Interesting new article in the Daily Telegraph. We don’t know if the headline writer was being ironic with ‘Bullying husbands face jail..’, rather than ‘Bullying partners…’, but it surely reflects the inevitable reality – virtually all the people targeted by these proposals will be men. We see the Home Office is working with a number of organisations, one of them Women’s Aid, whose CEO Polly Neate comes out again with the often-discredited lie that two women a week are being killed by partners or ex-partners. In 2011/12 88 women were killed by partners or ex-partners, a fall of 25% in just ten years.
Julie Bindel makes my point. here she opposes a new Law precisely because “vindictive” men may use it. Due to “nagging” or because they are prevented from seeing their children.
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/aug/27/coercive-control-crime-domestic-abuse-women
Have you seen Mankind Initiative’s latest video… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NlrRcLQwPEs&list=UU7PbpGeIZSl3FbQ9fwzvm4g ?
I realise I went on a bit but I’m serious. I’m sure the consultation will be hard to join. But if men’s organisations shock the liberal establishment with “yes” and we’ll get men to use it. Well then……
I think that all organisations working with men should be vocally welcoming this idea. Say they will campaign to make sure that men use this new law should it come in. This is because the strength of the current DV industry rides on the deep socialisation that violence against women and children is wrong. Hence they try to include stuff as “violence”. BUT a law about emotional manipulation, lying cheating, tantrums, stalking and so on. Well then there is much less shame in that than admitting a woman hit you. The public see that size isn’t a factor in being a b…… No I think the proponents of this will pull back if they think that men will report their abuse. Thus far they have been sheltered by the deep deep socialisation that boys must never hit girls and the reverse is shameful for the boys to admit. And so men rarely report it ( it’s in all the stats).
But many groups have literally shouted from the rooftops where their right to family and children’s contact is denied, where they’ve been duped, stalked , stolen from, faced tantrums, jelousy and etc. There is much less stigma to being hitched to a b——h
Of course the plan is to use it against men but a break from “wife beater” is a break from the “magic medicine” the magic formula that stops debate by invoking a horror from our deepest socialisation.
I work with women, their “chat” magazines never have a story about a “husband beater”. But have plenty on conniving, lying , manipulative, women. In popular culture from “bunny boiler” to gold digger we show much greater readiness to name abusiveness in women. The absolute blind spot is violence that’s the feminists trump card. So yes let’s campaign to get men and the women who love them to report coercive manipulative lying jealous contol freaks!!
Thanks. Unfortunately we know that it’s very hard to get involved in the consultation process, and even when you are – as Campaign for Merit was in the ‘women in boardrooms’ debate – non-feminist arguments are simply ignored by politicians of all political persuasions. “The evidence you’ve presented to us shows that putting more women on corporate boards leads to corporate financial decline, Mr Buchanan. Let’s have more women on boards, then!”
I am appalled at the legislation we are passing as a supposedly democratic country. With recent proposals to add emotional abuse to children as a new crime and this one we are rapidly becoming a state where everyone will be spying on every one else and the courts full of nonsense.
However this does present a great opportunity for the MHR movements if they can be involved in the consultation process. If ³unreasonable access to family² can be added as DA it will present a golden opportunity to achieve the F4J agenda. At the very least it may make them think about whether passing this is a good idea. Given the recent reports that suggested women are more controlling and manipulative than men this could be the one where the feminist finally shoot themselves in the foot!
Cheers
Pete
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