DOMESTIC VIOLENCE PROTECTION ORDERS AND THE CONSPIRACY OF SILENCE ON MALE VICTIMS OF DOMESTIC AND SEXUAL ABUSE

One of the most distressing things when you are a group that continues to fail to get a fair deal is when the media and politics continue and purposely marginalise you. Often and this site has raised it, it is a form of discrimination by omission.

Today, has been a classic example of how discrimination against men continues to be endemic in the uK. It is no surprise on the International Day of the Elimination of Violence against Women and Girls

This morning we were all greeted with the news that the Home Office has made £28 million available to end sexual and domestic violence against women and girls. Not a penny for male victims of sexual and domestic violence.No one is saying women and grils should not be supported who suffer in this way but many men do as well.

There is even a full blown strategy where conveniently the figures are highlighted showing that there are over 1 million women in England and Wales who are victims of domestic abuse and that 1 in 4 will be victim in their lifetime. Conveninetly the facts (as produced from the Home Office and collated by the ManKind Initiative) show that the male equivalent figures are 629,000 and 1 in 6.

The governement also announced (see bottom of press release) that they would pilot domestic violence protection orders in four areas. The quote greeeting everyone in the newspapers and in the media this morning from Home Secretary Theresa May was "Domestic violence is an appalling crime that sees two women per week die at the hands of her attackers." Wait a minute though, one man per fortnight also dies in this way but May does not mention that.

The whole issue of institutional discrimination against male victims of domestic abuse is of course exacerbated, albeit encouraged by a biased quote from the Home Secretary, by the media reporting. Once again, we have a gender neutral policy turned into one that is headlined and prefaced with the words 'wife-beater' or 'powers for police to ban men who abuse women' etc (see end for some examples).

But why instituntional discrimination in the way the orders are portayed by the government and the media?

It is because the orders apply to both male or female perpetrators of domestic abuse. Not only do they have to legally apply to all genders (though we know in a practical sense the police are only very likely to use them against male perpetrators and not female ones) but also because on BBC Radio 5 this morning, the presenter asked the Minister for Equalities, Lynne Featherstone, whether they applied to those who committed domestic violence against men. She said 'yes', but then used the usual caveat that most victims of domestic violence are women, thereby relegating male victims again to second class status.

But would you have known any of that by reading the govenment's annoucements or by reading any of the coverage? Of course not.

Today's announcement on the new money to tackle violence against women and girls (and nothing for men) as well as the deliberately inaccurate portrayal of the domestic violence control orders is another  classic example of the institutional discrimination by omission against men and male victims of domestic abuse.

This form of covert discrimination by omission is worse than overt discrimination because it is deliberately aimed at hiding the truth away. No wonder a government with a Minster for Women (and no Minster for Men) and numerous equalities ministers laugh in the face of men and the true meaning of equality.

Posted by Skimmington 

Examples of some of the worst of the media coverage - Daily Mail  , The Independent, The Guardian, ITN

Comments

[John Kimble]

Really good piece.

Doing a lot of reading on this recently, the latest figures (from 2008) in terms of deaths are actually two PEOPLE per week, (30% of those being men).

In other words the trend relative to your older figures is a reduction in female deaths and an increase in male deaths.

[Bob]

The fact that Theresa May didn't drop this policy initiated by the Labour government shows what side her bread is buttered.

Me thinks we have an infiltrator in he Conservative ranks.

Every man now has to be sacred that his neighbour or his wife's or girlfriend's friends decide they'll have him investigated and banned from his own home and of course any ban would be on his "Criminal Disclosure Record" for twenty years.

These misandry laws remind me of the kind of laws we were taught about at school that were enacted in Nazi Germany in the 1930s.

[Jenny]

This law would be ridiculous were it not so insidious. In a DV incident, the police almost invariable take the woman's side REGARDLESS OF THE FACTS so this law is bound to be abused.

Any man who tries to protect his children from an abusive mother can be removed from his home leaving - the children in danger.

Any woman who wants to "entertain" a boyfriend in here partner's home for a few days need only tell the police her partner shouted at her. He'll be removed and she'll have the place free for her and her boyfriend. Twenty eight days give her enough time to strip the place of any valuables too.

It's a thoroughly bad law.

[Hexe]

Hmm, the entire idea is totally wrong in the first place -- we don't need any kind of domestic abuse centers/laws/policies, getting involved in repairing/judging failing relationships is pointless make-work that never achieves anything and that actually prolongs the misery.

People either get on or not, and if they decide to beat each other up instead of breaking up, then there is nothing much you can do about it until they get bored with persecuting each other. Before they get to the assault level, they usually have nagged, hated and harangued each other for quite a while, who in the end 'loses' is just a question of who hits out first with enough intensity, that's all. There is never an 'innocent' party here ever, and when it's finally broken up almost all such people then graduate to the next masochist/sadist/narcissist they can 'play' with -- their problem is not the particular fight or enemy itself, but their naff personal culture that gets them into trouble where ever they go.

This is why in previous times, no-one ever got involved in other folk's marriage -- it's not that they were cruel not to want to help, it's that they knew that bad people have bad marriages because they are bad people.

The entire domestic violence industry should simply be abolished -- demanding fairness and adding yet more budget to 'help' men would entrench the very monster most of us would like to see dismantled.

[Groan]

There are two issues here. The first is simple equity in treatment. The second is that the DV industry is a bastion of the "all men are rapists" school of feminism. The latter point has become more important as the other pillars of feminism have weakened. DV has become a totem to prove men are bad and women need special rights. Hence it is treated as a sort of blasphemy to suggest even some DV may be initiated by women or that both engage in bad behaviour. The education in schools on respectful relationships is being colonised by the same viewpoint. Here materials say that DV is linked to equal pay and other favourite feminist mantras that really are irrelevant to to the issue but get linked in an ingenious way to equate equal pay and violence. Bizarre to most readers yet this kind of clever manipulation is there and being taught. This then links back to the denial of equity , for if all men are likely to be bad then why help them, or even believe them? To give such dangerous beings as men equal rights becomes twisted to mean letting them "off" and hence all the discrimination against men in a whole range of state activity . So for the die hard feminists to admit evil may not be just masculine would be the start of a slipery slope the calls into question all the special protections and privileges enjoyed by women based on the need to "protect " such defenceless paragons of virtue. Fighting for the rights of men simply to be treated with respect and be believed is not about creating industry it is about challenging prejudice and discrimination.