I was hopeful...honestly...but no....its not...and its filled with very clever distortions and things Ive taken some time to show here.
Im pretty sure no one will take the real time to read carefully what Ive written...but what the heck...its written so I will post it.
I took the time to read it, slow and careful. Please, if you wish to comment on my response afford me the same courtesy...
Or skim and react....your choice
Thankfully, men's rights is not the dominant agenda, and much of the men's movement focuses on personal growth and healing, emphasising what some have termed "men's liberation"
This is backwards. This EXPRESSES what I complain about…it ASSUMES men are desperately in need of healing and personal growth….why, if he attempts to equate the efforts of mens and womens rights, is it best mens rights be about fixing whats wrong with men, while womens rights are about fixing what men have done to women. Would he say that the womens movement is about “healing and personal growth”….would YOU say it is? Is VAWA about healing and personal growth? Is the unequal wage myth about healing and personal growth, whether you agree or not? Then why is it so wonderful that men NOT focus on tangible issues and rather he lauds us for “personal growth and healing”
Men such as ourselves, men with a concern for men's issues and a sympathy for feminism
I HAD sympathy for all the things feminism fixed. I just don’t see any new ground that todays feminists are covering that is worthy of support because they are WAY past “equality” as a goal.
We also need to defend women's organisations, services and feminism in general from attacks by men's rights forces. Men have an important role to play as allies of feminist organisations, putting ourselves between them and men's rights groups, taking the heat and limiting the extent to which women's energies are used up in responding to these attacks.
Here is why this is ridiculous:
California Domestic Violence Lawsuit Will Help Secure Services for All Abuse Victims
By Marc Angelucci and Glenn Sacks
At the age of 11, Maegan Woods tried to stop a domestic dispute between her parents. She soon found herself staring down the barrel of her father's shotgun. She watched helplessly as the trigger was pulled. She is only alive today because the gun didn't fire--the safety was on.
Maegan was abused and witnessed domestic violence in her home for most of her childhood. By age seven there had been knife attacks, punches, kicks, and more. It was hard to leave--the abuser was the one who earned the money, and the victim was unable to work because of a disability. On numerous occasions they looked for help to escape the abuse but were refused. Why?
Because in Maegan's family, the abused spouse was her father, and the battering and child abuse were perpetrated by her mother.
The California Battered Women Protection Act of 1994, codified in Health & Safety Codes Section 124250, et. seq., created funding for domestic violence shelter-based services. However, by defining domestic violence as something only experienced by women, the statutes exclude male victims from receiving state-funded domestic violence services, including shelter, hotel arrangements, counseling and legal services.
Maegan, now 21, and her father, David Woods, are the lead plaintiffs in a new lawsuit against the State of California and numerous state agencies and state-funded domestic violence service providers. Beginning in the mid-1980s, David was violently attacked on numerous occasions by his wife Ruth, who suffers from a bi-polar disorder which, in her case, creates a propensity toward violence.
On several occasions David decided that he and Maegan should get out of the house to escape Ruth's violence. However, with his disabling condition and inability to work, David had no money to provide for himself and his daughter. Numerous times he contacted a Sacramento domestic violence agency he had heard of in the media, WEAVE, but they always told him "we don't help men," and never offered him a referral to another facility. David tried churches and various programs, but all they could offer for men were homeless shelters with waiting lists. He found nothing for abused men and their children. David gave up and sank into a heavy depression.
By February 2003, Maegan began telling her father to find a place of safety from Ruth's violence. He again called WEAVE and again was told "we don't help men." Maegan, then 18, became so frustrated watching David being abused that she called WEAVE herself and insisted they help her father. According to Maegan, WEAVE said they do not help men, and that men are the perpetrators of domestic violence, not the victims.
That year Ruth finally began to seek professional help for her problems. David, loyal and a firm believer in his marriage vows, stuck by her. In January 2004, the two appeared together on the NBC's John Walsh Show and discussed Ruth's violence.
Domestic violence policies based on the woman good/man bad model kept David trapped in his violent marriage in a number of ways. The biggest reason David didn't leave Ruth was Maegan. She was frequently the target of Ruth's attacks, particularly when David wasn't around to protect her and take Ruth's blows. Domestic violence researcher Richard Gelles, whose groundbreaking work on domestic violence in the late 1970s was instrumental in bringing the issue to public consciousness, explains that current policies often trap abused fathers like David. They can't leave their wives because this would leave their children unprotected in the hands of an abuser. If they simply take their children, they can be arrested for kidnapping. Moreover, they would probably lose custody of their children in the divorce anyway, again leaving their children in harm's way.
These cases often have tragic results. In the highly-publicized Socorro Caro murder case, Socorro often abused her husband Xavier, a prominent Northridge, California rheumatologist, and once assaulted him so badly he had to have surgery to regain his sight in one eye. Trapped and not knowing what to do or where to go, Xavier endured the abuse, once telling his wife "one day you are going to do something that cannot be undone." A short time later Socorro shot and killed three of their four children. Their baby survived only because Socorro ran out of bullets. She was later convicted and sentenced to death for the murders.
While police intervention often works for abused women, abused men understandably fear that once the police are involved, their wives will accuse them of being the abuser and it is they who will be believed. Draconian arrest policies often direct police to make an arrest, and police are often pressured to arrest the man.
The anti-male bias of police policies was evident in the Woods case. During the 1995 shotgun incident, Ruth called the police after David wrestled the shotgun away from her. Maegan yelled to her mom, "Tell the truth!" and Ruth told the police she wanted them to come because she wanted to kill her husband.
Nevertheless, when the police arrived and David opened the door to let them in, the officers immediately grabbed him by the wrist, wrestled him to the ground, and handcuffed him. They only uncuffed him after Maegan told them that it was her mother who had the gun.
What's needed are domestic violence policies tailored to the needs of all victims of abuse, regardless of gender. Decades of research shows that heterosexual males make up a significant part of the population of domestic violence victims. According to the most recent fact sheet released by the Centers for Disease Control, men comprise over 35% of all domestic violence victims. In a meta-analytic review of 552 domestic violence studies published in the November, 2000 issue of the Psychological Bulletin
June 30th, 2009 by Glenn Sacks, MA for Fathers & Families
I recently attended the excellent Los Angeles domestic violence conference "From Ideology to Inclusion 2009: New Directions in Domestic Violence Research and Intervention."
The conference featured many domestic violence dissidents--researchers and clinicians who do not believe that the mainstream domestic violence establishment and its "men as perpetrators/women as victims" conceptual framework is properly serving those involved in family violence.
The Third District Court of Appeal in Sacramento ruled that California’s exclusion of men from domestic violence services violates men’s constitutional equal protection rights in a decision in October. The taxpayer lawsuit -- Woods. v. Shewry -- was initially filed in 2005 by four male victims of domestic violence. The Court of Appeal held that "The gender classifications in Health and Safety Code section 124250 and Penal Code section 13823.15, that provide state funding of domestic violence programs that offer services only to women and their children, but not to men, violate equal protection." To learn more about the lawsuit, click here.
David Woods, a partially-disabled male victim of domestic violence, was the lead plaintiff in the lawsuit. David spoke of the abuse he suffered at the hands of wife Ruth Woods at the From Ideology to Inclusion 2009. He explained:
We had an incident in February of 1987...This day was about 39 degrees [F], with a driving rain and about a 30 mile-an-hour wind. It was terrible, nasty...We had a fight the night before, before she went to sleep. I worked until 5:00 in the morning, went to bed. I got up around 10:30 in the morning. What woke me was the silence: no kids playing, Saturday morning, "What the hell is going on?" She was gone. The vehicle was still parked in the parking lot; I could look out the window and see it. She's gone, the kids are gone...
She didn't come back until morning-afternoon. She'd been out walking. She walked to a location that was three-and-a-half miles from our apartment, and walked back. By the time she got back, our children were the color of those seats: their fingers were blue, their lips were blue, their ears were blue. We had to put them in a warm bath to warm them up; they were hypothermic. I was... I lost my temper. I was pretty pissed off. "What in the hell were you doing? Why?" Seven, eight hours out walking around. The children were soaked; she was soaked. "What in the hell were you doing?"
We fought... We fought for about an hour. She started cutting up vegetables for dinner, and we were still fighting. At some point I said something to the effect, "Are you out of your freakin' mind?" She turned around, she had a kitchen knife -- a serrated vegetable knife, the blade was about seven inches long. She turned around and she stabbed at me.
And as you can tell, I like to wear buttoned-down collars. I tried to block it, but I was surprised. I was off balance; I wasn't expecting it... I had lost it partially. But the knife hit the collar-stay of my shirt, and it penetrated into the collar, cut the collar, and partially penetrated the little plastic stay in the collar of my shirt. And gave me a little nick here on the collar of my neck.
She reared back her arm and tried to stab me again. And as I moved, tried to block, and let's just say I had an adrenaline moment, I hit her in the mouth. And I gave her a little fat lip, right here. She dropped the knife. She screamed. She ran to the telephone and called 9-1-1: "My husband is hitting me! I think he's gonna kill me."
Well, when she dropped the knife I stood over it. I wouldn't let her pick it up and put it away. I wouldn't let her hide the knife. I was gonna say, "See? She tried to stab me."
Four Sacramento county Sheriff's deputies vehicles rolled up; there was a total of seven deputies. As I explained to them what happened, he said, "Yeah, that's fine. Put your hands behind your back." I said, "No, wait a minute. She tried to stab...there's the knife. See the knife? She tried to stab...see my [motions toward neck wound] -- see?" [Officer:] "Put your hands behind your back. Turn around." I said, "No. She tried..." And they -- five of them -- drew their weapons.
And at that time, our daughters -- who were 5 and 3 -- when she stabbed me, when she tried to stick the knife in my throat, our daughters were in the kitchen with us. My daughters came running out of the back bedroom saying, "Leave my dad alone! Leave Daddy alone! Mamma tried to hit him with a knife. All he did was hit her back so she wouldn't hurt him."
One of the deputies was a woman. And she took the children in the bedroom and shut the door. She was back there with them for about 15 minutes, talking with them. In the meantime, the others still insisted that I turn around and put my hands behind my back. They cuffed me, they frisked me. I was standing there in front of my daughters, when they came out of the bedroom.
"Daddy's cuffed; Daddy's going to jail." And the female deputy said, "It's true. Both of the daughters saw it. She tried to hit him, she tried to stab him with the knife. That's what happened."
They took the cuffs off me and said, "Your wife obviously needs help." During this 15-20 minute period, while she was in the room with the kids, we were talking about my wife: what she did for a living, she was a nurse, she worked for Kaiser Permanente. They said, "If she works for Kaiser, you've got health insurance; you've got mental health insurance. You need to call the emergency number and get her an appointment"...
Now, isn't that strange? When she had a fat lip, it was a felony and I was going to jail. But when they finally agreed and realized that she tried to stab me in the neck... it stopped being a crime at that point, it was a mental health issue. [And] it was my responsibility to call and get her an appointment.
Doing so will be challenging, and it may involve questioning aspects of the feminist-informed analyses we have held so far.
This is EXACTLY what we do! I question the accepted wisdom..the feminist derived talking points that are plain lies. Just yesterday I read an article where one of the number one college legal text books in the gender arena wall totally filled with false stats and claims. It even used some historical basis about a Roman Emperor who never existsd! It was totally wrong on every level. The author, a womans studies professor, had zero rebuttal except to attack the woman critiquing it. Much as this author sets the stage by saying “the men in mens rights groups are largely bitter angry divorced men”….thats such a tired worn out claim to dismiss men its pedestrian.
Men's rights men typically claim that men and women assault each other at equal rates and with equal effects,
He just lost all credibility. I needn’t even look at the proof. He would be correct…the statement he alleges to mens right groups is indeed a lie. Men and women do not assault each other at equal rates with equal effects…….MENS RIGHTS GROUP DO NOT ADD THE “EQUAL EFFECTS “
I am 100% confident that his refuting information will refute the equal effects. I agree….but it was never said!!!!!! This is the clever stuff we deal with….very sneaky but not sneaky enough.
very small proportion of physical violence between adults involves female perpetrators
Now if YOU like I have the counter evidence to this lie at my fingertips. Tons more women are seriously harmed…..but the mere perpetration of violence is equal
These men are using women's alleged violence against men as a way of discrediting attempts to deal with men's violence against women
NOPE…just tired of, for example in the story I put above, a man, stabbed by his wife…cuffed in front of his kids until THEY…THE kids tell the cops dad was innocent
The key point to make here is that attacking services primarily for women is no way to gain services for men. Men's rights advocates have attacked women's refuges and women's health centres, simultaneously while calling for either parallel services for men (refuges, health centres, even an Office for the Status of Men) or services for both men and women.
There are at least four problems with such strategies. They focus on the wrong target, they antagonise potential supporters,
Oh…potential supporters eh…like the one that hung up repeatedly on the abused disabled guy saying “we don’t help men….men abuse women”…even hanging up on the 9 year old daughter saying the same junk
I did not accept the wider conclusions that such men drew from their experiences, and I assume too that for any one incident (like a custody battle) there will be multiple versions of what happened. But if I want to reach such men at all, I do have to accept that what they describe is their reality for the moment and I have to show that I have heard them.
Really? Lets see. Multiple versions of SHE GOT CUSTODY? Please explain that.
For example, some boys are sexually abused, by adult men and sometimes women. Some men are unfairly treated in custody and divorce matters. But men's rights men wrongly use such examples to make much grander claims, for example that men are oppressed by women or that there is some kind of feminist conspiracy to cover up abuse of men.
He throws men a crumb…then takes it back. Mens rights groups don’t complain there is a cover-up for petes sake…he is totally utterly uninformed. They are about the ISSUES not who is or isn’t covering it up. Oh my gosh what an idiot. Men aren’t oppressed BY WOMEN. Repeat….men aren’t oppressed BY WOMEN…read it over and again…that’s NOT the point!!!!!!!!!!The SYSTEM is slanted, the CULTURE is slanted, the CHURCH is slanted, the MEDIA is slanted…….men are NOT oppressed BY WOMEN
highly ignorant and selective misrepresentation. It is based on gross stereotypes and long-standing sexist images of women as ball-breaking and malicious
Not at all. SOME women are that. Who cares??????. And not only feminism but the whole bent of society IS based on a stereotype of men as abusers and cheaters and marriage enders and dead beat dads. This guy is amazing
If you read this far…thanks
Cool Im banned TOO.
Enjoy it Holten and Company!
