February 9, 2021 - 11:53am
Whatever happened to feminism in universities? Women’s Studies, which began as a resource for working-class and marginalised women, was taken over in the 1990s by the elite post-modernists and twisted into something unrecognisable.
A paper in a peer-reviewed journal entitled, ‘White tears, white rage: Victimhood and (as) violence in mainstream feminism’ by Alison Phipps, professor of gender studies at Sussex University is a shocking example of how anti-women gender studies has become. This ‘discipline’, which promotes the idea that trans women are women, sex work is work, and stripping is empowering type of politics has led to a number of female academics becoming openly hostile to feminists who campaign against male violence.
In her most recent book, Phipps made claims that ‘privileged white women’ ‘weaponise’ their trauma from male violence in order to ‘purge’ bad men from institutions with no concern as to where they will end up next. She continues this offensive argument in her paper:
‘Ask the manager’ is a derivative of the ‘Karen’ slur, and deeply sexist. She continues: ‘…this paper argues that the cultural power of mainstream white feminism partly derives from the cultural power of white tears’.
Where was the cultural power of the victims of ‘grooming gangs’ and the millions of women (of all races) worldwide killed by men for no other reason than because they are female?
Phipps uses the term ‘carceral feminism’ to describe feminist campaigning to end violence towards women. She argues that those of us who want violent men to face criminal charges are unconcerned with the fact that a number of African-American men are in prison as a direct result of racism within the criminal justice system. So feminists like me are racist for arguing that dangerous men such as John Worboys should be in the slammer.
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SubscribeThis is what happens when activism runs out of things to be activist about. For the most part, the early feminists’ goals about the workplace and more opportunity for women have been reached. Women are in every profession, every walk of life, and no one thinks twice about it.
But activism has no goal and so, feminists are not able or willing to claim victory. Activism is a self-perpetuating enterprise and I do mean enterprise. It’s an industry unto itself, just pick the cause of your choice and see how it, too, is barely changed from its early days. Ironically, the trans part is an existential threat to womanhood itself, let alone feminism. When being a woman is a matter of identity, the decades of feminist doctrine crumble.
For the most part, the early feminists’ goals about the workplace and more opportunity for women have been reached.
Yes and no. Middle-class women have benefited from feminism, but poor women are still minding these women’s children and cleaning their houses for rubbish money, same as always.
All these left wing causes are intended to bring added advantages to people who are already doing pretty well but feel entitled to still more.
Yes, woke is about well-to-do socialism for the rich, bleak communism for the poor.
Poor men also do menial work for rubbish money. That’s not something limited to women.
If women want or need to go out to work somebody has to look after children. What is never mentioned is that nursery workers are frequently ill educated, young or foreign with poor language skills. Not the best environment for children. A family member who worked temporarily in several (expensive) nurseries would never put a child into one.
The starkest example is how the Ts managed to hijack the whole LGB apparatus once key LGB goals were met.
It’s all about victim hood, or intersectionalism. But the cold truth is that there are no victims of anything, except for women, this is because males are so much stronger then women, they hardly stand a change against violent male. It’s literally the same reason as why we have separate female and male sports.
The answers simple, get rid of gender and women’s studies. Waste of taxpayers money, appears to have little benefit beyond employing a few unemployables and doesn’t help women.
Yes, but it helps people who identify as women, and that’s the main thing these days.
Almost anything called “…Studies” turns out on inspection to contain only dogma, no intellectual content and certainly no “study” in the sense of critique. You start with the correct set of opinions already determined, and from there, it is your university’s job to narrow your mind.
Sadly all to true
Noooo…there are all sorts of opportunities in this new Grievance Economy.
They’ve really lost their way at this point in the humanties, and it is rapdily spreading into the sciences. Not so much in terms of academic output, but very much so in terms of the way institutions are run. It’s affecting everyone actually. Idealogies that become sort of frantic, detached from reality and accusatory like this have been seen many times in that past. I don’t think it has much to do with the actual ideas as they are stated by adherehnts, so much as some sort of social process, like macarthyism or the salem witch trials. There’s quite a bit of social psychology research looking into all that. Actual ideas that are based on careful thought tend to persist through time. Weirdness like this, on the other hand, tends to end and be looked back on as a regrettable period. Unfortunately we will have to go through it to get to the other end of it.
Orwell thought that sciences would remain uninfected by totalitarian thought-control, because ultimately, someone who builds aeroplanes has to be free to say 2 + 2 = 4.
I’m not so sure. The humanities are long gone but there are also oodles of bad, recent science, of activism and pseudoscience masquerading as science. Mostly it’s bad because of leftism.
Climate change is accepted as certain and climate models as data, despite the fact that climate models can’t even predict the past and that past temperature reconstructions have been known to rely on data about one tree. If you argue with any of this your career gets destroyed.
50% of psychology experiments aren’t reproducible. Racial differences can be acknowledged except when they can’t. And so on.
The left is coming for the truth, as always.
Activism and pseudoscience indeed- let’s not forget Sokal’s fabulous ‘transformative hermeneutics of quantum gravity’ hoax of the Social Text gang…
That’s an interesting instance Andrew, because it was a scientist hoaxing a cabal of liberal arts luvvies with a nonsense paper they were too dim to reject as nonsense.
The equivalent hoax by a liberal arts prankster on a science journal would be to get a nonsensical science paper published. The two areas you’d have the best chance would be psychology and climate science. In the latter case, as long as you upheld the consensus, I think it would be possible. Quack psychologists have had papers published on the deviant mental state of “deniers”, for example.
So it’s already here.
There are certainly fields like psychology which the replication crisis has made clear are so riddled with worthless pseudoscience as to be almost completely discredited.
But even engineering will have problems if people decide having a few bridges fall down is a perfectly valid aspect of “decentering whiteness.”
I’m not an expert in climate science, and I haven’t looked at it for about 5 years when I had a phase of interest. But honestly I do trust my colleagues on the general truth of climate change, regardless of specific modelling results. It’s true about psychology, but the thing is in general that not all published studies are equal. There are more and less prestigeous places to publish, and part of the reason for that is the quality of the peer review. So people who are good scientists try to publish in fancy journals and that is why. It’s not fool proof but it is generally people really doing their best and doing a hell of a lot of work to get things right and check for mistakes.
I don’t really find that the present ideological confusion has permeated the actual work I do. That would be hard. But, at the US governemnt institute where my close colleagues work they are firing all the established researchers and replacing them on diversity criteria. And they appear to be actually doing it not just talking. Under new rules you get fired from a role as lab head after 12 years (i.e, just when you are really expert) and replaced. I have seen the replacements. I look them up on google scholar. They do not have the goods. They have not published or been cited enough to get those top jobs.
Although I think it is nice to have a good mix of people I think it is very wrongheaded indeed to force things like this. For example, black people in the united states very often come from poor backgrounds. So those who fight their way out of pverty tend to want to make money, not fart around doing science which pays peanuts and takes half your life in training. So there just are not the candidates available, even if firing established researchers made sense which it does not. Because the appropraite replacement candidates don’t want to pursue it. That possibility appears not to have occured to the newly empowered diversity tsars.
There is a strange atmosphere at the moment and although it’s not quite Macarthyite, it’s definitely stressful.
That’s a shocking story. How can science in this Institute possibly progress when it sacks its most experienced people and replaces them with nonentities?
It’s definitely a thing, and I wonder how long it will last. “Lab head” at this institute is a more senior role than it sounds, it actually means you somewhat oversee a small group of tenured faculty. So it is possible to stay at the institute and do research after leaving that job. However most will not, they will be able to do better elsewhere. Of (even) more concern is the fact of aggressive diversity hiring at faculty level, for the reasons I suggest above. We’ll see what happens. I think all this it is about generational conflict and economic adversity, not truly about diversity or trans ideology. Those ideologies are ways younger people can exert force on older people, and there is no doubt that young people at the moment have diminished opportunities.
Re your last two sentences, I think you’re probably right.
Yes, I didn’t think of it that way, but she is probably right. Always follow the money.
Hi Terry. Absolutely, it’s a sound rule for us old cynics! I see like me google forces you to use your real name. It’s a good discipline …
Cynics – We weren’t born that way.
It certainly is a discipline!
No worries. We can just outsource serious science to the Middle and Far East. One global world.
Climate science has an absolutely laughable record of forecasting accuracy:
https://wattsupwiththat.com…
All modelling is like that. Because of nonlinearities.
Im not getting into a climate thing with you jon it’s not something I know enough about.
Are you envisaging a situation where the temperature around one tree deviated from that around neighbouring trees to any great extent.
Nobody knows what the temperature was in the past based on one tree.
On Australian national radio this week there was a discussion of covid vaccines. The question posed was: Should pregnant and breast-feeding persons get the vaccine? The interviewer maintained this language. The interviewee, who happened to be a midwife, spoke of pregnant and breast-feeding women. Clearly, that poor midwife was way behind the postmodern times!
I understand that midwives now refer to “pregnant men”. Then, today there is news that Brighton hospital (BSUH NHS) now forbids the mention of breast feeding and mothers. In such circumstances “Midwife” may soon be “Midperson”.
Sooner or later some baby’s going to die of malnutrition because of all this crazy new muzzling around the issue of breastfeeding. Can they even say the word “nipple”, or is that an unacceptably “gendered” word too? New moms usually desperately need help and support with breastfeeding to succeed with it and if midwives and nurses can’t even talk about it frankly and openly they can’t provide that help.
Why are we so Earth centered? Asking on behalf of Beings Not Born on Earth.
Next up: people working in animal rescue and welfare will be forbidden to refer to pregnant or nursing animals in their care as “moms” or “mothers”. They will also be forbidden to label young animals as male or female, meaning that when they’re taken in to be spayed or neutered the vets won’t know what kind of surgery to prepare for until they’ve actually examined the animal. Considering spaying is a much more complicated operation and takes twice as long, I can see this going horribly wrong in all kinds of ways. Finally, people seeking to adopt rescued dogs or cats will be forbidden to indicate sex preferences Already have a male cat or dog at home and think your pet will more readily accept a newcomer of the opposite sex? Too bad; take what you’re given and hope World War Three doesn’t break out.
Oh I do hope you are right.
The education system has been ‘captured’ by the trahsgender agenda. If you don’t support the agenda you are a effectively giving succour to the bullying and the suicides. Slam dunk. Google your LA’s school policy guidelines concerning the treatment of transgender issues. Read and weep. Their guidelines HAVE TO comply with the gender recognition act.
There is an epidemic of (poor) mental health issues amongst youngsters. Too right, the state is causing them! The state is literally telling children going through the throes of hormone raging that their body might be the ‘wrong one’, and “Transitioning (aka pretending a fantasy is true) is the answer”
This is the thrust of policy in LAs and schools. If an employee/teacher openly expresses opposition the employee is a marked man/woman, and I don’t mean a cis-man or ‘cis-woman’. Fancy having to qualify ‘man’ and ‘woman’? Education authorites are literally twisting the minds of our youngsters.
Where on the planet has a child been born and the midwife turns to the parents and says, “What a beautiful child, is it a boy or a girl, shall we flip a coin? And yet the notion of ‘assigned gender’ is at the core of the transgender agenda. With respect to this issue we are literally living in Oceania.
Because my victimhood is bigger than yours. Aristotle said that whatever a society values become the values of the society. As a society we have made many social ill financially beneficial – single motherhood, fecklessness, irresponsibility and now victimhood. And my victimhood must beat yours into submission till you accept that mine is bigger.
About 18 months ago I had the idea of designing and making a range of Victim Hoods. These hoods would be designed to express and proclaim different forms of victimisation, and would be worn upon the heads of those who believed themselves to have been subjected to a particular form of victimisation.
🙂
First belly laugh of the day ðŸ‘
What put you off ?
Was it the complexity of manufacturing all the different permutations of intersectional grievance ?
Probably the range of sizes required to reflect the different ‘needs’.
And only the biggest ones would sell.
PS if you want another laugh, the following is actually the headline for an article in today’s Guardian:
‘The phallic necktie is an outdated symbol of white male rule in New Zealand’
And Phallic belts? Umbrellas?
Please, oh please do it.
… while I normally despise you and everything you stand for, I had no choice but to give a Like for the sheer awesomeness of that idea. 0_o
What you have said is a perfect example of passive/aggressive behaviour.
Get some help.
Vikram, that is so accurate.
As a woman who has tried (really tried) to get along with feminist groups in the spirit of helping women who’ve fallen into a bad spot to regain their footing, I found that the majority of women in feminist groups seem to even hate other women.
I was endlessly silenced, shamed, or blocked for saying the most innocent things, such as “you should drop your rage and move on” which is apparently not a principle of feminism.
I also advocated for kids having fathers, and questioned the choices made by women who had multiple kids with a man they hated like poison.
Life is about choices. Even people with no means have created decent lives out of their efforts, but if a person has no desire to make the effort and simply feels entitled to be gifted a decent life, because they feel they are oppressed, and that comes with a price tag for the rest of us apparently.
So for every woman angry about these mentally ill or smart ass men who claim to “feel like women,” there is a woman who feels her life is terrible because she “feels oppressed by patriarchy.”
I am a woman from a poor family who got into a trade apprenticeship and worked really hard. Now my life is good. My best friends and allies were men along that road, and they asked little from me, except that we trade skills at work to help elevate each other.
Even (especially?) the most conservative men have championed my efforts and applauded my successes, so I would be lying if I said men stopped my from living my life how i want to live.
I am no different from women who have had domestic abuse, and harassment from a few men along the way. But again, those were often tethered to bad choices on my part, so I bear some blame.
Perhaps at the end of the day, people just really lack the courage and fortitude to look honestly at themselves and own their choices, so they might learn to do better.
It’s so much easier to just point the finger at someone else and not try.
I’m sorry but you’d need a heart of stone not to laugh at this.
Julie, along with JK Rowling, Suzanne Moore and so on, have all meted out identical hate to people to their own right. Now they’re getting a taste of it themselves, despite being leftists, for being to the right of nutters even loonier left than themselves.
This is, to a tee, a textbook example of Orwell’s observation that Communist dogma was as rigid as Catholic but unlike Catholic dogma always likely to invert on a moment’s notice. When last in power the Labour Party introduced a Women and Equalities Act (its very name Orwellian doublethink in itself). Ten years later, the same party now denies that women objectively exist. Oldthinkers unbellyfeel IngSoc, Julie. Get with the programme.
You can’t remove this feature from leftist politics, any more than you can take the water out of an ice cube. So you just have to suck it up, Julie: it’s all part of being on the left.
who on earth are “the elite post-modernists”??
when a writer uses a phrase like that I have the impression that the article is not for the general public but for a very small circle who will understand that ‘a’ is getting back at ‘b’ because ‘b’ attacked ‘a’ etc.
The rest of us remain clueless.
For many years I have thought that these university courses in “gender studies” “race and culture” etc are just make-work projects for otherwise unemployable people who would prefer to sit in the university all their lives.
The main alternative for these people is becoming an “activist” another euphemism for an unemployed unemployable person to be paid a modest amount to march in the street or yell and scream somewhere.
Some years ago, researchers pointed out that a large proportion of the so-called ‘homeless’ sleeping on the streets in some major cities were actually significantly psychiatrically disturbed, they had been offered various forms of welfare and housing, but preferred to feel ‘free’, even living in conditions that most of us couldn’t tolerate.
Similarly, the so-called activists, the followers of anarchic groups like blm and extinction whatever, and many caught up in the ‘trans’ debate, are people who have difficulties fitting into what the majority would call the normal ups and downs and challenges of everyday life.
You make a very good point with your last two paragraphs. I have know a few of these people.
“For many years I have thought that these university courses in “gender studies” “race and culture” etc are just make-work projects for otherwise unemployable people who would prefer to sit in the university all their lives.”
Yes but the bigger problem is that they turn out unemployable graduates. Often with big debt if they’re in the US. What a horrible joke to play on uninformed young people.
“…Why is gender studies promoting anti-women literature?…”
…because women aren’t women, I think. At least that’s what i’m getting from the “gender” debate….
I think if you don’t want to be a man, you can be trans, but not a woman.
And I think if you are trans, then you’re neither a man nor a woman.
But I think if you’re a woman you just can’t be, as this appears to be gender oppressive so you have to be something else other than a woman, although you might be able to be a womxn, not sure about that. Although I don’t think you can be a girl, whether you’re trans or not. But that might be wrong, because you can be a boy, but only until you can decide your own gender. That might be wrong too.
Anyway, it’s all got a bit silly.
I would say Orwellian, more than silly.
Money attracts charlatans like honey attracts wasps. Through work, I attended a workshop on cultural diversity and was prescribed Robin Diangelo’s book as the book to educate myself on the ‘Black Experience’. (For those who don’t know, Diangelo is a white woman who describes herself as a racist).
Just because Deangelo is racist (and making money from being so) doesn’t mean the rest of the white race is racist.
With regards to Deangelo,I think a more apt comparison would be money attracts charlatans like sh*t attracts flies.
The point I was making was that the people who should talk about ‘the black experience’ are black people. No white person can do so, however empathetic he or she may be. And yet a woman who fills ill at ease whenever surrounded by black people has made millions by hijacking the debate. As for your comparison, it was what I initially wrote but I changed it to appease the moderator.
I downloaded a sample of Deangelo’s book to see what it was like. I struggled through whatever the sample was but it was excruciatingly awful on every level.
So I skimmed that paper out of intertest. Quite apart from whether the central ideas are something I agree with or not, I think that text has a hell of a lot of interpretation of not very much evidence. What evidence there is, is in the form of citations to other papers which most probably have a similar character.
My own mind does work like this. But I try to keep such musings to bath time, or for staring out of the window of a train. They might be worth a chat (or they might not be) but I don’t seek political influence for them.
I’m a scientist but I did a history degree in the 90’s. It wasn’t this bad. They were getting a bit postmodern and I didn’t like it. But still, it wasn’t anything like this, it was much more serious. You had to actually make an effort to discuss evidence.
It’s like some sort of therapy session, alhough my own therapist would tell me to grow up if I started going on like this. It’s really, really bad. It’s surprsingly bad. It is in a journal with an impact factor of 1.2. So very few people are reading this.
But, she is teaching this. And I don’t think it’s good enough, it’s not “critical thinking” to claim “white women know how to be victims” because “Theresa May wept outside 10 Downing Street as she resigned the UK premiership”
Like I say that’s thinking for bath time, not for publication. And with that perhaps I should swithc this off and do some actual work of my own.
Why are British academics so lazy? Like much Critical Social Theory, it seems to lift its ideas straight from the USA. There appears to be no attempt to consider ideas in the relevant social & historical context. Inappropriate & inaccurate concepts are shoehorned into a British debate without even bothering to Anglicise the language. We had “defund the police” – “it doesn’t mean what it says”, now it’s “white women’s tears”, “carceral”. Smh
Gender studies is another pointless activity and should not be funded by the tax payer.
I don’t think many university courses are funded by the tax payer as the days of grants has passed.
Gender studies? I have been studying the female gender for some decades now. I am no closer to understanding it. In that sense it is rather like algebra.
Gender studies degrees (which used to be simply Women’s studies) are for wealthy mostly white people who are not required to immediately get jobs to support themselves after graduation. Ditto for studies preceded by any racial designation. The author is incorrect that Womens studies began as a resource for “working class” women. Unless they wanted to remain “working class” by which I assume she means low income.
You find these classes jammed with rich white women, and these degrees began at privileged private universities, not at public state schools where you would have found most low income students. These are hardly the only worthless degrees, but they are some of the most highly touted, at least in the US.
Many years ago in the Daily Mail there was photo of a retired lady academic who fought off three muggers; one was dispatched witha knife hand to the the throat, one kicked in the groin and one thrown down some steps. The lady was a former member of the SOE taught close quarter combat by Fairbairn and Sykes and had never practised since. What do we not put women through same physical and close quarter combat training as as those in the SOE? Nancy Wake GM killed a German sentry with her bare hands. Imagine if Weinstein had got similar treatment to the muggers he would have got the message. In warrior socities women have fought –
Sparta, Vikings, Mongols, in 18th century in Britain women took part in bareknuckle fights and a nun created Wing Chung.
Why is Violette Szabo GC( held off 40 members of the Das Reich Waffen until she ran out of ammunition ) not a feminist icon along with all the other women SOE agents? Is it because one cannot be a heroine and a victim and only the latter attracts money?
Ms Bindell.
Had you called the police back then, that b…tard may have been stopped in his tracks and you may have prevented the ACTUAL rape of his next victim.
As for the present conflagration, you and your ilk really didn’t realise the monster you were creating when you spent those years casually blaming all men for all womens troubles..
The cause of false victimhood is insatiable..
This is shocking. To be attacked and not report it and then blithely go on to mention a subsequent rape by one’s attacker and yet feel no responsibility for not having done what you could to prevent it.
Of course, because women are responsible for what men do. We wouldn’t want to live in a world where men suffer as a result of their actions. That’s what women are here for.
She didn’t say she felt no responsibility AND it happened when she was very young – in 1979.
Well, yes she basically did say she felt no responsibility. It was just sort of oh well, too bad, so sad. She was an adult when it happened. Sorry but this is irresponsible behavior.
‘Ask the manager’ may be deeply sexist, but that’s not the thing that is most deeply wrong with such a statement. If you have ever worked with women who come from ultra-violent communities — if you are interested in such communities, you might start with Richard Rhodes *Why They Kill*– you will discover that one of the ongoing problems they have is that ‘asking the manager/police/social services’ is not working for them, or working for them in a timely enough fashion to keep them from being battered and killed. This doesn’t mean that in the name of equality we should in some way prevent middle and upper-middle class white women from getting the protection they need — rather it is an indictment of society for not affording the same protections to others who need it too.
But currently the perception is that the protection will arrive too late for the female members of the ultra-violent communities, who have quite justified fears that an ultra-violent person they fear will beat them up or kill them. So, again quite understandably, they go to other ultra-violent members of their communities and ask for protection. When they get this — often in exchange for sex — they are temporarily reprieved, but this just means that the violence continues in their community.
When it comes to stamping out the violence in ultra-violent communities, only reaching the point where violence is the monopoly of the state, and not an ongoing constant private concern and preoccupation will work. (Aside from the outcome where the whole community ends up dead). I cannot imagine that Alison Phipps is unaware of this.
‘Asking the manager’ is what we want to work for *everybody*.
When I want to read fiction for entertainment I turn to crime fiction and read such authors as Ian Rankin, PD James, Christopher Fowler, Quintin Jardine, Peter Lovesey.
When I hear talk about trans-exclusionary feminists I am eager to ask these people who believe that trans-women are women the following question. In the hope of getting an honest and sensible answer, you understand.
A typical crime fiction novel begins with a dog walker exercising his dog on some ‘waste ground’ and discovering a body. Typically the body will be naked and wrapped in a carpet. Mr. dog walker contacts the police. The police cordon off the area and bring in a pathologist. The pathologist takes the body back to the lab where in-depth investigations take place.
This is a common scenario in crime fiction but the same thing does happen in real life, all too frequently.
So my question is this: having got the carpet-clad corpse back to the autopsy bench, how long would it take a professional pathologist to figure out that a trans-woman is actually a bloke plus some pills and a razor blade?
If it’s longer than five minutes I suggest that the pathologist needs to be sacked.
The fact is that every part of the human body bears evidence to the gender of the person that owns it (or owned it).
In the very week during which the JK Rowling furore erupted a body was discovered as a result of the excavations undertaken to further the HS2 project. Within a week or two the three questions had been answered which we have come to feel ourselves entitled to know, whenever a body is found and these are
(1) how long ago the person died,
(2) how old the person was at death,
(3) a man or woman?
And nearly always all three questions can be answered, even if only a fragment of a body has been found.
I remember that I was living in Brighton during 1974/5 and a house was being demolished and a fragment of a body was discovered in the roof timbers of a house as it was being taken down. A hand in fact. It belonged to an unfortunate person who had been killed by a bomb during the war according to the Evening Argus. I am sure that the pathologist who would have been called in had no difficulty in determining whether it was male or female.
Weird discussion. We all have issues that we care about. Charities we support. Campaigns we join. That doesn’t mean everyone who joins other groups is our enemy.
Doesn’t that rather depend on what those groups are promoting?
Is this the same Julie Bindell who wrote a column defending Aileen Wuornos, the female serial killer who inflicted violence on seven men by luring them into the woods and then shooting them?
Of course, it wasn’t her fault. She was apparently just unlucky enough to have been picked up hitchhiking by seven rapists. In a row. So she had no option but to kill them with the gun she just happened to have with her.
Doesn’t Julie realize that female violence against men and boys is just as real as male violence against women? Females instigate half of all domestic violence, including violence against children. Thirty-eight percent of those who are injured in DV are men.
Until Bindell and women of her ilk learn to accept and remove their own gender bias in discussions of domestic volence, they should be ignored.
Please cite the source for your assertion that females instigate half of all domestic violence.
This is a start: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.ed…
Plenty more if you take time to look for them, but I’ve given you a start.
Thanks, Brian. Very interesting. I confess I had casually assumed that men perpetrated most of the violent acts, so it’s good to be corrected and learn something.
There are all kinds of studies that show differing results as to who perpetrates domestic violence but one factor that isn’t in contention is that many more women are killed or seriously injured in domestic violence incidents than men.
Gladly.
Google female domestic violence against men. There are a number of studies that discuss the problem, including one by the government of Canada, and one by Psychology Today.
Try police statistics and criminal convictions as a starting point.
The problem with both police stats and convictions is that they are heavily gender biased against men. In Canada, feminists convinced the police to always arrest the husband in any DV dispute. The arrest stats then include disproportionately men. Then those same stats are used as “proof” that men commit DV disproportionately.
See the problem?
By chance I was reading about Aileen Wuornos yesterday, following a trail which began with Natalie Merchant. She asked to be executed because she felt she was so full of hate that she could never be released safely. Her early experiences were almost unbelievably brutal. I don’t think the death sentence was just.
Wuornos may very well be the victim of violence herself, and personally, I’m against the death penalty.
That said, no one ever argues that male serial killers should be spared just because they too may have been victims, do they?
For a recent case in which it was specifically argued that a male serial killer should not receive the death penalty due to his own victim hood, google Michael Madison in Cleveland, Ohio
In the case of recently executed Dustin Higgs, his petition for clemency says “Higgs had a traumatic childhood and lost his mother to cancer when he was 10″
In another recent case, that of Corey Johnson, his lawyers “described a traumatic childhood in which he was physically abused by his drug-addicted mother and her boyfriends, abandoned at age 13, then shuffled between residential and institutional facilities until he aged out of the foster care system.”
And this is why I find the death penalty to be problematic.
Thanks for the info. I wonder how those men fared? Oh. At least one was executed.
All of them were executed. In almost any death penalty case, most of which involve men as the accused, you’ll find that some mitigating factors, trauma and abuse prominently among them, will be brought up in an attempt to stave off capital punishment. Note that this is not the same as a self defense argument for mitigation.
There are two issues here: one is whether previous abuse should mitigate the sentence, which it probably should.
The other is whether the abuse justifies the violence committed, exonerating the perpetrator. In the case of Wuornos, Bindell has argued that she was the real victim, not the men she murdered. This is an entirely different approach, which, if implemented, would be used to justify female violence against men based on claims that the woman suffered violence at the hands of different men.
I don’t see it as a different argument for both sentencing and conviction. Serial killer of women Corey Johnson was also argued to be the victim of his own mother and her boyfriend.
It isn’t a female vs male argument as any successful argument of past abuse as a defense would allow men to serially kill women as in the serial male killer example I gave above and women to serially kill men. Or men to kill men and women to kill women. Any decent criminal defense attorney is going to bring up prior abuse and victimization regardless of who the perp is and who the victim(s) are. It’s part of their job.
In any case, Wuornos was executed. An argument of self defense was not made in her case. That argument could, in my view, influence both conviction and sentencing. But that wasn’t the argument her attorneys were making.
You are going to have a hard time finding dangerous abusive violent criminals who were not themselves violently abused as children. It’s not an argument for being more lenient with such people; instead this is the ‘lock em up and throw away the key because it is never going to be safe to let them out’ argument.
I used to believe that it was possible to reform hardened criminals when I was young. Now I have my doubts, especially when it involves someone who was violently abused as a child, whose entire identity is now framed by the abuse.
But mine is not the argument you seem to think it is. I’m not suggesting that we should lock em up and throw away the key, only that using previous abuse by other people to determine guilt is a bad policy. Being abused may very well be a factor in someone’s behaviour, including Wuornos, but that doesn’t somehow justify her behaviour. An explanation is not necessarily a justification.
Indeed. And I would argue that even whether an act of heinous violence was justified or not is moot. What society wants to know is whether the person who committed the act, however justified, is safe to let into the community. If you look at the research by Lonnie Athens, or studies on child soldiers, or other violent
communities¸ you will see that there are certain one-way doors, which, when passed cannot be undone. It is tragic when you end up with somebody who is too dangerous to be allowed loose in society. But it does happen.
Doesn’t Julie realize that female violence against men and boys is just as real as male violence against women?
Of course, not, but that’s true of most of Western society. We tend to expect men to defend themselves, which becomes an issue when the assailant is a woman. This is a bit like cases of teachers becoming involved with students. The reaction when the teacher is female is far more forgiving than if male, especially if the woman is attractive.
Not in the US. Female teachers go to jail for this behavior.
Some do, but the societal reaction tends to be different. When the teacher is male, he is regarded as a predator. When it’s a female, especially an attractive one, there is the invariable “man, my teachers never looked like that.”
Well, no not some. If convicted, they will go to prison. Female teachers sleeping with male students are regarded as predators and treated as such by the justice system.
What you are talking about “man, my teachers never looked like that” is a male locker room reaction, and I agree a silly one at that. And men should stop it. You’ll never hear a woman say it, btw.
But the societal reaction is quite different. It’s prison, if convicted, no matter what they look like.
Actually Annette, jailing female predators is a fairly recent phenomenon. Remember Mary Kay Latourno? She was given two strikes before being jailed. The social attitude that boys are somehow “lucky” to be sexually abused by women is a common attitude, not just one found in locker rooms, in my experience.
Mary Kay Letourneau was not a great example for you to use, since she served 7 years in prison. I’m not sure what you mean by two strikes. If you mean that she had two children with the boy she attacked, one was prior to her conviction for attacking that boy and the other was while she was in prison.
The societal reaction to her behavior was prison. But I agree that some, but not all men, believe boys sleeping with nice looking teachers are lucky. You won’t find this attitude among women who you will surely agree, are part of society. That is a specifically male, likely minority, reaction. I think they should stop that and join other men, women and the justice dept in believing such behavior does not make boys “lucky”. Don’t mistake the reaction of some men for society’s reaction, they are not the same.
She only served 7 years after she was caught the second time in a car with her victim. I don’t know why you think it’s only men with the attitude that the victimization of boys is fine. I know of no study that investigates this., but your assumption that it’s only men is unfounded.
I do agree that female victimization of boys ought to be treated the same, but consider Asia Argento, who posted pictures of herself in bed with a 17 year old boy. He was under age in Los Angeles, where the offense was committed, but she was not charged. Kevin Spacey, in contrast, was charged in LA because he gripped a 19 year old , who was of legal age.
If you believe seven years was significantly shorter of a sentence then perhaps you have a few examples of male teachers getting much longer sentences for their conduct with female students. You’d have to look at cases of male teachers in the same state as Letourneau (believe it was Washington) since sentencing would follow state guidelines, which would vary between states. Btw, Letourneau actually went to prison twice, the first time for a shorter period and then after she was caught again she went back to prison for the 7 year sentence.
You’ll never hear a woman say it’s okay if boys get “lucky” with female teachers. But if you have a few examples, I’d certainly listen.
If you’ll note in Alex’s comment to me, he says ” When it’s a female, especially an attractive one, there is the invariable “man, my teachers never looked like that.”
Do you think he is talking about men or women making such comments? If you believe that’s indeterminate, why would a woman comment that her female teachers “never looked like that”? You see, he means men say this, not women. And he’s right. Not all men, of course.
I don’t know the details of every relationship involving people of differing ages and it’s irrelevant to the subject here. The original comment was about female teachers involved with male students. It was claimed that female teachers got off on such behavior. They do not.
You were the one who said she got 7 years. My “only” was not meant to imply that the sentence was short, only that she got that sentence only after being caught abusing the boy for the second time.
This seems a common tactic in your responses- you misread things, then go off on a tangent, until it becomes impossible to discuss the central issue because of your own misunderstanding.
Yes, she had two sentences one for each time she got caught. Progressively longer each time.
The central issue as I had to point out to you when you detoured off to Kevin Spacey, was teachers.
When dealing with violence one needs to look if weapons are used. Men and women can use guns and knives. It is easier for a small fit agile female knife fighter to stab a large slow man than the other way round. If the man and women are unarmed, then strength and training need to be considered. A man who has fight experience can take a blow to the head which would kill a women, especially when they are light heavy weights and above. A light heavy weight who is street fighter in many ways is the most dangerous as they can combine power, speed and can ride a blow.
The hook from Henry Cooper which dropped Mohammed Ali would have killed most men and women.
What is the correct procedure for dealing with people who are hysterical, verbally aggressive and are close to physical assault but have not done so, such as waving their fist in one’s face? What does the law say ?
In a rational world, Wuornos would have gotten a medal.
Oh for crying out loud.
You know, instead of flinging accusations of being Not A True Progressive back and forth, you could try acknowledging that there are conflicting interests at work here? Black men would prefer it if lawkeeping was more lenient, because they don’t trust lawkeepers to treat them fairly. White women would prefer it of lawkeeping was more strict, because they don’t trust men to treat them fairly in the absence of legal consequences. Neither preference is unreasonable, but they are mutually exclusive, and championing the cause of one group uncritically by necessity means throwing the other group under the bus.
You could try acknowledging that and negotiating a compromise. Of course, to do that you’d need to admit that building a better society is complicated, and that it’s possible to disagree about how to do it for reasons other than being cruel and heartless and On The Wrong Side Of History. But you could, theoretically broaden your mind sufficiently to do that.
Or you could of course just keep yelling at each other and having a tug-of-war that cancels both of you out and leaves things pretty much the way they are, i.e. with white men still in charge of everything. As a white man, I’m fine with that option too.
The victims of crimes by black men are mostly black, I seem to remember. Do you reckon the black victims are in favour of more leniency?
The victims feel the police do them much more harm than good, and they are actually right about that. Black Americans dont like the police and it’s a rational position.
You seem remarkably confident that you speak for millions of people.
And sorry, I don’t buy it. A disproportionate amount of the US police’s time is devoted to crime in the black community, which means crime by black people on black people.
Unless you are going to make the ludicrous claim that police interventions do more harm than good, then a disproportionate amount of the US police’s time is spent helping, serving and protecting black people.
Yes indeed I’m fairly confident I’m speaking for those millions of people in an appropriate way. It’s not always inappropriate to do that, and anyway you are doing so yourself by taking the contrary position. It feels like a rhetorical manipulation on your part actually.
This view is pervasive and has produced a huge amount of public protest and cultural material. There’s a vast amount of information available on this topic Pete. I would simply direct you to that material.
I’m white but I’ve experienced it in a direct way myself as a graduate student in a southern state. It is not necessarily ludicrous to suggest they do more harm than good, and it’s definitely not ludicrous to suggest they are *perceived* that way. It’s a complicated situation.
i.e. google it please.
Cannot remember honest hard working black families keen on drug dealing in their street and lack of discipline in schools. Cannot remember black families keen on their children having to walk past drug dealers. Can remember a Mother horrified because a drug dealer offered her nine year old daughter a white powder. Can remember them sending their children back to W Indies and Africa for an education.
But none of those things mean that they perceive the police as helpful. Only that you assume they would.
I don’t see any connection between these two. Women object to being raped and killed by men, they have no preference as to the man’s colour or religion, his being white or black, Christian or Muslim makes no odds, we don’t like it from any man and want it to stop.
Being backlashed at by women is perhaps the worst of all. It’s heart-breaking, really, that committing one’s life to fighting against violence against women and children has become a crime and that those of us who have been victimized by men are shamed for living to tell the truth.
After 3 decades of man hating Julie I have zero sympathy for you and other Femanazis. For the scores of regular women that want to further the valid claims of equal human rights and female personal safety, we the men of your communities have always supported this endeavour and will always come to your aid as we have done historically. Please ditch these people that profit from peddling victimisation. They are in it for them and not you.
Bindel and Phipps are at odds, but I can’t sort out who is worse.
Phipps comes across as both misogynistic and racist in her paper.
I’ve just read the Phipps article (so you don’t have to) and what I took from it was that it was attempting, in a pomo-academic way, to take a swipe at those #metoo actressy types, and snowflakiness in general. Academics have to write about stuff, you know, and get it published, to keep their jobs. Anyway, good for Phipps. It’s about time someone had a go at those #metoo snivellers.
Because it’s not a real academic discipline
I agree wholeheartedly with this refreshing take on Gender Studies programmes. The poor quality of Phipps’s article is the very reason I retired from university teaching much earlier than I ever thought I would. Or is that just my inner Karen-ness coming through?
Your inner-Karen-ness I think