More Family Violence Bullshit
This article highlights problems in the way our media and feminist groups approach family violence.
Firstly, the spokespeople from Women’s Refuge and feminist academia bemoaned the claimed reduction in arrests and prosecutions even though the number of family violence ‘investigations’ and ‘offences’ were claimed to have increased. The police explained that they are using more of a ‘whole of whanau’ approach with alternatives to arresting and charging ‘perpetrators’. The feminists seem more interested in punishing men than reducing family violence.
Secondly, one of the key problems in the way feminist groups approach family violence is their simplistic categorization of parties into ‘perpetrator’ and ‘victim’. Much independent (as opposed to feminist advocacy) research has made it clear that the majority of partner violence involves both parties using various forms of violence towards each other during conflicts. The children may be purely victims but the adults are usually both victim and perpetrator. Police choice about which adult party to prosecute or to order out of the house is usually sexist against the man regardless of the actual events and even when he is the only one with injuries.
Thirdly, the claimed increase or at least poor reduction in family violence might suggest that the approaches pushed by male-blaming feminists over many decades are ineffective in reducing the problem. Those feminists don’t acknowledge that but simply continue asking for more money to do more of what they can’t show is working. Good on police for trying another approach. However, police insistence on maintaining the contrived categorization of parties into ‘perpetrators’ and ‘victims’ will reduce the success of their trial approach.
Fourth, the language used in discussions and by the journalists often amounts to manipulative propaganda. The headline of this article claims “Family violence is up…” and the first sentence claims “New Zealand’s family violence problem is only getting worse…”. These claims are conjecture. All we know is that calls to police regarding family conflict have increased. The article later reports Police Superintendent Tibbott gave two reasons for the apparent statistical increase, one that police now investigate every call-out and two that people appear to phone police more readily (as one would expect given all the encouragement to do so through publicity over recent years).
Professor Janet Fanslow’s reported opinion was that if police were more successful in getting crimes reported, there should be more prosecutions. But the claim that ‘more crimes’ are being reported is propaganda. Calls made to police during family conflict don’t necessarily mean crimes are being reported. Some calls are made by women to win their argument or to punish men (e.g.) for disagreeing with the woman’s wishes or for coming home drunk. Other calls are made because some family member believes a man’s non-violent behaviour (such as verbally expressing anger) amounts to violence or may lead to violence, under our fashionable ideology that sees men’s expression of anger as dangerous and unacceptable but women’s expression of anger as justified and ’empowerment’.
Fifth, Professor Fanslow and no doubt the other feminist interviewees like the idea of forcing ‘perpetrators’ (read ‘men’) into programs to change their behaviour. Many of these programs are feminist indoctrination courses and their ability to change future behaviour is poorly assessed. Forcing people into treatment programs of any kind is known to lack effective outcomes and in New Zealand we consider forced treatment to be unethical when done in other countries or to groups other than men.
Sixth, there was no attempt to interview any men’s movement spokesperson or representative of people (read ‘men”) who have been treated by police as perpetrators, even though the article was about the treatment of the mainly men who are routinely categorized as perpetrators. This lack of balance amounts to anti-male sexism and is business as usual for our biased media.
Finally, the picture accompanying the article is telling. These articles never depict a woman bashing her partner with a frying pan, stabbing him with a knife or stiletto heel, haranguing him incessantly even when he has made a clear request to stop, blocking his exit from a room when he has made it clear he needs to leave to calm down, or any of the other common ways that women commit family violence.
Here here….and what of the massive rise, purported to be an 88% rise, of Acc claims for people with mental problems due to supposed violence , reported to be brought on by the ‘me too’ wave of recent times, acc was said to be asking councellers to use their interns in order to help with the increasing back log of victims.
I agree also that is seems that it is Women commenting more and more on these types of issues.
..and as for using such words as perpetrator and victims, once again assuming innocence and guilt.
Comment by mama — Fri 17th August 2018 @ 4:20 pm
Brilliant summation by the Ministry of Men’s Affairs. Well done.
The obvious reason for the rising reports and the drop in prosecutions could be because more women are being reported for their violence. And the police prefer a softer approach.
The other obvious thing is that domestic violence is not actually black in white in severity. Introducing the criminal justice system very often makes everything worse. It is an extremely blunt instrument. This doesn’t fit with feminist theory but they will quickly change their tune if more mothers were prosecuted for child abuse.
The reality is that, usually it is 2 way relationship violence and in the majority of cases making just one party a criminal is counter-productive in the long run.
Taking a whole family approach and impressing upon everyone that there are better ways of dealing with life frustrations is a far more child friendly approach and much more likely to produce better outcomes.
I have a friend who works in this field. He tells me that it is often obvious that the children should not be with the mother or either parent but they know that often any other option is probably going to be even worse in the long run.
We have to address some of the causes. Being poor is not a valid cause.
In Australia there was a major study recently and the report showed that domestic violence was out of proportion in Aboriginal Communities and other specific suburbs around the country. So they know where resources should be focused but resources are spread evenly for political reasons and the problems in these areas are not confronted. It found that violence was committed by both men and women. It also found that men’s violence tended to be due to stress and frustration and then failing to find a better outlet.
Unfortunately all the keys to addressing these issues were not just glossed over by the media and feminists but they actually damned people who tried to bring these points to the public’s attention.
As an example, a man might be struggling to make ends meet, He might be feeling disenfranchised and devalued from society in general, his partner might be verbally abusing him and the children. She will even hit him. Then he retaliates in the heat of the moment, but being stronger and full of anger he does more damage. Criminalising him and denying him his children only makes his disenfranchisement greater. Now the woman is solo with the kids. She tends to neglect them and she soon has a “bad boy” boyfriend who ends up seriously abusing the children. The child grows up without a father and thus at far greater risk of a whole host of negative outcomes. Soon the child is now a pregnant teen and the cycle is about to repeat itself all over again.
The problem is that the solution to all this is the sort of solution that conservatives and Christians promote. Which is at odds with the ruling ideology and so it can’t be allowed to even be discussed. And so the cycle continues.
Comment by Vman — Fri 17th August 2018 @ 5:58 pm
..the above last two paragraphs remind me of South Auckland, from where we reside.
For in our area we have held, and may still hold, the greatest statistics for Government funded mothers… to name but one I am sure.
It seems to me to look after the children, which it seems is increasingly becoming a governmental problem, is the most important thing, this said, it should be that funding of a child needs refined, a more controlled approach to both spending (budgeting) and actual care of a child. To earn the solo parent benefit could include training and even relationship training, this also would build a picture of the mother.
They said on the news tonight that the government is going back to the future with a new ‘ministry of works’ style government portfolio, to help the building industry see this next phase through.
I say cool, love to see more of this stuff, I say recruit all expert mothers to become part time teachers, , or how about men being recruited to help pay their child support by doing trade classes in schools…
Comment by mama — Fri 17th August 2018 @ 7:18 pm
mama @3: Or how about protecting fathers’ right to be full and equal parents, and thereby scrapping so-called ‘child support’ for most?
Comment by Ministry of Men's Affairs — Fri 17th August 2018 @ 7:30 pm
I do not think you are being sarcastic.. but whether you are or not… hell yeah.. but to digress, I know it is fantastical but they say common sense prevails right?
Comment by mama — Fri 17th August 2018 @ 7:53 pm
@5: Yes, fair enough to suggest an improvement but when it’s to a system that continues its unethical foundations then it can end up being simply another form of the same injustice.
Comment by Ministry of Men's Affairs — Sat 18th August 2018 @ 10:50 am
Regardless of the facts in this story
one might consider this a disturbing direction in the domestic violence war zone.
Comment by Evan Myers — Tue 28th August 2018 @ 8:41 am
So he’s violent. Pretty fair cliam based on her side of the story.
But the orders applied when he was drunk. Sounds funny.
She only lets him see the kids in her presence. Sounds controlling.
Makes the orders near impossible to enforce.
Despite this she gets pregnant, again, to him. Come here, I love you, I hate you, go away, repeat, repeat….
Makes orders near impossible to enforce.
A successful law suit will make exaggerated cliams become severe breaches.
A successful law suit will make false cliams become true cliams.
The police will protect themselves and ignore justice.
Comment by DJ Ward — Tue 28th August 2018 @ 9:07 am