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| Chapter 10 — The Female Of The Species |
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Captain Parker to his company of Minutemen on the Lexington Green, April 19, 1775.
Note that John Corry, Jr. served with Capt. Parker's company that day.
Domestic violence against women
Duluth Domestic Intervention Project (DIAP): Attributes of abusive men
Profiles of typical Duluth model clients
The basis of our discussion concerns human biology and is the antithesis of Gloria Steinem's assertion that “The patriarchy requires violence or the subliminal threat of violence in order to maintain itself.” Our position is presented in the sections on patriarchy and the evolution of families. However, you may be interested in some background on how feminists think and the bases for our current situation.
Sally Satel, M.D., provides the following scenarios illustrating how the feminist movement views males:
“Let's call him 'Joe Six Pack.' Every Saturday night, he drinks way too much, cranks up the rock'n roll way too loud, and smacks his girlfriend for acting just a bit too lippy. Or let's call him 'Mr. Pillar of the Community.' He's got the perfect wife, the perfect kids. But he's also got one little problem: every time he argues with his wife, he loses control. In the past year, she's been sent to the emergency ward twice. Or let's say they're the Tenants from Hell. They're always yelling at each other. Finally a neighbor calls the police.
Here is the question. Are the men in these scenarios:
(b) in need of being locked up; or
(c) upholders of the patriarchy?
Increasingly, public officials are buying into Gloria Steinem's assertion that '...the patriarchy requires violence or the subliminal threat of violence in order to maintain itself.' They are deciding that perpetrators need to be indoctrinated in what are called “profeminist” treatment programs. And they are spending tax dollars to pay for these programs.
Most people would likely say (a) or (b) or perhaps both. In fact, however, (c) is the answer that more and more of the agencies that deal with domestic violence — including the courts, social workers, and therapists — now give.”
Based on this world view, or ideology, feminists heavily supported passage of the 1994 Violence Against Women Act (VAWA). However, to obtain passage of VAWA, feminist organizations like the National Organization for Women, and even secretary of Health and Human Services Donna Shalala, pelted legislators with facts and figures in the manner perfected by Hitler, and known then as “The Big Lie.” Feminist “factoids,” the preferred term of the 90's, included such lies as: “The leading cause of birth defects is battery during pregnancy.” “In emergency rooms, twenty to thirty percent of women arrive because of physical abuse by their partner.” “Family violence has killed more women in the last five years than Americans killed in the Viet Nam War.” These alarming factoids, or agitprop, aren't true, of course, but as Nazi and Communist propagandists found, a lie repeated frequently enough by enough people is taken as the truth by most of the population.
For example, in January 1993, a daring group of women called a press conference in Pasadena, California. Sheila Kuhn of the California Women's Law Center made the unfounded claim that Super Bowl Sunday was the “biggest day of the year for violence against women.” That stunning statement quickly appeared on Good Morning America, in the Boston Globe, and elsewhere. The Oakland Tribune would report the Super Bowl causes men to “explode like mad linemen, leaving girlfriends, wives, and children beaten.”
Gelles reviewed the origin of these factoids in 1995, but a rebuttal is seldom as effective, at least initially, as the first lie. That is particularly true where the government is the source of the lie as in the case of HHS Secretary Donna Shalala. And, of course, by 1995 VAWA had already been passed into law.
In pushing for VAWA, feminist advocacy groups were able to create new bogus statistics faster than the experts were able to shoot the old ones down. And some of the agitprop — like the fiction that wife-beating soars on Super Bowl Sunday — have become American myths as durable as the story of young George Washington chopping down the cherry tree.
In the January 24, 2000, issue of U. S. News, on p. 12 John Leo writes:
“The Violence Against Women Act slipped into law in 1994 without most members of Congress quite knowing what they were passing. We have Andrea Dworkin's word on this. Dworkin is surely a contender for the North American title of most overwrought, man-hating feminist. She told the New Republic at the time that the only possible explanation for the bill's popularity in the Senate was the 'senators don't understand the meaning of the legislation that they pass.'”
In the process, Congress generously authorized $1.6 billion to fund VAWA. Few taxpayers would begrudge this outlay if it actually resulted in the protection of women. Instead, Satel notes there is increasing evidence that the money is primarily being used to further an ideological war against men.
The feminist theory of domestic abuse, like their theory of rape, holds that all men have the same innate propensity to violence against women: you, your brother, your sister's boyfriend or husband, and every male are, deep down, equally evil.
Mona Charen has commented that:
“The trouble with ideologues is their simplemindedness. Communists saw a world full of evil: Conniving capitalists arrayed against virtuous, long-suffering proletarians. Fascists saw the world divided between master and inferior races. Modem feminists see violent, aggressive, uncivilized men victimizing helpless, innocent, peace-loving women. It is the mark of small minds that they seek to eradicate nuance and complexity.”
Professor Ruth Wisse of Harvard is quoted as saying in 1998 that:
“...Women's liberation, if not the most extreme then certainly the most influential neo-marxist movement in America, has done to the American home what communism did to the Russian economy, and most of the ruin is irreversible. By defining between men and women in terms of power and competition instead of reciprocity and cooperation, the movement tore apart the most basic and fragile contract in human society, the unit from which all other social institutions draw their strength.”
In line with their agenda of re-engineering our society to fit their theories, feminists have expanded the definition of abuse. Under the term “psychological battery,” it now includes:
• Refusing help with child care or housework.
and bear in mind that it is only men who behave this way in the feminist definition.
Those who think there is validity in such a broad definition of abuse should first consider Erin Pizzey's work with violent women, written a few years after she opened the first battered woman's shelter in the world. Her descriptions of what she describes as emotional terrorists will ring eerily true with many men who have been the victims of domestic abuse. Her book Prone to Violence should be read by everyone interested in equal justice for men and women. The Emotional Terrorist and the Violence-Prone, is a re-release of the earlier book. Her first book on family violence, Scream Quietly or the Neighbours Will Hear, is a virtual bible of the feminist movement, but when she has examined the other side of the picture, her work has been suppressed.
According to Satel, a checklist from a brochure of the Westchester Coalition of Family Violence agencies tells women that if, among other things, their partner behaves in one or more of the following ways, including “...an overprotective manner, turns minor incidents into major arguments, or insults you, then you might be abused.” As we point out in the current definition of domestic violence and abuse, it is currently anything a woman claims it is in Colorado.
With money provided by VAWA, the feminist ideology has come to pervade the bureaucracies created to combat domestic violence. In at least a dozen states, including Colorado, Massachusetts, Florida, Washington, and Texas, state guidelines or the law effectively preclude any treatment other than feminist therapy for domestic batterers, who are always male in their universe. Another dozen states, among them Maine and Illinois, are now, or have drafted similar guidelines.
Profeminists emphatically reject joint counseling, the traditional approach to marital conflict. Joint counseling and other couples-based treatments violate the feminist certainty that it is men who are always, and solely responsible for domestic violence. Any attempt to involve the batterer's mate in treatment amounts to “blaming the victim” in the feminist doctrine.
“The dogma that women never provoke, incite, or aggravate domestic conflict, further, has led to some startling departures in domestic law. Hundreds of jurisdictions have adopted what are called 'must-arrest' policies: that is, when local police are called to a scene of reported domestic abuse, they must arrest one partner ( almost always the man) [emphasis added] even if, by the time the authorities arrive, the incident has cooled off and there is no sign of violence, and even if (as is often the case) the woman doesn't want the man arrested.”
In the section on the frequency of domestic violence it is quite apparent that women are solely responsible for 25%-30% of all domestic violence and mutual combatants in at least 50% of such events. Recent studies also suggest that very frequently when a woman is injured as a result of domestic violence, she was the one who initiated the violence. Thus, when only the man is arrested the likely error factor is greater than 75%.
The woman may also react with what is termed the divorce-related malicious mother syndrome and anything you do in response to that aberration will be held against you.
Colorado, along with many other jurisdictions, have also enacted 'no-drop' laws — meaning that if a woman reports her partner, she will not be permitted to change her mind and withdraw the charges later, no matter how drunk, mad, or high on drugs she may have been. And even if it is the man who reports he has been assaulted, police will frequently arrest him anyway. Domestic violence and abuse are now crimes against the State and are prosecuted as such, at taxpayer expense, with the added proviso that such charges cannot be dropped no matter how flimsy and unbelievable the evidence against a man. The law thus presumes a man is guilty.
As stated above, domestic violence is a crime against the State and individuals are not given an option about whether to press charges. Charges are filed by the police whether or not they have witnessed a crime or not, whether or not there is substantial evidence for abuse or violence, regardless of who reports the assault, and whether or not the woman wants charges filed. Throughout history there is clear evidence that granting police such powers has inevitably led to gross abuses of citizens rights.
Under VAWA, $33 million was spent in 1997 on the “Grants to Encourage Arrest” program, which uses Federal money to induce localities to adopt must-arrest policies. In 1998 the budget of the “Grants to Encourage Arrest” program was $59 million. Thus, the Federal government is spending tens of millions of your tax dollars for the sole and avowed purpose of having men arrested on basically any trumped-up excuse a woman or the police can come up with.
In his book on Abused Men, Cook (p. 42-43) gives a horrifying example of how women and the police can abuse the current laws: Marvin T.'s alcoholic wife was having an affair with a local policeman in a small town. Marvin came home one day to find her drunk once again. During the ensuing scuffle she stabbed him seven times, among other damage, and the neighbors called the police. Who shows up but her boyfriend, the cop. The boyfriend-cop proceeds to handcuff and arrest Marvin, throw him in the back seat of the police cruiser, take him to a dark place, and beat him with a large police flashlight before taking him for treatment of his stab wounds. Mister, it may be your turn next!
Numerous examples exist of adulteresses using the domestic violence laws to evict or punish their husbands, of which the case of Dr. Emerson is one of the most publicized because of the Constitutional issues.
“...there is a satisfying, frontier-justice aspect to the feminist treatment programs: what better punishment for a loutish man than to make him endure hours of feminist lecturing? The trouble is, domestic violence — as these same feminists constantly remind us — is no joke. And there are virtually no convincing data that this feminist approach to male violence is effective.
Indeed, the paternalistic intrusiveness that characterizes so much of feminist domestic violence policy frequently has the unintended consequence of harming the very women it was meant to protect. Judge William S. Cannon, who has handled thousands of domestic violence cases through South Bay (San Diego) Family Court, finds that 'about eighty percent of the couples we see in court end up staying together.' Nonetheless, the California legislature has made it mandatory for judges to issue a restraining order separating the parties in all domestic violence cases. 'It's ridiculous,' the judge says of this mandatory separation, 'each situation is different.' Sometimes a woman doesn't want the separation, particularly if the threat from her husband is mild. 'If the woman feels relatively safe, she might well rather have her kids' father home with the family,' Judge Cannon says. In California [or Colorado], however, this option is no longer open to women. As Judge Cannon says, 'We treat women as brainless individuals who are unable to make choices. If a woman wants a restraining order, she can ask us for it.'
Persuading victims of domestic violence that they need no psychological help or are never to blame can also backfire, because it pushes many women away from seeking counseling that they plainly need. A prosecutor from Southern California, who preferred not to be identified, told me that many of the women he refers to treatment reject his advice. 'They're influenced by the prevailing view in the advocate community that tells them they don't need help. Meanwhile, I'm accused of blaming the victim,' the prosecutor says. Some of these women return to husbands who injure or even kill them, when a therapist might have helped them find the strength to stay away. Others end up doing the killing themselves, a tragedy that has happened “more than once on my watch,' the prosecutor said. The defense attorneys then claim that the wife is 'a victim of battered woman syndrome. They'll say the system failed her because she was never referred for professional help.'
It is likewise far from clear that must-arrest policies help victims of domestic abuse. Several studies — including one by Lawrence W. Sherman of the University of Maryland, whose early study on mandatory arrest in a single midwestern city actually gave rise to the program's popularity — suggest that mandatory arrest can escalate spousal violence in some men by further enraging them, and causing them to seek revenge on their lovers once they are released from jail.”
The defined goal of feminist treatment and legal responses is to separate women from their “abusive” partners (all men are abusers in the radical feminist creed) — no matter what the circumstances, and no matter how fervently the women involved wish otherwise. According to Satel, many shelter counselors interviewed by Kimberly Crenshaw of the UCLA School of Law believe that a batterer is incapable of breaking the cycle of abuse and the woman's only hope of safety is to leave the relationship. In a New York Times Magazine story about spousal abuse, writer Jan Hoffman summed up the advice of Ellen Pence, founder of the much-replicated Duluth Abuse Intervention Program and a staunch believer that all batterers are gripped by a hatred of women: “Ellen Pence's advice to women in battering relationships is simply this: Leave. Leave because even the best of programs, even Duluth's, cannot ensure that a violent man will change his ways.”
Note that in our section on the male perspective we give similar advice to leave for very different reasons: The State will persecute you if you don't!
Domestic abuse happened in the past and will happen in the future. In the past our culture tended to cover it up. To the credit of such pioneers as Erin Pizzey, we no longer do so. To that end we have enacted extensive laws in Colorado and the nation, and undertaken vast social programs in an attempt to reduce the abuse and violence, and provide shelter and succor for its victims.
However, it is not evident what benefits this massive interposition of therapeutic coercion in a significant portion of our criminal justice system has provided in reducing the incidence of domestic violence in our culture. Further, as Lederman points out: “...what has been absent in the discussion and legislation in the area of domestic violence is a balancing of the benefits of now extensive state intervention, both through criminal and civil process, and the detriment of the those very processes.” Clearly, the civil rights of men have been extensively denied by these actions.
That the above issues have not been addressed either in legislation, or for that matter studies commissioned by any of the three branches of Colorado government, should be no surprise. Much of the testimony, political pressure, and underlying rationale supporting Colorado's extensive domestic violence legislation is based on misinformation propounded by the very same special interests that are the beneficiaries of business generated by that legislation. Following is a discussion by Lederman , in an Independence Institute issue paper, of some of those fictions and those who have propounded them.
“Any discussion of myth making in the domestic violence area would be incomplete without mention of the impact of Lenore Walker, Colorado resident and psychologist. Dr. Walker's influence on domestic violence legislation reaches far beyond Colorado's borders. She is a nationally recognized figure in the area, due in large part to her book The Battered Woman, first published in 1979. Moreover, this particular prophet has been extensively honored in her own land. She has testified frequently at committee hearings dealing with Colorado's domestic violence laws.
The Battered Woman has been an immensely influential work. Many professional articles in the area of divorce law cite Dr. Walker chapter and verse. Dr. Walker should be acknowledged, and, up to a point, commended for the very substantial role she has played in turning the ship of state away from massive and routine denial of domestic violence to one of forthright recognition and necessary intervention.
But although the ends (putting domestic violence on the map of law enforcement intervention) have been legitimate, the means have often ranged from unsupported assertion to out and out lies.
First, The Battered Woman is less a scholarly work backed up by research than a political tract drawing on substantial anecdotal experiences of Walker's patients and on her own social/political perspective.
Secondly Dr. Walker has made outrageously false statements about factual issues surrounding domestic violence. She was central in the now infamous 'Super Bowl Hoax' of 1994 when on January 28 of that year, one day after a coalition of women's groups had called a press conference denouncing the Super Bowl as 'the biggest day of the year for violence against women,' Dr. Walker appeared on Good Morning America 'claiming to have compiled a ten-year record showing a sharp increase in violent incidents against women on Super Bowl Sundays.'
Other feminists joined in hue and cry until a lone journalist, Ken Ringle of the Washington Post, started to check the facts. Ringle quickly found that the studies cited at the news conferences said nothing of the sort. Further, when Walker was asked to detail the findings she referenced on the Good Morning America Show she said they were no longer available.
Another canard promoted by Dr. Walker, and embraced by feminist writers across the country, is the 'rule of thumb' supposed to be embedded in the common law. This rule allegedly gave statutory authority for husbands to beat their wives in countless Anglo-American jurisdictions with a stick no thicker than their thumb. The only trouble is no such laws existed on the books. According to Christina Hoff Sommers: 'The 'rule of thumb,' however, turns out to be an excellent example of what may be called a feminist fiction. It is not to be found in William Blackstone's treatise on English common law. On the contrary, British law since the 1700s and our American laws predating the Revolution prohibit wife beating, though there have been periods and places in which the prohibition was only indifferently enforced.'
The Super Bowl Hoax and 'Rule of Thumb' legend are but the tip of the iceberg of nonexistent factoids that have gone into the legislative mix of our domestic violence laws.
For purposes of examining the depth of misinformation in this area let us consider the following quote which appeared in the October 1994 issue of the Colorado Lawyer: 'Domestic violence is the single largest cause of injury to women in the United States, more common than auto accidents, muggings and rapes combined.' [emphasis added] The statement was noted and the note cited several sources, chief of which were two papers by Stark and Flitcraft. The actual research behind this 'fact' is based on a survey of one emergency room. It is a whopper. The facts, as revealed in a Justice Department study, are that all violence is responsible for about 3% of women's injury-related visits to emergency rooms, and domestic violence for about 1%. By comparison, CDC numbers show that more than twice as many women visit emergency rooms due to being injured by an animal (459,000 a year) than by a male partner.
Finally, perhaps the most destructive impact Dr. Walker and other feminist true believers have had on domestic violence policy has less to do with out and whoppers than with their unrelenting, and unsupported, condemnation of the institution marriage as the seedbed of domestic violence.
As it turns out, marriage, while certainly not immune from domestic violence, is probably the strongest antidote to a woman being beaten by a man in an intimate relationship. Violence is approximately six times more likely to occur outside the institution of marriage than within.”
The real target then of Colorado feminists is the institution of marriage, the destruction of families, and unrelenting warfare against the patriarchy that supports these underlying institutions of our civilization. These topics are explored in depth by Prof. Amneus in his book The Case for Father Custody .
In 1981 a group of citizens in Duluth, Minnesota became frustrated with what they perceived was a lack of commitment by the criminal justice system concerning “wife beaters.” With private funding they founded the Duluth Abuse Intervention Project. The project was a coordinated community wide effort that contained a number of agreed upon written protocols that were intended to connect the police, the court system and social service agencies. According to the program manual the basis for their beliefs came from a sample of just five battered women and four men who had completed the Duluth program.
Perhaps not since Marx and Engels' Communist Manifesto has a political agenda so corrupted the underlying values of a society. Even more frightening, the Duluth Model strikes not at the society, but at families. As noted above, radical feminists only solution to “domestic abuse” is to separate the man and woman by the actions of a police state. As noted in the definition of domestic violence, abuse is virtually anything women or the police want it to be. History clearly shows that such broad definitions and police powers will be repeatedly abused until the citizens rebel or outside forces overturn the society.
The original Duluth Model was defined as follows:
“The Domestic Abuse Intervention Project (DAIP) brings together nine agencies in a coordinated community response to domestic assault cases. The goal of DAIP, also known as the “Duluth Model,” is to stop domestic violence by combining victim safety, legal sanctions, and offender rehabilitation. In developing a community-based response to battering, DAIP seeks to avoid further victimization of the abuser's partner by holding him [ emphasis added ] solely responsible for his [ emphasis added ] use of violence and to promote zero tolerance for domestic violence within the community.
DAIP includes a mandatory arrest policy, which requires officers to arrest a man [ emphasis added ] suspected of domestic assault when probable cause exists, an aggressive prosecution policy, and a policy that requires probation officers to conduct pre-sentence investigations that account for both the incident and its context. Convicted offenders and respondents in civil protection orders are typically ordered to participate in the 29-week DAIP nonviolence class. The program offers culturally specific classes for Native American offenders, veterans, and women who have used violence.”
Another source for the Duluth Model is Women Helping Battered Women. Their Utopian vision is summarized in an Equality Wheel, as contrasted with a Power and Control Wheel (PDF) based on a patriarchal society. The power and control wheel “...depicts the primary abusive behaviors experienced by women living with men who batter.” The way Pence and Paymer put it, all the evils of mankind are represented in this power and control wheel and the patriarchal society it represents. However, Tom Graves has suggested a simple modification to the Power and Control Wheel that makes a lot of sense. Substitute “Using gender privilege” for “Using male privilege” and it becomes useful for describing many characteristics of family violence whether initiated by male or female. But that is contrary to feminist ideology.
Bert Hoff has critiqued the Duluth Model extensively and comments that it is a “victim” model. One in which it is inconceivable that men could be the victims of domestic violence. We would strongly suggest you read his review before advocating the adoption of the Duluth Model in your area.
The Duluth Model is based on blame and shame, not help. Ideology, not science. It ignores drinking, drugs, personality and mental disorders, and pathology. Only one cause, only one solution. There's no real evidence it works. It ignores domestic violence by women. Women who need help can't get it. It's taught by “wounded healers,” women who claim to be survivors of domestic violence and, consequently, hate all men. It's gender polarizing and exacerbates the “battle of the sexes.” It seeks to shame the male for being male, but ignores the fact that shame is a cause of rage, not a cure for it. It forces a couple apart despite their own wishes and the best interests of their children.
In the next section we look at the definition of the Duluth Model and some reactions to the conditioning it proposes:
If you are referred to counseling or therapy in connection with domestic violence or abuse, you will likely encounter a curriculum based on the work of Pence and Paymer.
“Throughout this curriculum we use male pronouns to refer to batterers [emphasis added] and female pronouns to refer to those who are battered [Thus they begin by rigid polarization on the basis of gender].
Dealing with gay and lesbian battering is beyond the scope of this book. We use gender-specific terms not only because the curriculum is for men who batter, but because battering is not a gender-neutral issue. [The >50% violence ratio in lesbian couples is ignored.]
In intimate heterosexual relationships where violence is occurring, the primary aggressors are typically men, and the victims are women. Every source of data, from police reports to hospital emergency rooms, from counseling centers to divorce courts, points to an enormous gender disparity in who is initiating the violence [ please look at the actual statistics in the frequency section ], who is more physically harmed, and who is seeking safety from the violence.
Violence in the family is directly linked to status in the family and to socialization. Men are culturally prepared for their role of master of the home even though they must often physically enforce the “right” to exercise this role. They are socialized to be dominant and women to be subordinate.
This doesn't mean that women never use violence. A person who is kicked or punched or spit on or cursed at or dragged from room to room or thrown down on the floor usually responds with some kind of physical defense. Women often kick, scratch, and bite the men who beat them, but that does not constitute mutual battering.
Mutual battering occurs when both parties engage in a series of abusive and controlling behaviors, coupled with the threat or use of violence to control what the other partner thinks, does, or feels.
Women's violence toward their male partners that is neither in self-defense nor in response to being battered is rare but can still be very dangerous. During the past 10 years the Duluth Domestic Intervention Project has worked with just under 100 women who have physically assaulted their partners, this represents 3.5% of offenders mandated to DAIP. In seven of these cases, the men were unable to leave the situation without increasing their partner's violence.
These seven men, like the thousands of women who have sought safety at the shelter are being pursued and terrorized by their partners. They like many battered women, needed legal protection, safe housing and tremendous emotional support.
What separated those seven men from the 90 other male assault victims was their fear and their inability to leave without their abusers escalating the violence and threats. Most men who live with women who are violent are abusing the women who have assaulted them and can end the violence against them by stopping their own violence or leaving the relationship.
The factors differentiating the enormous social problem of men's violence against women from the violence of women against men are the number of cases and the severity and pattern of the violence used against the victims. The civil protection order and the criminal court processes are effective tools for protecting almost all male victims because women rarely engage in 'separation violence,' the violence that occurs and escalates as victims attempt to leave their abusers. A report issued by the Minnesota Coalition for Battered Women on Jan. 28, 1991, documented the murders of 27 Minnesota women who were killed in 1990 by their male partners; half of them were trying to leave their relationships. None of the public documents indicates that any of the men killed by their partners during the same year were attempting to leave the relationship.”
The lack of supporting evidence in the above statements is characteristic of the feminist dogma. Since in their view, women rarely engage in violence, any evidence, e.g. battering in lesbian couples, that refutes their position is irrelevant or inaccurate. Such tactics have been characteristic of totalitarian regimes through all of recorded history.
Also note that under current laws in Colorado you may be sent for treatment of the type quoted above before your case ever comes to trial. Should you be convicted of domestic violence you will almost certainly be sentenced to a feminist program as described in the above curriculum. Would attending, and paying for many long hours of classes based on such rhetoric cure you of your patriarchal tendencies to subdue women by force? Might not the reverse occur?
Courses under the Duluth model discourage efforts to teach batterers stress management, listening or other communication skills, explore past experience, and examine “distorted thinking” and its effect on emotions. Analysis of psychopathology and individual sessions are also discouraged because they might serve to “support the defendant's [false] belief of uniquely different reasons for employing violence.”
Group leaders need not be licensed, but are required to go through a training series that includes a “gender analysis of domestic violence,” “gender role socialization,” “diversity issues” and “unlearning oppressions.” Facilitators must also “confront heterosexism and homophobia within group sessions.” Typically, facilitators and group leaders in the Duluth program are women who have, or claim to have been victims of domestic abuse. A hatred of males would thus seem to be a prerequisite for teaching the Duluth model.
In his book Rethinking Domestic Violence Don Dutton presents (p. 303) the following profile of a typical Duluth Model client based on his experience as a therapist:
“Based on police arrest statistics and court and treatment group data, we know the following about the statistically most likely participant in a court-mandated group. He is about 31, under- or unemployed. He resents his lot in life but has several mouths to feed. He does not hate women but in his eyes his wife 'isn't pulling her weight.' He drinks more than he should, but he doesn't like her telling him about it. His anger has increased lately, especially with work layoffs, but he is in denial about it. His anger is starting to generalize to other groups, groups that are 'taking his work away.' (Their identity varies with geographic location). He feels powerless but hates to admit it because of pride. The arrest startled him. He had no previous police record.
He is terrified about a 'treatment group.' He's never been in treatment; he thinks it's for sick people. When the group leader tells him he's using violence as a form of 'power and control' and that he flaunts 'male privilege' he is stunned. He sees himself as the last person to have 'privilege.' He thinks the 'facilitator' is 'full of shit' but knows he had better keep that opinion to himself because he has to finish this group as a condition of probation. That means the therapist has to think he's okay. If that means going along the nonsense they're spouting, so be it. They try to tell him he's like a slave owner, but he thinks, 'If anyone's a slave here, it's me!'
He mentions in group that his wife flies into rages and is sometimes violent, but his statements are dismissed as 'victim blaming,' so he learns not to talk about these problems. He 'goes underground' in group, not revealing what he sees as marriage problems. He keeps things to himself. The facilitator tells him he must write a letter of apology to his wife. He struggles with that one. He is feeling chronic anger now: toward her for calling the cops and toward the system that is forcing him to say and do these things. Some of the guys meet outside group to discuss how to 'get by and get out.'
His sense of powerlessness is increased or intensified by the unfairness of how he is being dealt with by the 'system.' Consequently, his sense of worth plummets further, and whatever optimism he has left is dealt a further blow. In other words, all the psychological and societal dynamics that came into play in the violent domestic situation become intensified and further solidified.”
Sally Satel, M.D., presents the reaction of one man to courses based on the Duluth Model:
“Take the case of 'Don,' a senior administrator at a southern university. Arrested once for slapping his wife (they are still together), Don was required to attend a Duluth-model program. About fifteen men sat for three hours on ten consecutive Wednesday nights in a classroom headed by two counselors. 'The message was clear,' Don told me, 'whatever she does to you is your fault, whatever you do to her is your fault.' It would have been a lot more helpful if they taught us to recognize when we felt ourselves being driven into positions where we lash out. The message should have been 'recognize it, deal with it, and quit hitting.' But all they gave us to work with was guilt.' According to Don, 'bathroom and cigarette breaks were filled with comments about the whole thing being stupid. In the sessions, group discussions among participants were not allowed to develop — maybe the leaders were afraid we'd unite and challenge their propaganda.' Rather than improve their relationships, Don felt the therapy only helped to increase polarization between men and women. 'Wives went to support groups and we went to our groups.'”
or Satel's description of the reaction of a battered woman to DAIP courses:
“Glenna Auxiera, a divorce resolution counselor in Gainesville, Florida, attended a training course on male batterers sponsored by the Duluth Abuse Intervention Program. She reports being 'stunned' by what she heard. 'The course leaders were fixated on male-bashing,' Auxiera says. 'I was a battered woman, too, and I see the part I played in the drama of my relationship. Hitting is wrong. Period. But a relationship is a dynamic interaction and if both want to change, counselors should work with them.'”
It should be obvious from the above that men are the enemy in the feminist mind, regardless of a man's race, creed, color, or any other characteristics. In their ideology, the battering that men impose on women is the result of our patriarchal society and training. Women only use violence for “self defense.” The only solution to the problem of domestic violence under their creed is to forcibly separate the man and the woman using police powers to arrest the man and tear him from his home and family with no more to his name than what he stands in.
On the basis of this unproven ideology, and with complete disregard of civil liberties, Colorado, and many other states, have passed laws that make a warrantless arrest of the male mandatory if a woman alleges domestic violence, or someone else reports that they suspect it, regardless of whether the officer witnesses any criminal act.
Hearsay is admissible as a basis for arrest and at hearings and trial.
The arrest of the male is mandatory even if the police have little or no evidence to support a woman's charges, or if the woman does not want an arrest made, and even if the police think the woman is lying.
If you are in your home, the police will enter without a warrant and search for evidence of violence or any other thing they may discover.
Once arrested, the male is usually held without bail for an indefinite period without a hearing, often exceeding 48 hours.
Before being released, the man must sign a restraining order that forces him from his home and children with no more than the shirt on his back, forbids contact with his wife and children, prohibits mediation, prevents or greatly hinders his finding witnesses for his defense, prohibits his possession of a firearm for any reason, or the possession or consumption of any alcoholic beverage.
Other punishments C.R.S. § 16-4-105 may be inflicted on the male prior to a trial solely at the discretion of the court.
The prosecutor is prohibited by law, C.R.S. § 18-6-801(3), from plea bargaining such cases to any charge that does not include domestic violence, the so-called “no drop” provision.
Ex parte (without the other party) restraining orders may be issued by the court if a woman alleges abuse of any kind, including verbal harassment, shouting, an argument. She may simply claim that she is fearful of a man or that the potential for “emotional harm” exists or may exist in the future.
An adulterous woman may obtain a restraining order against her husband on the basis that he threatened the male she was having an affair with (e.g., see the case of Dr. Emerson ).
Cathy Young notes that: “The basis for a restraining order need not include violence. In Massachusetts, over half of the 60,000 restraining orders in domestic cases issued every year do not, according to a 1995 state report, involve so much as an allegation of physical abuse.”
The consequences of violating a restraining order almost certainly involve going to jail no matter how trivial or uncorroborated the charges. Under this feminist ideology, men have been jailed for:
• Taking food to their children while the mother was away for days partying.
• Sending their kids a Christmas card.
• For asking a telephone operator to convey a harmless message.
• For accidental contact at the courthouse.
• For returning a child's phone call.
• For sending an email, even when a computer virus sent the email.
• For passing the woman going the other way on a highway.
• Being at the grocery store at the same time.
Many of these laws have been in place in Colorado for a decade or more. Yet in 2000 the Colorado legislature is allocating ever more money to feminist groups to stop alleged increases in such acts. It is a virtual certainty that such monies will go toward financing feminist programs rather than attempting to solve the problem.
macho (adj.): Of or pertaining to male behavior. It is always followed by the noun “bullshit.” In approved usage it is applied to any and all male behavior of which the speaker disapproves. Thus, a man holding a door for a woman and a man forcing a woman to walk two paces behind him are both macho bullshit. Only complete and total acquiescence to the woman's will is exempt from this label (see 'wimp').
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