December 9th, 2011 by Robert Franklin, Esq.
The Public Relations Department of Verizon reports that it has removed its “Monsters” video from the Internet. The radically misandric, false and misleading video had been criticized by Stop Abusive and Violent Environments, the National Coalition for Men, Fathers and Families, and others, and in commentary in Canada’s National Post and elsewhere. For days the company refused all comment on the matter before finally taking the video down–thanks to SAVE and NCFM for spearheading the effort.
That of course is excellent news. The level of mis- and dis- information about domestic violence is higher than for any other topic of national importance I can think of, so any improvement is a welcome step in the right direction.
But the mere fact that the Verizon Foundation has 86′ed a single video doesn’t mean it’s not still hard about the task of misrepresenting the facts about DV. From what I can gather from its website and statements made by its president, Rose Kirk, its mission appears to be the continuation of the fictional narrative the DV establishment has been peddling for decades. That narrative holds that only males commit domestic violence and only females are its victims.
The problems with that narrative go far beyond its intellectual bankruptcy. Far worse than that, they lead inevitably to the conclusion that women and girls don’t need to alter their behavior in intimate relationships. They don’t need to learn how to stop hitting their partners or trying to control their partners’ behavior. Therefore, they don’t need effective services to improve their own behavior. To suggest that they could benefit from those services, constitutes “blaming the victim.” Such at any rate is the loony and deeply dysfunctional narrative of the DV establishment.
The great irony of course is that, while the very people repeating that narrative proclaim loudly that they’re protecting women and girls, actually, the opposite is true. As I’ve said many times before, reliable studies show that one way women get hurt in DV incidents is by initiating violence. Erin Pizzey learned that way back in 1971 when she started the very first DV shelter in the U.K. And it’s been shown by an important study done in 2006 for the Centers for Disease Control.
So by refusing to acknowledge women’s violence against men, the DV establishment actually chooses to make women more vulnerable to injury.
That fact pretty much compels the conclusion that the DV establishment is more about demonizing men and boys than it is about protecting women and girls. And of course that’s one of the most harmful results of their ongoing campaign. The concept of domestic violence is one of the prime movers in the radical rise in divorce rates and the separation of children from their fathers.
From the very beginning of the DV movement, true believers took as an article of faith the radical feminist notion that the family was the seat of the oppression of women. Destroy the family and you liberate women was the rallying cry of the time. That ideology long ago ran aground on the shoals of known facts, such as the facts that married women are far safer than single ones and that children in homes with two biological parents are far safer than all others.
But old habits die hard, particularly when oceans of federal money encourage them to stay alive.
About five years ago, I was at a party and overheard a telling conversation. Two women were talking. I knew them both pretty well, but they had just met a few minutes previously. One was complaining about her husband, albeit not about any form of violent behavior on his part. The other was employed by a DV organization. Having just met the other woman, having heard only a few minutes of her complaints, the second woman responded, “divorcehimyou’llgetthekids.”
I stepped over and rebuked her for encouraging the separation of children from their father and she sort of bit her tongue, but her response spoke volumes. This was a woman she didn’t know. She had no idea of her level of discontent, the ages of the children, the length or importance of their marriage, but apparently none of that mattered.
“Divorcehimyou’llgetthekids.” It could be the motto of the DV establishment.