lifestyle
choice, but was unraveling "the basic socializing unit"
and causing high rates of delinquency, joblessness, school
failure and male alienation.

Moynihan was bitterly attacked for speaking what is now
universally recognized as the awful truth. Kay S.
Hymowitz, in the Manhattan Institute's August City Journal
writes that Moynihan's critics romanticized female-headed
families as a good thing. She described how the feminists,
who were fixated on notions of patriarchal oppression,
claimed that criticism of mother-headed households was
really an effort to deny women their independence, their
sexuality, or both.

VAWA gives the radical feminists a billion dollars a year
to pursue their anti-marriage, pro-divorce anti-male
activism and to expand mother-headed households even
further into our society.


What Is Domestic Violence?
Most people think of domestic violence as the sad or
tragic cases of men beating up women. Assault and battery
are obviously crimes that should be prosecuted and
punished. But domestic violence doesn't just mean criminal
conduct. The feminists have expanded the definition of
domestic violence to include an endless variety of
perfectly legal actions that are made punishable because
of who commits them.

VAWA's gender-specific title is pejorative and
sex-discriminatory: the Violence Against Women Act. VAWA
means violence by men against women. VAWA does not include
violence by women against women. VAWA's funds are
routinely denied to male victims of domestic violence. For
example, the Texas VAWA grant application makes its sexist
goal specific: "Grant funds may not be used for the
following: Services for programs that focus on children
and/or men."

Professor Martin Fiebert of California State University at
Long Beach compiled a bibliography of 170 scholarly
investigations, 134 empirical studies and 36 analyses
which demonstrate that women are almost as physically
abusive toward their partners as men. Studies by the
leading domestic violence researchers found that half of
all couple violence is mutual, and when only one partner
is physically abusive, it is as likely to be initiated by
the woman as the man.

The term domestic violence has morphed into domestic
abuse, a far broader term. Domestic abuse doesn't have to
be violent — it doesn't even have to be physical. The
feminists' mantra is, "You don't have to be beaten to be
abused."

A 1979 book called The Battered Woman by Lenore Walker is
credited with establishing feminist theory on domestic
violence and in originating what is called the "Battered
Woman Syndrome." This book is all hearsay without credible
statistical data. She admitted that her "research" and
generalizations were based on "a self-volunteered sample"
of women who contacted her after hearing her speeches or
interviews. Walker mentions the large study of domestic
violence undertaken by the National Institute of Mental
Health-financed survey of Straus, Gelles, and Steinmetz,
but fails to tell her readers that its final conclusion is
that women initiate violence in intimate relationships at
least as often as men do.

Nevertheless, Walker's unscientific book had a big impact
in spreading the propaganda that the "battered" are always
women, that "batterers" are always men, that "battering"
is not necessarily a violent or even a physical act. She
admitted that "Most of the women in this project describe
incidents involving psychological humiliation and verbal
harassment as their worst battering experiences, whether
or not they had been physically abused." While
psychological abuses can be hurtful, they are completely
subjective, and it is absurd to pretend that verbal abuse
is done only by men against women and not vice versa.

As an example of "battering," Walker defended the woman
who admitted she "began to assault Paul physically, before
he assaulted her," but "Paul had been battering her by
ignoring her and by working late, in order to move up the
corporate ladder." So, trying to do a better job of
supporting his family was construed as domestic abuse.
Like many feminists, Walker is not trying to improve
marriage but rather to destroy it. She urged that
"psychotherapists must encourage breaking the family
apart."

Domestic violence has become whatever the woman wants to
allege, with or without evidence. Examples of claims of
domestic abuse include: name-calling, constant
criticizing, insulting, belittling the victim, blaming the
victim for everything, ignoring or ridiculing the victim's
needs, jealousy and possessiveness, insults, put-downs,
gestures, facial expressions, looking in a certain way,
body postures, and controlling the money. A Justice
Department-funded document published by the National
Victim Assistance Academy stated a widely accepted
definition of "violence" that includes such non-criminal
acts as "degradation and humiliation" and "name-calling
and constant criticizing." The acts need not be illegal,
physical, violent, or threatening.

The domestic violence checklist typically provided by
family courts to women seeking divorce and/or sole child
custody asks them "if the other parent has ever done or
threatened to do any of the following": "blaming all
problems on you," "following you," "embarrassing, putting
you down," "interrupting your eating or sleeping."

Such actions are not illegal or criminal; no one has a
right not to be insulted. But in the weird world of the
domestic-violence industry, acts that are not criminal
between strangers become crimes between members of a
household, and such actions can be punished by depriving a
man of his father's rights, putting him under a
restraining order, and even jailing him. Family courts
mete out punishment based on gender and relationships
rather than on acts.

Creating a special category of domestic-violence offenses
is very much like legislating against hate crimes. Both
create a new level of crimes for which punishment is based
on who you are rather than what acts you commit, and the
"who" in the view of VAWA and the domestic-violence lobby
is always the husband and father.


VAWA: Feminist Weapon Against Men
When a woman appeals to a VAWA-funded shelter, she is
immediately told she must file for divorce and accuse her
husband/boy friend of domestic violence so that a
restraining order can be issued against him. That would be
rational if we were talking about life-or-limb
endangerment. But it makes no sense if abuse involves
merely run-of-the-mill disagreements for which mediation
and reconciliation could be better for all, especially the
children. No VAWA programs teach women how to deal with
family disputes without resorting to divorce. No VAWA
programs promote intact families or better male-female
relationships. VAWA has no provision for addressing
problems within the context of marriage.

What VAWA does is to promote divorce and provide women
with weapons, such as the restraining order and free legal
assistance, to get sole custody of their children.

The Illinois Bar Journal (June 2005) explained how women
use court-issued restraining orders as a tool for the
mother to get sole child custody and to bar the father
from visitation. In big type, the magazine proclaimed:
"Orders of protection are designed to prevent domestic
violence, but they can also become part of the
gamesmanship of divorce." The "game" is that mothers can
assert falsehoods or trivial complaints against the
father, and get a restraining order based on the
presumption that men are abusers of women.

The Final Report of the Child Custody and Visitation Focus
Group of the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court
Judges admitted that "usually judges are not required to
make a finding of domestic violence in civil protection
order cases." In other words, judges saddle fathers with
restraining orders on the wife's say-so without
investigation as to whether her claim is true or false,
and without accountability if it is false. If a hearing is
held, the woman merely needs to prove her claim by a
"preponderance of the evidence." That means she doesn't
have to prove the abuse happened, only that it is more
likely than not that it happened.

Elaine Epstein, former president of the Massachusetts
Women's Bar Association, admitted in 1993: "Everyone knows
that restraining orders and orders to vacate are granted
to virtually all who apply . . . In many [divorce] cases,
allegations of abuse are now used for tactical advantage."

The consequences of the issuance of restraining orders are
profound: the mother gets a sole-custody order, and the
father can be forbidden all contact with his children,
excluded from the family residence, and have his assets
and future income put under control of the family court. A
vast array of legal behavior is suddenly criminalized with
harsh penalties. The restraining order frequently
precludes the father from possessing a firearm for any
purpose, which means he loses his job if he is in the
service or law enforcement, or working for a company with
so-called zero tolerance policies.

Nevertheless, one study that evaluated the effectiveness
of restraining orders concluded that "they were
ineffective in stopping physical violence" and another
stated that "having a permanent order did not appear to
deter most types of abuse."

Billions of dollars have gushed forth from VAWA to the
states to finance private victim-advocacy organizations,
private domestic-violence coalitions, and the
indoctrination of judges, prosecutors and police in
feminist ideology. This tax-funded network is staffed by
radical feminists who teach the presumption of male and
father guilt. VAWA gives $75 million annually in grants to
encourage arrest and enforcement of protection orders, and
$55 million annually to provide free legal assistance to
victims (but not to the accused men).

Rep. Deborah Pryce (R-OH) said during the VAWA debate,
"Since 1995, states have passed more than 600 laws to
combat domestic violence, sexual assault, and stalking."
Congress should investigate how many of these laws were
the result of lobbying by VAWA employees using taxpayers'
money. VAWA employees are aggressive advocates of the
"must arrest" laws (that require the police to arrest one
person [you can guess which one] despite the trivial
nature of the alleged abuse and despite the woman's plea
that she doesn't want the man arrested), and the "no drop"
laws (that require prosecution even though reconciliation
has taken place). VAWA employees also lobby against the
shared-custody laws that respect father's rights. Studies
show these "must arrest" and "no drop" laws don't stop
domestic violence, but flood the courts with trivial cases
(about pushing, hair-pulling, etc.) alongside of real
cases of battering that deserve prosecution.

Congress should not be spending taxpayers' money to deal
with marital disputes, and courts should not deprive
children of their fathers on the feminists' presumption
that fathers are dangerous. The current VAWA
reauthorization bill not only continues an extraordinary
level of federal funding without accountability, but it
makes sure that future funding can go only to the same
feminist organizations that have been getting VAWA funds
in the past.

An estimated 40% of our nation's children are now living
in homes without their own father. Most social problems
are caused by kids who grow up in homes without their own
fathers: drug abuse, illicit sexual activity, unwed
pregnancies, youth suicide, high school dropouts,
runaways, and crime. Where have all the fathers gone? Some
men are irresponsible slobs, but no evidence exists that
nearly half of American children were voluntarily
abandoned by their own fathers; there must be other
explanations.

Congress should conduct an investigation to find out how
much of this fatherlessness is the result of bad
government policies and putting taxpayers' money in the
hands of a small radical group that is biased against
marriage and fathers. Congress should terminate funding
for the Violence Against Women Act - a hate-men law that
throws husbands and fathers out of their homes and
deprives them of their children after a very ordinary
squabble masquerading as domestic violence. VAWA is not
about stopping domestic violence - it is about empowering
radical feminists, using taxpayers' money, to change our
culture.

[Hawkeye]

Must be Halloween... spooks all over the place, except for this thread!

We must all think *outside the box* and DEMAND your congresspeople make this VAWA GENDER NEUTRAL!

Fact: Women HIT, GRAB and Abuse MEN

Fact: Men HIT, GRAB and Abuse WOMEN

Urge this men-biased, proposed law, be re-written to include the word:

EQUAL!!!!