The Murder of Jeffrey Dryden: The Grim Truth Surrounding Male Domestic Abuse (9 page)

Yet if the roles were reversed and the
man was watching another man abuse a woman in the same way, we
would instantly see a public outcry for any man daring to say on
national TV that, “Good for him…the woman probably DESERVED it.”
Does this not sound like a double standard? Does anyone deserve to
be hit by someone that is supposed to love him or her?

Sadly, this social experiment didn’t
end there as later in that same clip, an off duty police officer
was seen walking by the couple with his wife and instead of
intervening, instead of helping the poor guy that was obviously
being abused by the woman, instead of doing his job, he just walked
by.

When interviewed and asked about the
situation, the same feeling as with the others were heard, “the
woman posed no threat and the guy probably deserved it.” However,
when asked if he had walked by a man doing the same thing to a
woman he stated, “Of course in that situation I would have to do
something.” Why would he intervene only for the woman and not the
man, is not the crime of assault and abuse the same for everyone
regardless of age, color, creed, religious beliefs, sexual
preference or gender?

Enter the Mediated Culture
(Shadowboxing)

So why is our society so acceptable to
the acts of violence by women against men but not the reserve?
There are several answers to this question, though there are only
two main thoughts, two main answers that come to my mind. The first
is the use of Social Conditioning, (which I touched on in a
previous chapter) through repetitive comments, thoughts and ideas
not originally our own design. Displayed upon us by (yes you
guessed it) the media and other forms of authority, which dictates
to us what is right and what is wrong, what is tolerable vs. the
intolerable.

As you sit there reading this, you may
think that your actions are dictated not by what others think
and/or do around you but by your own moral compass and for the most
part I agree with that thought, however, not everything we do, not
everything we’ve accepted as moral and justifiable are our original
thoughts.

Case in point, (and this may seem a
little too simple of an example but the ideal concept is the same)
when you were a toddler, your parents “conditioned,” you to dress
in public and to go to the restroom to relief yourself instead of
just going wherever you were standing. This conditioning continues
to this day, though you can choose to run around naked in public,
but by doing so, society, in of itself, will place its own social
condition upon you.

Taking this to the next step, for the
most part, parents have conditioned their sons to never hit a girl.
Society has created laws to that event, and the Feminist Movement
has taken that conditioning a step further to condition society
through repetition in every facet of the media to instill the ideal
concept that man, being “all-powerful” cannot be abused by the
“all-powerless” woman.

However, as with all societies there
will always be those few that stand out above the rest. Which speak
from our own hearts and care not for what society deems as correct
but for what we have found to be correct.

It is with these people that the second
answer to the question comes to mind, which is the lack of
accessibility to the truth. Currently, if you were to go to the
internet and try to look up information on male domestic abuse on
any search engine, you would more than likely find pages upon pages
of sites and information pertaining to men abusing women but
nothing on women abusing men.

This is because the facts behind female
domestic violence against men by women are not voluntarily
available to the public. Why is it not easily accessible? To answer
this fully we need to go back to the feminist cannon stated above
and apply it to the government’s inception of circular
reasoning.

The concept of circular reasoning is
where one provides evidence for the validity of an assertion, which
assumes the validity of the assertion. Confused? Good, that is the
basic concept of the ideals behind Circular Reasoning. Examples of
circular reasoning would be something like, “A is true because B is
true and B is true because A is true,” or “there isn’t a problem
with the law, because if everyone obeyed the law there wouldn’t be
a problem.”

Thus, by applying the feminist prime
cannon, which states, “No aspect of the male/female relations can
be considered as fact without first accepting the male as all
powerful and the female as completely powerless.” The government
and the media have applied their own “circular reasoning,” by
unofficially stating, “Females cannot abuse men as men are all
powerful, and all powerful men cannot be abused by powerless
women.” Consequently, any and all studies done which show men as
being abused by women are false under the construct of this
reasoning.

Do you think this is nothing more than
conjecture? If so, perhaps you can explain why the US Department of
Justice, which administers grants to researches on domestic related
violence, has refused funding research on female violence against
men by demanding that all male victimization be ignored (Davis,
2010). Furthermore, perhaps you could also explain why House
Resolution 590, (created by the 110th US congress of 2009) was
enacted to raise awareness of domestic violence in the US, and of
its devastating effects on families and communities but ignores
male victimization, mentioning men as only offenders and never
victims (1st session H.Res.590, 2009).

The fact that the government has
decided to ignore men as victims from the equation is strikingly
odd when you take into account that the Violence Against Women Act
conducted a survey (a survey supported and funded by the government
no less) which found that there are 1.5 million female victims per
year, and 835,000 male victims per year. To put this in terms that
show a significant value, the report showed that nearly 40% of the
VICTIMS in the Violence Against Women Act survey were men (Tjaden
& Thoennes, 2000).

As stated before, there are over 200
plus studies and surveys that show, or rather, prove that women are
just as, if not more, prone to using violence in a relationship.
Some of these studies even show that women are usually the first to
use violence. Have used violence by slapping, hitting, biting,
kicking and gouging and are more prone to use and/or threaten to
use a knife against their partner.

However, finding them online can be
time consuming because of the circular reasoning stated above.
Furthermore, those that represent the VAWA and other women against
domestic violence organizations instantly discredit these studies,
because they are privately funded and not supported by the
government, thus in their eyes making them invalid…circular
reasoning at its best.

According to Political author, David L.
Fontes, the reason why the feminist movement has placed pressure on
organizations to ignore men as victims is that “any discussion on
the problem of ‘battered men’ is considered politically incorrect.
As feminist and other advocates against domestic violence, are
primarily, if not exclusively interested in showcasing the
maltreatment of females by males in our society and are not
particularly interested in showcasing the maltreatment of males by
females, especially in the area of spousal abuse and child abuse
(David Fontes).” Erin Pizzey, founder of the first battered woman’s
shelter, which started in 1972, believes that the reason why
feminist have such views is. “Because they have focused their
attention on the oppression and victimization of women, it is very
difficult for them to acknowledge domestic violence against men by
the women they have focused to assist, furthermore by doing so
could de-emphasize the services being provided to abused women,
thus threatening the budgets allocated for woman’s shelters and
services.” Simple stated, “If we acknowledge that men can be abused
by women, we take away from the funds we get to support those same
women,” (Cook, 1997). It seems as with all things filled with great
intentions, it always boils down to the funds than the purpose of
the intention.

Women are Violent Creatures
Too

You may think that female violence is
something new, that Male Domestic Abuse is something just recently
brought into question over the past few decades, but again, the
full truth has been hidden from you.

Though abuse made by women on men can
be traced back through several centuries, it wasn’t made a serious
issue of study until around 1974 when researcher R.J. Gelles’ study
on Domestic Violence found that, “the eruption of conjugal violence
occurred with equal frequency among both husbands and wives (Gelles
R. J., 1974).” This was researched in greater detail when in 1977
sociologist Suzanne Steinmetz wrote on a series of five surveys
based around the then highly accepted “Conflict Tactic Scale” or
CTS. This scale of testing was developed in 1971, to measure the
degree of family violence by breaking physical violence in the home
into eight categories. Using these five surveys, she created a
study she entitled, “The Battered Husband Syndrome.” In this
syndrome, Steinmetz showed that, “husbands and wives are roughly
equal in their use of any form of physical violence (Steinmetz,
1977).

Though the first three surveys
Steinmetz used were based on her own individual works, the forth
survey was a national survey done by the Family Violence Research
Laboratory. This survey agreed with Steinmetz initial findings, and
went a step further by showing that for the year of 1975, “12% of
both husbands and wives had used violence against their mate
(Steinmetz, 1977),” thus showing that the percentage of women and
men, husbands and wives, who use violence against the other, was
equal.

The fifth survey (Crime Survey);
however, showed or rather suggested that husbands, or men in
relationships were prone to use violence at a greater rate than
wives, however, this study was also bias in part as half the
information for it came from police and social services reports.
These reports had already selected or rather based the premise of
their research on male domestic violence against women.

Despite the bias found in the fifth
survey the one common thread or rather the one thing that all five
survey’s showed consistency was that, “Women not only used violence
at rates similar to men, BUT (emphasis added), that women matched,
and often exceeded, husbands in the frequency with which they
engaged in violent behavior (Steinmetz, 1977).”

This all said however, when Steinmetz
disclosed her findings and sources to the media in 1977 the media
tossed aside the first four surveys. Focusing more on the
controversy that husbands used violence in a relationship more so
than their female counterparts, thus blowing the findings of the
actual study out of proportion and consequently used their “Media
Shadowboxing,” to control what could be and should be acceptable by
our society. This “Media Shadowboxing,” has continued even now as I
write these words to paper.

In 1985, the Family Research Laboratory
conducted another survey with the intention of either support or
dismissing the 1977 survey conducted by Steinmetz. This survey
interviewed 6,002 households with an oversample of 508 black
households and 516 Hispanic households.

The research team in the 1985 survey
used twice the size as the original 1975 survey (Steinmetz survey),
as well as oversamples of minority groups and populations in
certain states that were at risk of being under-represented. The
findings in this survey confirmed Steinmetz original findings as
she noted in 1977, furthermore the 1985 survey found that, “Women
were twice as likely to throw something at their husbands or live
in boyfriend. Women were also more likely to kick, bite, punch,
hit, try to hit, and threaten to use a knife or a gun. Whereas men
were more likely to push, grab, shove, slap, or use a gun than a
knife (Richard J Gelles & Murray A. Straus, 1989).”

In 1992 the Family for Violence
Research Laboratory conducted yet another survey, this survey just
as the 1975 and 1985 survey again confirmed that women (wives)
engage in intimate violence at a rate comparable to husbands
(Kantor, 1994). This study showed a growing trend when applied to
the previous studies done in 1985 and 1975. In comparing the 1975
study against the 1985 study, researchers found that male violence
against women had declined by 21% however; female violence against
men remained constant. In comparing this trend with the 1985 study
to the 1992 study, researchers found that male violence against
women in an intimate relationship had dropped by nearly 37% and
nearly a 50% drop in an overall comparison of the 1975 survey to
the 1992 survey.

Women are not only violent to their
spouses or lovers but to their children as well. For instance
studies have shown that over 2/3’s of the child abuse committed in
America by a parent was committed by the mother (Murder in
families, NCJ-143498), 55% of mothers are more likely than the
fathers to murder their children, and mothers are 64% more likely
to kill their sons more often than their daughters (Ditson &
Shay, 1984)

The Feminist
Control

Despite this, I bet you never heard of
these studies, nor the nearly 200 other studies that have anything
showing, detailing, or listing as possible truth that men could be
victimized by the weaker, powerless sex but I am sure you’ve heard
of, or read several other studies that show the reverse.