2 thoughts on “Belgium to open its first shelter for battered men”

1. Reblogged this on John Allman . UK and commented:
   Questions to ask (of Belgium and the UK), are:

   1. How many places are there that are allocated on a first-come-first-served basis, or a priority-of-need basis, without discrimination against either sex? If we can have unisex toilets in this day and age, why on earth do we need ladies and gents shelters for refugees from domestic violence?

   2. How can it possibly be lawful (in the UK, or Belgium), for a public authority to direct public funding towards organisations that openly practise sex discrimination (by earmarking refuge places as being for one sex only)? Such organisations, as a matter of policy, foster poor relations between men and women. This is an inevitable affect of isolating victims of domestic violence from the opposite sex. It is the deliberate segregation of the sexes at a time of crisis for each refugee, when he or she is in greatest danger of extrapolating his or her personal disappointment with the particular member of the opposite sex who used to batter him or her, into a general misogyny or misandry, as the case may be.

   The solution to the shortage of refuge places that are not available to battered women, is NOT for “men’s” groups to create refuges that exclude women, and to apply for public sector funding. That is an absurd non-solution that merely perpetuates an artificial and absurd pseudo-problem that feeds off the real and serious problem of domestic violence.

   Rather, the solution is to starve of funds, and to prosecute or to encourage victims to sue, refuges run by “women’s” groups that exclude men; to prosecute or to sue them for sex discrimination. Market forces will force those sexist organisations running shelters to become non-sexist. or to sell their businesses to others who are willing to operate those businesses in a non-sexist manner.

   Probably the worst thing that one can do for many a refugee from an abusive relationship with a former intimate partner of the opposite sex, is to place them into an environment in which they never meet another members of the opposite sex, and especially where they never meet members of the opposite sex who are themselves refugees from domestic violence. This is likely to warp their perceptions, causing them to become entrenched in an erroneous belief system that the cause of domestic violence isn’t violent people of either sex, but rather an entire violent sex, about one half of the world’s population. This is likely to delay, or prevent permanently, their recovery.

2. Reblogged this on World4Justice : NOW! Lobby Forum..

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