Posted on 12/09/2001 10:26:26 AM PST by FoundationAndEmpire
Amid the war against terrorism both abroad and at home, as we send our servicemen overseas to defend our homes and country, Attorney General John Ashcroft can apparently find time to undermine our heroes here on the home front by continuing federal action to destroy their families and children.
The Attorney General and Health Secretary Tommy Thompson have just announced the creation of a federal “Toolkit to End Violence Against Women.” The Toolkit is a series of documents that rehash familiar but discredited hysteria about domestic violence and instruct mothers on how to use groundless accusations of domestic violence to end their marriages and remove children from their fathers.
Like myriad existing government programs, this will do nothing to “end violence against women.” What it will do is accelerate family destruction and increase violence against children.
Consider three long-established and undisputed facts:
* First, there is no epidemic of violence specifically against women. In 1999, the socialist-feminist magazine Mother Jones, hardly a bastion of male chauvinism, reported that “women report using violence in their relationships more often than men” and “wives hit their husbands at least as often as husbands hit their wives.” While the politicians of feminism, such as the National Organization for Women (NOW), refuse to acknowledge this truth, its theorists admit and even celebrate the fact. “Women are doing the battering,” writes feminist icon Betty Friedan, “as much or more than men."
In his book, “Women Can’t Hear What Men Don’t Say,” former NOW board member Warren Farrell provides a bibliography of studies going back a quarter-century, many by feminist scholars, establishing beyond doubt that domestic violence is an equal opportunity problem. Professor Martin Fiebert of California State University has compiled a similar bibliography of 117 studies.
* Second, the hysteria over domestic violence is largely geared toward one aim: removing children from their fathers. Donna Laframboise of the National Post investigated battered women’s shelters in the US and Canada and concluded they constituted “one stop divorce shops” whose primary purpose was not to shelter abused women but to promote divorce.
These shelters, many of which are federally funded, issue affidavits against fathers sight-unseen that are accepted without any corroborating evidence by judges eager (for their own bureaucratic reasons) to justify restraining orders against fathers and the removal of their children.
Feminists themselves contend that most domestic violence takes place within the context of “custody battles.” “All of this domestic violence industry is about trying to take children away from their fathers,” writes Irish Times columnist John Waters, who predicts:
“When they've taken away the fathers, they'll take away the mothers.”
* Third and most serious of all, the most dangerous environment for a child is the home of a single mother. Children in single-parent households are at much higher risk for physical violence and sexual molestation than those living in two-parent homes.
A British study found children are up to 33 times more likely to be abused when a live-in boyfriend or stepfather is present.
“Contrary to public perception,” write Patrick Fagan and Dorothy Hanks, “research shows that the most likely physical abuser of a young child will be that child’s mother, not a male in the household.”
Mothers accounted for 55% of child murders according to a 1994 Justice Department report (and fathers for a tiny percentage). As Maggie Gallagher writes in her 1996 book, “The Abolition of Marriage”:
“The person most likely to abuse a child physically is a single mother.
The person most likely to abuse a child sexually is the mother's boyfriend or second husband. . . . Divorce, though usually portrayed as a protection against domestic violence, is far more frequently a contributing cause.”
Adrienne Burgess, head of the British government’s Fathers Direct program, observes that “fathers have often played the protector role inside families.”
Domestic violence programs provide a gravy train of government funding that empowers the divorce industry to seize control of more children, with predictable results: more divorce, more single-mother homes, more abused children. In no other area has the current administration been so committed to continuing the failed policies of the last one.
Do we really believe that the preponderance of firefighters and police officers who died on September 11 were “batterers”?
More urgently, how long do we expect our servicemen to fight and die to protect their country and families when the government of their country seems bent on destroying their families?
If they will, that is a great idea. Some of they like to look the other way. Or how about giving the guy who has a protection order out against him his GUNS back!!! If the guys at the local level cannot be counted on, who is there to keep them in line? When they do deal with it, there is still the need for laws to back them up.
This is not the norm! If it is then the "norm" hasn't hit the mid-west yet!
The Battered Shelters are "One-stop divorce shops"! Your federal and/or local taxes going to promote divorce and not very equitable in terms of offering counseling or like services for men. Basically, all the paperwork and info to get the ball rolling and getting what you can, from the divorce! A real strong advocacy for divorce. And there's no check to see if these women are really being battered, often as not, the woman is more violent than the man. Also many are more interested in getting custody, and the support payments, than the actual welfare of the children.
I must have been in the wrong place! Again I think this is a generality! The shelters I am aware of, and those I have dealt with are not like that! There is counseling there, protection, food, shelter and clothing if you need it. I know several women and children who would be dead today, had those shelters not been available for them. From my experience the shelters do not supply the attorney. My ordeal was not a quick-stop thing, and was far from lucrative! If it were true that I could live off the gov't handouts and programs, then tell me where!! The child support and little help I did get temporarily was not a get rich scheme. It was poverty!!
I agree with you that there is not the same assistance available for men.
From my experience there IS a check and balance in the system to determine the battering. That system, at times, errs on the side of the abuser, leaving the abused unprotected. There is no perfect system in this world. Sometimes that error comes into play with the "he said - - she said" issue. Who is to say there was or wasn't sexual abuse if there are no Dr reports, or great photos that show physical signs? So who does the judge believe? The judge has a 50% chance of being right! What margin of error is there?
often as not, the woman is more violent than the man. Where do you get this from??????
As far a ministers being a good place to go....as long as they are educated in Domestic Violence and Abuse, they would be very helpful. If, however, they are not....they can be more damaging.
This was in the "left" coast. Perhaps it was the very center of the feminist movement, at the time, about 24 years ago, before any Rush Limbaugh.
I was working in partnership as the only midwives in this nest of feminazis. We did bloodwork for our prenatals through some doctors at the women's health center and taught some classes at the women's crisis center. The local ob/gyn's gave us some resistence, so these were the choices of my partner, when I came on the scene. Even then we were conservatives, pro-life, pro family, believed in God, ..., so this did not go down well with the local feminists. I recall one lady wanted us to do her homebirth. She was gay, "married" to another gal, having gotten pregnant in a one nighter with some undertaker, boy the stories you here in this profession. Anyway, we invited them to view some some pro-life movie being aired in the local city center. It was being protested by the feminists; we had our pictures taken and posted at the local center, something like wanted posters. Some feminist broke in on the movie and made rude jestures to our expecting couple. Later they received life-threatening calls. We were excluded from any future conferences or radio interviews about homebirthing and midwifery, only workers from the feminist center were interviewed or attended. This was all a bit much, considering we were the only midwifery group operating in a three county area.
To make a long story short, we saw from the inside the policies of the people running both of these centers. They were extremely hostile towards men. Local counselors, of the same ilk were extreme advocates of divorce as a first solution, and not just for battering. I personally watched how the local politics, funding and media were manipulated. I saw how the media excluded any voice other than the PC one to be heard. I saw many families broken by the workings of this funded machinery. Perhaps it was only a local phenomenon. But I suspect it played itself out in other areas, at that time, considering what I heard and saw coming out of Boston, Berkely and Santa Cruz, then.
I concede your doubt of the numbers or generalizations made, I would have to admit they need to be looked at. But consider this, most men will not admit nor complain about a woman physically attacking him, but this becomes serious business if this attack includes the use of knives, etc.
The numbers may not ever reflect the true picture and I maintain that the individuals I personally met were not above inflating numbers to achieve their agendas.
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