The lack of agreement in defining family violence has led to
confusion and disarray in attempts to determine factors that cause
or contribute to family violence.
-Harvey Wallace
Deborah Capaldi the author of a recent study from the Oregon Social Learning Center and Andy Klein, who is a consultant and author concerning domestic violence and a lead writer for the National Bulletin on Domestic Violence Prevention, recently appeared on the MSNBC show “Scarborough Country.”
Capaldi asserts that her study is not an attempt at “victim blaming” however, it does clearly document that women are not only often involved in mutual aggression with partners but they can frequently initiate a “domestic violence incident” with aggression of their own.
Klein asserts that Capaldi’s study is a “real misstatement of what ‘domestic violence’ is all about.” Klein maintains that the “domestic violence” as seen in civil and criminal courts is not people engaged in mutual fights and pushing or slapping or pinching each other. Klein claims the violence seen in the courts is the type that lands female victims in the hospital and the morgue.
Too often in society it is, “either you are for me or against me.” Contemporary society too often has an “I’m absolutely right and you are absolutely wrong attitude.” The fact is most police officers who respond to domestic violence calls recognize thatboth Capaldi and Klein are correct.
The majority of professionals recognize the Capaldi study concerns itself with “domestic violence” as defined by statute law, its most popular measuring tool the Conflict Tactics Scale and as defined by the National Violence Against Women Survey (NVAWS). Klein is not debating “domestic violence incidents,” he is describing the results of what is generally accepted by the majority of domestic violence advocates as “battering behavior.”
Confusion and Disarray
Why the confusion and disarray that Harvey Wallace noted? Esta Soler, who is the President of the Family Violence Prevention Fund (FVPF) (www.endabuse.org) acknowledges that this debate, “goes to the definition of domestic violence.”
However, similar to Soler, the majority of domestic violence organizations ignore and purposely misrepresent the difference between “abuse,” domestic violence” and battering behavior” when they present the number of “female victims” of domestic violence.
Soler claims that, “Certainly, all violence is wrong regardless of who is the perpetrator. But domestic violence is not one person pushing another person one time. Domestic violence occurs when there is an ongoing pattern of fear, intimidation and violent assault.” Why is it that the FVPF and Soler, who is both the founder and president, does not use her definition when it attempts to “educate the public?” Is FVPF educational process purposely misleading?
The fact is that Soler and majority of other fundamental feminist domestic violence organizations (fundamental feminist are people who care more about women’s rights than equal rights) intentionally use imprecise language, vague or sensationalist data. It is their intent to use misleading statistics, myths, and non-scientific research concerning domestic violence to further their women’s rights agenda.
This melding of the women’s rights agenda with domestic violence
initiatives is non-productive to proper domestic violence efforts
and is a disservice to all victims of domestic violence regardless
of age or gender.
This approach has produced a “male vs. female victim” schism. Fundamental
feminists accomplish this by the proffering of a “one label fits all”
approach to domestic violence and at the same time insisting on a
“one cause fits all” philosophy. Is it not more than ironic that
Soler and other fundamental feminists have created what Soler
now claims is the problem?
The Nexus of the Problem
It is “domestic violence” organizations like the FVPF, the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence (NCADV) the White Ribbon Campaign and in fact the majority of domestic violence organizations across America that continue to mislead society in general and public policy makers in particular by consistently and constantly mix or match domestic violence as battering behavior when and where it suits their purpose. These organizations actually offer the following as fact:
Ø A woman is “battered” every 15 seconds and that
Ø As many as one out of every three woman will be “battered” by a husband or boyfriend
Ø Females are always the victims and males the batterers.
These “domestic violence” organizations know full well, as Soler acknowledges in her response to the Capaldi report, that all of the studies she and these organizations use to document “domestic violence” data includes minor pushing, shoving, and verbal abuse incidents. These organizations know full well they are responsible for mislabeling and then presenting these minor forms of abuse as “battering behavior.”
These organizations exclude males as victims while they know full well that a great many males are killed, battered, and are victims of less injurious and non-sexual forms of domestic violence as women. Male victims, because these organizations care as much about women’s rights as domestic violence, must be painted invisible or inconsequential.
Some callously claim that male victims are two few to matter. Katherine Greene, who was the public affairs director of Jane Doe, the leading Massachusetts domestic violence agency, quoted a Jane Doe board member's comments on male victims at an annual board meeting. Sometimes it snows in Florida, we can't ignore it, but we don't make public policy around it.''
Although Soler is able to clearly define the problem as the lack of an agreed upon definition of domestic violence, she and the other domestic violence organizations will clearly and carelessly continue to ignore her own definition on their FVPF websites.
The Misinformation Station
The FVPF website has a section labeled “Get the Facts – Domestic Violence in the United States”. This section of the FVPF website is filled with data presented by FVPF as domestic violence incidents. However, few if any, of what FVPF claims is domestic violence is measured by studies using the Soler definition.
What Soler refuses to acknowledge is that it is her organization and many other domestic violence organizations similar to FVPF that are the origin of this confusion and disarray that Wallace notes. They created the problem that they now complain about.
The “Did You Know” public education section of the FVPF website documents that women suffer between 960,000 and 3 million incidents of “domestic violence.” FVPF present this information as “domestic violence” incidents when Soler knows full well this data in no way meets the standard of her definition of domestic violence. She and other fundamental feminist use it because it fits their women’s rights agenda.
Although the Soler definition is that, “Domestic violence occurs when there is an ongoing pattern of fear, intimidation and violent assault,” the findings from the National Violence Against Women Survey (NVAWS) make no such claim. Soler and these other organizations know full well that the findings from the National Violence Against Women Survey reports that the majority of domestic violence incidents are minor.
In fact the NVAWS includes male victims that FVPF and other fundamental feminist organizations always and intentionally exclude. These organizations accept, at face value – no questions asked, that NVAWS documents that all 1.3 million women are victims of “domestic violence.” Concerning that the NVAW survey documents that there are 835,000 male victims.
The domestic violence organizations attempt excuse, exclude, erase, and paint as invisible these 835,000 male victims of domestic violence. In a mind boggling exercise of Orwellian double speak, ignored by both the media and or public policy makers, these organizations claim that NVAWS documents that many of the male victims are victims of minor violence. These male victims do not meet the standard set by the Soler definition. And, of course, they are right. The fact that the same is true for majority of the 1.3 million women is ignored by these organizations. One might wonder why the double standard.
The FVPF website in the information to the public section “Did You Know” reports that nearly 25% of women report being raped and/or physically assaulted by a current or former spouse, cohabiting partner or date at some point in their lifetime.
While the FVPF does not have a “What We Do Not Want You To Know” section it clearly and without shame presents misinformation to suit its women’s rights agenda. The actually number of the above data is for 22.1% for women and 7.4 percent for men. How and why does an organization that claims to be a Family Violence Prevention Fund purposely exclude male victims? What has happened to, “The truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth?”
The FVPF documents that nearly one-third of American women (31%) report being physically or sexually abused by a husband or boyfriend at some point in their lives. While Soler and the FVPF know full well this data does not meet the Soler definition of domestic violence they present it as “a domestic violence fact” never the less.
Because Soler is an intelligent person she can correctly define the problem. Because she is a fundamental feminist she can not or simply refuses to understand that FVPF and other domestic violence organizations are part of the problem?
The National Coalition Against Domestic Violence proclaims that, “EVERY 15 SECOND A WOMAN IS BATTERED.” In fact, this is just one of the myths NCADV use to influence public policy. Soler and the NCADV know full well that the data that produces this “battered women fact” contains not only minor incidents of domestic violence it documents that males are victims as often as females. The latter is not part of their educational process.
The Gender War Battle Flag
The announced goal of the White Ribbon Campaign is to bring men and women together to discuss the problem of violence against women and girls. WRC simply ignores female to male violence as if it never happens and when it does, somehow it is still the fault of the male. This is because WRC and the majority of domestic violence organizations quite clearly believe that the patriarchy is the cause violence against women.
When one chooses to believe that the patriarchy causes domestic violence that philosophic belief does not allow them to believe females can be as assertive or aggressive as males in family conflicts. This defies logic as these same people claim that in the workplace and in society in general women can be as strong and assertive as males. This is another facet of the double speak domestic violence/women’s rights melded agenda.
This is the crux of what is wrong with contemporary domestic violence intervention. The unannounced goal of all of these organizations is to convince the media and hence our public policy makers and the general public that patriarchy and power relations alone cause domestic violence because they have two agendas not one. This, the-patriarchy-makes-them-do-it, belief proffered by these fundamental feminist domestic violence organizations has led many in society and our public policy makers to ignore the complexities of domestic violence.
Jeffery Fagan writes in The Criminalization of Domestic Violence this enigma “is caused by a more complex set of hierarchical influences--for example, weak social controls, situational arousal, or even psychopathology . . .” He warned professionals, “Let’s not be embarrassed or embarrass ourselves by continuing on this frustrating path of fad-driven and nonsystematic policies with weak after-the-fact evaluations.” (http://www.ncjrs.org/pdffiles/crimdom.pdf.)
Those of us, both men and women, who work to minimize “domestic violence,” for all victims, regardless of age or gender know that there are battered victims and that where there is severe injury, sexual assaults or when the victim is killed, it is females who are the primary victims. However, all of the above organizations know full well that women are not always the primary or exclusive victims of “domestic violence.”
All of these organizations proffer that domestic violence is caused by men because men in general are misogynists. These organizations claim that men objectify women and do not see women as a people. They stress that men do not respect women as a group and that contemporary masculine mores and norms cause men in general to view women as property to be used and abused and/or sexual assaulted. They believe in their hearts and minds that men cause domestic violence because men in general hate women in particular.
The vast majority of physicians, nurses, psychiatrists, psychologists, family counselors, educators, social workers, attorneys, judges, and law enforcement professional do not agree with the fundamental feminist. It is our public policy makers and the media who must eventually answer why they have ignored these professionals for so many years.
The National Institute of Justice sponsored report was issued online but not published in October of 2002. Controlling Violence Against Women: A Research Perspective on the 1994 VAWA’s Criminal Justice Impacts is the most comprehensive report concerning the effectiveness of the Violence Against Women Act to date.
This report notes on page 66 that VAWA has “. . . the Act may be reinforcing the adoption of popular, but untested policies that seem to abound.” The report also notes on page 68, “Put bluntly, it does victims of violence little good to learn that a criminal justice official has successfully implemented a policy or practice if what is implemented is ineffective, or worse, harmful to victims.
Sadly, what fundamental feminists ignore is that without proper understanding of cause there will not be a proper remedy for domestic violence. The melding of agendas hinders not helps battered victims. By falsely offering that one third or one half of all women are the victims of domestic violence they marginalize the actual battered victims.
Is it not time that the media and our public policy makers recognize this fundamental feminist double agenda and end the “blame game - hate debate.”
