The National Coalition Against Domestic Violence (NCADV) is celebrating its 25th anniversary this year. Its website http://www.ncadv.org/ proclaims it is the only national organization providing a voice for local domestic violence programs [emphasis added] and battered women. NCADV claims that their work demonstrates NCADV commitment to include survivors of domestic violence in the process of influencing policy and legislation at the national level. In fact, NCADV has a long history of excluding many domestic violence victims.
NCADV does influence policy and legislation at the national level. However, NCADV works only to provide assistance to female victims of domestic violence. NCADV does not and can not accept that men are domestic violence victims because NCADV proffers that domestic violence is caused by men because they are men. NCADV believes that men objectify women, do not see women as a people, do not respect women as a group, and contemporary mores and norms cause men in general to view women as property or sexual objects.
Their website publicly and proudly proclaims, although they know it is not a fact, that “EVERY 15 SECOND A WOMAN IS BATTERED.” For just a $1.00 you can buy a NCADV bumper sticker that claims this to be a ‘FACT.” In fact, this is one of the myths they unethically use to influence public policy.
Most researchers and professionals agree that a “battered victim” suffers from what is labeled by Michael P. Johnson as “intimate terrorism.” A “battered victim” is a victim whose life is thoroughly, extensively, and completely controlled by a batterer and the victim’s behavior is purposely altered to suit the batterer’s desires while they live in a spousal/familial styled relationship. The batterer systematically uses physical violence, economic subordination, threats, isolation, and a variety of other behavioral controlling tactics to ensure the victim does what the batterer desires.
Thus it is generally accepted by the vast majority of professionals that “battering” is when one person uses physical and/or psychological power and economic manipulation with the intent to control or alter another person’s behavior against their will.
What is a fact is that the vast majority of studies used by the NCADV and other women’s rights movement to report the number of “battered victim” do not document what is generally accept by most professionals to meet the “battered victim” criteria.
The vast majority studies or surveys employ a form of the Conflict Tactics Scale (CTS) developed by University of New Hampshire in 1971. CTS is the most common measure of non-sexual family violence.
The CTS is not designed to measure in any rational context the reason or motivation for the behavior of either abuser or victim or nor does it document the longevity or the severity of abuse. NCADV knows that the CTS does not document if a victim is “battered.”
In fact, NCADV and most domestic violence agencies know full well that the CTS scale does document that men and women abuse each other at approximately the same rate. That fact is not on any of their bumper stickers.
It was women’s rights groups who first manipulated the CTS scale to inflate the number of “battered women.” And they continue to only when and where it serves their particular purpose. And strangely enough, it is these very same women’s rights groups who denounce the CTS because it also documents that there is asymmetry concerning domestic violence victims and abusers. The CTS does not in any manner shape or form document “battered victims.”
It is this misuse of the CTS by NCADV and others in the women’s rights movement that brought the question of domestic violence symmetry to the attention of men’s rights groups. NCADV knows full well that CTS can be used to document that a man is a victim of domestic violence every 15 seconds.
However, few in the electronic or print media asks “why the lie.” Is it moral and ethical for NCADV to sell a bumper sticker and influence public policy with a fact that NCADV knows full well is not the truth?
There are few who deny that women are “battered victims” at a rate considerably higher than men. There is no question that battered victims now receive the assistance they did not receive 25 years ago. And the lower down the socioeconomic and educational ladder these victims are, the more help they need. And there is no question that NCADV played and continues to play an important role in providing that assistance to women.
There is also no question that NCADV intentionally excludes male victims. They do so because they believe that the patriarchy has caused men in general to abuse women in particular. Rather than being open, honest, positive and inclusive, NCADV demonstrates a closed mind, it purposely distorts facts and it is negative towards male victims and works exclusively for female victims.
NCADV knows only too well that the CTS does not document that all victims of domestic violence are “battered” victims. Why does NCADV continue to distort the truth with their “EVERY 15 SECONDS A WOMAN IS BATTERED,” myth? What happened to ethics, honor, morality, and the truth? And should not all victims of “domestic violence,” regardless of age or gender, be recognized as victims? And most important of all, why does mainstream media take a pass on all these questions?
The NCADV website has a list of politicians who, perhaps, believe this “every 15 second” myth http://www.ncadv.org/voices/voicehome.htm . Individual readers are invited to visit that page to see if their elected official is on the list. If they are, the reader might want to forward this article to them so they might ask NCADV, why the lie?
