Yesterday Mark Brooks (chairman, Mankind Initiative) gave evidence to the Welsh Assembly’s Communities, Equality and Central Government Committee, with respect to the forthcoming Gender-based Violence, Domestic Abuse and Sexual Violence (Wales) Bill. The video is here, Mark’s session 1:32:48 – 2:17:00.
Giving evidence with Mark was Simon Borja, who heads The Dyn Project which supports male victims of IPV in Wales. His analysis of IPV is clearly a feminist one, and the organisation’s submission to this inquiry was a feminist one. Some months ago I was given a copy of one of Borja’s presentations, and it largely consisted of the sort of long-discredited nonsense you’d expect from Women’s Aid. At 1:36:11 in the video he uttered this gem with respect to the title of the bill which originally only mentioned women in its title (and will, we predict, do so again):
I strongly believe the term ‘violence against women’ doesn’t exclude men and boys.
Let’s use the term ‘violence against men’, shall we? After all, it doesn’t exclude women and girls, does it?