I think we all know around here what the Duluth Model is. Most of us have also likely seen the stock responses to bringing up the Duluth Model as a criticism of feminism, or as evidence that men face real legal discrimination.

  • It's old and irrelevant. It doesn't have influence anymore, or never had as much influence as we claim it does.
  • Their language *sounds* bad, but it's not as ideologically anti-male as we make it out to be. It needs some updating but isn't fundamentally bad.
  • "It's just a rehabilitation program for wife batterers"

It normally takes a bunch of work to sufficiently address these statements, which are obviously wrong if you take any real time to educate yourself. But to educate someone else takes quite a few links and pointing to specific quotes from sections of a large web page or hour+ long video. Biggest problem being that I've never found bite-size smoking gun evidence of our stance on the Duluth Model - not something that strongly challenges the above dismissals in short form.

Well I just discovered the closest I've ever found to a silver bullet against the first two points.

This is a short clip of an interview with Scott Miller, who is listed at the top of the Duluth Model's "Meet Our Trainers" section of their website (https://www.theduluthmodel.org/about-us/meet-our-trainers/), where it specifies that he's been working for them since 2000. And if you look around, you'll find he's one of the most common public representatives of the organization.

In the clip, he states that he's been working for them for 25 years, which marks it as a very recent interview. Probably 2025. Video posted Oct 8, 2025. He refers to himself as working for DAIP, which establishes clearly that DAIP is these days another interchangeable label for the Duluth Model. I think part of the claim that Duluth Model is no longer relevant is because they've mostly stopped referring to themselves by that label, and you will these days more often see it referred to as DAIP or CCR. (I wonder why)

And he talks about the organization's approach to running an intervention program for women who use violence in relationships. He actively describes this as groups organized for women who have been convicted of domestic violence charges and court-ordered to attend, or women who have self-admitted to using violence and are seeking help with their behavior.

He consistently refers to these women as "survivors". This clip could not possibly make it any clearer that the attitude of himself and the organization he works for approaches violent women with the assumption that they are victims fighting an oppressor.

Here's the pivotal quote:

So back in the 90s we started working with women who were arrested and that was a specific group of women. Trying to find out and understand their experience. It was new for our program at the time. I wasn't there then, but it was really a conversation about what leads you to use violence. What happens to you when you do. What are you trying to create when you're resisting his attempts. What are all the different ways you resist besides violence. So it's really just a process of trying to understand and then create a program for that specific kind of issue. And we did that for for some time. But as Cammy has discovered that you know currently we have a group for women. And there are women who are ordered, because they've been convicted of a domestic assault use of illegal violence. There's women who are referrals from child protection. And then there's women who refer themselves or walk in. And you know one of the things Cammy said, Cammy can talk about this is, that it's kind of a unicorn to have a woman come in who's not ever used violence in her relationship.

So essentially straight from the horse's mouth that when a woman is convicted of domestic violence and court ordered to attend an intervention program, that this intervention program will view them unquestioningly as being a survivor of abuse who used violence to resist "his attempts". And that this is ongoing as of 2025.

Clip is 4 minutes long. So a super easily digestible thing to have in your pocket for whenever someone tries to dismiss just how fucking awful and a real ongoing issue the Duluth Model is.