Baltimore, MD–Hard times are here. Unemployment is spiking, home values are tanking and Wall Street execs are running off with bags of the People’s money. With so many suffering so much, with so much uncertainty about the future, you might think men could get a break. You might think, “We’re all in this together, so let’s make nice for a change.” But if you do, that means you don’t run a major newspaper.
Two metropolitan dailies, the Baltimore Sun and the Detroit Free Press ran articles here and here this week on the increase in domestic violence the economic downturn seems to have produced. And guess what? All the victims are women. Why are we not surprised?
OK, I know, not all of them are women, just “almost all” according to the Sun. The Free Press calls it a “prevalent pattern” to which there are only “a few exceptions.” And as usual, all of the personal examples of DV cited in the articles have male perpetrators and female victims. Nary a male victim is interviewed, only women. According to these articles, women don’t abuse men, women don’t abuse children and women don’t abuse other women.
The Sun article maintains its facade of objectivity by citing Department of Justice statistics which say that 73% of DV victims are female. Now if I were writing the piece, I wouldn’t call 73% “almost all” of anything. (Who would say that a baseball team with a 73% winning record won “almost all” of its games? Heckuva good year, but “almost all?”) But what’s more important is the fact that the DOJ statistics are the only source the article cites. And the way those figures are compiled makes them differ sharply from studies which ask people if they’ve ever committed DV or had DV committed against them. Those figures consistently show that women and men are equal opportunity abusers.
Why is that so hard for the MSM to grasp? What stake do they have in misrepresenting the truth?
So yes, times are hard for everyone, men included. But I guess any time is a good time to trash men.