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VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN ­ A MONEY GRABBER

When the Status of Women Minister, Josée Verner, appeared before the House of Commons Standing Committee on the Status of Women on February 5, 2008, she stated, "Violence against women and girls is a major concern for Canadians.  It is, therefore, a key priority for the Status of Women."  It certainly is for the Status of Women!  Of the 60 projects approved by that agency, since October 2007, 34 were designed for violence against women projects.  In addition:

$7 million per year has been set aside for the Family Violence Initiative.  This fund is co-ordinated by the federal Public Health Agency under Health Canada.  It promotes public awareness of the risk factors of family violence and works with 12 different federal government departments and agencies to work against family violence.  It also serves as a clearinghouse on family violence.

$56 million has been allocated for prevention of violence programs on the reserves; and

$179,000 has been given to a Quebec based feminist organization, AFEAS (Association for female education and social action) in order to counter violence against women.  AFEAS has 300 groups across Quebec, which promote “"social egalitarian feminism" designed to provide women with an “"independent identity, equal status and freedom of choice."” In September 2007, AFEAS undertook a petition to overthrow the federal government's decision to change the mandate, and cut budgets and the offices of Status of Women Canada.

Violence Against Women –- A Sure Winner

Feminists have found that violence against women is a sure winner.  Who can refuse them their sad claims of innocent women victims being brutalized by nasty men while their children look on in shock, horror and bewilderment?  It is a terrible picture but one that is not necessarily accurate.  Such situations do exist and society should do everything it can to stop abuse of women, but it is only a small part of domestic violence.  Feminists persistently ignore the true facts about domestic violence –- it is a two-way street with women being as responsible for it as men.  Instead, feminists have erroneously insisted for over 30 years that it is women, and only women, who are victims of family violence.  In doing so, they have suppressed research and any dialogue that could be perceived as having the potential to undermine their fictitious concept of domestic violence. 

Government Funds Pour In

This suppression of the truth has been necessary in order to keep government funds pouring in to pay for women's shelters (there are approximately 600 such shelters in Canada), rape relief centres, and special projects to protect women and children from abusive partners.  In short, it was and is a sure fire method to obtain government funding and to ensure agitation against men, on the basis that it is only men who are abusers.  Money is not being distributed to men's groups or for male shelters in order to protect them from their female abusers.  In short, funding for violence against women is a lucrative never-ending source of funds for feminists and there is no way they will allow this windfall to be cut off without a terrific battle.

The Story Behind Domestic Violence

A great deal of research has been conducted on domestic violence: this research is very enlightening and tells quite a story –- a story rarely exposed to the public view.

A leading authority on domestic violence is Professor Murray Straus, professor of Sociology and Co-Director of Family Research Laboratory at the University of New Hampshire.  In the mid-seventies, Dr. Straus and his colleagues made the disturbing discovery that women physically assault their partners in marital, cohabiting, and dating relationships as often as men assault their partners.  This finding caused Dr. Straus and his colleagues to be excommunicated by feminists, whose work they believed was no longer trustworthy.  Thirty years following the controversy, the overwhelming accumulation of evidence, from more than one hundred studies, continues to show approximately equal assault ratios between men and women.  Also, the explosion of marital and family therapy has brought clinical psychologists face-to-face with the assaults by both parties, as compared to biased data provided by shelters for battered women, claiming that only men were abusers.  Notwithstanding these developments, the “"women only as victim"” theory has persisted, mainly, according to Dr. Straus due to the efforts of feminists to conceal, deny and distort the evidence.  Feminists, he claims, have carried out this concealment by:

suppressing the evidence by researchers whose conclusions are contrary to their views;
avoiding the obtaining of any data inconsistent with their male dominance theory.  This is done by asking female participants in studies about attacks by their male partners and avoiding asking them if they ever physically retaliate against their male partners;
citing only studies that show male perpetration of domestic violence;
deliberately misinterpreting the results of studies which are contrary to their own views;
creating “"evidence" by citation, that is, by frequently citing previous publications that lack proper evidence, in order to “"validate" the questionable evidence in these studies to support male only violence;
obstructing the publication of articles with conclusions unacceptable to them and refusing to fund research that might contradict the view that male dominance is the cause of domestic violence;
harassing, threatening and penalizing researchers who produce evidence that contradicts feminist dogma, as experienced by Professor Straus and his colleagues;

The above have created a climate of fear that has restricted research and the publication of the truth about domestic violence for the past 30 years.

Women Equally Instigate Domestic Violence

Objective family conflict studies, without exception, show about equal rates of assault by men and women.  Most of these assaults are minor, such as pushing, shoving, slapping and throwing things.  If these are initiated by the wife, however, this poses a risk of escalation to more dangerous assaults by the husband.  It has also been established that men and women are instigators of family violence at the same rate.

In seeming contradiction, however, police records show that males are the perpetrators 80% to 90% of the time.  This is because police statistics reflect only the cases in which the police become involved e.g., when there is an injury or threat of one.  Because assaults by males are more likely to result in an injury, police are much more likely to be involved in male perpetrated assaults.  Misleadingly, this excludes at least 90% of the cases of partner assault.

There are several other significant points about domestic violence:
studies show that women are more likely to be seriously injured in domestic disputes, because men, generally, are physically stronger and are therefore capable of inflicting more harm,
according to a 1993 Statistics Canada Survey on violence against women, there is more than four times as much assault (9%) experienced by women in common law relationships as experienced by legally married women (2%);

It is also interesting that domestic violence occurs more frequently in lesbian than in heterosexual relationships, supporting the view that relationship dynamics, not gender, rule domestic violence.  This finding was confirmed by a Statistics Canada 2006 study in violence against women, released in October, 2006, which stated: