Is feminism its own ideal abuser? (Minimizing, Denying, and Blaming)

In the first entry in this series I noted that patriarchal dominance theory informs feminist anti-violence programs, such as the Duluth Model, which is the model used most commonly by police forces to educate their officers. (Source: the duluthmodel.org) The image below illustrates the Duluthian conception of domestic "power and control". Its illustrators listed the tactics they believe men use to control their wives. Interestingly, feminism routinely uses almost all of these tactics in order to control men.

In that first entry, I adduced evidence that feminism makes use of all the tactics it lists in the 'Using Isolation' sector of its wheel of 'Power and Control'. In this entry I'll adduce evidence that feminism makes use of all the tactics listed in the 'Minimizing, Denying, & Blaming' sector of the wheel. 

1. Not taking concerns seriously

• Below this paragraph I've adduced anecdotal evidence evincing feminism's belittlement of men's issues. A single anecdote usually does not justify believing anything other than the anecdote itself. However, given a sufficient number of them, we may inductively infer conclusions from them. Bearing that in mind, consider the following.

• Feminism uses the phrase "what about teh menz?" to mock people concerned about male suffering.

• The video below this paragraph depicts a well known representative of feminism singing "Cry Me a River" in reply to a man's expression of concern about the rate of suicide among men.

(video 1)

• The hosts of "The Talk", all of who have advocated for feminism, relished the genital mutilation of an adult man (video 2). They repeated the relishing when they attempted to apologize for doing so (video 3).

(Video 2)

(Video 3)

• Feminism sustains a sub-culture that belittles male suffering.

• Feminism belittles men's issues by telling those who discuss them to "check [their] privilege." Below this paragraph, I've inset excerpts from an article in The Guardian that reported on the phrase.  You can also find evidence of its prevalence by searching The Urban Dictionary, Know Your Meme, Google, Twitter, or elsewhere on the internet.

 (Note that the author describes the phrase as a phrase used to

 command a person making a political point to remember that

he is a male.)

To summarize the first section, popular television hosted by feminism relishes in male suffering and regards it as humorous. Feminism's internet activists use a number of memes to belittle male suffering, some of which have become so popular that they have motivated marketers to emblazon them on consumer products. Accordingly, we may conclude that feminism doesn't take concerns about male suffering seriously. 

2. Making light of it

• In Israel, feminism successfully prevented the promulgation of a bill that would illegalize forced envelopment. (Source: Jerusalem Post) If feminism regarded female-on-male rape as a serious crime, then it would not have prevented the promulgation of this bill. 

• Feminism has ensured that the definition of rape excludes forced envelopment. Authorities must use the phrase 'made to penetrate' in order to designate the act perpetrated by a woman when she forcibly envelopes a man's penis. (Source: justice.gov; Mary Koss) What does it matter?

• Compare: raped Anne and John was made to penetrate. The first expression is not a sentence; whereas the second one is a sentence, and it accords with English grammar. In order to use the word raped in a sentence, one must reference the victim and the perpetrator; however one may use made to penetrate in a sentence that does not reference the perpetrator.

• Compare: John raped Anne and John was made to penetrate by Anne. The first sentence comprises three syllables. The second sentence comprises nine syllables, yet it doesn't impart as much information as the first sentence does. 

• John was made to penetrate Anne by Anne is the most concise sentence that imparts all the information that John raped Anne imparts. John was made to penetrate Anne by Anne doesn't seem like the sort of sentence people use in real discourse. 

• The sentence Anne sexually assaulted John is a more concise sentence. However, 'sexual assault', unlike 'rape', does not impart the severity of the sexual assault perpetrated against the victim. 

• Moreover, effectively all literate adults know what act 'rape' designates. Most literate adults do not know what act 'made to penetrate' designates, at least not before they briefly consider the phrase. 

• Furthermore, 'rape' connotes a horrible violation of a person; 'made to penetrate' does not do so. 

• Finally, note that 'John raped Anne' is a proposition expressed in the active voice; whereas 'John was made to penetrate' is a proposition expressed in the passive voice. That matters: the wikibook, Rhetoric and Composition, states that "The active voice is used to concisely and forcibly describe people's actions." 

Accordingly, 'made to penetrate' does not enable users of the phrase to impart the relevant information as easily as 'rape' does. Perhaps most importantly, 'rape' forces users of the phrase to reference the perpetrator; whereas 'made to penetrate' does not do so. Additionally, 'made to penetrate' does not elicit the emotions that 'rape' elicits. Feminism makes light of female-on-male rape by forcing authorities to use less expressive sentences when they discuss such acts.

• Feminism advocates for judges to punish leniently women who harm men.

• Feminism advises judges to sentence women more leniently than they sentence men. (Source: The Telegraph). If feminism did consider female-on-male violence a serious crime, then it would not have advised the judiciary as it did.

• Feminism advocates to close all women's prisons in England. (Source: BBC) If feminism did consider female-on-male violence a serious crime, then it would not have advocate for the closure of all women's prisons in England. 

• Feminism advocates for special, favourable, treatment of female violent offenders. If feminism considers female-on male violence a serious crime, then it would not advocate for special, favourable treatment of female violent offenders as the image below depicts it doing.

• Feminism has argued that false accusations benefit the accused. 

• Below this paragraph, I've quoted Catherine Commins, assistant dean at Vassar College in New York, who makes light of the effect of false accusations in order to advocate lowering the evidentiary standard that prosecutors must satisfy in order to obligate judges to convict men accused of rape. 

"Men who are unjustly accused of rape can sometimes gain from the experience. They have a lot of pain, but it is not a pain that I would necessarily have spared them. I think it ideally initiates a process of self-exploration. 'How do I see women?' 'If I didn't violate her, could I have?' 'Do I have the potential to do to her what they say I did?' Those are good questions."

• Below this paragraph, I've quoted the prominent feminist Germaine Greer. In the quotation she makes light of the effect of false accusations by suggesting that men enjoy prison.

        '...a man can feel secure only in a maximum security prison'

• Feminism claims that violence against men doesn't harm them.

• The Duluth Model website claims that women's violence against men has a "trivial" effect on men. That claim makes light of domestic violence perpetrated by women against men. 

• Feminism claims that we ought not worry about violence against men, as women, generally, can't hurt men as badly as men can hurt women. Upon brief consideration of their claim one will probably apprehend that feminism's justification fails.  

• Ought we regard a small man who batters his large wife as less blame worthy than an average sized man who batters his average sized wife?

• Suppose a woman wakes her husband every morning by spitting in his face. Ought we regard such violence as less blame worthy than that perpetrated by a man who slaps his wife?

• Physical violence isn't what makes domestic violence especially terrible, what makes it especially terrible is the fact that the person you love did it to you. 

• If someone falls down the stairs, do they often need to see a counselor for years after the event? Usually they do not need to do so. If the physical damage were what made domestic violence especially harmful, then, presumably, many more people would need counselling after a purely physically damaging event, such as falling down the stairs. 

(Readers of Jezebel, feminism's second most read magazine, replied to an 

article on domestic violence by contending that women may hit men, but

not vice versa.)

To summarize the second section, feminism has protected women who harm men from the adverse social and legal consequences of their actions. Moreover feminism prevents men from describing these acts in terms that convey their severity. Furthermore, feminism deprives men of the solace that justice provides victims of battery when the law punishes their assailants. It seems that feminism does not regard violence against men, or the rape of men, as harmful crimes; therefore, feminism makes light of issues that affect men.

3. Saying it didn't happen

• Most impartial researchers agree that women assault their male partners as much, or more than, men assault their female partners. Nevertheless, feminism attempts to deny the prevalence of the problem.

• Women assault their male partners as often, or more often than, men assault their female partners.

• The CDC reports that women perpetrate 70% of unilateral domestic violence, as does a study published in the American Journal of Public Health, and another study published in the Harvard Medical Review.

(CDC study)

(Harvard Medical Review)

(American Journal of Public Health)

• The following excerpt from Scientific American notes that women assault their male partners at least as often as men assault their female partners, and that women initiate violence at least as often as men do. 

• The Huffington Post published a report on a study that had discovered that two thirds of women in refuges reported perpetrating severe violence against their partners, which corroborates the CDC study and the Harvard study: All three studies imply that approximately 67% of female victims of domestic violence had perpetrated it against their partners. The study also discovered that men tend to under-report violence and that women tend to over-report violence.

• In fact, there are over 271(!) studies, which collectively studied 370,000 people, that have discovered that women perpetrate more domestic violence than men. 

• Moreover Wikipedia reports that female victims of domestic violence report it -to anyone at all- at twice the rate that male victims of such violence do. Accordingly, it seems reasonable to suspect that the aforecited studies unintentionally under-report the prevalence of female-on-male domestic violence. 

• Feminism prevaricates about, conceals, and denies, the preponderance of women among perpetrators of domestic violence.

• An article published in The Guardian quotes feminism denying that there are more male, than female, victims of domestic violence. Moreover, the quoted representative of feminism cites a peculiar statistic, which omits much information pertinent to her claim. Regardless, feminism has prevaricated by opting not to impart the most germane data: the overall ratio of the number of male victims of domestic violence to the number of female victims of such violence.

• This widely cited paper lists the methods used by feminism to suppress evidence of the prevalence of female on male domestic violence. 

• Method 1. Suppress Evidence 

• Method 2. Avoid Obtaining Data Inconsistent with the Patriarchal Dominance Theory 

• Method 3. Cite Only Studies That Show Male Perpetration 

• Method 4. Conclude That Results Support Feminist Beliefs When They Do Not 

• Method 5. Create "Evidence" by Citation 

• Method 6. Obstruct Publication of Articles and Obstruct Funding of Research That Might Contradict the Idea that Male Dominance Is the Cause of DV 

• Method 7. Harass, Threaten, and Penalize Researchers Who Produce Evidence That Contradicts Feminist Beliefs.

• The Florida State Law Journal published a 200 page study that extensively documents the history of feminism's suppression of research on the prevalence of domestic violence against men by women.
  
  Perhaps the most physically and personally intimidating behavior was directed at Suzanne Steinmetz, who had first brought the issue to the public’s attention.43 Steinmetz appeared on such shows as the Today Show and Phil Donahue. 44 Her work was reported in various newspapers and magazines, including a full-page story in Time magazine.45 Yet, while Steinmetz’s work received some support, the public attack, the public attack against Steinmetz and her family evidenced the public's overwhelming rejection of her work. Verbal threats were launched against her and her children - at home and in public. Threatening phone calls were made to Steinmetz and the sponsors of her speaking engagements in order to prevent Steinmetz from further publicizing her work. On one occasion, a bomb threat was called into an ACLU meeting at which Steinmetz was scheduled to speak. Professionally, Steinmetz was also threatened. In an attempt to prevent her from receiving tenure, every female faculty member at the University of Delaware was lobbied by individuals calling on behalf of the women's rights movement... Other social scientists committed to the study of husband abuse and family violence were similarly mistreated.Such tactics seem to have proven effective. Both researchers who were involved in the early projects and even those who might have become involved admit that they now choose to give the topic of battered men "wide berth".

• Women sexually assault and rape men and boys, but feminism both, suppresses evidence that evinces, and denies, its occurrence.

• Women do sexually assault and rape men and boys.

• The largest study of sexual exploitation of homeless youth in Canada discovered that women had sexually exploited 75% of homeless boys. 

• An article in The Guardian reports that the police estimate that there are 320,000 child-sex offenders living in the UK, and that women constitute 20% of that population: 64,000.

• Moreover, consider that authorities disbelief 86% of the victims of female sexual violence who report the crimes. Additionally, consider that a person accused of perpetrating sexual violence becomes a person suspected of perpetrating sexual violence only if someone believes the accuser. Accordingly, we may conclude that women constitute much more than 20% of the pedophiles living in the UK, as the data provided by The Guardian only counts the number of female child-sex offenders that the police suspect of perpetrating child-sex crimes.

• Below this paragraph, I've excerpted the images from the CDC's National Intimate Partner Violence Survey. 
• Note that feminism's advocacy persuaded the CDC (see the bullet about Mary Koss) to exclude forced envelopment from its definition of rape: the CDC only considers instances of forced penetration as qualifying as proper rape. 

• Additionally, note the use of 'reported' and 'have been'. The latter verb-phrase denotes an event that, in fact, occurred; whereas the former verb denotes an event alleged to have occurred. 

• We also ought to note that the questions the surveyors asked men about occurrences of 'being made to penetrate' markedly differed from the ones that the surveyors asked about proper rape. The latter set of questions patently encourage affirmative replies, the former set of questions does not do so. 

• Moreover the proper rape statistic includes all occurrences of intoxicated sex; whereas the 'made to penetrate' statistic does not include intoxicated sex. 

• Furthermore, the proper rape statistic includes all women who experienced "sexual coercion", which includes all occurrences of penetration that occurred when the woman felt "pressured" to permit such penetration. In contrast, the "made to penetrate" statistic does not include such occurrences. 

• Accordingly, in order to compare the prevalence of occurrences of a man being "made to penetrate" to the prevalence of occurrences of proper rape, we must add the proportion of men who reported sexual coercion to the proportion of men who reported "being made to penetrate". The sum of those two proportions equals 17.8%. A proportion comparable to the proportion of women who the CDC reports as having been raped: 18.3%

• Nevertheless, it stands to reason that the survey would have reported an even greater proportion of men who reported "being made to penetrate" if the surveyors had asked similar questions about proper rape and about "being made to penetrate" and if they had counted occurrences of intoxicated intercourse as occurrences of both "being made to penetrate" and proper rape, instead of counting such occurrences only as occurrences of only proper rape. 

• According to the Canadian Children's Rights Council, American and Canadian courts, on average, collectively convict one female teacher of raping a male pupil every week. Moreover, even the most conservative extrapolation from the subsequent facts indicates that, every week, there are thousands of occurrences of female teachers raping their male pupils.

• According to Health Canada and the Australian Institute of Criminology Research, males report sexual assault half as often as females do.

• Police believe only 14% of the reports of women perpetrating sexual assault against a boy (previously cited).   

• When the police believe such reports, police indict the accused female 46.5 times less often than they do when when a female has accused a male of sexually assaulting her (source). For reference, police indict 25% of the reports of sexual assaults against women that they believe (source).

• According to the Canadian Children's Rights Council women who sexually assault boys, do so on twelve or more occasions. 

• Feminism conceals and denies the preponderance of women among perpetrators of sexual assault. 

• Feminism has ensured that the definition of rape excluded forced envelopment. (Source: justice.gov; Mary Koss) Accordingly, whenever a woman rapes a man, she no longer, properly speaking, rapes him. 

• Many of the institutions that feminism influences deny, or tergiversate about, the preponderance of women among perpetrators of sexual assault. The sexual assault center run by my university claims that women perpetrate 1% of sexual assaults. 

• There is an abundance of data from impartial sources (which I've republished in this entry) that indicates that women commit much more than 1% of sexual assaults. 

• If we consider the other statements depicted in the image below this paragraph, then the claim that women perpetrate 1% of sexual assaults seems preposterous. Consider the statement "we know that violence occurs within lesbian relationships". That implicates that the prevalence of violence within lesbian relationships justifies the quoted claim about lesbians in general. It also implicates that violence does not occur considerably often within gay relationships. After all, if it did, they, presumably, would have written "we know that violence occurs within homosexual relationships". This suggests that a considerable number of homosexual women perpetrate sexual assault, and that homosexual men, for all intents and purposes, do not perpetrate sexual assault. I doubt that the university's current administration would ever accede to that. Moreover, given the considerable prevalence of sexual violence within lesbian relationships, the statement that "99% of all sexual perpetrators are male" suggests that heterosexual women perpetrate preposterously little sexual violence, or that there are preposterously few homosexual women, or that a handful of heterosexual women have sexually violated an extraordinary number of men. I doubt that the university's current administration would ever accede to any one of those statements. To conclude, the university hasn't sufficiently considered the statements depicted below this paragraph, or it knowingly published preposterous claims that demonize men. 

• I've already cited two academic studies (source) (source) that evince academic feminism's efforts to suppress research into the prevalence of female violence, those efforts include efforts to suppress research into the prevalence of female sexual violence. 

• Women rape boys detained in juvenile detention centers; however, feminism denies this well evidenced fact. 

• Women rape 8.5-12.5% of the boys detained in North American juvenile detention centers.

• During 2008 and 2009, The Bureau of Justice Statistics undertook to ascertain the frequency of sexual victimization of youths detained in America's juvenile detention centers. They ascertained, and  reported, that, in the year preceding their study, female prison guards had sexually assaulted approximately 10% of the boys 26,500 boys detained in the detention centers. 

• In 2012, The Bureau of Justice Statistics repeated their 2009 study; they discovered that, during the year preceding the study, female guards had sexually assaulted approximately 8% of the boys detained in American juvenile detention centers.

• In 2013, The Business Insider published an article describing the nature of the sexual assault. 

• Nevertheless feminism quickly denied the facts that the Bureau of Justice Statistics reported.

• In a lengthy post, Queen's university professor Dr. Adele Mercier patently denies that the sexual assault occurs as often as the Bureau reported. I've inset excerpts of her post below this paragraph. Below the first excerpt, I've inset a excerpt from the first report published by the Bureau.

• Dr. Mercier contends that the facts presented in the report indicate only the fact that "even people in detention centers like to have sex."

• Ultimately, Dr. Mercier concludes that none of the sexual assault perpetrated by women against boys involved "attack/coercion" or "force". However, the report states otherwise: 1,150/2,730 (42%) youths reported female staff forcing male detainees to perform sex acts for them. I've posted an excerpt from the report below the final excerpt from Dr. Mercier's post. 

• So Dr. Mercier's claim that all the incidents involved only consensual sex is a patently false one. We know that 42% of the incidents involved force or coercion. However, we do not know that the other 58% of the incidents did not involve force or coercion. Accordingly, she must withdraw her first claim  ("'95% of abused boys in juvenile detention centers reported being attacked/coerced by female staff.' This is FALSE."), otherwise, she must preface it with 'For all we know". In fact, she would need to accept all of the following statements in order to justify her claim, even if she did preface it with 'For all we know". 

• either 

• that children may lawfully consent to sex, or

• that sex without lawful consent does not qualify as rape, or

• that rape does not qualify as an attack, which is an assertion that all,  or almost all, her fellow feminist-philosophers would dispute (source); 

• and either 

• that imprisoned youth can always safely refuse a guard's sexual advances, or

• that feminism inaccurately conceives of sexual coercion as consisting entirely in the sexual-exploitation of a person's inability to safely refuse a sexual advance (source);

• and either

• that psychological coercion does not qualify as proper coercion, or

• that the actions of the staff do not qualify as psychologically coercive, despite the fact that most sources regard psychological coercion as proper coercion; and despite the fact that any entirely self-interested action done by an agent in order to cause a person to feel obligated to do something that the agent desires that person to do is an action that satisfies the criteria for emotional coercion as published by most sources; and despite the fact that the report documents that the female staff behaved in a manner that would cause young detainees to feel obligated to accept a guard's sexual advances;

(Excerpt from the Texas Observer)

• and either

• that an authority who grooms one of her child wards for sex neither attacks, nor coerces, that ward in any sense of either word, or

• that the guards' behaviour did not qualify as grooming, despite the fact that it satisfies all of the relevant criteria for child grooming listed by the UK's largest child protection charity, the NSPCC. (I.e. offering understanding, buying gifts, giving special attention, using their professional position.)

• To conclude, unless Dr. Mercier retracts her contention that the original claim is false, she must accept each, and all, of the four foregoing disjunctive assertions. If there is even one that she would not accept, then she must retract her contention.

• Misandry qualifies as a social phenomenon (see the evidence cited in my recent entries); nevertheless, feminism contends that it "isn't real".

• The writer of this article published by Jezebel, the second most read feminist magazine, asserts that misandry doesn't exist. However, no matter whether only 'systemic' misandry qualifies as misandry-proper, you can find ample contrary evidence in this entry.

• A search for "misandry isn't real" renders a number of articles discussing that claim; the titles of several of those articles evince the fact that feminism often denies the fact that there is such a thing as misandry.

To summarize this section, domestic, and sexual, assault of men by women often occurs. Feminism undertakes to ensure the public does not believe that women harm men. 

4. Shifting responsibility for behaviour

• Robin Morgan, editor of Ms Magazine argues that men oppress women and women may justifiably hate them for it.

I feel that man-hating is an honorable and viable political act, that the oppressed have a right to class-hatred against the class that is oppressing them.   

• Feminism advocates for the "battered woman" defense, which women may employ to escape punishment for taking the law into their own hands and executing their husbands. Effectively, this defense exonerates women who plot to, and carry out, the murder of their abusive husbands. The defense implies that the courts ought to blame the male victim for the pre-meditated criminal acts perpetrated by a sane woman in full control of herself. Consider the following excerpt from Australian-News.net, and the cases described in the Wikipedia article on the battered woman defense.

• On Twitter, I asked this representative of feminism whether we ought to consider it wrong for women to hit men. She replied by shifting the responsibility to the men: blaming such occurrences on provocation and implicating that she believes men ought to control women who can't control themselves.

• A writer of an article published by Jezebel, the second most read feminist magazine, blames all men, personally, for the hatred some women feel towards men, collectively.

To summarize this section, feminism believes that we ought to regard men as culpable for much of the violence that women perpetrate and for feminism's hatred of men. In other words, feminism shifts responsibility for much of its actions, and the actions of women, to men. 

5. Blaming them for it

• Below this paragraph, I've inset an article published in Jezebel, the second most read feminist magazine. The author of the article denies that misandry exists and argues that men perpetuate the issues that feminism has eventuated or perpetuated. 

• Men losing custody of their children: The author ignores the fact that feminism (via the National Organization for Women) has campaigned against equal custody. (Source) 

• Alimony payments: However, feminism has done nothing to ensure men receive alimony payments when the woman earns more: Courts award men alimony in only 3% of cases even though women earn more than men in 37% of such cases.(Source) 

• Men being raped: However, we have already adduced evidence that evinces the fact that feminism advocates for the abolition of women's, but not men's prisons, and denies that men are raped. 

• Nice guys discovering that women don't like men who behave that way: However, feminism deplores pick-up-artists (source), (I, personally, consider PUA lame) and the resources that teach men how to pick-up women. Moreover Jezebel perpetuates the problem: it instructs its readers to use men for their resources (source).

• The author continues to blame patriarchy for, and insists that feminism wants to remedy, the following. 

• Chivalry: However, feminism often takes advantage of it (e.g. #HeForShe). Consider that a well-known representative of feminism, who recites the entire article in this video (source), laments the disappearance of chivalry in her dating profile (source), and that Jezebel condones the practice of men paying for women on dates (source). 

• Industrial accidents: However, feminism campaigns only for the mandated presence of women in safe jobs (politicians, executives, STEM, etc.). 

• Suicide: However, feminism has interrupted every event on Canadian campuses that has tried to discuss issues relating to the problem of male suicide (source). 

• Being viewed with suspicion: However, feminism often claims that "all men are potential rapists" (source); it has gone so far as to claim that "all men are rapists and that's all they are" (source) , and has posted notices composed of a list of the names of all the men who attend a certain university and a warning to women that these men "are potential rapists."(source) 

• The draft: However feminism has shamed men into military service, and has advocated for the draft (source). Moreover, this year, women organized campaigns that made use of their sexuality in order to encourage men to fight and die for them in Gaza (source).

• Often, when one accuses feminism of misandry feminism replies by contending that misandry is actually the fault of men, usually by blaming "the patriarchy". 

(This reader of Jezebel, feminism's second most read magazine, notes that

she "used to get so angry it was out of control" until feminist theory taught

her to direct it at the patriarchy.)

• The Duluth Model blames men for the domestic violence perpetrated by women. They claim that women use violence only to respond to men's violence. However, the studies I have adduced in this entry confute that claim.

To summarize this section, feminism blames men for the issues that it eventuated, or perpetuates, and refuses to accept responsibility for the harmful effects of much of its advocacy.

6. Conclusion

Feminism satisfies all the criteria listed in the 'minimizing, denying, and blaming' sector of the Duluth wheel. 

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