Tuesday, November 29, 2005

What's wrong with this picture?

It seems that Qantas (and Air New Zealand, and British Airways) are under fire for their policy of not seating unaccompanied minors next to men. Some have a slight sneaking suspicion that this just might be a tad discriminatory, others are a bit clearer on the concept. The excuse for this misandry is, of course, passenger safety.

But on the other hand, Qantas are apparently happy to, quite literally, put knives in the hands of their passengers and don't mind at all if you prattle away on your celular phone. The excuse is, of course, passenger convenience.

Oooookay....

Tuesday, November 15, 2005

The Missing Persons of Domestic Violence: Battered Men

Mark Rosenthal has begun a potentially very interesting web site, "Breaking the Science" in which he plans to present evidence of partisan political influences on the soft sciences. He has started with domestic violence. One of the links is to an article by Richard J. Gelles "The Missing Persons of Domestic Violence: Battered Men" who began researching domestic violence without specific regard to which gender beat on which, and discovered much that has been unpopular ever since. A few choice quotes:

"...it was explained to me that I must certainly be wrong, and even if women did hit men, it was always in self-defense and that women never used violence to coerce and control their partners, as did men." Never? Never!

"... the rate of abusive female-to-male violence was the same as the rate of abusive male-to-female violence. When my colleague Murray Straus presented these findings in 1977 at a conference on the subject of battered women, he was nearly hooted and booed from the stage." So much for scientific objectivity...

"every study among more than 30 describing some type of sample that is not self-selective ... has found a rate of assault by women on male partners that is about the same as the rate by men on female partners."

" It is reasonable to suppose both men and women underreport female-to-male partner violence in a crime survey, as they do not conceptualize such behavior as a crime." I've made this point myself

"None of the nearly billion dollars of funding from this act (VAWA) is directed towards male victims. Some "Requests for Proposals" from the U.S. Justice Department specifically state that research on male victims or programs for male victims will not even be reviewed, let alone funded." And VAWA is suppposed to be non-gender-specific.

"Men ... who retain their children in order to try to protect them from abusive mothers, often find themselves arrested for "child kidnapping."" Imagine doing that to an abused wife fleeing with her kids...

"The frustration men experience often bursts forth in rather remarkable obstreperous behavior at conferences, meetings, and forums on domestic violence. Such outbursts are almost immediately turned against the men by explaining that this behavior proves the men are not victims but are "perps."" Yeah, men should be able to control themselves no matter how badly they're treated, huh?

For their pain in making this research, Gelles and his colleagues have and continue to pay severely:

"The response to our finding that the rate of female-to-male family violence was equal to the rate of male-to-female violence not only produced heated scholarly criticism, but intense and long-lasting personal attacks. All three of us received death threats. Bomb threats were phoned in ... Suzanne received the brunt of the attacks - individuals wrote and called her university urging that she be denied tenure; calls were made and letters were written to government agencies urging that her grant funding be rescinded. All three of us became "non persons" ... Advocacy literature and feminist writing would cite our research, but not attribute it to us. Librarians publicly stated they would not order or shelve our books."

"it was alleged that Murray had abused his wife. This is a rather typical critique in the field of family violence - men whose research results are contrary to political correctness are labeled "perps.""

I'm sorry, but would someone please explain to me who was it who was supposed to be the abuser...?

Books that don't exist

I read an unfavorable review of "Are Men Necessary" and started poking around a little on Amazon.com and without any difficulty found a plethora of female-positive, male-negative books. Of course, I have seen this before, but then I remembered my "gender-switch" game and decided to apply it to some of them. The results are below, together with the links to the books from which they are derived (don't worry, I make no money from these links). Perhaps this will stimulate some thought - if you saw such titles in a bookshop, what would you think?

Are Women Necessary?

Let's Face It, Women Are $$#%\›$: What Men Can Do About It

Bastard: In Praise of Difficult Men

The Natural Superiority of Men

Ditch That Bitch: Dealing With Women Who Control and Hurt Men

Why Does She Do That?: Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Women

No Visible Wounds: Identifying Non-Physical Abuse of Men by Their Women

Anger Busting 101: The New ABC's for Angry Women & the Men Who Love Them

How to Spot a Dangerous Woman Before You Get Involved

When Women Batter Men: New Insights into Ending Abusive Relationships

Nasty Women (actually, this one really does exist)

Christian Women Who Hate Men

Women Who Hate Men and the Men Who Love Them

Keeping the Faith: Guidance for Christian Men Facing Abuse

Feminist Perspectives of Husband Abuse

Rethinking Violence against Men

Men and Female Violence: The Visions and Struggles of the Battered Men's Movement

Lifelines: Men, Female Violence, and Personal Safety

Battered Men and Feminist Lawmaking

Battered Men in the Courtroom: The Power of Judicial Responses

Battering of Men: The Failure of Intervention and the Case for Prevention

Surviving Domestic Violence: Voices of Men Who Broke Free

When the Woman You Love Treats You Like the Man She Hates: How to Deal With Abusive Behavior from Those You Love the Most

Intervention for Women Who Batter: An Ecological Approach

Diary of a Crack Addict's Husband

When Battered Men Kill

Convicted Survivors: The Imprisonment of Battered Men Who Kill

Fighting Back: A Battered Man's Desperate Struggle to Survive

Battered Man

Shattered Dreams: An Abused Husband's Escape to Freedom

Dear Jane: Love Letters and Lessons Learned from the Husband of an Alcoholic

The Ones Who Got away: Men Who Left Abusive Partners


It is interesting that, having made this list and the gender switches, I am concerned that some visitors to this site may get the wrong idea, especially after I leave the blatantly misandrist (and now here misogynist) titles behind and start getting into the serious books on abuse. I fear that some might think that I am trying to deny that there abused women and abusive men out there. If you think that, then you have missed my point completely and I suggest you reconsider. If, on the other hand, you think that I am being a pathetic, whiny male in suggesting these titles, consider then your attitude towards the women who buy the real titles to which they are linked and, I respectfully suggest, ask yourself why the difference?

Sunday, November 13, 2005

Dating as hostage taking?

There's something quite unaccountably funny about this idea:

"an ex-police negotiator [...] felt that his experiences dealing with crazed homicidal hostage takers might prove useful when it came to romancing the ladies."

"part of his job as a police negotiator was luring the more crazed hostage takers to the window so that they could be shot down in a hail of bullets. Well, haven't we all had dates like that?"

Moreover, the "book sold out on Amazon on the first day".

My, but what tangled webs we weave...

Parthenogenesis here we come.

Here's something a little different, the prospect reproduction without women. I'm used to the idea of of the superfluousness of men, but for their sperm (and money, let's not forget what's really important), but I have to admit I'm less familiar with the thought of superfluous women, but for their wombs.

All these various advances of reproductive technological are all very exciting for many, but I wonder that so many seem not to think beyond the birth of a healthy child. This article quotes Allan Pacey: ''There are safety concerns. This is genetic material and if you create a new life you have to know it is properly formed and imprinted." I have no idea what "imprinted" means, and I agree that proper formation is probably a good idea, but at what point does "genetic material" become a child? Is that the point at which the responsibility of the doctors & technologists expires? Parents who want to adopt usually have to go through some pretty serious vetting. Do those who would have a child through technological intervention?

It's also odd that we talk in terms of "creating" a new life. Isn't that what Frankenstein did? No, it isn't, really, he took existing material and, er, animated it. But then, so are these geneticists...

(Why is this stuff always in the UK press?)

'I wasn't prepared for the grief I feel after the death of my ex-husband'

Acrimonious divorcing couples could learn a lot from this story.
.

Thursday, November 10, 2005

George Rolph, The Anatomy of Abuse

A four-star article on abuse from George Rolph.

Some excerpts (my emphasis):

Abusers are often deeply selfish individuals who live in a “me me” world where only their own feelings, needs and desires are important. When the abuser expresses love for the victim it is often not because they feel that love, it is often because they want something from the victim that threats will not get them.


Some abusers will abuse others by proxy and this seems to be a predominantly female trait. ... men who have been beaten up by other men when their abusive female partner has told another man that her victim had expressed a desire to sleep with the attackers infant child ... making false allegations to family members or the state authorities in order to have someone else attack or arrest the victim. ... to withhold contact unreasonably from a parent with his/her child. In such a case, the abuser is using the state apparatus to continue abuse after the relationship has ended. This constitutes abuse of the child concerned and the adult denied contact. I also consider false rape allegations that can utterly destroy a persons life to be abusive behaviour that is all too often unpunished by the state.



Misogyny ... criticising female behaviour is not the same as hating females. An important distinction needs to be made between the two for any rational debate on these issues to succeed.

Child maltreatment in the US

The US Dept of Health and Human Resources publishes an annual report on the maltreatment of children. Here are the latest 3 years' worth: 2001, 2002, 2003.

In all three years, the perpetrator of abuse was twice as likely or more to be the mother acting alone than the father acting alone.

Should I Apologize For Being Angry?

An interesting post on Blogwonks about being angry over unjust treatment. Should one apologize for being angry in these cases? No, those who are not angry, on the other hand, should be ashamed.

An excerpt (my emphasis):

There is a huge and growing roll of fallen men who have given their very lives because they have suffered massive personal and/or shared damage to their families, their finances and their reputations...Men who, like my own father, have placed shotguns in their mouths. Men who have burned themselves to death in protests. Men who have jumped off bridges. Men who have starved themselves in hunger strikes. Men who have lost their sanity...Men who have gassed themselves in cars. Men stripped of their families, children and reputations...Men who have watched helplessly as crippling child support payments have destroyed their ability to earn or keep a business running. Men who have been sent to jail for “waving” at their children in a passing car and so found themselves in breach of a “no contact order.” Men trapped in horrifying and savagely abusive relationships they cannot escape from or find any help to manage, because the system set up by women, for women, will not allow them in. Men being forced to pay child support for children they did not father... Just how damn patient do they want us to be?

Wednesday, November 09, 2005

The knife, the murder weapon of choice for the British wife

Multiple recurring themes in one today. The murder modus operandi for UK wives is clearly a knife to the chest, and the husbands just keep on forgiving. In the latest case, she'd even tried it twice before and not spent any time "at Her Majesty's Pleasure". Keep it up girls! stick it to 'im!

"If" by Rudyard Kipling

This spoke to me of my situation:


If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you
But make allowance for their doubting too,
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream--and not make dreams your master,
If you can think--and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it all on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on!"

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings--nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much,
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And--which is more--you'll be a Man, my son!

Tuesday, November 08, 2005

Biased? The BBC? Nawww...

Hot on the heels of my post on fathers getting a break from the BBC, I find two articles on cancer drugs being withheld from patients in the UK because they're too expensive. This one headlined all of the world edition News Front Page, the UK News Front Page and the England Section. This one was buried in the Scotland section. Can you spot the central difference?

Fathers and testosterone.

Well, the BBC web site actually published something moderately favorable to fathers. It seems that fathers have significantly lower testosterone levels - "the lower levels of testosterone in fathers may reflect both their withdrawal from the competitive arena and their involvement in paternal care."

But "A UK expert said the fall was nature's way of ensuring men behaved in a "civilised" and non-aggressive way around newborn offspring.", so if you're not a father, you're still an animal who can't be trusted to behave himself. Sigh.

Nevertheless, perhaps this might add some weight to the idea that being a father has some significance and consequences for a man although it appalls me that this has to be pointed out at all.

Thursday, November 03, 2005

"It was just a silly row"

According to the BBC web site, two male TV stars have been belted by women today. Both women were arrested and freed without charge. What got to me was the quote from the one who had split her husband's lip (a newspaper editor no less): "It was just a silly row which got out of hand."

You committed domestic violence you stupid cow! How about a little contrition, huh? Sheesh.

Think about it, "it was just a silly row that got out of hand". How many men would that excuse having split their wive's lips? Imagine if, let's say, Tom Cruise belted his beau and said that. Imagine, ladies who might be reading this, if you were nursing a nice fat bruise and your significant other had said that. Imagine, men who might be reading this, trying to get away with blatting your woman good and hard then excusing yourself with "it was just a silly row".

Can you say "double standard"? I knew you could.

Wednesday, November 02, 2005

Nymphomania and feminism's most despicable accomplishment

Who was it who said something like: "A young man who's not a liberal has no heart, and old man who's not a conservative has no sense"?

I have never thought of myself as a republican or conservative or in any sense of "right of center", but increasingly I find myself reading conservative views with a nodding head. Twice in two days, Mens Activism has linked to Townhall.com articles that sit well with me:

Mike S. Adams has a lovely, swingeing go at some gender PC nutcase who willfully misreads one of his articles to accuse him of slandering and therefore harrassing women at UNC - amongst other idiocies, she claims he called them nymphomaniacs, he didn't. I do hope he follows through with his threat of a formal counter-complaint.

And Kathleen Parker puts it succinctly when she says:

"Men haven't turned away from smart, successful women because they're smart and successful. More likely they've turned away because the feminist movement that encouraged women to be smart and successful also encouraged them to be hostile and demeaning to men.

Whatever was wrong, men did it. During the past 30 years, they've been variously characterized as male chauvinist pigs, deadbeat dads or knuckle-dragging abusers who beat their wives on Super Bowl Sunday. At the same time women wanted men to be wage earners, they also wanted them to act like girlfriends: to time their contractions, feed and diaper the baby, and go antiquing.

And then, when whatshisname inevitably lapsed into guy-ness, women wanted him to disappear. If children were involved, women got custody and men got an invoice. The eradication of men and fathers from children's lives has been feminism's most despicable accomplishment. Half of all children will sleep tonight in a home where their father does not live."


(My emphasis added.)

I couldn't have put it better myself, "feminism's most despicable accomplishment". Hmmm. Maybe I am drifting right here, after all, a lot of good it did me to support the other side...

Tuesday, November 01, 2005

Every 35 minutes, a man in the US commits suicide as a result of divorce.

Click here.

The same data show that suicide rates among women are not affected by divorce.

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