Terminal Inconsistency
April 5, 2005
Claiming the moral high ground is always a perilous political strategy, but it is especially so when the claimant is plagued by terminal inconsistency.
Eileen McNamara
It is generally acknowledged that the electronic and print media plays a legitimate and important role in shaping social issues and policies. Although the media does not actually control the process of social or cultural change, its involvement can often act as a catalyst for change or create resistance to change.
The media most often paints the picture of domestic violence in black and white and not a mosaic of many different colors and hues that it represents. The media portrays that domestic violence is caused by misogynist or sexist heterosexual men, whose patriarchal cultural beliefs cause men to abuse women.
What the media ignores and many domestic violence advocates are unable or unwilling to accept is that by statute law in all fifty states domestic violence is not restricted by age (with the exception of the fact that we may continue to physically assault our children), gender or sexual orientation.
Reams of data and hundreds of studies document that that domestic violence is often gender neutral and many forms of domestic violence reflect the inevitable conflict that exists in all intimate or familial relationships.
The Media’s Myopic View
In the 1970s the feminist movement used its newly found political power and the public policy maker’s ever willingness to pass laws to end unwanted behavior and their willingness to “get tough on crime” to put in place mandatory arrest, prosecution and laws that would mix and match civil and criminal interventions. These unperfected and still unproven measures that ignore the complexity of the issue continue to be avoided everywhere else in the criminal justice system.
The feminist movement also believed that the criminal justice system was sexist and when the criminal justice system began to treat domestic violence as a serious crime, dramatic change would occur. The problem is, as the National Violence Against Women Survey (NVAWS) and hundreds of other studies document, most domestic violence incidents to not involve injurious serious violent behavior.
Feminist firmly believed that if laws were passed to protect women, punish offenders and send the message to the general public that spousal abuse will no longer be tolerated that domestic violence would end or at least be minimized.
Feminists demanded that the criminal justice system treat domestic violence the same as crime in general. The seemed ignorant of the fact that the criminal justice system has a long track record of being unable to change individuals behavior. Murder has been treated as a serious crime, regardless of the gender of the victim and yet murder continues both inside and outside of our homes.
What feminists are unable or unwilling to understand is that women are the perpetrators of noninjurious physical assaults against other family members as often as men. When the victim is smaller and weaker and lacks the resources that women have, some women can be just as violent and controlling as some men.
However, partially because of the media’s myopic presentation of domestic violence most people continue to imagine bruised, black eyed women being beaten and battered by uncaring violent men.
For the last decade many academics, researchers, criminologists, minority and progressive feminists, social workers and many domestic violence advocates have been questioning if this contemporary reactive one-size-fits-all solution is effective and just.
Further, many are beginning to question how it is morally responsible or possible to believe that a law is a good law because it saves some people and then ignore the fact that the same law might be a bad law because it harms some people?
A Ray of Light in the West
The Rocky Mountain News, is to my knowledge, the only major newspaper that has actually taken a serious role in questioning and more importantly examining, many contemporary domestic violence interventions, laws, policies and procedures. It is refreshing to finally read an open and honest presentation of the issue that is unbiased and free of gender feminist ideology.
The Rocky Mountain four part series suggests it is time to rethink many of the contemporary strategies that were put in place without any empirical studies that document they actually would work. The four part series includes:
An Advocate’s Myopic View
The executive director of the Denver Domestic Violence Coordinating Council claims in a letter to the Rocky Mountain News that all domestic violence incidents should be treated as a crime. She claims that if you push your girlfriend and she falls, bruising her arm the incident should be treated as a crime.
Does this executive director believe that if this incident occurs between an 18 year old sister and a 17 year old brother, that the incident should be treated as a crime? Does this executive director believe that family members should call the police? Does this executive director recognize that given those circumstances, by statute law in Colorado the police will be mandated to arrest, the district attorney will prosecute, and the sister will be placed in a batters program?
How or why is it possible that an executive director of a domestic violence coordinating council can not understand that the vast majority of physical assaults in families may not be committed by a batterer or against a woman who has been battered?
Is it really possible that she does not understand that the issues of power and control run through all family violence regardless of the age, gender or sexual orientation of either offender or victim?
Call it Like it is
This same domestic violence executive director writes “Why is it so hard to call it like it is? Domestic violence is a crime.”
“It is hard to call it like it is” because many domestic violence laws in the vast majority of states have little to nothing to do with the “battering behavior” that most domestic violence advocates are rightly and honestly concerned about. The incident between the sister and brother is similar to “family conflict behavior” that many other family members or intimate partners might experience.
“It’s hard to call it like it” is because no other crime, in the past or now, uses untested and unproven “one-size-fits-all,” mandatory arrest and prosecution strategies. If the criminal justice system thought that these measures actually could or would reduce recidivism those measures would be replicated. They are not. Reams of data and hundreds of studies now document that in many noninjurious family incidents women are just as likely as men to be the first person to hit, push, shove or slap.
“It’s hard to call it like it is” because all other crime that make the vital and important distinction between minor crimes (misdemeanors) and serious crimes (felonies) is ignored. Those distinctions are bedrocks of the criminal justice system their importance is ignored by many domestic violence advocates.
“It’s hard to call it like it is” because domestic violence is not treated like all the other crimes, as once demanded by feminist. In fact those same feminists now demand that domestic violence be treated differently than all other crimes.
“It’s hard to call it like it is” because all other crimes allow for the victim desires to be heard. Domestic violence intervention often ignores what victims want and hence disempowers victims.
“It’s hard to call it like it is” because all other crimes recognize the importance of the time honored tradition of law enforcement discretion. Logic and common sense has been replaced by “Big Brother” knows better.
“It’s hard to call it like it is” because one out of every four offenders being arrested are women not men. They are being arrested because these women initiate the violence and they hit, push, shove and slap as often as men.
“It’s hard to call it like it is” because domestic violence intervention was supposed to be about preventing violent men beating and battering their spouses or intimate partners. Now domestic violence includes each and every minor assault. Mountains of evidence and reams of data document women engage in nonsexual physical assaults as often as men. When someone initiates the violence they are not acting in self defense.
“It’s hard to call it like it is” because it has become what most families, particularly families at the lower end of the socioeconomic educational ladder, do not want law enforcement officers investigating each and every family dispute.
“It’s hard to call it like it is” because the well intentioned efforts to prevent violent spousal or intimate partner assaults, in some instances, have been reduced to arresting someone for sending court ordered payments to their spouse/partner where there is a court ordered no contact order.
“It’s hard to call it like it is” because it has spiraled out of control and become something that most people, regardless of their socioeconomic condition or educational status do not want.
“It’s hard to call it like it is” because I believe that this executive director will not admit that even she will not call the police for every family threat she hears or every hit, push, shove, or slap she observes in her family.
“It’s hard to call it like it is” because other than the Rocky Mountain News the electronic and print media do not seem to know just what the heck it is or what to do about it! What was once investigative reporting and in the case of the Rocky Mountain News still is, is now often reduced to parroting as the truth what others claim it to be.
