What do you think of this blog and its argument?

serpentineeyelash · 2019-09-03T13:37:10+00:00

[Part 2 of 2]

Feminist bias and censorship

Though Elam arguably lost the moral high ground when he engaged in censorship himself, he’s not wrong that there is a much more vast and powerful phenomenon of feminist censorship targeting evidence of male victims.

Futrelle makes a big deal out of Straus having said some positive things about feminism (and possibly identifying as a feminist). But surely more important is that Straus agrees with Elam’s position that feminist ideology has systemically suppressed research on female-on-male domestic violence. Straus’s points include the following:

He gives examples of suppression of evidence in the publication process (including a study showing female-on-male teen dating violence is more common than male-on-female in four developing nations).
He points out that feminist studies on “intimate terrorism” only study male perpetrators and female victims. He has published studies showing that when criteria for “intimate terrorism” are applied to female-on-male violence rather than only male-on-female, the rates are about the same.
Governments cite only the studies claiming male dominance in domestic violence.
He debunks several studies claiming to prove female violence is self-defence. The most revealing example is a 2005 study by Kernsmith, whose “self-defence” category includes motivations such as anger, coercion, revenge, and retaliation. The same study also showed men and women were equally likely to be motivated by “disciplining” and “exerting power”. Other studies misleadingly drew sweeping conclusions from just a few percentage points difference between men and women.
Researchers self-censor because of the repressive atmosphere toward results showing gender symmetry.
Research on male victims is not eligible for government grants and can be blocked by ideologues on funding panels.
Starting in the 1970s, many researchers on male victims have lost their jobs, had appointments blocked by campaigns, had speeches shouted over by protesters, received bomb threats, been accused of being domestic abusers themselves, and so on. These feminist attempts at censorship continue to the present day.

Futrelle just handwaved all this away. And he did not respond at all to another source cited by Elam, a video by Tom Golden showing more examples of anti-male bias in research and media:

A 2009 NSPCC report found boys were victims of teen dating violence at nearly equal rates. But the male side of the results was successively downplayed by the executive summary, press release, and media coverage, until boys were completely absent from the resulting ad campaign.
Elizabeth Miller’s 2010 study on women reporting reproductive coercion was widely reported as if it applied to the general population. But it turned out the sample was from a handful of reproductive health clinics in poor neighborhoods. This was not disclosed even in the journal article, and would never have come to light had it not been mentioned in the university newspaper.
The 2003 Conformity to Masculine Norms Index (CMNI) lists several highly negative traits which were not categorized as masculine by earlier studies, based on the opinions of a focus group of female students.

Futrelle makes a point of citing Elam's own sources conceding that women suffer more from domestic violence than men. But it is possible that even maverick researchers like Straus may still hold vestiges of the bias of their colleagues. Also, the contrarians may feel under pressure to pander to establishment bias on points where they have not yet found much counter-evidence, but they might consider it worth investigating further in their heart of hearts.

Futrelle cited an earlier statement by Straus that “nearly three-fourths of the violence committed by women is done in self-defense”. But it seems Straus changed that opinion later in life, because his "Thirty Years" article clearly argues against that conclusion and criticizes the methodologies by which some researchers arrived at it.

Futrelle’s criticisms of MRAs

I think the existing Men’s Rights Movement is far from perfect, and in naming r/LeftWingMaleAdvocates I made a conscious choice to move away from the “MRA” label. That said, I still think Futrelle’s criticisms are largely unfair.

The last thing that Futrelle said before being censored was to defend someone accusing Elam of wanting to “restore the patriarchy”. Elam and his website A Voice For Men have significant faults, but wanting to restore the “patriarchy” is not one of them, as evidenced for example by the website publishing an article entitled “Patriarchy is the oppression of men”.

Futrelle dismissively says MRAs should just build their own shelters. This ignores that there is already an existing shelter infrastructure which discriminates against men and indeed assumes males are the perpetrators. And this is true not just for the physical shelters, but also for other services like helplines which cannot use the excuse of concern about violent male stalkers. (And if they refer male victims to hotel rooms or homeless shelters, that is clearly not equal treatment.)

Not everyone has the required skills or inclination to start services like domestic violence shelters. Personally, I barely have the social skills to make small talk, let alone run a shelter full of traumatized and potentially violent strangers who may be in danger from their violent exes! Moreover, the few who have tried to start men’s shelters and services tend to face enormous opposition from institutionalized feminists demonizing them as “the abusers’ lobby” etc (Elam cited the example of NOMAS lobbying against the Californian government providing any funds to male victims).

Besides, every other political cause has plenty of adherents who do little more than raise awareness online. Why does it suddenly invalidate the cause when male advocates do that?

Blauwpetje · 2019-09-02T16:41:57+00:00

The imbalanced temper of Paul Elam is well-known, not just towards feminists, I myself had at least three times a row with him in the reactions of his YouTube channel. Still, he also sometimes says quite clever things. The same goes for Avfm as a whole. 2. The promise that everybody could react short of incitement to violence was broken, but is was a stupid promise. Someone who uses a debate about dv to 'prove' MRA's are only there to defend 'patriarchy' is insulting and taking up precious room and energy in a debate. 3. The fact that male violence can do more harm is due to more physical strength, not to 'patriarchy' or 'toxic masculine' behaviour. 4. Really gendered is the reaction of society to violence: a lot more support for women than for men. 5. The accusation that MRA's just 'attack feminism' and 'do nothing to help men' is insincere, knowing the trouble with funding help for men and the role of the media, and the role feminism plays in this. 6. This said, the story and the endless links and links in links makes it hard to admit if anything relevant is in it. Maybe there is.

serpentineeyelash · 2019-09-03T13:20:40+00:00

[Part 1 of 2]

I’ve just read through the whole debate on both blogs. I admit, it seems Elam made the pretty embarrassing error of misreading “report” as “overreport”, then ended the debate by censoring Futrelle’s response while posting aggressive rhetoric about how he’d won the debate. I can’t deny this was dishonest conduct on Elam’s part, but it concerned only one of many studies being debated and therefore does not invalidate the overall argument for gender symmetry in domestic violence.

The debate had so many citations on both sides that it is difficult to evaluate everything (and there has been another decade’s worth of research since the debate). Nevertheless I’ve tried to evaluate as much as possible, and I’ve split up this post into subtopics for easier reading.

Prevalence and motivations

Elam and Futrelle talked past one another to a certain extent. Elam made clear from the start that he thinks the overall incidence of partner violence is the most important statistic, because all violence is wrong. And it is indeed very important, because it shows that men are no more evil than women, contrary to what is constantly implied by all the feminist rhetoric and ad campaigns and policies on domestic violence.

Futrelle’s main counter-argument was that many studies cited by Elam were based on the Conflict Tactics Scale, of which he made several criticisms. One criticism only applied to the “first version” of the CTS, which is silly because obviously, any problems with the first version have since been corrected by the revised version which continues to find gender symmetry in domestic violence.

Futrelle also argued the CTS does not distinguish between different "motivations" such as aggression and self-defence. As Elam pointed out, this conflation applies regardless of gender, and Futrelle did not demonstrate that women’s violence is more often self-defence than men’s violence. The motivation of violence is, I imagine, something very difficult for researchers to measure, even when the motivations are self-reported. It is a very shaky basis on which to base a theory that male violence is worse than female violence. Or as Elam puts it, the concept lacks clarity.

The claim that female domestic violence is merely “violent resistance” and only male domestic violence is “intimate terrorism”, supposedly based in “patriarchy”, seems to originate from Michael Johnson. Absurdly, Johnson came up with the theory by surveying only men in prisons and women in refuges!

Since the Elam-Futrelle debate took place, research by Elizabeth Bates has found that, even using Johnson’s typology and asking women to describe the motivations behind their own violence, women are more likely to be intimate terrorists and men are more likely to engage in violent resistance. (The same study also found that women are more likely to be violent toward men than toward other women, whereas men are more likely to be violent toward other men than toward women.)

Injuries

Another example of talking past each other: Futrelle’s strongest point, that research finds women have a lower rate of physical injury, was partly conceded by Elam in his initial post. However, Elam went on to cite (via Fiebert’s bibliography) several other studies contradicting that result.

One thing I’d need to look into more is the definition of an injury and how that is measured. For example, is a bruise an injury? Women bruise more easily, so it would be no surprise if women are getting more bruises. Though to be fair, some of the statistics cited refer to “serious injuries” – again, I’d need to look more into this. But even if true, it is likely because men tend to be physically stronger, not because men are being more aggressive per se.

Yes, Straus’s research is among those that finds women receive more injuries. But Straus himself argues this doesn’t mean female-on-male violence doesn’t matter. He points out that the vast majority of male-on-female violence doesn’t result in injury either, yet the total amount of male-on-female-violence is cited all the time in prevalance arguments. The way Straus sees it, intimate partner violence is equally likely to be started by the woman, but when the man retaliates and the violence escalates, the woman is more likely to end up injured. And in the same chapter cited by Futrelle, Straus points out: “One can hurt a partner deeply--even drive the person to suicide- without ever lifting a finger.”

After the debate took place, Denise Hines published a survey showing that male victims of female intimate terrorists meet the clinical criteria for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, just like female victims of male intimate terrorists.

Stalking and homicides

Futrelle also argues the CTS ignores post-separation escalation of violence, and homicides against current and former female partners.

Admittedly, there is little data on female violence post-separation. But in a video I recently posted on this subreddit, Bates discusses her latest research showing, among other things, that female-on-male violence also escalates post-separation. Post-separation is when women tend to actually make rather than merely threaten false allegations, which can result in the male victim being arrested, investigated, or suspended from his job. This is also when male victims experience having their children turned against them. The threats of false allegations and parental alienation are both major reasons why male victims stay with their abusers.

As for homicide, the homicide rates cited by Straus show women commit more than a third of intimate partner murders, which Straus points out is far from negligible even if it is not equal. Moreover, homicide rates are from crime statistics, which are based on the judgements of a criminal justice system that is biased against males, so the true rate is probably higher.

LeJacquelope · 2019-09-02T21:24:26+00:00

Paul Elam is the David Futrelle of the men's rights movement. Wait, or is David Futrelle the Paul Elam of male feminism? Not sure which. Anyway, both are utter trash.

Also, the entire domestic violence debate leaves out the fact that women are violent as fuck to other women in lesbian relationships. Rape is reported in no less than 30% of lesbian relationships. 30. Fragging. Percent. The fact is feminism only cares about domestic violence when they can politicize it to peddle fear of men. MRAs will naturally only care about male victims. Egalitarians need to arise and do better by talking about all victims.

Melthengylf · 2019-09-03T10:14:13+00:00

I think we needvto separate symetric violence from abusive coercive control. They are not the same, and mixing the two does nor help anyone.

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