Improving domestic violence programs in schools

gurthanix · 2020-05-12T11:39:53+00:00

Boys are never abused by girls.

This is the fundamental issue with the RREiS program. The assertion that "Gender-based violence can affect anyone" might seem like an olive branch on the surface, but the authors are just using an exceedingly broad term that includes generic male-on-male bullying. This is done to give the appearance of "feminism helps men, too", even while the program intentionally avoids talking about female-on-male domestic and intimate partner violence.

Indeed, the program is specifically designed to exclude this issue, and to foster the impression that it is so rare as to be non-existent. This is openly admitted in the final evaluation report that preceeded the approval and state-wide rollout of the program. From page 41:

At the conclusion of the pilot, a number of school leaders demonstrated a clear understanding of the need for culture change around gender and could explain the link between Respectful Relationships Education and gender-based violence. These school leaders were able to express the gendered nature of gender-based violence and recognised that the key aim of RREiS was to address the underlying drivers of gender-based violence:

I think it’s a range of things and it’s a deeply entrenched cultural problem that needs to be addressed. It would [come] down to the objectification of women, through the media, through history, through just the culture. […] It happens because of these cultural mores that have developed over centuries and have probably been exacerbated with media and so on. Focus group session, Principal.

We call it family violence. We call it domestic violence. We call it all these things – it’s a euphemism actually. It’s male violence. Yet it doesn’t get labelled that. Focus group session, Principal.

In other words the idea that "family violence" is a euphemism for "male violence" represents a "clear understanding" of the nature and drivers of domestic violence, and it is this kind of understanding that the RREiS program wishes to inculcate in both students and staff. A further example occurs on pages 75 and 76:

The absence of professional learning poses potential risks Where teachers did not undertake the professional learning there were negative impacts for some classes. Focus groups revealed examples of untrained teachers who presented to students information which contradicted the key messages of Respectful Relationships Education which were provided in the professional learning and in curriculum. Reflections from untrained teachers indicated that they did not understand the nature and extent of gender-based violence or what the RREiS pilot was trying to achieve. The following comment was made by an untrained teacher on their experience of teaching the curriculum:

One of the interesting things I found through the kids was that a lot of them […] have that misconception that domestic violence [impacts] mainly women. They didn’t realise that there was the male perspective of how the men are subjected to different types of violence in the household. Focus group session, Teacher

This led to confusion and contradiction for the students in these classes. On the one hand, the students in focus group sessions were able to demonstrate a sound understanding of gendered power relations and statistics on gender-based violence, yet maintained that they had learned that we need to ‘talk about how the women can be violent to men’.

I.E. in the absence of the RREiS program, attempts to educate students about domestic violence ends up with them thinking that it's important to talk about female-on-male violence. Per the report, this is a negative outcome, represents a failure to understand the nature of domestic violence, and the RREiS program is needed to prevent it.

mellainadiba · 2020-05-12T08:29:16+00:00

How the model of domestic violence is applied around the world due to feminist creation of gendered domestic vioelence theory - Duluth Model that leads to battered men being arrested when they call the cops :

"When women use violence in an intimate relationship, the circumstances of that violence tend to differ from when men use violence. Men’s use of violence against women is learned and reinforced through many social, cultural and institutional experiences. Women’s use of violence does not have the same kind of societal support. Many women who do use violence against their male partners are being battered. Their violence is used primarily to respond to and resist the violence used against them. On the societal level, women’s violence against men has a trivial effect on men compared to the devastating effect of men’s violence against women."

Lets see what the data ACTUALLY shows:

The first part of this paper summarizes results from more than 200 studies that have found gender symmetry in perpetration and in risk factors and motives for physical violence in martial and dating relationships. It also summarizes research that has found that most partner violence is mutual and that self-defense explains only a small percentage of partner violence by either men or women. The second part of the paper documents seven methods that have been used to deny, conceal, and distort the evidence on gender symmetry. The third part of the paper suggests explanations for the denial of an overwhelming body of evidence by reputable scholars. The concluding section argues that ignoring the overwhelming evidence of gender symmetry has crippled prevention and treatment programs. It suggests ways in which prevention and treatment efforts might be improved by changing ideologically based programs to programs based on the evidence from the past 30 years of research.

Criticism of the feminist gendered model of DV and even what the creator of the above model said when she realised she f*cked up (but the model and similar gendered model are still being used today)

Criticism of the Duluth Model has centered on the program's insistence that men are perpetrators who are violent because they have been socialized in a patriarchy that condones male violence, and that women are victims who are violent only in self-defense.[15] Some critics argue that "programs based on the Duluth Model may ignore research linking domestic violence to substance abuse and psychological problems, such as attachment disorders, traced to childhood abuse or neglect, or the absence of a history of adequate socialization and training."[9][16] Others criticize the Duluth model as being overly confrontational rather than therapeutic, focusing solely on changing the abuser's actions and attitudes rather than dealing with underlying emotional and psychological issues.[16] Donald Dutton, a psychology professor at the University of British Columbia who has studied abusive personalities, states: "The Duluth Model was developed by people who didn't understand anything about therapy,"[9] and also points out that "lesbian battering is more frequent than heterosexual battering."[17] Philip W. Cook points out that in the case of homosexual domestic violence, the patriarchy is absent: there is no male dominance of women in same-sex relationships, and in fact, female on female abuse is reported more than twice as frequently as male on male abuse.[18]Furthermore, some critics point out that the model ignores the reality that women can be the perpetrators of domestic violence in heterosexual relationships, as well.

The creator herself has said:

"By determining that the need or desire for power was the motivating force behind battering, we created a conceptual framework that, in fact, did not fit the lived experience of many of the men and women we were working with. The DAIP staff [...] remained undaunted by the difference in our theory and the actual experiences of those we were working with [...] It was the cases themselves that created the chink in each of our theoretical suits of armor. Speaking for myself, I found that many of the men I interviewed did not seem to articulate a desire for power over their partner. Although I relentlessly took every opportunity to point out to men in the groups that they were so motivated and merely in denial, the fact that few men ever articulated such a desire went unnoticed by me and many of my coworkers. Eventually, we realized that we were finding what we had already predetermined to find."[20]

The Duluth Model is featured in the documentary Power and Control: Domestic Violence in America with commentary from its authors as well as its main critics, such as Dutton.[21]

Erin Pizzey the founder of Chiswick Women's Aid, the first ever refuge in the world for victims of domestic violence notes in an interview in The Red Pill that men and women are equally capable of domestic violence, though over time domestic abuse shelters have shifted to be almost exclusively for battered women. [22]

Their [feminists] ideology also asserts that men were impervious to any therapeutic intervention, courtesy of their deeply ingrained patriarchal privilege.According to this new model they precluded anything but criminal treatment for men’s alleged violence toward women and children. Laws were passed that specifically forbade any couples intervention for men accused.[23]

Learn more:

https://becauseits2015.wordpress.com/2016/08/06/a-non-feminist-faq/

Blauwpetje · 2020-05-12T08:44:54+00:00

I have my doubts with the idea, however well-meaning, that all children and especially boys need to be taught social and psychological lessons to cope with themselves and eachother. When some concrete problem is going on, alright, but pleeaase not structurally. Very often adults project their standards, and worse: the standards of the group they happen to be in, into their judgment of the behavior of children. Children solve their conflicts and express their emotions maybe not in the way the adults around them would like, but often surprisingly effective. I get severe doubts when I read words like 'building empathy', as if empathy is an adult thing that children have to learn from them. Children have a lot of empathy, they just don't express it in complicated talk.

spudmix · 2020-05-12T08:57:59+00:00

I like this post! Thanks for the effort you've put in.

As a teacher, do you think that encouraging for example a more balanced presentation of scenarios in Topic 8 would be meaningful for those students who undertake this curriculum?

Are you in a position to recommend changes to this curriculum?

Oncefa2 · 2020-05-12T15:52:15+00:00

EDIT: I did not set an image for this post but for some reason I got a grey bin?

If you want a specific image to show up, link to an imgur or reddit image link. Otherwise it will pick the top image in the first link that has an image in it. Which in this case is a trash bin lol.

mellainadiba · 2020-05-14T14:20:12+00:00

These are great points. And it's great to get an understanding here. But for real change, we need to compile this into letters, simplyf it and send it to schools, teachers, post this on education forums of which there are countless on reddit and elsewhere, send it to teaching organisations.

Also have a look here:

Whistleblowers accuse £210,000-a-year domestic violence charity boss of fostering a 'toxic' bullying culture and hiring her husband and daughter for sensitive roles

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6564553/Whistleblowers-accuse-210-000-year-domestic-violence-charity-boss-toxic-bullying-culture.html

as stated elsewhere in comments, DV is a business, they are making money by this agenda making it male perps only. In Ireland only 1.7% of funding is male, its essential to keep this narrative... money matters

Colombian-mra · 2020-05-14T20:55:42+00:00

I worked in social work in academy bullying to graduate from upper school and most bullying is boy on boy or girl on girl

Improving domestic violence programs in schools

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