An article from the UK announces that an unintended consequence of new equality laws stating that services cannot be denied based on gender is to deny funding to women’s only domestic violence shelters. Fiona MacTaggart, the former Home Office minister, commented, saying that “There are some stupidnesses developing in the system that nobody intended.”
Let me start by saying I know men are victims of domestic violence as well as women, and that they do need services and there should be services available for them.
I picked up this article from Fark.com, and quickly discovered a league of Men’s Rights Advocates (who may or may not identify themselves as such, but at least one naming Glenn Sacks directly in their comment) patting themselves on the back in the comments section for “ending the sexism against men”. Some of my personal favorites include the following:
There’s a reason the United States did not ratify the Equal Rights Amendment. People were worried about cases like this. And unisex bathrooms, because separate but equal bathrooms are discriminatory.
And
Men are ALWAYS viewed as the guilty ones in these situations. Of course it’s blatant sexism but because it’s against those evil, evil white males, people laugh it off.
Now let’s break that down. The first comment is patronizing at best. “See what happens when we give women rights? They just make trouble.” The second is just insulting- “No matter what the situation, women are always given priority and men aren’t believed when they’re victims of violence!” While it is likely true that men experience difficulty in reporting domestic abuse by a woman, the way this comment is positioned and phrased is to state that women are arbitrarily trying to screw men over. And for the record, I’m not cherry-picking; see for yourself.
As the comments went on, I felt my blood boiling. Soon I was being inundated with remarks that not only reeked of victim blaming (“Why did you stay past the first time you were hit?” “Yawn. Stopped reading after I saw you didn’t report it to the police.”) but also stated that most divorce lawyers are going past suborning perjury and going so far as to SUGGEST it:
See my above posts, domestic violence is increasingly becoming less about domestic violence and more about positioning yourself for the upcoming divorce. Don’t believe me, just do a google search and read horror story after horror story. Funny thing about the stories too, they all sound exactly alike. Almost as if some organization was advising women on how to go about doing this.
Because that’s what feminism is all about. Encouraging women to lie about domestic violence to get better positioning in a divorce case. Not that that would reduce the number of reports from actual victims, that it would reduce the believability of actual victims (I normally hate the term ‘actual victims’ but when MRAs are saying feminists are encouraging women to lie, then yes, I mean actual victims), or completely alienate men and women from the cause who were disgusted by these tactics or anything. What kills me most is that if I were to respond by saying “What about the rape victim who was written off by the police?” I would receive an avalanche of HAVEN’T YOU BEEN LISTENING?! WOMEN LIE ABOUT THIS STUFF FOR THEIR OWN BENEFIT, creating a geometrically correct circle of logic.
Just as a note- the man who mentioned his specific lawyer telling people to do this wasn’t written off with a yawn for not reporting his lawyer for about 3,478 laws and ethics violations.
-BFF
