VAWA Hearings Paint Men Invisible
August 8, 2005
If there’s any regret I have about this legislation, it’s that so many men think it doesn’t apply to them. Men are covered. Men are included. - Senator Joseph Biden
Implicit association occurs when the ideologies of others become conclusions that we think wehave reasonably and rationally reached. To understand more about Implicit Association Tests (IAT) go to www.implicit.harvard.edu.
IAT demonstrates there can be a conscious level where we believe everyone is treated fairly and justly. However, IAT also reveals a second unconscious level is created when we accept ideology as fact and chose to ignore empirical research and evidence to the contrary.
VAWA Does Apply to Men
The Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) has created ideologically based “implicit association” training for the criminal justice system, similar to the, “Victim-Defendants: An Emerging Challenge in Responding to Domestic Violence in Seattle and the King County Regions.”
This training is based on the ideology and interest of agencies rather than empirically based U. S. Department of Justice sponsored theories, research findings and scientific evidence.
http://www.mincava.umn.edu/documents/victimdefendant/victimdefendant.html#id2634729.
VAWA – 2005 increases this “training” from $185 to $225 million annually. In these programs every male offender, regardless of the context of the incident or how minor the offense, is to be treated as a batterer.
VAWA training implies that batterers are men and victim/survivors are women. VAWA “training programs” also proffer that society has indoctrinated men to oppress women and that men believe they have the right to exert power over women using violence.
These programs claim that “batterers” [men] know how to use the system and that “batterers” [men] know how to set up the victim/survivor [women] to get arrested. The training also claims that “batterers” [men] will pretend to be the victim when law enforcement shows up. Unlike the “batterer” [men] the victim/survivor [women] do not know the system.
Officers are also prompted to arrest the bigger and stronger person [man] and it implies that the person most likely to suffer an injury [woman] must be the victim.
This training and mandated arrest policies ignore that officers can have difficulty determining a primary aggressor because some times the abuse can be mutual, often the incident may be minor or isolated, there may be no injuries to either person and many families are seeking services not sanctions and arrest.
Men Are Included
The Senate VAWA hearings establish “implicit association” because male victimization was not mentioned by either senators or advocates. Their exclusion impliesmen are not victims.
Sheriff Ted Sexton testified that the National Sheriffs’ Association plays a key role in VAWA’s mandated coordinated community response to prevent, investigate, and prosecute crime of violence against women [by men].
Actress Salma Hayek testified that every 15 seconds a woman is beaten [by a man]. The Executive Director of the National Center for Victims of Crime testified that violence against women [by men] is a key focus of the agencies work.
Lynn Rosenthal of the National Network to End Domestic Violence testified that violence against women [by men] continues to affect our country in epidemic proportions.
M.L. Carr, the President & CEO of WARM2Kids testified that he works with the Family Violence Prevention Fund to protect our daughters from being abused by our sons.
Senator Leahy testified women are being killed by men each year and Senator Feingold testified that men abuse, rape and murder women.
Demonic Men Angelic Women
The VAWA hearings imply (see above) that men are the abusers and women their victims.
The senators and witnesses ignore that the National Violence Against Women (NVAW) survey http://www.ncjrs.org/pdffiles1/nij/183781.pdf document that 1.5% of women and 0.9% of men report being raped and/or physically assaulted by a partner in the previous 12 months.
There are an estimated 4.8 million intimate partner rapes and physical assaults against women and 2.9 million against men annually http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/nij/pubs-sum/181867.htm. Which begs the question; “Why do the senators and witnesses knowingly and purposely exclude any mention of male victimization?”
In an inexplicable juxtaposition of logic, most advocates who support female victimization marginalize, minimize and ignore male victimization. Perhaps Biden does believe VAWA is inclusive of men, however, the above exclusion demonstrates Biden’s words are empty promises and renders Biden and the advocates incapable of understanding the empirical reality of male victimization.
Until public policy makers and advocates understand the importance of recognizing and responding to female and male victimization with similar compassion, they create a divenissess that contributes more toward the perpetration than the reduction of domestic violence.
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Richard L. Davis (Lt.ret) is the author of Domestic Violence: Fact and Fallacies, an adjunct instructor of criminal justice courses for Quincy College at Plymouth and the VP of www.Familynonviolence.org. He may be reached at rldavis@post.harvard.edu
