Men's Issues and Stats
Trudy Schuett, Submissions Editor
It seems the ignorance of feminists is not only alive and well, but growing at an astonishing rate. Or maybe it’s deliberate, this dissemination of obvious untruth. I vote for the deliberate, as I’ve never met a feminist or women’s shelter advocate yet who could hold an entire conversation without resorting to at least one fabrication. They are very good at trying to convince people that they have some special knowledge of the world that nobody else has. I keep expecting to see something like this : 2 + 2 = 823 on a feminist blog, (with some convoluted logic to justify it) and this recent nonsense at Alas, A Blog comes pretty close.
Barry Deutsch, otherwise known as "Ampersand," is trying to convince readers of the site that men’s right’s activists always use research from before 1990 to make their claims. Feminists spend so much time and energy attacking this diverse group of many people and organizations around the world they’ve developed an acronym – MRAs – which lumps us all into a convenient group to save typing, not to mention bothersome explanation or description.
The internet is a big place, and has a tendency to keep things. Every once in a while I’ll encounter something I wrote a decade ago, as I’m sure a lot of other people have. There is a lot of old web content, and sites that have been neglected for many years. To make the presumption, however, that anyone, much less everyone in a large group, would rely on outdated information to address a current topic suggests that perhaps the person broadcasting this presumption has motives that are less than honest.
To say that everyone involved in activism for men's issues prefers to rely on antiquated data is absurd in the extreme. Mr. Deutsch engages in a lot of unnecessary written acrobatics to describe a situation that does not exist. All on the basis of visits to two sites he’s targeted for the day's attack exercise.
MenWeb and Men's Network are voluminous sites with many sections and individual articles. It would not be difficult to find seven outdated articles using these sites as reference, especially the old section of MenWeb, which is clearly marked as not updated since 1996. However, a visit to the front page of MenWeb (which I note Mr. Deutsch has not linked) will show much more recent information.
The most often quoted research into domestic violence is a group of studies compiled by Dr. Martin Fiebert at the Department of Psychology California State University, Long Beach. While certainly there are a number of studies dating before 1990 included, because it is an attempt to compile as much information as possible, it also includes much more recent works, which show up in the first page. This compilation, by the way, is an ongoing project, and so subject to change as Dr Fiebert finds new studies.
Here are a few more resources. Whether you choose to lump these sites into the category of “men’s rights advocates” ("MRAs") is up to you.
If you’re talking about domestic violence in general, often those who are advocates for unserved populations are mistakenly described by shelter advocates as interested only in men’s rights, because of feminist tunnel vision--and that tendency to draw encompassing conclusions based on little or no evidence, as we’ve already seen.
Speaking as an advocate for unserved populations since 1999 (and yes, also an advocate for men's rights), I do want to mention that it was the feminists who persuaded me to work for equal access for all to Domestic Violence services. I have many years' experience working in the social/human services field, and I was appalled at the state of affairs as regards so-called "battered women's shelters." No other agency in the field engages in such blatant misuse of statistics and research to mislead the public. No other agency is so willing to abuse their own clients for political and financial gain.
While it is true many shelter programs face loss of funding and other support, this is almost entirely due to the fact that they are bad programs. They are often poorly managed agencies, with deliberately-adversarial relationships with local governments, law enforcement, and other local human services agencies.
Today's shelters offer a simplistic, negative, non-solution to address a complex human issue. They force all clients, without regard to the nature of their problem, to accept their single solution. It is not yet well-known, due to the culture of secrecy and concealment surrounding women’s shelter services as a whole, but there is a seriously-decreasing number of clients who ever complete the shelter programs. More and more, women who are not willing to accept shelter ideology (and the essential disrespect extended toward clients it so often entails) are leaving to seek help elsewhere.
While Mr. Deutsch decries the loss of funding to these programs, and the movement to repeal no-fault divorce laws, as "incredibly harmful to the interests of battered women," that isn’t precisely true, either. Certainly it would be harmful to interests of feminists, who would no longer have the cash cow available to promote their ideology. While it may be convenient to place blame on the men's movement for forcing needed change, it's probably more an indication the public is no longer willing to support hatemongers and their self-serving interests.
Related Posts (on one page):
- Editorial Bullying in the Carnival of the Skeptics
- Men's Issues and Stats
I think repealing no-fault divorce would be a giant step backward. When you don't have no-fault, you wind up having to prove that one side or the other was nasty, brutish, evil, etc. There's no need for that.
In other words, you had a lot of people simply making it up. I know, I talked to people who had to get divorced that way. They didn't want to accuse or be accused, and the breakup was fairly amicable, but just to get a divorce one had to accuse the other of something terrible. So one volunteered to "take the bullet" and agree to be painted as the bad guy (and yeah, it was usually the man).
"No-fault" means what it says: "we both agree to split, and that's all there is to it."
In other words, it gets the state out of trying to arbitrate right and wrong in relationships.
I again do not see how ending no-fault divorce is a good idea, nor do I see how it ties in with men's rights issues.
The whole pre-1990 data issue looks like a red herring.
But with VAWA (Violence Against Women Act)reauthorization coming up in September, there will be plenty more of this. I don't generally respond, but Dean asked me to. I probably will respond occasionally, just to keep the "other side" visible.
The truth is, of course, is that bad studies are bad studies and good studies are good studies no matter when they were done.
So, yeah, it's a red herring.
If you look at the major orgs focused on DV, (websites that is) you find that divorce almost takes precedence over offering help for the problem. Most state coalitions "against" DV (these agencies are funded by VAWA) spend nearly all their time tinkering with divorce legislation in their respective states.
Despite the billions of dollars in funding, and full cooperation from law enforcement, as well as municipal govs nationwide, there has actually been little or no research into new ways to address the DV problem.
IMHO shelter programs as they exist today are not intended to help victims. They exist to enable as many divorces as possible, and cause suspicion and fear in the community. The fact that so many women are the unwitting pawns in this effort is simply considered collateral damage. Those who believe that feminism has anything to do with women's rights are seriously misled.
I can't control my devil's advocate urge: a good study can become a bad study if underlying conditions change. If there were a 200 year old study of domestic violence, I would consider it fairly irrelevant today.
But I'm not sure that 1990 is far enough back to be irrelevant today. I'm willing to consider the possibility that there's been a fundamental change in the last 15 years. I just can't imagine what it could be.
Oh, I quite agree. But you'd need a good study to convince me. :)
Having read a bit further in the entry that Trudy is talking about, that is the claim that the original author is making: that MRAs use old statistics because things have changed. I am not convinced of that, though. There are a huge number of variables in the DV question, and one side has a documented history of deceit and fabrication, so I tend to look at statistics with a skeptical eye.
Skeptical in the true sense of the word, as in 'wanting supporting evidence' rather than the all-to-common 'denying that with which I do not agree.'
Since the findings don't support feminist views, I wasn't surprised that there was no 1995 study.
Dr. Suzanne Steinmetz, who participated in at least one of the surveys, has been quoted as saying she no longer does family violence research because of death threats from feminists.
So one reason for relying on older studies may be that newer ones were only published if they corroborated the feminist party line.
and another in 2000
What happens now is that although the findings of these studies indicate a different picture of the problem, feminists simply choose to ignore them. They are still in the pre-Internet mode, which allowed them to say anything they want without fear of challenge.
You are right about made-up incidents so as to have grounds for divorce before no-fault, though. I've never come across one in real life, but they are common enough in English mysteries that I think they must have existed in some quantity at some time. The idea seems to be that you hired someone to be your adulterous partner for an evening, and someone else to be the detective catching you in the act, and then your spouse had documented "grounds," and you could divorce. It's a plot that depends on the cooperation of the spouse, obviously.
Michelle: How old are you? No-fault became the norm in most states by the end of the 1980s I believe. So if you're under 30 or 35, or have always lived in a state that had no-fault (some had it as far back as the early 1970s) you just wouldn't encounter the old-school conditions. Illinois (where I lived for about 25 years) didn't get no-fault until the mid to late '80s, and I witnessed a friend get divorced. They didn't have to do anything as dramatic as faking evidence, but one had to accuse the other of "mental cruelty and neglect" and the other had to not contest the charge.
I guess I do get the point about no-fault divorce in which one party can simply unilaterally divorce on no grounds and seize custody of the kids.
The most amusing thing being all these women, and women like them, are frequently bashed as "not feminists" or "anti-feminist" by the exact same feminist establishment who claims that "there is no one feminism" and that all feminists can't be tarred with the brush of just a few. Yet they take it upon themselves to declare who is or isn't a feminist when someone dares question their sacred dogmas.
I'm 37, and as I grew up from the mid-70s through high school in NY, and have lived in CA since '84, yep, I've no experience of states without no-fault.
I just don't know of any other contract that can be broken unilaterally without a showing of fault by the other party. Mind you, I don't think it would be particularly fun to stay married to someone who desperately wanted not to be married to you, but I still think being able to divorce unilaterally is odd.
Just because I say that the set of feminism includes more than one possible set of opinions (aka, "there is no one feminism"), it doesn't logically follow that every set of opinions must be accepted as feminist. It's illogical of you to imply that these two positions are contrary.
Speaking only for myself, I think a feminist is someone who believes that women in our society lack social, political and economic equality in a substantial and important way, and who actively favors fighting against that inequality. I think that definition includes a lot of feminists who don't agree with each other (Susie Bright and Catherine MacKinnon and bell hooks, etc), but it doesn't happen to include Cathy Young and Christina Hoff Sommers.
(By the way, I tried changing my name to "Barry Deutsch aka Ampersand," but I just got a blank screen of death. Sorry about that!)
I'm responding to Trudy's response to my post, but let me first say: Please consider going to my website and reading my original post, so that you have some context.
It's not important, but are you certain that feminists are the ones who developed "MRA"? I first encountered the expression at Stand Your Ground, which is an MRA message board. There certainly are people "involved in activism for men's issues" (how is that phrase any better than saying "MRA"?) who use the expression - see, for example, the blogger at Faith and Society.
You didn't correctly understand my claim.
I didn't say everyone "involved in activism for men's issues" prefers to use old data in all circumstances. That would obviously be a ridiculous claim. I claimed that when discussing one specific issue - the supposed equality of intimate homicide rates between men and women - men's rights activists find it to their advantage to use old data, and often data that represents urban areas rather than the country in general.
Your counter-argument is that I deceptively linked to and discussed out-of-date articles to make my point, and more recent articles would cite more recent homocide data. However, I think you're mistaken. For example, this article by Glenn Sacks is less than a month old, and still it cites "the DOJ's 1994 survey Murder in Families," which used data from 1988.
The counter-example you provided a link to - Dr. Fiebert's well-known list - isn't useful to your case. Yes, of course Dr. Fiebert has more recent studies on his list; but of Dr. Fiebert's four citations regarding intimate homicide, the one with the most recent data is a report "on homicide rates in St. Louis from 1968-1992." The contrast between these four studies, and the much more recent data in most of the non-homicide studies Dr. Fiebert cites, is quite striking. This supports my argument; men's rights activists use outdated data when discussing intimate homicide.
As for your description of shelters, I think you're being unfair. You make shelters sound like feminist indoctrination camp; but the actual shelter workers I know are far too busy dealing with day-to-day practical issues to have time to practice indoctrination. It's difficult and often unpleasant work, and to imply that feminists do it because it's a "cash cow" is ridiculous. No one gets rich working for shelters; it's a low-paid, ridiculous-hours, high-stress field.
The truth you don't seem to acknowledge is, people who disagree with you can nonetheless have good motivations. My experience is that feminists work at shelters because they genuinely want to help battered women, not because they're seeking cash or converts.
This is an empirical claim. What empirical evidence can you cite in support of this claim?
Actually, those links are to the same study, not two different studies.
I've cited the CDC study frequently on my website and in other writings, and I've seen other feminists cite it as well (although probably my interpretation differs from yours). Your claim that feminists don't cite it is simply untrue.
Please consider reading my post, Martin.
There's been a huge change in the intimate violence rates for men; in particular, the rate of men (and especially black men) known to have been murdered by wives and girlfriends has gone down dramatically. This is not a controversial point at all, if you read the academic and federal government literature; on the contrary, it's probably the single best-known and least-disputed fact about intimate murder rates over the past 25 years.
As a result, if you consider 15-year-old data - and in particular, if you focus on data from large urban districts, which over-represents black men compared to a national sample - you can support a claim that men are nearly as likely to be murdered by intimates as vice-versa. However, the most current nationwide data does not support such a claim.
Why there has been such a huge change in the intimate homicide rates is a matter of speculation (and I speculate a bit about it in my post). But that the change has happened is not in doubt.
(By the way, when I say "intimate murder rates," I should clarify that the phrase refers only to intimate murders known to the police. By definition, unknown intimate murders are not counted.)
Now that I see that on screen, it sounds really snooty and obnoxious. I didn't mean it that way, honest! I just think that some of your questions might be answered by reading the post that Trudy ws critiquing. No disrespect intended.
Feminists are in love with numbers as a way to "prove" that only some women deserve the help of domestic violence programs. Of course, numbers can't be of any help in gauging the extent of human anguish, which is why I quit playing the "dueling statistics" game some time ago.
Had domestic violence services been left to the non-profit and private charity sector where they belonged, we wouldn't be having this conversation at all. But feminists believe that government (preferably directed by women) should be in charge of everything. They say, "The personal is political," which ultimately reduces everybody and all their needs to numbers.
Because a certain group of people have, for years, promulgated the incorrect notion that only men are violent, and that as a result women need special laws to protect them. In many cases, these laws have been enacted, and they include such things as mandatory arrest and charge laws and near-automatic granting of child custody.
The notion that only men are violent is necessary for the current world-view of the outer edge of feminism, which holds that there is a patriarchy, and that this patriarchy is perpetrated through violence: men control women by beating and killing them, and making them fear rape and murder. In this worldview, peaceful women are oppressed by violent men, and it isn't going to change because men are inherently so.
The endless repetition (over at least the last 20 years) of things like 'all men are potential rapists' has other effects, too, too numerous to go into here. Some of them, though, are that it is ok to hit men, and ok to murder them (he was probably beating her). For a very recent example on this very blog, look at the comments on Dean's circumcision posts. If it were circumcision of female infants under discussion, few would be bridling at the term 'child abuse'. But it's male circumcision, and the general reaction is that the term 'child abuse' is extreme, and that there really isn't anything to get worked up about.
I did read your post. (And trust me: if "Please read my post" were considered snooty and obnoxious, we would have to chastise Dean on a regular basis. In almost every controversial thread, he has to at some point remind people to read before arguing. So that's not a problem.)
My concern is that data fluctuate for a lot of random reasons without actually changing the underlying reality. Old data and new data could all be just different snapshots of the same phenomenon. So it's not enough to say the data's old. You need to at least posit an explanation for why the old data is therefore invalid (or of course, you can show how the old methodology was flawed). Without that explanation, I believe the old data to be as accurate as the new data.
And looking at your post, I don't really see any reasons why the old data aren't valid today. Saying that "the high rate of husband-murder among blacks before 1988" is "a historic anomaly" amounts to saying, "I don't like this data, so please ignore it." I'm sure that, if I have the power to declare certain subgroups to be anomalous, I can make any set of data say whatever I want it to say.
So give me a reason why people today are different in their behavior from people in 1990, and I'll be more open to the "old data" argument. But right now, "old data" looks an awful lot like "fluctuating data".
Now on the urban vs. country-wide -- which Ms. Schuett fails to address -- I can see a lot of room for debate. But then, the title of your post was "Why Men Right’s Activists Prefer Data From Before 1990", so the urban issue wasn't a primary issue for you, either.
You seem to be saying that activists are free to cherry-pick data and don't need to explain the choice to ignore current, representative data should be ignored. That simply makes no sense.
You're saying that the burden of proof lies on people asking that current, representative data be used. That's not true; the preference for current and representative data is an accepted norm, all else held equal, and it's deviations away from this default that require explanation. To justify using out-of-date, non-representative data, MRAs who prefer the old, urban data would need to show some reason that data collection has become inaccurate in recent years, and why urban datasets are to be preferred to representative datasets.
Finally, your suggestion that this trend can be explained by measurement fluctuation is... incredible. In order for that to be the case, you'd have to believe that the margin of error for measuring intimate homicides known to police is over 150%. Since you've given no explanation to justify believing that the margin of error is incredibly huge, I don't think that holds much water.
Furthermore, you'd have to believe that a sustained decline in intimate murder of men over the course of three decades represents random chance in measurement - not unlike flipping a coin fifty times and coming up heads 50 times in a row. It could happen, but it's certainly not the most likely explanation.
Finally, I don't think a belief that "if it isn't explained, it should be assumed to be meaningless fluctuation" is logical. It's illogical to believe that if we don't yet have a full explanation for a phenomenon, that phenomenon must not really be happening; but that illogical belief is implicit in your bias towards labeling all unexplained phenomenon as fluctuation.
Shelters ARE little more than “feminist indoctrination camp,” as Mr. Deutsch says above. It is built in to the system under which they function, so there need be no specific effort on the part of shelter workers to implement the ideology. Everything from outreach materials to board policies to shelter buildings themselves are built on the concept of “all men are abusers, all women are victims.” The AZCADV devotes an entire website section to attacking men. Included in this is their statement of philosophy, which were it directed against any other group of people would be considered hate speech.
There is no good motivation when you presume your clients are incapable of making their own decisions, and force them to accept a pre-determined solution without question, whether it applies to their situation or not. More on that here.
The taxpayer-funded nationwide structure of services for abuse victims actively prevents any group other than women without male children over 12 from fully accessing services, or any other organizations from developing more-inclusive agencies and programs. This is evidenced by the fact that other agencies have tried to establish other programs and been denied access to state coalitions and thus, funding.
As one with 20 years’ experience in social services, I am well aware of the nature of the work. In this case however, the billions of dollars that go to women-only programs seldom filters down to the direct-services level. It is usually squandered at higher levels on things like champagne lunches for stakeholders and big salaries for high-profile individuals. For example: Recently Senator Conyers of Michigan presented a bill asking for a million dollars to “study” and maintain the National Domestic Violence Hotline. A million dollars for a phone bank and website. Does that not seem a tad overboard?
As to the decreasing number of clients completing programs, I did jump the gun a bit on that one, as I’m still in the process of compiling my supportive information, most of which is embargoed for my use for another couple of months. However, if you can get anyone among your shelter friends (who is high enough up the chain of command to know, and to give you a straight answer), you will most likely find it to be a concern. Why else would the statement about the number of times a woman “needs to leave her abuser” suddenly be part of news stories and websites so often? IHMO, it’s preemptive ass-covering. It was a major concern in pre-VAWA days, when shelters were catching a lot of flak for their “revolving door syndrome.” VAWA has effectively covered a multitude of sins.
I'm going to have to disagree. Truthfulness should compel you to use all data, and not to write off inconvenient data as old or nonrepresentative.
No, I'm saying that activists -- and remember, that includes yourself -- have to explain which data they include and which data they exclude, if they want to persuade people like myself. I'm sympathetic to your point of view, having friends and relatives who were battered women. I contribute to shelter programs. But I'm not going to ignore data that doesn't fit your model simply because you claim it's nonrepresentative.
I'm sorry, but that's ludicrous. You're granting yourself the right to claim what's current and what's representative. And I'm simply asking for justification for your claims. One more time: what has changed since 1990? If you told me they were using data that's 60 or 100 years old, I'd be more receptive. But I can't see that there's been a major sociological shift in 15 years. Or if there has been, it has been in the opposite direction from what you posit: I think that the past couple of decades have seen a growing awareness of domestic violence, and a reduced social tolerance of it. So what have I missed? What's changed?
And don't tell me "the data"; tell me the phenomenon that the data represent. Otherwise, yes, I have to say that fluctuation is as likely a reason as anything else.
Do I have to dig out "How to Lie with Statistics"? I'm not saying you're lying, but I'm saying that I've seen plenty of more "convincing" trends that turned out to disappear in the sea of data if longer periods, more studies, or different methodologies were applied.
If it isn't explained, then we don't know the explanation. Therefore, we don't know how best to respond. If I experience an accelerated heart rate, a doctor doesn't just issue a prescription; he runs tests to find the reasons behind the data, and determines the right course of treatment from there.
Yes, and if you had shown that a longer period, more studies, or different methodologies made the finding that intimate murders of men have decreased sharply over the last 30 years dissappear, that would be a convincing reason to ignore the data.
However, you must realize that it's logically impossible for me to prove a negative; I can't show there is no possible alternate study or methodology that will produce a different finding for intimate murder rates for the past 30 years. If you're basing your disbelief on the existence of such an alternate study or methodology, then it's up to you to show that such an alternate study or methodology exists.
(Keep in mind that the data I'm referring to is not a sample-based study, which leaves a lot of room for tricky questions about sampling bias; it's a simple running count of every intimate murder known to police for the last 30 years. Insofar as the police numbers are accurate, I honestly don't see any way for the data I'm citing to be inaccurate).
Your analogy misses the point.
The wise doctor in your analgy isn't denying that the accelerated heart rate exists, which is what you're doing. Admitting that you don't know the cause of something is very different from saying "if I don't know the cause of something, then probably it doesn't exist at all." The doctor is doing the former, which is logical; you're doing the latter, which is not logical.
Add to this mix the virulently hostile anti-male attitude espoused by many feminists and shelter advocates, which reached its most hysterical levels in the last 20 years or so, and I would not be surprised to see a decline in the number of women successfully prosecuted or even reported as having been murderers when that is, indeed, what they were guilty of.
To this mix must also be thrown in the fact that all violent crime--all of it--has been on a downward slope since at least 1990.
Simply put, Barry, while some of what you're saying may be fair, the entire tenor and tone of your original article, blasting whole groups of people by accusing them of habitually using old data in order to obfuscate, and then drawing sweeping conclusions as a result, is something you should probably retract. Ditto your sweeping conclusion that the shelter movement is primarily responsible for the reduction in domestic violence. You can't back that up with the data you've presented.
I've even heard it from cops.
I find myself wondering who would accept that line of reasoning from someone who said that if a man cripples or kills his wife....
I'm basing my skepticism (not disbelief) on the fact that you keep dodging the question: why should I believe that 15 year old data is not reliable data?
If you can't answer that, then I have to presume the 15 year old data is every bit as valid as more recent data. And if old data and new data seem contradictory, then both data sets have to be equally suspect. There's no reason to presume that your preferred data is the more accurate data.
A simple question has been posed; and rather than answer it, you're spending post after post explaining why the question isn't relevant. The longer you dissemble, the more skeptical I get. You're the one with a point to prove. If the point is valid, it has to stand up to questioning, and not just to the questions you think are relevant.
Please: stop trying to undermine my reasoning, and just answer the question.
Are you willing to contemplate the idea that if I haven't fully understood what it is you want from me, the fault might be partly yours, as well as mine?
I never said that the 1988 data is not reliable. On the contrary, I think it's a fairly reliable measurement of what was going on in urban areas in 1988.
I don't think that either set is suspect, nor (when correctly understood) do they contradict each other.
Anyone who draws conclusions from looking at either data set alone may be getting an accurate picture of what happened in the particular year that data set measures; however, they are drawing an inaccurate picture of what's happened in intimate homicide over the last 30-plus years.
Over the last three decades, there's been a large decline in murders of black men by their wives; there's been a significant decline in murders of boyfriends and wives (regardless of race); there's been a significant but less steep decline in the murder of black women by their boyfriends; and, finally, the murder of white women by their boyfriends has remained stable or gone up a bit.
I'm not aware of any data set out there that contradicts what I said in the above paragraph. (However, keep in mind that these statistics include only intimate homicides known to police.)
The two different data sets you refer to do not contradict each other. Rather, they are describing two different points on a time line during which intimate murder rates have been changing rapidly.
* * *
So, with all that stated, what's my objection to how most MRA articles on intimate homicide use data?
You appear to think I'm saying that the 1988 data set is inaccurate, or badly gathered. That's not so. I think it's an accurate, well-gathered data set which shows what was going on in 1988.
However, because the overall data set shows that intimate homicide rates have changed rapidly over the last 3 decades (including the last 15 years), I think 1988 data is not accurate as a picture of what's going on in 2003. Nor should it be expected to be. For a picture of what's going on in 2003, it's far more accurate to use data gathered in 2003, all else held equal.
I still haven't seen a coherent explanation of why my view is unreasonable or mistaken.
The tone of my post is so mild compared to the sweeping condemnations of feminism typical on your site, that I assume that you're either joking or lacking perspective when you criticize the tone of my post. Read the following paragraph:
Of course, that isn't from my post. It makes no arguments and presents no proof; it's nothing but insult after insult after insult. I defy you to find any hundred-word block in my post that can match the above for both sustained insulting tone and total lack of substantive content.
Similarly, when you say "Ditto your sweeping conclusion that the shelter movement is primarily responsible for the reduction in domestic violence," I have to wonder if you fairly read my post. Here's how I introduced the section you're referring to:
In what I wrote, I did not claim the shelter movement was "primarily responsible for the reduction in" intimate homicide; on the contrary, I was careful to say that the shelter movement was only part of the answer. And that claim - the claim I actually made, not the one you falsely attributed to me - is reasonably supported by the data I cited.
* * *
Regarding your other claims, it's unclear whether you have any peer-reviewed data or studies supporting your speculations. Regardless, I'm not convinced that they'd make a significant difference to the data source both I and most MRIs use most of the time (which is, ultimately, the FBI's Supplimentary Homicide Reports). This is incident-level data we're talking about, so if they're prosecuted or what the verdict is, is not relevant to this data.
It's true that homicides deemed justified by the police are not included in this data. However, according to the FBI, only about 1.5% of homicides are deemed justified by police; such a low number would not significantly alter the overall proportions of male/female intimate homicide victimization.
Furthermore, other types of intimate homicide also not included by the FBI may bias the numbers against counting female victims as intimate homicide victims. For instance, "familicides" are not included in the intimate homicide numbers unless the second victim is under 10 years old. "The perpetrators of familicide are almost exclusively male" (JAMA, 6/23/98).
More importantly, although murders by boyfriends/girlfriends are counted by the FBI as intimate homicides, murders by ex-boyfriends and ex-girlfriends are not. Since men strongly predominate in killings of ex-spouses, it seems likely that they also predominate in murders of ex-boy-or-girlfriends. Furthermore, ex-wife murders are a significant proprotion of the whole, so it's quite possible that ex-girlfriend murders are too.
I can't back this up with data yet (I've never considered this line of thought before today), but it wouldn't suprise me if the number of intimate homicides not counted because the murderer was an ex-boyfriend is much larger than the numbers of uncounted multiple-offender, justified, ex-girlfriend, and familicides combined.
Barry makes several interesting points each of which warrants some examination:
1) Women are opppressed in contemporary America.
2) Men, as a group, do the oppressing.
3) Men represent a common interest group and stand united behind a common group of advocates.
4) New data, like new fashions, are better than old data.
4) The domestic violence shelter movement is a smashing success and women have more options than ever before.
5) Women are less safe today than they were in 1990.
6) Men and women are at war with each other and women are winning, er, losing, er, "whatever girfriend, I have to go draw a cartoon".
How's that for good manners?
Look, I'll stipulate that fathers' rights advocates tend to exclude studies funded by the Janet Reno justice department from their analyses of domestic violence, which is the kernel of truth that Barry exaggerates in his post; I don't know that all of them do, but when I was in that game I did and I recommend that others do it as well.
The reason is that Reno's people turned the Bureau of Justice Statistics into a Soviet-style propaganda mill, with the full help of the VAWA's training programs for local cops and VAWA-inspired must-arrest policies and local propagandizing.
Some of these examples have already been cited: the tendency to regard killings committed by women as self-defense even in the absence of "imminent threat" (nice phrase, isn't it?) and the fudging of relationships in male-perpetrated murders. When mom's boyfriend kills her child, he tends to be recorded as "father" in order to even out prolicides (look it up) by mother and father.
Feminists are smart enough to realize that point 1 above is insupportable by real data: women have more wealth, longer lives, happier lives, better access to education, more career and family choices and more power in family court than men. So the only way to keep the movement going is with concentrated production of bad social science data and a marvelous campaign to spread crappy reasoning across the country and the world. And to their credit, they work hard.
This violence-against-women thing is a marvel unto itself. The vast majority of victims of violent crime are men, but you'd never know that from the obsessive focus on which sex fights with fists instead of words and law.
My hat's off to the Josef Goebbels of the women's movement.
Of Goebbels it was said:
Is Barry the second coming of Goebbels? Who's to say.