Blind Eyes and Deaf Ears

[Brent]

Blind Eyes and Deaf Ears

December 23, 2003
by Richard L. Davis


Fundamental feminists believe that women are the victims of domestic violence because the patriarchy has caused men in general to be sexist misogynists. They believe men use violence against women to oppress and subjugate all women. And there are no empirical facts, scientific data, academic studies, college text books, or scholarly treaties that can make them change their mind.  They believe that they are absolutely right, everyone else is absolutely wrong. They are proud of the beliefs they hold and they listen to no one to the contrary.

Casting reason and logic to the winds, the majority of domestic violence advocates have accepted and adopted this fundamental feminist ideological belief. They "believe," because it is what "they see" because of the histories of their own abuse or their passion for their avocation, that domestic violence "is" violence against women. They have come to believe that the violence women suffer from is singularly or primarily caused by patriarchal sexism and the power and control that men want to exhibit over women.

Holding these myopic fundamental feminist ideologies causes many domestic violence advocates, who honestly attempt to view domestic violence through an unbiased lens, to have preconceived perception of what reality is supposed to be. That reality is that "men are offenders and women their victims."

The fundamental feminist philosophy does not allow these advocates to accept the reality of male victims. Their assumption of what is supposed to be real creates their reality. If men are victims and women offenders, the foundation of fundamental feminism will crumble. Monotheism demands and requires only one God. The fundamental feminist domestic violence philosophy demands and requires only one victim (female) and one offender (male).  

Esta Soler is the president and founder of what she has titled the, Family Violence Prevention Fund //www.endabuse.org. How and why she thinks her organization really is concerned with family violence is beyond me. She and her organization are classic examples of fundamental feminism.

Soler writes in, Promoting Prevention, Targeting Teens: An Emerging Agenda to Reduce Domestic Violence (PPTT) http://endabuse.org/field/PromotingPrevention1003.pdf

that, "Our greatest hope is that this document will inform, enlighten and inspire those of us who work – today and in the future – to build a society in which all women and children can live free of violence." SOLER CAN NOT SEE MEN AS VICTIMS

She is unable to see men as victims of intimate partner abuse because as a fundamental feminist she views intimate partner violence as demonic men/angelic women. And now she wants to blame men and the patriarchy for teen dating violence.

How can she title her organization Family [emphasis added] Violence Prevention Fund when her organization erases and excludes any mention of men as victims or women as offenders? How is it that our public policy makers can not see the overt bias this organization has against men? Is there not a single member of either the Federal House of Representatives or Senate that has a clue?

The author of the PPTT, Ann Rosewater, notes that there is a Massachusetts study that reports about one in five female public high school students has experienced physical and/or sexual dating violence. The study she refers to is the 1999 Massachusetts Youth Risk Behavior Survey http://www.doe.mass.edu/hssss/yrbs99/letter.html . She makes no mention of Massachusetts public school boys.

This Massachusetts survey documents that 18 percent of females and 7 percent of males report they were hurt physically or sexually by a date or someone they were going out with. Also 16 percent of females and 6 percent of males report that someone had sexual contact with them against their will. Rosewater is either unconcerned or unaware that public high school boys can be victims. It appears that is not the only data she ignores or is unaware of.

Rosewater writes in the typical fundamental feminist stereotypical manner, that boys act masculine and tough and girls are of course passive and are "good girls." The author also notes that the Safe Dates intervention program serving young teens in North Carolina is an excellent program. Rosewater must not be aware that Safe Dates does not agree with her "bad boys – good girls" theory which appears to be a knockoff of fundamental feminisms "demonic men/angelic women."  

Rosewater must be unaware that the founder of the Safe Dates intervention program Professor Vangie Foshee documents that adolescent "good girls" perpetrate as much "dating violence" as the "bad boys." Perhaps Soler and Rosewater are not aware that a central philosophy of Safe Dates is that when you work with adolescents you must consider girls and boys as equal offenders.

Foshee documents that studies consistently show that girls and boys perpetrate equal levels of nonsexual violence, even when controlling for self-defense and the seriousness of the abuse. One must assume this behavior is by the "good girls" is not sexist or misogynist's driven.

And of course there is no mention of the most common physical assault in our home - spanking. Studies document that women spank their children more often than men. Nor is there any mention that more women physically assault their children than men. Do Soler and Rosewater really think that these physically assaults of children by women have nothing to do with family violence?  

Fundamental feminism and organizations similar to the Family Violence Prevention Fund do not allow for the truth to be told. I understand the agenda of people like Soler. She is more concerned with women's rights than victim's rights and so she manipulates the truth.  

However, what I do not understand is how or why so may professionals and our public policy makers do not know or do not want to see that these "demonic men – angelic women" domestic violence agencies are manipulating them?

It is impossible for Soler to want to build a society in which all women, men and children can live free of violence, because she truly believes that men are demonic and women angelic. However, where are our public policy makers who we have elected to represent all of us, regardless of gender?

Is there not a single public policy maker who has read any of the findings from the National Violence Against Women Survey (NVAWS) http://www.ncjrs.org/pdffiles1/nij/183781.pdf. Those findings document that 40% of women and 53.8% of men report they were physically assaulted by a parent, stepparent, or other adult caretaker as a child. NVAWS estimates that 1.9 million women and 3.2 million men are physically assaulted annually. The NVAWS documents the annual rate of intimate partner assaults was 44.2 per 1,000 women and 31.5 per 1,000 men.

The National Research Council (NRC), Advancing the Federal Research Agenda on Violence Against Women, in its report to Congress has concluded that there is no evidence that documents violence between intimates is dramatically different from violence in general http://books.nap.edu/catalog/10849.html.  

The NRC report to congress concludes that while there are some distinctions in the context and consequences of the violence, the patterns of behavior that cause the violence are little different from violence in general.

The NRC report to congress concludes that much of the violence women perpetrate can not and should not be dismissed as defensive. The majority of the perpetrators of domestic violence have histories of violence and behavioral problems both inside and outside of intimate relationships.

What information is it that the members of congress seem to be missing that allows them to continue to be manipulated by these fundamental feminist organizations? Is there not a single person in congress that has read the evidence presented to them from the studies they voted to fund?

How can it be that an organization that it is supposedly concerned with FAMILY violence continues to proffer its "demonic men/angelic women" philosophy and each and every member of congress continues to swallow it hook, line and sinker?

Richard L. Davis



[font size=-2]Richard L. Davis served in the United States Marine Corps from 1960 to 1964. He is a retired lieutenant from the Brockton, Massachusetts police department. He has a graduate degree in criminal justice from Anna Maria College and another in liberal arts from Harvard University. He has a BA from Bridgewater State College in History and he minored in secondary education. He is a member of the International Honor Society of Historians and an instructor of Criminology, Group Violence and Terrorism, Criminal Justice and Domestic Violence at Quincy College in Plymouth, MA.

He is a past president of the Community Center for Non-Violence in New Bedford, Massachusetts and the vice president for Family Nonviolence, Inc. //www.familynonviolence.com in Fairhaven, MA. He is an independent consultant for criminal justice agencies concerning policies, procedures, and programs concerning domestic violence. He is the author of Domestic Violence: Facts and Fallacies by Praeger publishers and has written numerous articles for newspapers, journals, and magazines concerning the issue of domestic violence. He has columns concerning domestic violence at //www.policeone.com, and //www.nycop.com, is a distance learner instructor in Introduction to Criminal Justice and Domestic Violence for the Online Police Academy and has a website at //www.policewriter.com.  

He and Kim Eyer have a domestic violence website The Cop and the Survivor at http://www.rhiannon3.net/cs/. He lives in Plymouth, Massachusetts with his wife and the two youngest of five children. He experienced domestic violence professionally for 21 years as a police officer and personally as a child and as an adult. In his retirement he continues to use his education, experience, and training to help the children, women, and men who have had to endure violence from those who profess to love them. He may be reached at [email protected]. [/font]

[StPaulieGirl]

Maybe it's too much pressure from the holidays, nevermind babysitting my son's best friend for a few days, but this article doesn't make any sense.

Good girls and bad boys.  What a load of tripe.  Try "hormones".  Most of the time a healthy female will be subliminally attracted to a "bad boy".  This is genetic.  It has to do with the ancient practice of insuring the survival of one's offspring.  Plus the sex is probably pretty great.

Listen, and I've given this lecture to my older girls when they started dating.  Guys just want one thing, so don't lead them on, then cut them off.  Don't give me any crap about that statement, because you know it's true.  16 yr old boys are nothing but hormones.  It's normal.  I have a 16 yr old boy, and it's kind of uncomfortable for me to do the birds and the bees lecture.  But I have to.  

God designed the sex act to feel good, thereby populating the earth.  What the hell, feminists suck.