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Evolving evil from good — a brief history
Domestic violence and no-fault divorce — a marriage made in hell
Violence against women and woe unto men
A breakthrough plan for ending the cycle of abuse, yeah right!
Batterers, victims, and the cycle of violence
Where have all the couples gone?
The missing piece of the equation — single mothers
Well what does cause intimate partner violence?
Why is there so little real violence in DV cases
Age-related mental disorders — 35 and older
Restraining (protection?) orders and false allegations
What criminal domestic violence is not associated with
PTSD and TBI are not domestic violence
Post traumatic stress disorder
Why PTSD looks like domestic violence
Shame and blame are not treatment
Aggressive by nature, violent by training
Crybabies — Momma took all his toys
Victimhood versus self defense
It is basic to understand that I am not speaking here of those individuals who consider themselves “feminists” because they support equal rights under the rule of law, equal opportunity in employment and education, equal protection under law, and protection from violence for all persons. These positions are supported by those on the right and the left and certainly by the Equal Justice Foundation. However, equal rights also demands equal responsibility but there is little about contemporary feminism that can legitimately be viewed as promoting gender equality and responsibility. Now, the quest for equality has been replaced by neo-Marxist rhetoric of female “liberation” and “empowerment.”
And let me forestall, and respond to numerous ideologues who have written vitriolic emails claiming that I hate all women. Please note that I have a very lovely and loving wife whom I've been with for fourteen years. She is still one of the nicest people I've ever known and we laugh and play every day we are together.
For the same critics who claim the Equal Justice Foundation is anti-female please note that half the officers and directors of the Foundation are female as well as about one third of the authors on our web sites.
With that out of the way let me first briefly review the history of how neo-Marxist radical feminism evolved. For those of you who think 1984 is ancient history, and WW II is just something your great-grandfather fought in, a lesson in why the ideology of these viragos is so harmful to our society is essential.
With socialism and communism on an upswing at the end of the Second World War Marxist- and radical-feminism got off to a great start. But by the end of the 1960's, with the economic recovery of capitalism, radical feminism was clearly failing. However, in 1971 Erin Pizzey opened the first refuge for battered women in Chiswick, London, England, and her 1974 book Scream Quietly Or The Neighbors Will Hear brought the issue of domestic violence to worldwide attention.
Domestic violence is a propaganda minister's dream subject. It is common enough that the reality essential to all good propaganda is evident. Men who beat their wives are universally reviled. Conversely, abused men are mocked and derided. Radical feminists, longtime students of communist-propaganda methods, quickly snapped up the issue as their own. The cry of “wife beater” degrades men and can be blamed on the hated patriarchy, which they accuse of subjugating and enslaving females. And any man who denies the accusation is faced with the classic paradox.
The issue also conforms to the arguments of Engels and Marx that class distinctions and oppression first arose between man and woman in monogamous marriage. Therefore, “class struggle” began when men discovered, or insisted on (a) the recognition of their fatherhood, (b) enslaved women in marriage, (c) created the patriarchal family, and (d) established private property. Thus, according to Marxist theory, the family is the root cause of female oppression and radical feminist ideology evolved from that. Vladimir Ilyich Lenin put it bluntly: “Destroy the family and you destroy society.”
One of the first things Lenin did when he came to power after the 1917 Russian Revolution was to pass the equivalent of our present no-fault divorce. On September 16, 1918, a law was passed in the Soviet Union whereby one could obtain a divorce by simply mailing or delivering a postcard to the local clerk without the necessity of even notifying the spouse being divorced. [Compare that practice to the current use of ex parte restraining orders.]
That statute, along with the communist encouragement of sexual immorality during marriage, approval of abortion, and forcing women out of the home into the workforce accomplished its purpose of destroying the Russian family (see Mikhail Heller, Cogs In The Wheel, 1988, p. 168-179).
Even more ominously, Erin Pizzey noted many years ago that any country that has tried to create a political solution to human problems has ended up with concentration camps and gulags. Torture, which used to be considered an abomination in America, has become almost routine. Carey Roberts has examined this pogrom in a series of essays on Marxism And The Roots of Radical Feminism. But in the face of unpleasant truths, humans have a propensity to simply deny reality.
Ignoring the failure and destruction of the Russian Effort To Abolish Marriage, radical feminists were greatly helped in their crusade by California Assemblyman James A. Hayes who introduced and got passed a “no fault” divorce law in 1969. Thus, after January 1, 1970, either party to a marriage contract could end it without reason or justification. “No fault” divorce quickly became the national standard virtually without debate or question. That proved a great boon to neo-Marxist feminists following in the disastrous footsteps of Lenin's and Stalin's attempts to destroy families and marriage.
No-fault divorce, “the child's best interests,” and other components of family law in America were imported from the worst of the Soviet family law system. Without question we should also acknowledge the contributions of Antonio Gramsci and Herbert Marcuse to this radical feminist ideology. Thus, in the 1970s radical feminists in the United States achieved unilateral divorce-on-demand from state legislatures, unilateral abortion-on-demand from the courts, and unilateral control over children in the welfare class by taxpayer handouts to women that made husbands and fathers financially unnecessary.
Radical feminists have now successfully carried on a 40-year campaign to destroy families and marriage and what they deride as the “patriarchy,” which they want to replace with a matriarchy.
I think it is clear that without the cause celebre of domestic violence and the fortuitous, though disastrous, coincidental adoption of “no fault” divorce that, at most, radical feminism would presently consist of a few crazy witches in isolated covens rather than the Mad Hatter's Tea Party they form throughout our society today. And it might be of interest to note that the Soviet Union only lasted about 70 years following such insane policies.
Radical feminists have continued their campaign against marriage through now Vice President Joe Biden's favorite legislation, the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA), which provides a billion dollars a year to feminist centers to promote divorce and oppose reconciliation. VAWA is based on the pretense that women are naturally victims entitled to tax-paid legal and financial assistance while men are naturally batterers who are not entitled even to due process protections.
As with any ideologically-driven movement, these redfems quickly established dogma engraved on stone tablets. In their etymology of “domestic violence” only men are violent towards their female intimate partners and men batter women in order to maintain the patriarchy and, therefore, to subjugate women. Also, the dogma insists that the only occasions on which women are violent is in “self defense.” That doctrine continues to be used as a convenient foil to the demonstrable fact that women are as violent, or more violent than men in intimate relationships.
Further, since all men are “batterers, rapists, and bastards” by nature in redfem ideology, and all their subjugated chattels, i.e., married women, are “victims” there is little value in attempting to treat these male beasts.
From redfem dogma arose a draconian set of laws that ignored virtually all of English jurisprudence and such frivolous impediments as presumption of innocence until proven guilty, perjury and subornation of perjury, arrest and search warrants, due process, reasonable bail, a requirement for prosecutors to establish both mens rea 1 and actus reus 2 before a jury of one's peers in order to convict, substituting instead torture and coerced plea bargains. And the necessity for this is explained by continually castigating men for their support of the patriarchy.
Since the patriarchy is to blame, the only “treatment” for male batterers is the “shame and blame” of the Duluth model based on a cycle of violence, which it is unquestioned that all males go through in all their relationships with women. As the cycle of violence is a given in redfem ideology, couples counseling is forbidden in the name of “victim safety.” Therefore, the only answer for a couple having problems is divorce, no matter how much they want to stay together or the damage done to children by separating their parents.
Like any dogma derived by raving maniacs, when a critical examination was undertaken by shocked investigators, who often initially supported female equality, there was little coincidence between the observations and the ideology. As we now have more than three decades and hundreds of scientific studies establishing beyond question that men and women are equally violent in intimate relationships it is clearly time to reexamine the premises of the draconian and destructive laws that evolved from this deeply-flawed and extremely dangerous ideology.
1. Mens rea “guilty mind” generally requires the prosecution to prove the defendant acted purposefully, knowingly, recklessly, willfully, and intentionally. That is of particular importance in cases where the defendant is mentally impaired, e.g., traumatic brain injuries, or reacts instinctively without conscious intent, e.g. flashbacks with post traumatic stress disorder or a startle response due to combat stress.
2. Actus reus requires the prosecution to prove the defendant voluntarily committed a criminal act. The model penal code specifically describes what are considered involuntary acts and thus not criminal: (1) a reflex or convulsion; (2) a bodily movement during unconsciousness or sleep; (3) conduct during hypnosis or resulting from hypnotic suggestion; (4) a bodily movement that otherwise is not a product of the effort or the determination of the actor, either conscious or habitual.
In 2008 Linda G. Mills, J.D., Ph.D., published a much-touted book Violent Partners: A Breakthrough Plan For Ending The Cycle of Abuse . On one hand I fully agree with her conclusion that in many cases where abuse in a relationship has begun that couples counseling might be beneficial. Further, the Circles she describes for such treatment likely have great therapeutic value for couples who long to stay together and are willing to work at maintaining their relationship. But, perhaps unfairly, I use her work as a foil against which to measure what I observe in intimate relationships.
Further, it is impossible to find solutions to the problem of intimate partner violence unless and until we identify the full spectrum of issues and causes. In her attempt to rectify one of the evils of redfem ideology, Dr. Mills has grossly oversimplified the problems of intimate relationships. Very early in her work Erin Pizzey realized that a clear distinction must be made between:
• Women [or men] who accidentally become involved with a violent partner and now wish to leave and to never return again.
• Women [or men] who, for deep psychological reasons of their own, seek out a violent relationship, or a series of violent relationships, with no intention of leaving.
Clearly couples counseling is contra indicated in the first case and reasonable help by society to enable such individuals to escape and reestablish their lives is worthwhile. As in some cases a woman, and sometimes a man and his children, may have great difficulty leaving such accidental relationships, some clearly-delimited assistance for these individuals may be justified, e.g., the refuges (shelters in America) pioneered by Erin Pizzey.
But these are not the individuals Dr. Mills is concerned with, although likely they are a substantial fraction of what are described as cases of “domestic violence.”
In fact, Dr. Mills comes across as so naive and lacking in commonsense as to make one wonder whether she should be out on her own without a minder. For example, she describes herself as a teenager anxious to lose her virginity, repeatedly going over to a boy's house and into his room while smoking pot and drinking. This leads to what she calls a sexual assault. In another instance she is letting a boy buy her gifts out of money he works for (Dr. Mills attended the very upper-class Beverly Hills High School in Los Angeles and her parents were quite well to do). When she tires of him she reports he “stalks” her by sitting in his car outside her house and repeatedly calling her. Lets see, only about 90% of young lovers, both men and women in roughly equal numbers, behave in this manner. Usually when a vast majority are doing something it is considered normal behavior. It certainly makes a poor example for criminal behavior.
Then Dr. Mills goes to college and meets and moves in with a social worker. David is abusive before they shack up, but she moves in anyway. Clearly, she has met the criteria of the second distinction that Erin Pizzey made about intimate relationships. But, of course, she is entirely the “victim” in their relationship. But these two examples are not the major failure of her work.
In redfem ideology there are only batterers (always men), and victims (always women), in intimate relations. Again I call on the wisdom of Erin Pizzey who stated that:
“...it is essential to understand the differentiation between our use of the words battered and violence-prone. For us, a battered person is the innocent victim of another person's violence; a violence-prone person is the victim of their own addiction to violence.”
By definition, battering in a relationship involves emotional and physical abuse of an unresisting intimate partner that are combined and continue over time. In his book Rethinking Domestic Violence, Dutton (2006, p. 188) would limit the use of the term “batterer” to someone who repeatedly strikes or kicks a person who is not resisting. Battering clearly does not refer to a single argument, nor does it mean the occasional conflicts that many couples have that may grow to yelling at each other and some pushing or shoving.
In a violent relationship the level of violence may increase with time and that is particularly true with the second category of relationships distinguished by Pizzey. Sensible people will quickly leave such a relationship by any means possible and the great majority of relationships de-escalate or separate without police intervention. But in redfem ideology that doesn't happen and the couple goes through a repeating cycle of violence idealized in the Duluth model by a power and control wheel until he kills her. Naturally the only solution in their ideology is to separate the couple by any means possible, legal or illegal, voluntary or involuntary, and many are the tales of women who have been threatened with, or actually had their children taken if they would not divorce their husbands.
While examples of a cycle of violence can be found among some intimate partners, it is rare, which even Dr. Mills weakly admits late in her work. She does turn the tables somewhat on the redfem cycle of violence by quoting a case where an alcoholic, drug abusing woman shoots her alcoholic, drug abusing, and apparently violent husband. Dr. Mills notes in excruciating detail the lives of these poor wretches and their abuse and neglect as children, as well as the way Rick and Brenda abuse and neglect their own children. Predictably, these children don't turn out to be upstanding members of society either.
While no doubt many such cases exist, Dr. Mills commits the fallacy of basing her later analysis of intimate partner violence largely on the social outcome when parents, relatives, or others physically or sexually abuse children. If one is to attribute a substantial percentage of domestic violence to individuals who were abused as children then the source of that abuse merits some mention.
It is of note that Dr. Mills considers domestic violence primarily within the context of couples, particularly married couples. But today that is hardly the demographic found in police reports, at least in Colorado. Table 77 shows that in 1995, when current DV laws first went into effect, married (42%) and common-law (8%) couples were just half the population involved in DV police incidents. By 2007 married (31%) and common-law (7%) couples comprised just over one-third of the DV incidents in Colorado reported to police. So considering treatment for couples, in whatever format, and though alongside Dr. Mills I strongly advocate couples counseling, we are now considering a distinct minority of DV cases seen by the legal system. Obviously for the majority of DV cases we are applying the wrong approach to the problems.
Dr. Mills does note in passing that one discernible effect of draconian DV laws has been to instill a fear in couples of calling the police. Table 74 shows an 15-year plot of 911 calls for domestic disturbances in Colorado Springs, Colorado, for the years 1990 through 2004. Despite a +44% increase in population, domestic disturbance 911 calls underwent an absolute decrease of –17%, and a population-projected decrease of ~46%. Those findings have now been replicated elsewhere and it is clear that what draconian redfem DV legislation has primarily done is to frighten away the very people who probably need help the most.
Another side effect of the 911 fear is that apparently over half the domestic disturbance calls are now hearsay, and usually anonymous, deeply burdening law enforcement with emergency calls based on such things as a loud TV in the next apartment, neighbors hearing yelling and loud noises. etc., and dialing 911.
Consider the following vignette of a not uncommon occurrence that was sent to me while writing this essay:
“Yesterday one of my neighbors was hauled of to jail on this craziness. I talked to his girlfriend today. Its seems that the guy was upset about something and a person who the girlfriend was talking to on the phone called the police. He got hauled away and has a no contact [order]. She being a foreigner did not know what to do. In talking to me at least she knows that she has to go to the court right away to try to get the no contact lifted. She was telling me that there was nothing going on except an argument and that the police just seemed intent on an arrest.”
Redfems consider a pillow fight domestic violence so a couple at play, or enjoying loud sex, are likely to find a cop at their front door and pushing their way into the home from an anonymous 911 domestic call from which an arrest is likely.
In fact, the DV and divorce laws and family courts have become so draconian that for years the EJF has pointed out that today a man has to be functionally insane to marry and a drooling idiot to sire a child. Certainly the statistics, as noted above, show that men are avoiding marriage, or even shacking up, in droves in order to protect their honor and fortunes.
Nowhere does Dr. Mills examine the relationship between single mothers and crime. John Maguire has pointed out that:
“Although the words 'domestic' violence are commonly used, some commentators say that a better description would be 'shack-up' violence, because violence is most common, especially where children are involved where the woman is living with a boy friend. In a piece in the Weekly Standard last December by John A. Barnes, he cited four studies which show 'that the incidence of abuse was an astounding 33 times higher in homes where the mother was cohabiting with an unrelated boyfriend than in a stable nuclear family.'”
In examining the influences of race, ethnicity, gender, and place, Lauritsen and White (2001, p. 53) state that: “...the proportion of households with children that are female-headed was the strongest and most consistent community predictor of risk for all forms of violence.” Thus, to reduce family violence, a primary effort must be made to reduce the percentage of single mothers in society.
• 63% of youth suicides. (Source: US Dept. of Health & Human Services, Bureau of the Census).
• 71% of pregnant teenagers. (Source: US Dept. of Health & Human Services)
• 90% of all homeless and runaway children.
• 70% of juveniles in state-operated institutions come from fatherless homes (Source: U.S. Dept. of Justice, Special Report, Sept. 1988)
• 85% of all children that exhibit behavioral disorders. (Source: Center for Disease Control).
• 80% of rapists motivated with displaced anger. (Source: Criminal Justice & Behavior, v. 14, p. 403-26, 1978).
• 71% of all high school dropouts. (Source: National Principals Association Report on the State of High Schools).
• 75% of all adolescent patients in chemical abuse centers. (Source: Rainbows for all God`s Children).
• 85% of all youths sitting in prisons. (Source: Fulton Co. Georgia jail populations, Texas Dept. of Corrections 1992).
There can be little doubt these statistics have worsened since these studies were done as the numbers of single mothers and fatherless children continues to multiply.
Studies by a variety of groups show that 60-70% of child abuse is inflicted by women, commonly single mothers. An additional 20-30% is inflicted by mom's boyfriend or a stepfather.
Clearly to minimize child abuse we should be keeping children with their biological fathers as well as their mothers whenever possible, the antithesis of redfem ideologues whose raison d'être is based on destroying marriage, families, and the patriarchy in order to free women from their bonds.
That is not to suggest we return to the broken model where the couple buys a license from the county clerk that enslaves them and their children to some ignorant black-robed monster in what is euphemistically-called a “family” court. But we do need to return to marriage as a contract solemnized by a religious or other ceremony of the couple's choice that specifies from the beginning how children, property, medical, and life's other issues will be handled by the couple, rather than by grossly-incompetent judges.
Nor are the root causes of domestic violence as simple as Dr. Mills implies. I found little or no consideration for the multitude of other causes of intimate partner violence in Dr. Mills work.
It wasn't long after Erin Pizzey brought the problem of domestic violence to the world's attention that researchers began serious scientific studies of the issues. Pizzey immediately evoked the hatred of redfems by pointing out that when she opened her refuge (shelter) for battered women that 62 out of the first 100 women to come to her were as violent, or more violent than the men they had left. To make matters worse, in 1982 Pizzey published her book Prone To Violence describing the extensive violence against men she had witnessed as perpetrated by deranged and often substance-abusing women. For that heresy she couldn't go anywhere without a police escort and redfems eventually drove her into exile from England for a decade.
In 1980 Murray Straus, Richard Gelles, and Suzanne Steinmetz published their book Behind Closed Doors, Violence in the American Family. These heretics had the outrageous audacity to establish that in intimate relationships women are as violent as men and, commonly, the violence is mutual. For their scientific honesty all three received death threats and other abuse and vilification by radical feminists. Redfems rightly feared their propaganda, and attendant funding, might be challenged if the facts of domestic violence became widely known and their ideology shown to be the dangerous gender-biased tripe it is.
Straus, Gelles, and Steinmetz did establish the foundation for Dr. Mills thesis that children of abusive relationships ofttimes grow up to engage in violent relationships as well. But that is apparently only true of about one-third of children who grow up in such despicable circumstances.
During their original studies Straus and Gelles also began development of a Conflict Tactics Scale (CTS) in an attempt to provide a quantitative measure of intimate partner violence (IPV). Since then the CTS has become the standard for measuring IPV. Typically, in general populations the CTS suggests between 10-12% of couples have some interpersonal violence in a given year.
Subsequent research has consistently confirmed the early findings of these pioneers and in the eight years I've worked with Prof. Martin Fiebert, the bibliography he has compiled showing that women are as physically aggressive, or more aggressive than men in their relationships with their spouses or male partners has grown from just over 100 references to a current tabulation of 246 scholarly investigations. 187 of these are empirical studies and 59 are reviews or analyses. The aggregate sample size in the reviewed studies exceeds 237,750. Thus, the observation that women and men are roughly equally violent in intimate relationships is one of the most replicated and well-established findings in the social sciences. But redfems still deny this.
For those of you who have been young, in love, with small children, and facing financial problems, you are probably thinking that if only 100 or 120 couples out of 1,000 (10-12%) have some severe argument or fight in a year that it is a small number. You probably remember working through more than that number of conflicts as you tried to build a marriage, raise your little ones, survive financially, and establish a career. If so, as defined by redfem dogma you are obviously a Neolithic patriarch who regards your wife as a slave you can abuse at will, and refuse to let her find her true self.
The picture of domestic violence changes dramatically if we move away from redfem ideology and ask citizens only about criminal domestic violence. That is done twice annually by the National Crime Victimization Survey. There citizens report only 4 out of 1,000 (0.4%) of households experience what might be considered criminal domestic violence. And in only about half of these cases is it likely that a prosecutor could establish mens rea and actus reus beyond a reasonable doubt in order to obtain a conviction before a jury. And, as always, about half these cases are mutual combat between the partners.
But in the minds of redfem ideologues and their taxpayer-funded propagandists, every push-and-shove by a couple during an argument, every time a man pounds on the table for emphasis, every time he swears at or around his intimate partner will inevitably lead to him murdering her unless they intervene with draconian penalties. That propaganda is great for maintaining their funding but, as usual, it is not borne out by the facts. Table 88 through Table 91 present available data on intimate partner homicides in the United States from 1976 through 2002. Note that by 2002 the total number of IPV homicides had fallen to less than 2,000 (Table 88). By way of contrast, Table 92 compares IPV homicides with some other common causes of death. The largest risk to an individual is clearly from medical mistakes, where the danger is nearly 100 times that of domestic violence. Even common flu presents 20 times greater risk of death than intimate partner violence. Dept. of Justice Uniform Crime Reports (UCR) lists a total of 16,137 murders in the United States in 2004 and intimate partner homicides, including both men and women, only account for about 12% of the total. If one is afraid of a violent death then drunk drivers present eight times the risk of IPV (Table 92).
Humans are typically unable to distinguish clearly between possibility and probability. So doctors are trusted because they spend a lot money and TV shows advertising how good they are. And medicine has come a long way in the past century despite the obvious risks and much higher probability of injury and death from visiting your doctor or hospital than from your spouse or intimate partner. While the data indicate a considerable decline in the number of intimate partner homicides, a lot of money and TV advertising is used to frighten the public about a very remote possibility.
As noted above, fear of domestic violence makes great propaganda, but simply isn't supported by reality. But what redfem propagandist would dare make the distinction between possibility and probability. The fact that a woman has a greater chance of being struck by a drunk driver, or dying from the flu, than being killed by an intimate partner isn't likely to win those million dollar grants they feed off taxpayers with.
The fact that American society and prosperity is built on patriarchal families is of no consequence to redfems. Therefore, all family squabbles and lover's quarrels must be dealt with in the most draconian terms by arrest of the male, wreckage of the children and family, and destruction of the batterer to the point where he can never oppress another woman again in his life. Note, however, that it is virtually impossible to obtain a criminal conviction before a jury in any of these “he said/she said” cases involving family squabbles and lover's quarrels. Thus, by any means possible, the male must be precluded from any chance to defend himself.
While she admits that women are violent, Dr. Mills relies primarily on the work of Tjaden and Thoennes and their National Violence Against Women Survey (NVAW). Straus (1999a) has noted that the NVAW survey found only: “...1/12th of the rate obtained by family conflict studies such as the National Family Violence Surveys.” And since its publication I have used NVAW results for examples of how not to conduct multivariate analyses.
The redfem dogma that IPV is related to patriarchy has also been debunked by a number of studies that show lesbian partners are, on average, the most violent of all intimate relationships.
Despite a great deal of advocacy research, the evidence is clear that women are at least as violent as men in intimate relations. However, Dr. Mills comments that only ~14% of police reports of domestic violence are made by men. Table 72shows that in Colorado between 1999 and 2010 20-23% of the victims in police reports have been male. Nonetheless there is a great disparity in the number of police reports of male victims and the social data showing overall gender equality in intimate partner violence, e.g., Table 8. In younger couples, many studies find that women are two to three times as violent as males. So why the disparity between police and social domestic violence incidents?
First, the major difference between the sexes engaged in IPV is that men don't tell.
Secondly, long experience has taught abused men that if they do call the cops, they are the one most likely to be arrested. Of course that counts in police statistics as a male “batterer” even when he has knife and gunshot wounds inflicted by his female partner.
With regard to injuries in such conflicts there is also rough equality probably due to the more common use of weapons by women. And surprise is frequently used by females to compensate for their often smaller size. In a metanalysis Archer (2000) found women suffered 60% of all injuries in IPV incidents with men accumulating 40% of the total. Because of the common use of weapons, arguments have been advanced that men suffer the more serious injuries. Also, men are much less likely to report or regard scratches, bites, and bruises as “injuries” by nearly an order of magnitude.
Before considering what causes intimate partner violence it is critical to establish why actual violence in court cases where the defendant is charged with domestic violence very rarely involves violence that the ordinary citizen would consider criminal, or any violence at all.
In common with many other states, in Colorado “domestic violence” isn't a crime in and of itself. Instead it is an add-on charge that can be applied to virtually any other charge. Thus, under Colorado law telephone harassment, trespassing, DUI, disturbing the peace, phone obstruction, violation of a restraining order, auto theft, shoplifting, indecent exposure, disorderly conduct, drug possession, false identity, forgery, bail or probation violation, and on and on with over 60 known offenses where men and some women have had domestic violence added to the criminal charges against them. However, only a few of these crimes involve actual or threatened use of violence. Such broad use of the charge undermines the credibility of the actual problem and burdens the courts with spurious cases.
The Colorado Bureau of Investigation takes a more realistic approach to the problem of domestic violence and tabulates just eight offenses under this category: homicide, forcible sex, robbery, aggravated assault, simple assault, intimidation, kidnapping, and non-force sex, a much more logical approach. And consistently about 70-80% of these criminal cases involve simple assault, implying the violence is minor. About 20% of the reported cases involve aggravated, or felonious assault where major violence is involved.
As a result there is a great disparity between police reports of domestic violence and court cases. There are roughly 150% more court cases than police reports of domestic violence every year in Colorado (Table 80).
Thus, in considering causes of domestic violence we need to realize there is a great disconnect between police reports, court cases, and actual intimate partner violence. What causes an individual to shoplift or indecently expose themselves may or may not have any relationship to violence in an intimate relationship and they are certainly not acts of violence in and of themselves.
But we are still left with actual cases of intimate partner violence. And though the debate on what constitutes IPV is ever expanding in the redfem literature there are only a few major causes known to me. These include, but are certainly not limited to the following:
As noted above, I agree with Dr. Mills, Erin Pizzey, Murray Straus, and others that individuals who are abused as children and grow up in violent families will sometimes enter into violent intimate relationships as they mature. But that answer is simplistic and incomplete as most police incidents today don't involve couples, as noted above.
Certainly further research is required on whether the presence of even an alcoholic or drug abusing biological father acts to moderate the behavior of the children.
The United States today has 24 million children growing up in a household without their own father, and 17 million of those are in mother-headed households. Demographic data suggest that today only about 12 out of 100 children (12%) will be born to a couple who are legally married and remain so until the child reaches its majority.
As noted above, if we want to control child abuse the obvious first step is to reduce the number of single-mother homes. And controlling child abuse will reduce later intimate partner violence as well as other pathological behavior. But currently we are engaged in a vicious spiral in the opposite direction due largely to neo-Marxist radical feminist ideology and taxpayer-funded propaganda.
• In August 2005 a soldier came home from the war in Iraq and went home on leave to his wife and 22-month-old child in Fort Collins. There he found she had been working as a stripper and having an affair with another man. Result: he kills her and commits suicide.
• In Lakewood a woman sets her boyfriend's car, and six others on fire.
• In the small town of Security near Colorado Springs a woman runs over her rival and leaves her for dead.
The all too often fatal effects of taking out an ex parte domestic abuse restraining order also fall under this category. Other, less than fatal, acts of revenge in these circumstances are no doubt much more common though seldom publicized. And frequently, if not the majority of such orders are obtained as an act of vengeance as they demonstrably provide no protection, though that is their ostensible purpose.
In his book Women Can't Hear What Men Don't Say, Dr. Warren Farrell lists (p. 159) five catalysts to violence upon separation:
(2) Leave a vitriolic, rejecting note;
(4) Have the spouse [or significant other] arrested [or served with a protection order];
(5) Have a lover and go to her or his house.
Jealousy and desire for vengeance by spurned or tormented lovers are powerful emotions and dangerous games, as has been demonstrated throughout history. However, it seems quite unlikely that any possible sanctions will deter or prevent such disasters from occurring. Certainly laws against stalking have been ineffective and are virtually unenforceable.
In reading Dr. Mills book, Violent Partners, I was taken aback by the total absence of any reference to, or discussion of personality disorders as a factor in intimate partner violence. While there are many more possible personality disorders that result in violence in an intimate relationship, I have summarized the three most common ones brought to the attention of the Equal Justice Foundation by our respondents.
Erin Pizzey has long regarded narcissism as the most dangerous of personality disorders in an intimate relationship. As a psychological condition, narcissism is characterized by self-preoccupation, lack of empathy, and unconscious deficits in self-esteem. While narcissism is commonly associated with males, female narcissists are also common, and can be equally dangerous. In England such women are referred to as Toxic Wives.
In their book The Batterer, Donald Dutton and Susan Goant established a link between borderline personality disorder (BPD) and abusive men. Currently 75% of diagnosed cases of BPD are women and it is estimated that 2% of the general population suffer from this disorder. The chaos and violence sufferers of this disorder inflict in their intimate relationships is now well documented. Unfortunately, treatment for BPD is usually ineffective and there is no known cure. It usually becomes evident in the teenage years and is thought to be related to biological, neurological, and genetic factors that result in a dysfunctional limbic area of the brain that controls emotion. Any partner of someone with BPD will suffer from emotional and physical abuse and may be driven to violence themselves by the actions characteristic of BPD. Typically partners of BPD sufferers refer to the relationship as “Walking on eggshells.”
A close relative of BPD, and sometimes indistinguishable from that condition, is what is now known as bipolar disorder (BP, formerly manic depressive). As identical twins are quite likely to both have BP there is clearly a genetic factor. As lithium and other drugs affecting brain chemistry are palliative, the disorder is usually treatable. Emotional and physical abuse are less common with BP partners but erratic and irrational behavior often arises when sufferers neglect, or refuse to take their medication. Without medication BP sufferers frequently become a danger to themselves and others. There is some evidence emerging that traumatic brain injuries may lead to bipolar disorder in some cases but that is not yet clearly established.
Of course the mental condition of one's partner might be even more dangerous. Fortunately, sociopaths and psychopaths are rare, but the possibility should not be dismissed when attempting to define the causes of violence in a relationship. And these conditions occur with roughly equal frequency in males and females.
Head injuries have been linked in many cases with violent behavior but, as noted below, such behavior is not criminal.
It is also clear, as noted above, that some women become violent during perimenopause. Endocrinological problems such as thyroid glandular dysfunction are linked with personality changes that may sometimes lead to violence. While these conditions may not satisfy the requirements for a criminal conviction what usually happens in our experience is that a woman who suffers from these problems becomes violent and then blames her intimate partner. If her intimate partner is male he is frequently arrested and, whenever possible, coerced and even tortured into taking a plea bargain. The result is he has a DV conviction and she avoids needed treatment because it is obviously his fault as proven by his criminal record.
Deliberate self injury is quite common. About 1% of the general population and 10% of adolescents self-mutilate and females do it twice as often as males (2:1 ratio). 80% of females who self-mutilate have a history of sexual abuse. The most common manifestation is cutting but other forms include burning (often with caustic substances), hitting, skin scratching, biting, hair pulling, bone breaking, and, in more drastic cases, amputations and self castration. Self mutilation is very addictive, particularly with cutting.
Self-injurious actions are often related to, or associated with PTSD, borderline personality disorder, mood and eating disorders, dissociation, obsessive-compulsive behavior, and frequently includes substance abuse.
Deliberate self injury should not be confused with intimate partner violence. But all too frequently women injure themselves and then file a police report claiming the injuries were caused by a boyfriend or spouse, particularly where combined with issues of vengeance or jealousy.
We are not a long-lived species. Until the early 20 th Century, just 100 years ago, the average lifespan was less than 45 years. And it is well established that after about age 40 the physical and mental condition of most humans begins to deteriorate.
While modern medicine has now extended our lifespan to an average of around 80 years, biologically we haven't evolved in just a century. So the diseases of old age still creep up on many of us in our 40's, and many of those problems can lead to violent and erratic behavior in some individuals.
Human females go through a clear biological cycle associated with their reproductive function. Around age 12 girls go through menarche and become fertile. Biologically women should begin bearing children around age 14 to 16 so that their children can mature before they die some 20 to 30 years later. For women who live longer, and today most do, they will eventually reach menopause around age 50.
Unless a woman has had a hysterectomy (surgical menopause), menopause is proceeded by a period known as perimenopause in which their estrogen and other hormonal levels drop, and other physical changes in their physical and emotional state occur. The average age at which estrogen levels begin a sharp decline is 43 but the onset of perimenopause can occur anytime between age 35 and 50 and perimenopause typically lasts for about 7 years.
It is well established that an unfortunate 10-15% of women suffer emotional and physical breakdowns during perimenopause. A plot of extreme violence by women shows a marked peak between ages 35 and 44 (Table 11) that correlates with the age of onset of perimenopause in human females. I am legally blind in my right eye due to a former wife who became violently insane at age 43-44 apparently due to this condition. Divorces also peak for women aged 40-50 even when they have been married for over 20 years before the onset of perimenopause/menopause.
Fortunately, modern medicine can relieve the symptoms of this phase of a woman's life cycle with hormone replacement therapy (HRT) in most cases. But many women, including my ex-wife, refuse to accept the fact this is happening to them and blame the male in their life instead.
Many men and women face the brain disorder known as Alzheimers disease as they age. Early-onset Alzheimer's has been known to develop between ages 30 and 40, but that's exceedingly rare. It is more common to see someone in their 50s who has the disease. The risk increases with age and runs in families. As the disease progresses the individual will tend to become easily agitated and often violent.
It is an unfortunate fact that more and more we are seeing men arrested and convicted for domestic violence who are suffering from Alzheimers disease, a tragic legacy of radical feminist ideology. And it is ludicrous to sentence these men to Duluth model “shame and blame” treatment programs, which benefits no one except the ideologue collecting the money for this idiocy.
In addition to the well-known problem of Alzheimers, there are many other forms of dementia associated with old age and disease. These include: vascular dementia, Lewy-body dementia, frontal temporal dementia, HIV-associated dementia, Huntington's disease, dementia pugilistica, corticobasal degeneration, Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, and other rare hereditary diseases.
The bottom line is that anytime a man, middle aged or older, starts acting out or becomes aggressive in the presence of a female, and the cops are called, he is likely going to jail for “domestic violence.”
It is barbaric to incarcerate men, or women, for mental health problems. It is even more depraved to jail a mentally-disturbed individual on the basis of a failed ideology.
If you weren't already a millionaire when you married and you and your partner had young children I think you will take it as a given that there were fights about finances and about how to deal with the little varmints when they misbehaved. Dr. Mills notes that such “situational violence” or common couples violence exists. But under current laws and ideology when the neighbors call the police during such arguments the father is arrested, jailed, victim's advocates and child protective services (CPS) pressure the mother to seek a divorce, or separation if not married, lawyers and child evaluators get rich, and the male is shamed and blamed while the children are traumatized and their young lives often destroyed.
Dr. Mills relates a vignette about a couple with young children and having financial problems. The husband comes home from work, goes down in the basement to let a large, young dog out (that his wife got against his wishes). The dog starts jumping around on the stairs and breaks a mirror, so there is glass all over the steps. About then the wife comes home. When the dog sees her at the top of the stairs it jumps around even more while he tries to forcibly control it. He yells at her to stay back. She doesn't like the way he is treating her pet and comes down the steps and kicks her husband, which knocks his glasses off. Without his glasses he is legally blind. He lashes out blindly, striking her glasses and causing a gash in the side of her nose that requires stitches. Naturally, when they go to the emergency room the husband is arrested even though she struck the first blow and neither of them wanted to press charges. Net result, he is convicted of a felony (I presume he foolishly took a plea bargain) and they are out $30,000 in legal fees and he nearly loses his job. I'm sure all devout feminists see the value of making him a convicted felon, enriching redfem lawyers, putting his home, job, children, marriage, and all their futures at risk because she wouldn't stay back and viciously assaulted her husband. However, the logic and justice of this escapes me, although I hear similar stories of such insanity every day.
Now Dr. Mills has a Juris Doctor degree. So lets look at the same scenario above from a legal standpoint rather than through a feminist lens. A man is dealing with a large, excited young dog on a dangerous stairwell. A hostile and angry individual approaches from the top of the stairs and is warned to stay back (duty to warn). Instead his assailant comes down the stairs and, without further provocation, violently assaults him, kicking and blinding him. In self defense he wildly strikes out at his assailant, driving them off him. As a member of the jury, ask yourself who is the guilty party here? Who acted in their own self defense? Either we have equal justice or we have none, only the law of the jungle. And I don't think women will ultimately come out the winners if we continue down this path.
Data and anecdotal evidence suggest that in a majority of cases where couples are emotionally abusive and physically violent with one another, or their children, there are moderate to severe substance abuse problems. That is certainly the case with the couple Dr. Mills uses in her study.
Most experts in the domestic violence field don't regard alcohol as a primary cause of abuse in most cases but do acknowledge that alcohol use is often a trigger in violent incidents in a relationship. And there are many men and women who are upstanding individuals when sober but are mighty mean drunks.
Alcohol may also exacerbate mental problems and personality disorders. The problem seems to be more acute, or at least more common, with victims of post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and traumatic brain injuries (TBI) where the sufferers commonly self medicate with alcohol
Of and by themselves many currently illegal drugs, e.g. marijuana, apparently don't incite or promote violence beyond levels that occur otherwise in the population. One notable exception is methamphetamine. Meth addicts appear to always become more violent and abusive as their addiction progresses.
Conversely, a great many prescription drugs have been shown to cause violent or suicidal behavior, including a number of psychoactive medications, pain pills, anti-malarial drugs, and etc. From the prospect of domestic violence, prescription drugs might well be a bigger risk factor than the illegal ones.
Of course, combining any drugs with excessive alcohol use can lead to bizarre and dangerous behavior.
Most couples form working partnerships but almost invariably with their children one is the disciplinarian (bad cop) and one is the softie (good cop). The bad cop can be either the father or the mother and that apparently happens in about equal numbers, and roles may switch as the children grow into teenagers. That usually works pretty well until hard times hit, mother wants a divorce, has a new boyfriend, or she has or develops mental problems. Then each and every action dad has taken to discipline the kids will be considered child abuse, especially if she is the one actually abusing the children. Come the police, she is believed, he is guilty unless and until he can prove his innocence, he is tossed in jail usually with a ridiculous bail (What 8 th amendment?), and doesn't see his kids again for years, if ever.
Dean Tong's book, Elusive Innocence, is recommended for details on this redfem game and I don't know how many times men have contacted me after they were arrested trying to defend their children from the mother.
Likely you'll object that father may philander as well as mother. But when the man strays the courts don't put mother in jail for child abuse without evidence, or even if he has evidence. And in a divorce he is stripped of everything he owns and strapped with child support often based on “imputed income,” i.e., what the judge thinks he should be making, or would be making if his wife hadn't charged him with domestic violence, child abuse, etc., and had him jailed repeatedly until he lost his job and can't find another.
Either way it is one more “domestic violence” incident in police and court records and redfem tabulations of male battering. But in my experience it is extremely rare for there to be any real violence in these cases before the false allegations begin.
The “cure” is often causing the problem. Dugan and others (2001) found that:
“...Increases in the willingness of prosecutors' offices to take cases of protection order violation were associated with increases in the homicide of white married intimates, black unmarried intimates, and white unmarried females...”
As such, protection orders are a triumph of form over substance, and may cost the initiator their life. And subsequent studies have affirmed this finding.
Ignoring this research, and in a flight of fancy, on p. 36 Dr. Mills claims:
“The system works best for a white heterosexual woman from the middle or upper classes who has no children and has already decided to leave before that first phone call to the police. Mandatory arrest gives this woman that brief respite — while the batterer is in custody — to marshall her forces, get a restraining order, get out of the house, and hire a lawyer. If her violent partner pursues her, he risks jail, which he is likely to view as threatening his livelihood and reputation.”
Maybe in her later years Dr. Mills has taken to using something stronger than marijuana? Or she is so totally naive that she believes the redfem propaganda? I have heard some farfetched claims as to how VAWA “helps” women but the nonsense she presents is remarkable.
Lets take a look at how mandatory arrest, “no drop” prosecution, and restraining orders actually work and, in the process, often promote the violence they are supposed to stop.
In the real world Mrs. Hotpants Smith has a new lover and wants Mr. Smith out of the house and new boyfriend in. She wants to keep the house, the kids, the car, the bank accounts, and get child support and alimony. Simplest way for her to do that is to pick up the phone, dial 911, and hysterically claim her husband is attacking her or pointing a gun at her. Or she can go to the local courthouse and get an ex parte restraining order without Mr. Smith knowing anything about it.
Police then kick Mr. Smith out of what was his house and home, with maybe a half hour to pack, and Johnny Codpiece moves in. There is little Mr. Smith can do about it and his struggles and twists trying to get out of this nightmare simply result in the noose being tightened more tightly around his neck. Perjury by Hotpants is encouraged and often suborned by victim's advocates, attorneys, and women's shelter groups, and her legal fees will be paid. Even if Mr. Smith exposes the perjury Hotpants will suffer no penalty.
If, by some miracle, Mr. Smith escapes from the first restraining order or DV charges, Hotpants can obtain additional restraining orders by judge shopping or just bringing the same charges again in the same court. And, by law, Mr. Smith must continue paying the mortgage, utility bills, insurance, credit cards, daycare, child evaluators, psychiatrists and psychologists, special masters, guardian ad litem (GAL) and court cronies, and other incidental expenses incurred by Mrs. Hotpants. For a real life example see Epitaph For A Charter Member Of The Equal Justice Foundation.
Another common way restraining orders really work is that Barbara Barfly rubs up against Johnny in the local bar. One thing leads to another and pretty soon she has shacked up with him in his home or condo. That lasts for a few days to a couple of months until one day Johnny finds he has a restraining order against him barring him from his own home and Ms. Barfly in full possession. See Your 'Lucky' Night for a summary of stories I've heard about this happening to men.
Johnny rages and storms at the injustice and gets jailed for his trouble, losing his job in the process (about 80% of men lose their jobs in these cases). He is then living in his car, in a hobo camp (Bushvilles as they are now called) or, at best, with friends or relatives. No job, no money to hire a lawyer, and Babs keeps his house or condo.
And if Johnny was only renting, Babs will live there for awhile until the lease is up, or a new John comes along, then sell everything of value in the apartment. And it is extremely unlikely she will be prosecuted for this and Johnny will almost certainly go to jail if he fights this outrage.
Obviously not every restraining order is used the same way as stated in these two examples. These are simply a couple of common ways I repeatedly hear about. Women are very creative, and jealousy, revenge, immigration, jobs, and other motives often form additional bases for the abuse of ex parte restraining orders or false allegations of domestic violence.
Nor should it be imagined that I am unaware of men who abuse women in a similar manner when the opportunity and motive presents itself. Men used to refer to this as “Find 'em, f**k 'em, forget 'em.” Redfems have led to an expansion of that approach by men bent on vengeance or revenge against women in general for some restraining order, or similar female scam by a former partner. Today they refer to it as “Find 'em, f**k 'em, fleece 'em, forget 'em.” And how long do any of you think we can continue to escalate the war between the sexes like this and remain civilized?
The problem is that these gross abuses of human rights occurs under color of law and is condoned and encouraged by virtually every court, judge, district attorney, and legislator in the land.
Since there are roughly two million restraining orders issued against men (and perhaps 200,000 against women) every year in the United States, in a certain percentage the men (and sometimes women) will react with violence to these outrageous injustices. Next time you read about a murder, or murder/suicide between intimate partners, see if there was a restraining order in place. I've documented fifteen cases but that isn't even the tip of the iceberg showing restraining orders don't protect and frequently act as a catalyst for violence.
Because Colorado Springs is one of America's largest military bastions, and for most of the 21 st Century we've been fighting two wars, post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and traumatic brain injuries (TBI, or closed-head injuries) are much more common in our community than average.
As one result of the erratic and often frightening behavior sometimes associated with PTSD and TBI we have two to three times the number of “domestic violence” cases and restraining orders here as comparable Colorado judicial districts. The Equal Justice Foundation has been pointing out for years that false allegations result in the loss of ~1,000 military personnel every year just from the five bases surrounding Colorado Springs. Typically these men, and a few women, lose their veteran's benefits as well and commonly become homeless mental wrecks or end up in prison.
Clearly, redfem ideology and the resultant indiscriminate draconian laws with mandatory arrest, no drop, and dominant aggressor policies lead to the wholesale destruction of military careers and their families and children based on the injuries and stress of combat. For doing their duty and honoring the call of their country, radical feminism rewards these men and women with arrest and destruction of their lives if they survive the multiple tours of combat they commonly endure.
It should be remembered that in the wars of the 20 th Century that psychiatric casualties outnumbered physical casualties and the problems often didn't become apparent for decades after the combat. So even after the current wars end these problems will not go away and are virtually certain to grow worse with time.
PTSD and TBI are not limited to soldiers in combat. Any encounter with interpersonal violence can lead to PTSD symptoms and any number of accidents may result in the closed-head injuries that characterize TBI.
Diagnostic criteria for post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) requires exposure to a traumatic event in which both of the following were present:
1. The individual experienced, witnessed, or was confronted by events involving actual or threatened death or serious injury of self or others.
2. The response involved intense fear, helplessness, or horror.
Obviously combat infantry are likely to meet these criteria and combat medics or corpsmen will be particularly susceptible. For details on PTSD in these situations Dave Grossman and Loren Christensen's book On Combat is highly recommended.
The characteristic symptoms of PTSD are: sleeplessness, nightmares, impotence, irrational anger or irritability, difficulty concentrating or focusing, dissociation from actual events, hypervigilance, flashbacks to the event, and exaggerated startle response. In many cases these symptoms may be mild and disappear within days or weeks.
For example, you pass a car accident with bodies strewn on the roadway. For a few weeks you have difficulty sleeping and some nightmares. After that the scene is scarcely remembered and doesn't bother you much anymore. But if the bodies strewn across the highway were your children or spouse, PTSD is likely to continue for a lifetime. Often the severity of the condition increases with time, especially if untreated.
If the carnage and violence are repeated and continue over time, or the deaths and injuries involve loved ones or close friends, as noted above, then the stressors often lead to chronic or acute PTSD. At Fort Carson in Colorado Springs alone we have, at any given time, approximately 10,000 soldiers who have completed two or more combat tours in Iraq or Afghanistan and some PTSD is inevitable in all of these troops. Of the 10,000, approximately 3,000 suffer from severe PTSD that is chronic or acute. Of the 10,000 it is estimated that roughly 2,000 have some level of traumatic brain injuries ranging from repeated concussions to gunshot or shrapnel wounds to the skull.
• Significant emotional distress, including suicidal ideation in some cases, that is made worse by chronic sleeplessness;
• Impairment of intimate or social relationships often expressed as irrational and inexplicable anger;
• Nightmares in which they kick and fight while asleep;
• Violent awakenings or they may possibly attack someone who startles them, particularly from behind. Anyone who has had to awaken a veteran has likely had the experience of them coming up swinging and wives and children learn to stand back or shake the foot of the bed;
• Dissociation from events or reality, often resembling short-term memory loss;
• Impotence that may result in strains in an intimate relationship that make the situation worse.
Commonly the sufferer will attempt to self medicate with alcohol, finding the only way they can sleep is after imbibing heavily. DUI charges are one common manifestation of this and family arguments often result from the drinking.
And post traumatic means just that. Often these symptoms won't express themselves for months or years after the events, or only one or two of the symptoms may be present initially with the problems getting worse with time if unrecognized and untreated.
The correlation of PTSD symptoms with “domestic violence” are obvious. Wives tell us of waking up and finding their husband's hands around their throat, others speak of being kicked while their husband slept and having terrible bruises on their thighs. Wives or girlfriends unfamiliar with PTSD may naturally be frightened by this behavior and call the police expecting, and hoping to receive help. Instead, their horror is increased by police who insist on arresting the man despite their pleas that he just needs help. Because of his condition, or if he has been drinking, the man (or woman) may make the situation worse by becoming aggressive and belligerent with police, particularly if they are experiencing a flashback.
Redfems, who hate warriors with a particular passion, have leapt at this opportunity to persecute and taunt veterans at every turn with the epithet of “trained killers.” As a result, veterans and active-duty military are left to the tender mercies of radical-feminist courts and jail, compounding their nightmares.
And if military personnel plead guilty or are convicted of “domestic violence” in these trumped-up cases, or are given a permanent restraining order, they will lose their security clearance, be tossed out of the military with a less than honorable discharge, often lose their veteran's benefits including health care, lose any professional licenses they may have, and can never handle or be in proximity to a firearm or ammunition again for the rest of their lives.
We are often asked what is traumatic brain injury, or TBI? Many people have been hit in the head, knocked unconscious, or suffered mild concussions without any apparent permanent damage. So why is TBI such a serious problem and how is it differentiated from the normal hard knocks of a lifetime? The National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke provides the following summary:
Traumatic brain injury (TBI) can result when the head suddenly and violently hits an object, or when an object pierces the skull and enters brain tissue. TBI symptoms may be mild, moderate, or severe, depending on the extent of the damage to the brain, but with closed-head injuries the extent of brain damage is probably not immediately apparent.
With mild TBI the patient may remain conscious or experience a loss of consciousness for a few seconds or minutes, fading in and out of awareness. Other symptoms include headache, confusion, light-headedness, dizziness, blurred vision or tired eyes, ringing in the ears, bad taste in the mouth, fatigue or lethargy, a change in sleep patterns, behavioral or mood changes, and trouble with memory, concentration, attention, or thinking.
With moderate or severe TBI these same symptoms may be present but the individual may also have a headache that gets worse or does not go away, repeated vomiting or nausea, convulsions or seizures, an inability to awaken from sleep, slurred speech, weakness or numbness in the extremities, loss of coordination, and increased confusion, restlessness, or agitation. Dilation of one or both pupils of the eyes is one of the first things medical personnel check for with TBI.
Little can be done to reverse the initial brain damage caused by trauma. Stabilization is critical and prevention of further injury is essential. Primary concerns include insuring proper oxygen supply to the brain and the rest of the body, maintaining adequate blood flow, and controlling blood pressure if there are open wounds and bleeding.
Approximately half of severely head-injured patients will need surgery to remove or repair ruptured blood vessels or contusions (bruised brain tissue). As soon as facilities are available skull and neck X-rays to check for bone fractures or spinal instability are usually done. Computed tomography (CT) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans are increasingly valuable in evaluating the extent of brain injuries and diagnosing functionality during recovery and rehabilitation.
Long-term prognosis is often not possible during the immediate recovery period. Disabilities resulting from a TBI depend upon the severity of the injury, the location and type of the injury or wound, and the age and general health of the individual.
Moderate to severe TBI often impacts speech and language skills, and wounds may involve the jaw, tongue, vocal cords, or speech centers of the brain itself. Motor skills may also be affected by their wounds and they may stagger when they walk, for example. Convulsions and seizures may also make them appear crazy or drunk in public or private.
Some common disabilities associated with TBI include problems with cognition (thinking, memory, and reasoning), sensory processing (sight, hearing, touch, taste, and smell), communication (expression and understanding), and behavior or mental health (depression, anxiety, personality changes, aggression, acting out, and social inappropriateness). There is also a suggestion that moderate to severe TBI can result in the development of bipolar disorder in some patients.
Obviously severe TBI can result in a more-or-less permanent vegetative state but those sad cases are beyond the scope of this discussion.
Clearly, within an intimate relationship TBI is going to have many of the characteristics of abusive and violent behavior as defined by radical feminists. And, again, when a wife or girlfriend becomes frightened by the erratic behavior, the seizures, or other symptoms, and dials 911 for help the DV police are going to arrest the soldier or veteran. His often slurred speech, socially inappropriate behavior, and aggression will all be used against him in jail and in court where, typically, he will be denied essential medications.
After a cold and sleepless night, or several, in jail this brain-injured individual will be brought into our notorious Fast Track court without ever being given a chance to see a defense attorney. Then a zealot posing as a prosecutor will demand they enter a plea bargain without any explanation of the consequences of a guilty plea. Should the befuddled defendant sign what often amounts to a death sentence, they will be given a restraining order forbidding them to go home and cast into the street. If they have enough of their senses left to plead not guilty, soldiers are commonly told they will be held in jail until trial six months away.
Many people become more crotchety and cranky as they get older. But those who develop Alzheimers and some forms of senile dementia will also become agitated and violent during the progression of these conditions. Thus, it isn't uncommon under current laws to find men in their 70's being arrested for “domestic violence” and sent to a DV treatment program after being coerced into taking a plea bargain. Of all the idiocies of current laws, this has to be one of the worst.
As women typically live longer than men, problems with senile violence are more common with them. But at least society has the sense not to arrest the poor old biddies, or the redfem ideology protects them.
However, as modern medicine prolongs life without providing a cure for such diseases as Alzheimers, violence in elderly couples will increase. However, that is not a problem that criminal sanctions can, or should attempt to solve. But redfem ideology currently impedes or prevents any more rational approach to the problems of aging in couples.
The notable decrease in marriages, and even cohabitation, cited above makes it clear that the objective of radical feminism to destroy marriages and families is succeeding. If we are to make a breakthrough in ending the “cycle of violence,” as Dr. Mills exhorts us to do, we must first rethink the ideology that radical feminism has used so successfully these past 50 years to destroy our children, families, and society. Clearly present laws are making the problems worse.
Even more ominously, Erin Pizzey noted many years ago that any country that has tried to create a political solution to human problems has ended up with concentration camps and gulags. Torture, that used to be considered an abomination in America, has become almost routine.
Research has clearly and undeniably established that men and women are equally violent in intimate relationships and in half the incidents both partners are mutually violent. Lesbian relationships have been shown to be more violent than heterosexual ones. Thus, the propaganda so endlessly spewed forth with taxpayer-funded advertisements that all domestic violence is the result of men beating women is clearly false. But this propaganda has now taken on the mantle of “truth.” Any lie repeated long and often enough by the State is almost certain to be believed by the majority. Thus, current advantage lies with redfems on this issue.
As shown in Table 88, DV murders are down primarily for male victims. But it should be noted that this decline began in 1976, long before current domestic violence laws were enacted. Thus, the draconian legislation sponsored and promoted by radical feminists cannot be credited with this decline. There is also debate as to whether the murder rate has actually declined or whether improved medical techniques in the last fifty years saves lives that would formerly have been lost.
Demographic data in Table 80 indicates that while Colorado's population grew 18% from 1998 to 2007 that the number of domestic violence court cases grew by an astounding 31%, while police reports of domestic violence only grew by an estimated 12%. And Table 74 makes it clear citizens are more afraid of police intervention in a domestic dispute than they are of their partners. The only logical conclusions one can draw from these observations are that:
• Domestic violence court cases bear little or no relationship to actual intimate partner violence in Colorado.
• The great majority of the reported court cases are the result of false allegations.
Since 2002, when the state court administrator first tabulated them separately, the number of domestic abuse protection orders has varied from a low of 6,687 in 2007 to a high of 8,287 in 2003 (Table 69 and Table 70) for Colorado overall. However, where redfems hold sway, as in the 4 th Judicial District (Colorado Springs), they have responded to reforms in prosecuting criminal DV cases by radically increasing the number of protection orders from 1,733 in 2002 to 2,712 in 2009, a +57% increase. In addition, the number of protection order violations increased from 76 in 2005, with 2,318 such orders issued (3%), to 532 violations in 2009 with 2,712 such orders issued (20%). The data in Table 61 make it clear that this increase in protection order violations was a coordinated effort over the past five years, apparently as a result of increasing difficulties with prosecuting criminal domestic violence cases. Civil protection orders and violation of such orders bypasses the difficulties of due process in proving guilt. And having to actually prove a man guilty beyond a reasonable doubt is anathema to redfems.
There can be little doubt that redfem groups like TESSA are misusing restraining orders wherever and whenever the courts allow it.
One of the most surprising findings, but consistent with demographic data that show 50-75% of all DV cases and restraining orders are false allegations, is that most court cases don't involve any violence. As noted above, one major reason is that a DV charge can be added on to any crime, including such unlikely ones as shoplifting, indecent exposure (one wonders if this is an intimate relationship why indecent exposure is domestic violence?), few of which actually involve physical violence or the threat of violence. And since anything can be labeled “domestic violence” it makes false allegations a simple matter.
With regard to restraining orders the EJF has never seen any documentation to substantiate a domestic abuse protection order actually providing protection for anyone. Conversely, research and numerous examples demonstrate that getting a restraining order frequently creates the danger, or exacerbates what was simply an irritation into something dangerous.
The effect of removing upwards of 2 million men from the workforce under draconian domestic violence laws every year for more than a decade is also likely to have some bearing on the current economic disaster.
As outlined above, the following conditions are currently (December 2008) known to be associated with intimate partner violence although this list is not intended to be exhaustive or cover every possible cause:
• Age-related mental disorders — 35 and older
• Restraining (protection?) orders and false allegations
Many times these factors interact, e.g., a personality disorder may lead to single motherhood. She then takes up with an alcoholic boyfriend who abuses the children who grow up and abuse their intimate partner.
But no ideologically-approved DV treatment program exists that incorporates and treats these problems. And clearly the present laws are making the situation worse while destroying children, families, and marriages on an unprecedented scale. That, of course, fits the radical feminist objective of destroying the patriarchy perfectly.
Where radical feminist ideology falls flattest is with the “treatment” it supports. Redfem dogma is fundamentally based on the proposition that men batter women to support the patriarchy. Thus, there is no, and cannot be any effective treatment for this inherent condition in a patriarchal society such as ours. The best that can be done then is to shame and blame men for their violent behavior. As noted above, under redfem ideologically-mandated laws domestic violence criminal cases continue to increase and ever more restraining orders must be issued to cage these wild male beasts. How much more obvious must it become that radical feminist ideology has nothing to do with controlling domestic violence and everything to do with remolding society in their neo-Marxist image of a matriarchy?
No reliable study has shown any value to the Duluth model of “treatment” for domestic violence offenders, many of whom are simply going through the motions because they made the mistake of taking a plea bargain that they will regret for the rest of their lives. The only value to such practice is that it provides financial support to some redfem covens.
Treatment methods that have been shown to work in some cases, e.g., couples counseling as Dr. Mills proposes, are forbidden by redfem dogma under the mantle of “victim safety.” What isn't mentioned that about 80% of the couples caught up in these nightmares stay living together. Instead of teaching them how to handle conflict and fight fair, the courts add to their financial burdens with worthless DV classes that simply blame men and make excuses for female violence.
Couples counseling is certainly needed in many cases particularly where children and a family can be saved and the proposals by Dr. Mills are a step in the right direction. But available data show that most incidents don't involve couples and such palliatives, though anathema to radical feminists, don't address most of the causes tabulated above. And clearly only a fraction of intimate partner violence is related to abuse as a child.
from his poem: Soldier an' sailor too
Virtually the first lesson any military recruit must learn is to stand rigidly at attention while enduring the most vile and abusive verbal assaults imaginable, with their drill instructor often literally spitting in their face. Once that basic discipline has been mastered, if it is, then the recruit will be physically abused, often to the breaking point. Dave Grossman in his book On Killing remembers sitting up to his waist in the mud of a Florida swamp picking up live frogs and casually eating them raw during his eighth week of Army Ranger training. Men, and women, who can stand to discipline of that degree are not a casual danger to other citizens unless gravely provoked. They can be counted on to use common sense and the utmost restraint in virtually any situation and one can be assured they will put the safety of women and children before their own, for such is the measure of such men.
I took my sensitivity training with Marine Corps infantry (1 st Marines) and have always been curious how redfems think they will survive without such protection? As George Orwell noted last century, people sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf. I've used weapons and explosives my entire life but, as a Marine, only once had to draw a gun with intent to use deadly force against another human. But there is little doubt that I, and others with my training and discipline can and will kill in self-defence and to protect others. But we are few in number.
I can't say for sure how you make a man out of a boy but I think the Marine Corps has a fair handle on the problem. Can't say I made a real good Marine but for some strange reason for over a decade they've listed me in Who's Who in the World, Who's Who in America, Who's Who in Science and Engineering, and similar tabulations. One son served with 5 th Marines as well. The other son had lung problems when he tried to enlist in the Marines but you might look at A Simple Act of Heroism and judge for yourself whether he became a man.
And I certainly do not want to slight the other Armed Forces who turn out a lot of good men and women as well. I've also got a lot of respect for the Coast Guard, who pulled me off an unexplored desert island I was shipwrecked and marooned on.
So what makes Marines and other men from the Armed Forces the “trained killers” so despised by redfems? Any reliable crime study will show you that veterans are the most law-abiding citizens in our society. And before it is assumed that every man is a potential murderer and everyone in the military is a “trained killer,” as feminist dogma insists, we should keep in mind the findings of General S.L.A. Marshall. During WW II he found, after he and his staff interviewed thousands of soldiers and Marines in both the European and Pacific theaters of that war, that more than 80% of the troops in the front lines never fired their weapons at the enemy despite direct risk to their own lives. From this General Marshall concluded that: “the average and healthy individual...has such an inner and usually unrealized resistance towards killing a fellow man that he will not of his own volition take life if it is possible to turn away from that responsibility...At that vital point [the soldier] becomes a conscientious objector.” To overcome this innate inhibition against killing requires either rigorous training and discipline or the lack of morality inherent in a psychopath.
For more on this subject the book On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society by Dave Grossman is highly recommended. Grossman states (p. 39) that:
“We may never understand the nature of this force in man that causes him to strongly resist killing his fellow man, be we can give praise for it to whatever force we hold responsible for our existence. And although military leaders responsible for winning a war may be distressed by it, as a race we can view it with pride.
There can be no doubt that this resistance to killing one's fellow man is there and that it exists as a result of a powerful combination of instinctive, rational, environmental, hereditary, cultural, and social factors. It is there, it is strong, and it gives us cause to believe there may just be hope for mankind after all.”
The most dangerous individuals on our streets today are “gangbangers,” not military veterans. These are young males, typically without a male model or father in the home, who have trained extensively on realistic video simulators, and sometimes with paintball games, and have advanced skills for killing. But they lack both morals and discipline and, uncharacteristically, have no compunction about killing other humans. However, it is politically incorrect to note that these vicious animals are almost always the misbegotten spawn of single mothers.
Instead, the redfem-dominated domestic violence industry finds it much more politically palatable to persecute those of us who keep our guns handy and are dedicated to protecting and defending society. And what differentiates men and women like me from “gangbangers” and similar sociopaths? Discipline and training, virtues little known to radical feminism.
I can tell you what destroys a male. Falsely accusing him of beating his wife, taking his kids from him, making him homeless with an ex parte restraining order, taking his job from him, leaving him no pride, and mocking all his accomplishments and efforts to provide for his children and family.
I hear the outrage when this happens but fewer than one in ten will stand up and fight the injustice. Oh, they threaten to sue everyone, but only if someone will pay their legal fees, or the lawyer will work pro bono, or at least take their sure-to-win case on a contingency fee basis. But ask them to put together a timeline of events and list who's who in their case and I rarely hear from them again. And all this after they were afraid to plead not guilty and stand trial before a jury of their peers.
Some of these boys, and they are boys despite their ages, get as far as starting a web site, organizing a local group for “father's rights” or “men's rights” after taking a plea bargain, but those typically fade in a year or two. And, oh, the emails that seem to assume I'll be more willing to help them if they curse and insult me. But ask who the judge in their case was, or what court they were in, or to document the injustice and they are lost and incapable of even such a simple task.
Day after day I listen to complaints about judges and for years we've had an outline of what is needed to document judicial misconduct. But these boys seem to prefer whining and crying to providing useful documentation. And I must admit that in many of these cases that I've tried to document I end up agreeing with the judge or feeling sorry for the ex-wife who had to put up with this crybaby or momma's boy.
While these boys insist the laws must be changed, ask them who represents them on city council, who their county commissioner is, who is their state representative or senator, and you get a blank stare. They may know who is, and even write their Congressman, but are glaringly ignorant of the fact they've been convicted, i.e., taken a plea bargain, under a state or municipal law and their Congressman has no authority in such cases, nor can legislators interfere directly in court cases anyway.
It is also time for a wake up call on petitions and letter writing. A thousand letters and emails to a Congressman or Senator are all in a day's mail. Ten letters on the same problem to city council or county commissioners are a mandate. Five people showing up at a city council or county commissioner meeting are going to have a big impact, especially if they are following up on letters they've written. Fifteen to thirty letters to a state representative or senator are going to be read, and ten to twenty people showing up at state legislative hearing following up on their letters are a mandate. EJF VP Sheryle Hutter and I get awfully tired of being the only ones to write or show up at these hearings and then having a bunch of crybabies hollering about injustice and telling us we have to do more, as well as telling us what we must do for them. Donations don't accompany their demands however.
Most of these crybabies are not even aware of the three branches of government, let alone which does what. But they will not learn anything or try anything new except to scream to high heaven that their “rights” have been violated and these laws have to be changed, and changed now. And having ruined their own lives they are perfectly willing to tell me and everyone else how things should be done without bothering to research whether that method has been tried or not. Many of them even argue with me claiming that a plea bargain or no contest plea is not a guilty plea and a criminal conviction. Clearly they haven't even read the plea bargain they signed.
And don't ask them to organize, donate, or do anything meaningful like testify to a legislative committee. That would take guts and likely they wouldn't be in trouble if they had any brains or guts.
I've got sad news for you boys, you don't have any rights if you won't stand up for them in the beginning and are unwilling to fight to the death for them and the liberty of others as well. Our Founding Fathers put their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor on the line for liberty. If you are willing to do less every day of your life the redfems have you whipped and you are chattels of their regime.
But even cornered rats will fight back and that makes these boys dangerous. So when you read about a male going berserk and killing his kids, his ex, and himself bear in mind he was likely driven to desperation by his own cowardice and redfem lunacy.
The ones to protect are the children, which none of these groups seem to care about except in their own personal case. Incidentally, “shared parenting” isn't an answer to these problems. By then the battle is already lost and the parents are wanting to cut the children in half.
“All societies are based on rules to protect pregnant women and young children. All else is surplusage, excrescence, adornment, luxury, or folly, which can — and must — be dumped in emergency to preserve this prime function. As racial survival is the only universal morality, no other basic is possible. Attempts to formulate a 'perfect society' on any foundation other than 'Women and children first!' is not only witless, it is automatically genocidal. Nevertheless, starry-eyed idealists (all of them male) have tried endlessly — and no doubt will keep on trying.”
Radical feminists, and Marxist-Leninists before them, have turned this essential concept on its head. They have worked to implement laws that destroy families, ensure that the fathers so essential to the protection and support of mothers and young children will not be present, and leave children to grow up as feral animals.
There are probably as many or more citizens who are on the EJF mailing list than the total number of radical feminists in the United States. Maybe a few hundred of our readers will take meaningful action or provide financial support. The rest will continue to cry in their beer about how their rights have been violated but will slink away from the responsibility and discipline needed to put radical feminism back in the hole it crawled out of. And these crybabies cannot be motivated to take concerted action because their feelings are hurt and the bad judge wouldn't listen to them whine.
Radical feminism is well suited to those mentally-deficient individuals who regard themselves as “victims” and demand the world provide for their wants and needs. The Communist credo of “From each according to their ability, to each according to their needs,” well describes how redfems feel. But a State that consumes without regard to how much it produces is a slender reed on which to stake individual survival and that of their children.
In iron years past, and those ahead, it is the inherent strength of families that provides the means of survival for children and their parents. Families understand instinctively, or soon learn that they must produce more than they consume to survive.
Conversely, radical feminists believe the limit on their credit card has no meaning and that they can eat the seed corn and more will magically appear next spring. Their piracy of the domestic violence issue has allowed them to flourish under a State without constraints on spending. They have foolishly used these resources in an attempt to destroy families and marriage in the name of their ideology. But who will they turn to in iron years to come?
In How To Deal With A Stalker Wendy McElroy suggests the following ways to defend yourself and assume responsibility for your own self-protection:
• Take a course on self-defense;
• Change and strengthen your locks;
• Buy a gun and learn how to use it.
At the very least such “victims” should carry pepper spray or a taser and learn to use them. It is difficult to defend anyone who takes no responsibility for their own personal safety and survival. Society has no responsibility to provide police protection for every “victim,” as established yet once again in Castle Rock v. Gonzales.
Given Dr. Mills background, as well as others who regard themselves as “victims,” there is no better advice than to obtain a gun and go through a concealed-carry class so that they can defend themselves. Or they can choose to die like sheep on the slaughterhouse killing floor when the boogeyman comes for them.
The necessity for armed self defense is the antithesis of the radical feminist agenda that can only succeed if the population is disarmed. And through false and inflated claims of domestic violence and abuse in conjunction with the Lautenberg Amendment 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(8)(9) they are doing that to approximately two million men a year in the United States.
Under a variety of pretexts and events Australia, Canada, and England, among other countries, have already disarmed all their citizens in the past decade. Of course violent crime rates have now risen, which is used as justification for the need to hire more police. That eventually gives the socialist government total control over the now-unarmed populace.
The 20 th Century genocides in the Soviet Union and Communist China, the horrors of Nazi Germany under National Socialism, the massacres under the communist Pol Pot regime in Cambodia were all proceeded by disarming the citizens so that resistance was basically impossible. The relationship between disarmament and later genocide is examined in detail by Dave Kopel.
In examining the problems of families and intimate partner violence some simple facts emerge from study after study:
• The safest place for a child is with their biological father; conversely, the most dangerous place for a child is in the home of a single mother.
• The safest place for a woman is in her home married to the biological father of her children.
• Men and women are equally violent in domestic relationships with 25-30% of intimate partner violence being exclusively female on male; 50% mutual combat (it usually takes two to tangle); and the remaining 20-25% exclusively male on female violence, making it the least of the problem.
• To reduce violence in intimate relationships both partners much be evaluated and each individual's problems resolved or the couple must voluntarily dissolve.
• Intervention by the legal system is often the worst possible response and, however necessary it may be in some cases, it has done nothing to fix the problem of intimate partner violence.
• On average, there are as many mentally disturbed women as men. Jailing the male does nothing to alleviate the insanity of the female.
• While biology requires sex to create a child, civilization requires marriage and families to raise the child.
• Under current laws and practices a man has to be functionally insane to marry and a drooling idiot to sire a child, the antithesis of civilized necessity.
It would be well to keep these fundamental findings in mind and laws and custom must reflect these facts if our society is to survive.
But make no mistake, we are engaged in an epic battle between two incompatible ideologies with fundamentally different views of the rights of the individual and the power of the state, with the future of civilization at stake.
Let me close by repeating Erin Pizzey's warning that any country that has tried to create a political solution to human problems has ended up with concentration camps and gulags. But there is a widespread avoidance of the reality of the atrocities Marxism has inflicted on humanity, in part due to the emotional impact they have on individuals. Or people claim the press is simply exaggerating to sell papers, or TV ads, or anything to avoid accepting the truth. And people always prefer to imagine it can't happen here.
In his excellent book, On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society, Dave Grossman (p. 212) quotes 1960s radical communist David Horowitz about how this denial syndrome played out for him and Horowitz's friends:
“I and my former comrades in the Left dismissed the anti-Soviet 'lies' about Stalinist repression. In the society we hailed as a new human dawn, 100 million people were put in slave-labor camps, in conditions rivaling Auschwitz and Buchenwald. Between 30 and 40 million people were killed in peacetime in the daily routine of socialist rule. While Leftists applauded their progressive policies and guarded their frontiers, Soviet Marxists killed more peasants, more workers, and even more communists than all the capitalist governments combined since the beginning of time.
And for the entire duration of this nightmare, the William Buckleys and Ronald Reagans and other anti-communists went on telling the world exactly what was happening. And all that time the pro-Soviet Left went on denouncing them as reactionaries and liars, using the same contemptuous terms...
The left would still be denying the Soviet atrocities if the perpetrators themselves had not finally acknowledged their crime.”
In early 2009 the United States appears to be in much the same position as Russia was in 1917 with our own version of encroaching Marxism and the American Congress resembling the Russian Duma of 1917. Read the above statement again simply substituting “redfem” for Soviet and you have a chilling vision of America two decades from now if present trends continue.
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