The Murder of Jeffrey Dryden: The Grim Truth Surrounding Male Domestic Abuse by Troy Veenstra Page B

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.
    For instance, the National Violence
Against Women conducted a study in 1997, which surveyed
approximately 16,000 households divided equally into men and women.
Its findings showed that men physically assaulted their female
partners 3 times more than women assaulted their male lovers;
however, this study is biased as it is classified as a “Crime
Survey,” which is purposely designed to show a much higher rate of
injury not acts of violence. Crime studies “are presented to
respondents as a study of crime, crime victimization, personal
safety, injury, or violence, rather than as studies of family
problems and conflicts as most male domestic abuse studies; Family
conflict studies show a much higher rate of assaults (Straus,
1999).” Depending on the type of survey used to support and obtain
the data, “600,000 to 6 million women are victims of domestic
violence each year, and between 100,000 to 6 million men (Gelles
& Staus, 1990).” In addition to this startling bias, research
has shown that Feminist funded studies have also added to the scope
of abuse by men towards women to include such non-physical, and
non-violent areas such as, “acts of lying, humiliation, withholding
information, sharing of wealth, and refusing to help with child
care or housework (Sally L. Satel, 1997).”
    As mentioned above, current government
sponsored funding into the research of domestic violence, refuses
to fund studies on men being abused by women, as in their eyes men
cannot be victims of a non-existent crime.
    For example, the Center for Disease
Prevention and Control (CDC) has a list on their website for
programs designed to prevent violence against women, these programs
stress services to women, but contain no information services
available to men (Detschelt, 2011). Thus leaving it to each state
to determine if abuse of a male by a female is, a crime, or finding
as Ellen Pence, founder of the Domestic Abuse Intervention Project
and a leader in the battered women’s movement stated, “Domestic
Violence against men is just not a social problem (Lewin,
1992).”
     
    Defending Female Violence
against Men
    “ I have never forgiven you
for the way you looked at me the first time I hit you.”
    “ How did I look,” I
asked.
    “ You looked hurt and
shocked… angry and disgusted with me,”
    “ How should I have looked
after you hit me?” I asked
    “ I needed you to understand
how I was feeling at the time. I needed your support, not your
anger, your disgust.” She said. “That was the day she stabbed me in
the arm, the day I found the courage to leave.”
    Feminist as a whole view all forms of
domestic abuse as an, “Essential element of the vast male
conspiracy to suppress and subordinate women, not through one
individual male but with the patriarch society as a whole (Sally L.
Satel, 1997).” As such, the only reason men use violence against
women is to maintain the essences of the patriarch society. In
laymen terms, some feminist believe that men use violence against
women to remain “All powerful,” and therefore in order to do this,
one must use violence against the “completely powerless” (does that
sound like a certain kind of reasoning?).
    In any case, because of this belief,
several feminist groups have come to the decision to admit that,
“yes women use violence as much as men do,” but they make sure to
add, “However, women only use violence as self-defense against
their abusive male partners.” Though this would be a great opening
statement in court, this defenses loses momentum when we look at
the amount of domestic violence against women by women in