With this guy at the top, it’s no wonder we don’t know anything about domestic violence. OK, he’s only second from the top, but it’s close enough for government work, don’t you know.
This article is reprinted from Glamour magazine and it’s an interview with Vice President Joe Biden about domestic violence (Huffington Post, 5/6/11). Well, it’s not exactly about domestic violence. It’s more about the myth of domestic violence that’s been repeated interminably for 40 years and that the interviewer, Joe Biden and his wife (also interviewed) have all accepted without question.
It’s about 1,500 words and, by the end, knowledgeable readers are left with the burning question “Can this guy be this dumb?” Or maybe he’s just lived his life as if all his actions were directed by a GPS system manufactured by feminists. I can just hear it: “Turn left at the next corner. Read Catharine MacKinnon’s “Toward a Feminist Theory of the State.”
Seriously, this is the Vice President of the United States and he volunteers this:
This attitude of how society views women as chattel — that’s the biggest thing to overcome.
Really? Chattel? It’s a fascinating theory. I suppose it would be better if it had a single iota of anything to support it. But for Biden, it’s not only self-evident but “the biggest thing to overcome.”
Chattel? Let’s see, this is a society in which women have more of the good and less of the bad than men in almost every imaginable category. Longevity? Check. Education? Check. Exemption from military conscription? Check. Exemption from combat if they do serve? Check. Lower rates of homelessness? Check. Higher rates of health insurance coverage? Check. Lower rates of suicide? Check. Numerous laws like VAWA and sexual harassment laws that are designed specifically to protect women but not men. Check. Fewer killed or injured on the job? Check.
And that doesn’t even mention family law and adoption law that seem as much as anything to be enacted for mothers, by mothers. I could go on forever about how those areas of law privilege women and mothers.
So maybe the Veep could explain to us ignorant savages how he figures that women are seen as chattel in this society. Someone should tell him to lay off the Kool-Aid.
From someone who’s somehow convinced himself that women hold the status of domesticated animals, I suppose it’d be too much to ask him to make sense about intimate partner violence and predictably, he doesn’t.
As I said, it’s a 1,500-word article, more or less, and in all those words, not one even hints that men can be victims of DV.
Reading it, you could easily conclude that the Vice President of the United States, knows little or nothing about domestic violence in this country. And remember, this is a man for whom the issue is important; VAWA is his signature piece of legislation. So you’d think he’d know something about the 36 years of social science that shows that women perpetrate domestic violence as often as men do and initiate it more often.
But no, not a word. He’s equally ignorant about what domestic violence actually is. Again, reading his words and those of his wife, you’d easily believe that DV is all “battering” as the true believers in the DV establishment never tire of claiming.
Again, Joe Biden is flat wrong. The great majority of domestic violence in this country is non-injurious. Study after study shows that. One large government study showed 61% of women and 75% of men said they’d received no injury whatsoever in the DV incident inquired about. Figures from Scotland and Canada are similar. The simple fact is that most DV consists of a push or a shove or even less – not good behavior perhaps, but also behavior we need to keep in perspective.
Joe Biden has no intention of keeping anything in perspective. For him we need more laws and regulations like expanding Title IX to ensure that women (but apparently not men) on college campuses are safe. We’re all for safe campuses, but Biden nowhere explains how that’s going to be accomplished and why men aren’t entitled to benefit.
And speaking of men, Biden lets slip one offhand remark that lets us know that his basis for all of this isn’t domestic violence but misandry. He claims to have spoken to “men’s organizations” thus:
I’d say, “How many of you work in a big law firm, and what if one of the partners was gay and every time you left the office he’d pat you on the ass? How many of you would report it?”
Did you notice? That’s right, even in his hypothetical example, he can’t show a woman acting wrongly. He can’t even conceive of asking “and what if one of the partners was a woman and every time you left the office she’d pat you on the ass?”
For the Vice President of the United States, women are never wrongdoers; only men are. So the rest of the interview is all of a piece. Men are perpetrators, women are victims. It’s straight out of the Catharine MacKinnon playbook.
I’d say it’s close enough for government work, but it’s nowhere near that good. What it is, is good old-fashioned American anti-intellectualism, a classic case of disdain for the clear teachings of science because they contradict his false but cherished beliefs.
If you’d like to send a letter to the editor of Glamour, here’s the link to do it.
If you’d like to teach the Vice President a few basic facts about DV, click here.
As always, keep it short, informative and civil.