Exposing the anti-male myth
Bettina Arndt
May 25, 2007 12:00am
(Herald Sun)
WHEN Erin
Pizzey
was a small girl she pleaded for help from a teacher, blood
running down her legs from a whipping her
mother
had given her.
Her plea was
dismissed. No one would believe such violence was possible in
this rich, glamorous diplomat's family.
That was 60 years
ago.
In 1971, Pizzey
launched one of Britain's first women's refuges but became
disenchanted when the refuge movement was hijacked by women
promoting anti-male agendas.
Since then, she
has been fighting a mighty battle to expose the truth about
family violence: namely that girls and boys, who are exposed to
violence in early childhood, can grow up to repeat what they
have learnt.
She has written
about her own experiences; her 193cm father was a bully but it
was her beautiful, 144cm mother who terrorised and battered her
family.
She's written
books and articles exposing the anti-male myths being propagated
about domestic violence, documenting research that shows
domestic violence is often reciprocal, with men and women locked
into destructive behaviour.
As she explained
in her radio interview with
Dads on the Air this week it made her unpopular with
British feminists who had turned domestic violence into a
million dollar industry. She received death threats and was
heckled while speaking publicly in the UK and US.
Yet, she continues
to speak out about the failure to recognise that women can be
equally complicit in such violence.
It's not in our
interests she says, for women to be continually taught they are
victims.
Pizzey takes a
swipe at Australia's Violence Against Women campaigns, which
show a never-ending parade of violent men. There is never a hint
that men are sometimes victims.
"It's a terrible
lie," says Pizzey, who has written extensively about women who
behave as "emotional terrorists".
The whims and
actions of such women determine the emotional climate of the
household.
Pizzey makes the
telling point that marital dissolution can "call to the fore the
terrorist's destructiveness", mentioning the women who make
false allegations of violence or sexual abuse, or simply cut dad
out of the lives of children.
This month, an
important step towards a more balanced debate was made with the
publication of Allegations
of Family Violence and Child Abuse in Family Law Children's
Proceedings.
The report was
produced by the Australian Institute of Family Studies. It
examined 399 cases and found most involved allegations of
violence, often from both sides.
In these
circumstances, where unsubstantiated allegations fly in both
directions, it's just too hard for judges to see the wood for
the trees, suggest the AIFS researchers.
They found it was
rare for judgments to deny contact on the basis of such
allegations.
The report is
critical of Australian research on violence in Family Court
matters.
The report shows
much of this research relies on small, carefully selected
samples to draw misleading conclusions about male violence.
This blinkered
research "rarely concedes the possibility that at least some of
the violence may be situational, one-off, reciprocated, or even
at times initiated by women," says the AIFS report.
How refreshing to
see AIFS research acknowledge that there's a very real
difference between the situational violence common in marital
separation, with both parties doing things they later regret,
and the more systemic controlling violence where the males are
almost always the perpetrator.
In the latter
case, court intervention is often necessary to protect children
and mothers from these dangerous men. The challenge is a court
system that can properly identify them.
But what's needed
with situational violence is for men and women to be helped to
calm down and look carefully at the impact of their behaviour,
particularly on their children.
Child-centred
mediation in the Family Relationships Centres is helping people
learn to stop the violence, unlike court processes, which often
serve to escalate it.
bettinaarndt@hotmail.com |
