MenAreGood
Maryland Commission for Men's Health Report on Domestic Violence (2010)
tgolden
July 23, 2024

I wrote this report when I was the vice-chair of the Maryland Commission for Men’s Health in 2008-2010. This was one of three reports that The Maryland Department of Health tried to deep six. It took us a year to track down what they had done and the reports finally made their way to the legislators. (The story of this event was a chapter in Janice Fiamengo’s excellent book Sons of Feminism: Men Have Their Say.) They really didn’t want this to get out and they succeeded since it was a year late. It was written with the idea of giving legislators a good sense of the bigoted path the domestic violence industry had taken in Maryland. It continues to be a good summary of how the feminists have built a lethal anti-male industry. It is amazing and shocking how little has changed since that time. Sad too.

The attached image was not a part of the original report. lol I couldn’t resist.😀

 

 

Perhaps the most confusing, perplexing, and controversial area in which men’s health needs are overlooked is the issue of male victims of domestic violence. One immediately noticeable trend is the strong tendency to focus solely on female victims and ignore male victims. This tendency is seen repeatedly.  Most media, whether print or electronic, focuses on female victims of domestic violence and all too often fails to mention male victims. Almost every article in the newspaper and every program on TV about domestic violence focuses on female victims.  We see the same focus in academia: courses in sociology and women’s studies repeat the message that women are the primary victims of domestic violence and rarely mention male victims. If you look on the internet at web sites of domestic violence agencies you will likely see a similar bias.1 One oft-quoted statistic is that according to a Department of Justice report, there are 1.5 million women each year in the United States who are victims of domestic violence.  What you don’t see is that the same report also found that there are 834,000 male victims of domestic violence each year in the United States.2  Rather than adding the two and saying 2.3 million Americans suffer from domestic violence each year, all too often the only statistic highlighted is the one about women. One side of the story is told and the other side is ignored, as 834,000 men are omitted. Nationally, we have the “Violence Against Women Act” which boldly excludes men from its name. The National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges (a national group that teaches judges on the issue of domestic violence) offers a typical description which includes women but seems to minimize men: “Domestic violence puts millions of women and their families at risk each year and is one of the single greatest social ills impacting the nation.”3 There is no mention of men who might be at risk.  Most organizations promote the idea that females are the overwhelming majority of victims of domestic violence.  The general public has heard that message for decades and believes it to be the sole truth.  But is it?

The National Council Against Domestic Violence (NCADV) offers a similar message that women are the vast majority of the victims of domestic violence. According to their definition of domestic violence: “There is not a typical woman who will be battered – the risk factor is being born female.”4 If “the” risk factor is being born female, that seems to exclude men from sharing the risk. But a look at their own statistics compiled from state governments tells a very different story. In the state of Maryland, according to NCADV statistics, men comprise 23% of the victims of domestic violence, and women are 23% of the perpetrators.5 Maryland State Police statistics reveal similar estimates, listing men as 25% of all victims of domestic violence.6 These numbers are confirmed and even exceeded when compared with peer-reviewed research. What you find is that men are a sizable portion of the victims of domestic violence, a much larger portion than is usually mentioned through a variety of sources. In fact, peer-reviewed research reveals that most domestic violence is characterized not by one person abusing the other, but by what is termed as “reciprocal” violence: a brawl between two partners.7 The bulk of the research also suggests that women are more often the initiators of the violence.8  This sharp contrast between the commonly-held public view of women as the vast majority of domestic violence victims with men as the sole perpetrators, versus the research and statistics compiled by authoritative sources, paint pictures that are hard to reconcile.

The domestic violence agencies in Maryland are obviously comprised of a compassionate group of people dedicated to fighting a horrible problem.  The Maryland Commission for Men’s Health wholeheartedly agrees with them that domestic violence needs our attention and our resources. The issue that the commission finds worrisome is that it appears that only a part of the problem of domestic violence is being addressed in earnest: the female victims. The other parts are taking a back seat: male victims and female perpetrators. Due to this imbalance, some Marylanders go unserved and left in great pain.

There is a saying among NASA engineers that “an ounce of thrust at takeoff can mean thousands of miles down course.”  The ounce of thrust that has thrown the domestic violence industry off course is the idea of holding men and masculinity solely responsible for the incidence of domestic violence. In its early years as a cause, many of those working in domestic violence assumed that men were the sole cause of domestic violence and, of course, women were seen as the only victims.  It was this contention that has limited their vision to see the complexity of domestic violence and its many victims both male and female, heterosexual and homosexual. Over the years, various organizations and individuals have tried to offer feedback that males are in need of treatment as victims and females are in need of attention as perpetrators, but all too often their voices go noticably unheard.

 

How did things get to this point?

When domestic violence activism first started in the 1970’s, the leaders were mostly feminists who were rightly concerned about the lives and safety of women. What they saw was shocking: situations where muscular men were beating innocent women. Very quickly these stories started making their way to the media. People were shocked and outraged. The activists kept the stories flowing to the media and the media continued to alert the public to the truly awful horror stories. The feminist activists applied their ideological template to the issues of domestic violence. In the 1970’s, the feminist template presumed men were a major cause of women’s problems and were a large inhibiting factor holding women back from a variety of opportunities.  Phrases like “all men are rapists” and “men are pigs” were commonplace.  Men were routinely disdained and blamed.  The horror of males committing domestic violence gave some reason to believe that these early misandrist stereotypes of men might hold some truth.  Uncaring men, using their power to control and beat women, were observed repeatedly in these domestic violence situations, and this led to the assumption that it was men who were the underlying cause of a grievous social problem.  Sadly, we now know that this idea of men being the underlying cause of the problem represents a truth but simply not the whole truth.  What we now know is that although the stories of women being beaten by bullying men were certainly true, they told only part of the story.  Researchers today characterize domestic violence as being 25% men beating women, 25% women beating men and 50% being more of a brawl between the two people.9  The brawling and the violent women had been overshadowed by the more shocking and outrageous examples of helpless women being beaten by bullying men.

This statistical breakdown of 25%-25%-50% is a shock to many and very difficult to believe.   However, we have already seen how the premier national domestic violence organization, the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence (NCADV), verifies that in Maryland, for example, men comprise 23% of the victims and females 23% of the perpetrators of domestic violence.  Why would people not believe this to be the case?  Could it be that an ideology that holds men as the primary culprits in incidences of domestic violence continues to inhibit them from seeing situations in which men are victimized by abusive women?

The feminist idea that men are wholly responsible for domestic violence found immediate traction.  The horrible situations that were being reported were all of abusive men terrorizing defenseless women.  This sort of scenario struck a chord in both men and women who heard these reports.  The women were moved due to their own compassion for other women and children who might be vulnerable and in need.  The men were moved since an important part of the man’s biological and social sex role is to provide and protect for women and children.  Seeing women abused by out-of-control men was a very strong call to action for most men.  It is little wonder then that most states quickly developed laws and the beginnings of support for these female victims.  By the 1980s, only a few short years from the early activism of the 1970s, many states had already put domestic violence laws on their books. That’s moving pretty fast, for legislative bodies, who are known for their tendency to be circumspect when introducing whole new classes of penal laws.

What prevented evidence of other forms of domestic violence from coming to the surface? One answer to this question comes from one of the original domestic violence activists, Ellen Pence. Pence was the author of an important book about domestic violence and the influential Duluth Model (discussed below). She was also the founder of the Duluth Domestic Abuse Intervention Project.  Pence admits that there was an effort to avoid issues related to women’s violence and highlights the neglect of female abusers:

In many ways, we turned a blind eye to many women’s use of violence, their drug use and alcoholism, and their often harsh and violent treatment of their own children.10

Why would the original activists “turn a blind eye?”  Did they not see that turning a blind eye put many innocent people in jeopardy?  One of the reasons was surely that the theoretical framework of men being the “only abusers” left no room to see women as anything but victims.  The norm for viewing female abusers came to be that a female abuser was considered to have been “abused in the past” and was acting this way out of hurt and self-defense, not evil or anything else. Their view of domestic violence simply did not allow room for the possibility of the woman as the abuser, plain and simple.  As in all things, if your theoretical framework doesn’t account for a phenomenon to exist, it is much less likely to be recognized.  It is also probably true that the media showed more interest in the stories where women were abused by men.  These stories touched a cultural nerve and therefore sold more papers and air time.  People wanted to read about female victims, but were not so interested in hearing about males who were abused by women. The early activists must have found that they could get the word out much more quickly and more powerfully by focusing on stories about men beating women.

The focus on male batterers and female victims has left us knowing a good deal less about female batterers. How could the less-physically powerful women ever batter or intimidate men?   What we have since found out through research is that violent women make up for their lack of physical strength by using weapons and the tactic of surprise.11  In domestic violence situations, women will often use weapons when men are vulnerable.  Think of Lorena Bobbitt who severed her husband’s penis while he slept or Mary Winkler who shot her husband in the back with a shotgun while he was sleeping, or Clara Harris who ran over her husband with her car as her daughter sat next to her.  All are examples of women committing domestic violence by using the element of surprise paired with lethal weapons. Interestingly, none of these murders or incidents was ever portrayed by the media as domestic violence.  The words “domestic violence” seem to be reserved exclusively for male-on-female violence only.  When women do choose to be violent as in the above examples, muscles simply don’t matter.  A shotgun will beat muscles every time.  The national figures for the United States show that 30% of spousal murders, the most lethal form of domestic violence, are committed by women against their husbands or partners.12

It wasn’t just the domestic violence activists who intentionally ignored women’s violence.  Our culture also tends to look the other way.  For whatever reasons, a woman’s violence is simply not as upsetting to see.  Just watch television shows or movies to see the frequency of women hitting or kicking men. In today’s world it is a given for women to hit men on TV but not the other way around.  Everyone sees this but few seem to get upset or to protest.  We are living with a huge double-standard where a woman’s violence against a man is something we see in cartoons, movies, commercials, or TV as innocuous or even comical. We see plenty of violence from men towards other men but when we see violence from men towards women it is seen as anything but comical or innocuous; it is seen as deadly.  This double-standard likely increases the chances for women’s violence in relationships to be overlooked by the media, the general public and by domestic violence workers.

It is also likely true that once these activists were looking for funding for their endeavors from the government or private institutions, the stories about “vulnerable women in great need of safety” brought much more attention and promises of funding than did a similar story of a man being abused by his wife.  Every politician wanted to be seen as the one helping solve this problem by “making women safe in their own homes”.  Those stories about men as victims simply didn’t have the same traction.  No politician wanted to touch those.  For them, rather than help male victims in their lobbying for funds, the stories of abused men would likely muddy the waters and detract from the powerful images of women-in-need.  The stories about men-in-need were also completely counter to the growing ideology that men were the source of all domestic violence.  An abused man simply didn’t fit into that framework and would likely have decreased the success of any unisex funding efforts.

It is easy to see how the ideology of men as the source of the domestic violence problem likely developed over the initial years of domestic violence activism.  It fit with the image that the media was helping to portray. It fit with the feminist idea that men were “the problem” and it surely helped in advocating for domestic violence funding.  There were good reasons simply to not bring up men-as-victims.

 

The Duluth Model

In the early 1980s an important event transpired in the history of domestic violence prevention.  A group of domestic violence activists met in Duluth, Minnesota after a particularly gruesome murder of a wife by a husband.  The group started to put together what would eventually become the “Duluth Model”, which has since become a staple ideological protocol for most domestic violence agencies in the US.  In some states, its use is mandated.  In many ways it has become the handbook for those working with domestic violence victims and situations.  It is important to understand the initial questions asked by the Duluth gathering at the inception of the Duluth Model theory.  Here are questions asked by those at the initial gathering: “Why is she the target of his violence”  “Why does he think he is entitled to have power?”  “How does the community support his violence?”13  As you can see from the questions, the Duluth Model at its very beginnings was only about male violence towards women.  It was never about mutual violence or a woman’s violence towards a man. It was only about men beating women.  It had no remarks or suggestions for abused men or about female perpetrators.  The flagship theory of the industry only focused on women as victims and men as perpetrators.  Australian author Tom Graves has evaluated the Duluth Model and lists its major problems.  Here are the first three:

1.  It believes that violence is masculine and that men are responsible for violence
2.  It refuses to remark or address the fact that men can be the recipients of violence
3.  It holds only men responsible as change agents.14

These three errors play a huge part in the failure of the Duluth Model to address the needs of male victims and the needs of female perpetrators.  Let’s hypothesize a possible example of the damage that can occur from stereotyping victims of domestic violence:  Imagine both wife and husband have been drinking.  The wife, in a burst of anger, throws a wine bottle at her husband who was hit on the arm as he blocked the bottle.  The wife next comes after him with a wine glass and tries to throw wine in his face.  He blocked that also and in the process, the wine glass breaks and cuts his wife.  The police arrive.  They find a bleeding and crying wife and a husband who claimed that he had been attacked.  Their Duluth Model training has taught them that the vast majority of victims of domestic violence are female and so, what do they do? Arrest the man and put him in jail!  No matter how much the man might try to explain his actions, the police would likely refuse to listen.  In fact, once the wife realizes her husband was going to jail, she would probably start to tell the truth, that she was the attacker.  The police would of course hear none of it and off to jail the man would go.

This man would be placed into a mandatory Duluth Model domestic violence “educational” group.  He would not be allowed to speak the truth of what had happened. When he would try to explain that it was his wife who had attacked him, he would be told to be quiet and focus on his violence. The truth of his being abused would be seen by the group leaders as an “excuse” that keeps him from taking responsibility for his violence.  He would be forced never to mention his wife’s violence.  He would have two choices.  One would be to tell the truth and not “graduate” from the educational sessions, which would leave him legally vulnerable.  The other would be to lie and say he was the abuser.  We could guess that this man would choose to lie simply in order to ”graduate” from the “training”.

This sort of example shows how the system can take on the role of what is being called a “third party” abuser.  The spouse no longer has a need to batter.  The police and community agencies are now taking over that role by treating the falsely-accused man in a manner that lacks respect for him as a human being who has been abused or as a citizen with the right to be presumed innocent or to have his side of a given unwitnessed incident fairly considererd.  This is what can happen when pre-judgments arising from stereotypes are used instead of impartial mindsets coupled with factual analysis.

Since its inception, the Duluth Model has been reworked and made more “gender neutral”, but it continues to fail miserably in its capacity to address the needs of men who are victimized and of women who are violent.

If you visit the Duluth Model web site, you can see that their primary focus on female victims continues to this day.  The Duluth site claims that women account for as many as 97% of the victims of domestic violence.15  We know from both police reports and from peer-reviewed research that this is far from the truth.  It does however show that the Duluth Model continues to be focused on female victims and has failed in taking current thinking and research into account, thus placing male victims at risk and allowing female perpetrators to go unchecked or psychiatrically untreated for their abusiveness.

 

The Duluth Model spreads to the community

As the domestic violence industry grew, the Duluth Model took a greater and greater hold on the theoretical practices of domestic violence agencies.  As it took this greater hold, the ideas of domestic violence being only about men beating women spread farther.  As funding grew for domestic violence agencies, the funding for trainings grew correspondingly.  The 1994 federal Violence Against Women Act started pouring about one billion dollars per year into domestic violence endeavors.  A part of that money was spent on trainings given to the court systems, judges, police, lawyers and domestic violence workers.  The message the workshops broadcast was founded on the Duluth Model ideology that women were the vast majority of domestic violence victims and men were only a tiny minority.  More and more, the ideas of the Duluth Model became the standard.  It was presented as fact that domestic violence is pretty much only about women being abused by men.  That ideology is now set firmly in place.  The early work of the activists has focused exclusively on abused women and now the theoretical framework that guided their work is firmly planted in an ideology that focuses on female victims but ignores the needs of male victims and the actions of female perpetrators.  Now these ideas have been spread successfully into our community agencies and public institutions.

 

Opposing Voices to the Duluth Model — Researchers

Murray Straus, Richard Gelles, and Susan Steinmetz are early researchers on issues of domestic violence.  This group published a book in 1982 that ran counter to the feminist ideology.  The book, Behind Closed Doors,16 said clearly that domestic violence was a two-way street with both men and women responsible as perpetrators and victims.  The response was swift and powerful.  Upon publication, Straus, Gelles and Steinmetz were immediately seen as enemies. Prior to their findings that there is gender symmetry in domestic violence, they had been praised and held in high esteem as instrumental in the early research on domestic violence.  But once they found data that contradicted the feminist belief that men were the only perpetrators and women the only victims, things changed drastically.  At that point, they lost their glow and became villains to those who supported the ideas of women as the only victims of domestic violence.  Death threats and other avenues of intimidation were used to try to silence them.  Murray Straus, Ph.D., describes his struggle with intimidation and explains his own reluctance to publish his results that went counter to the feminist domestic violence ideology:

Researchers who have an ideological commitment to the idea that men are almost always the sole perpetrator often conceal evidence that contradicts this belief. Among researchers not committed to that ideology, many (including me and some of my colleagues) have withheld results showing gender symmetry to avoid becoming victims of the vitriolic denunciations and ostracism. Thus, many researchers have published only the data on male perpetrators or female victims, deliberately omitting the data on female perpetrators and male victims.17

In essence, these researchers were being bullied. In fact, Straus published a paper in 2006 that describes not only the intimidation they suffered but also chronicles the specific ways that the feminist researchers made certain that their own data only produced the desired results that reflected the ideology that women were the primary victims of domestic violence.18

The research by Straus, Gelles, Steinmetz, and many others which clearly shows that men are victims has been available through journal articles for years.19   Some activists have drawn from the statistics and findings and tried to use this information to change the system to encourage existing services to include focus on male victims of domestic violence.  When activists make such attempts, they are usually met with the same results most every time:  the domestic violence industry claims that the peer-reviewed research is inaccurate and cites numbers from their own clinical settings, hospital settings, and emergency rooms.  The numbers they cite are very different from the research numbers and clearly show that domestic violence is indeed primarily a “men beat women” problem.  So who is correct?  The quick answer is BOTH.  The research numbers from scientists such as Strauss, Gelles, and Steinmetz are correct from their perspective and from the populations they studied.  These numbers were usually drawn from the general population and reflect the “average” person or family.

But how about the domestic violence agencies numbers?  Well, they are correct also, but one must note that the sample they draw from is very biased.  They draw from a population that has been utilizing services specifically built for women who were abused.  It is little wonder that they would therefore be more likely to show greater numbers of female victims.  Imagine a hospital that was built specifically for the treatment of caucasian diabetics.  When they look at their own numbers and stats they would assuredly say that the majority of victims of diabetes are white!  Since their services are built to serve whites, that is exactly what their stats will show.  One would also assume that they would be teaching in the community about whites and diabetes and also do Public Service Announcements for whites who might have diabetes.  The same thing happens within the domestic violence industry.  The entire system was originally built for women.  The name of the law the Violence Against Women Act makes that very clear.  It is little wonder that the statistics they compile and the research done within the domestic violence industry on their own populations would reflect that women were the primary victims.  You see this idea filter down to the clinical level where almost every group for domestic violence victims in Maryland is for women only.  The treatment groups are almost always built for male perpetrators and female victims. The overwhelming majority of public service announcements on domestic violence are focused on female victims.  When you solicit for a certain type of victim, it is no surprise that your statistics, trainings and treatment will center around that particular type of client.

 

Opposing Voices to the Duluth Model — Clinicians

While the peer-reviewed research has been noting male victims for years, the clinical side of the equation has now started getting noticed.   In 2007, the American Psychiatric Association published an article in the August issue of Psychiatric News titled: “Men Shouldn’t be Overlooked as Victims of Partner Violence.”20  The article cited some of the research findings about women being more likely then men in relationship to initiate domestic violence and focused on issues of reciprocal interpersonal violence versus nonreciprocal violence. Here is a quote from the article:

Regarding perpetration of violence, more women than men (25 percent versus 11 percent) were responsible. In fact, 71 percent of the instigators in nonreciprocal partner violence were women.

And another:

As for physical injury due to intimate partner violence, it was more likely to occur when the violence was reciprocal than nonreciprocal. And while injury was more likely when violence was perpetrated by men, in relationships with reciprocal violence it was the men who were injured more often (25 percent of the time) than were women (20 percent of the time). “This is important as violence perpetrated by women is often seen as not serious,” Whitaker and his group stressed.

The word is getting out that both men and women are perpetrators and victims of domestic violence.

 

Opposing Voices to the Duluth Model — The Courts

The courts are also starting to take notice of the discrimination that men face in the domestic violence industry.  In the Woods et. al. vs California case in 2008, a Superior Court in Sacramento, ruled that male domestic violence victims had been unconstitutionally denied services.  The court held that state laws violated men’s equal protection rights by excluding male victims from state-funded domestic violence services.  The court found: “domestic violence is a serious problem for both women and men” and that “men experience significant levels of domestic violence as victims.”21  The court also found a percentage of state-funded programs deny men services they are entitled to receive.

Then, in October 2009, a West Virginia judge struck down state rules for regulating domestic violence shelters because they operate “on the premise that only men can be batterers and only women can be victims” and “exclude adult and adolescent males from their statutory right to safety and security free from domestic violence based only on their gender.”22

 

Are there men who fall through the cracks?

We have seen how the domestic violence industry has had a history of blaming men and masculinity for domestic violence. This sort of theoretical assumption has a negative impact on the willingness of men to seek help. The men, not unlike the early female victims of domestic violence in the 1970’s who were very reluctant to seek treatment, are certain that no one cares about their situation and are highly unlikely to seek out services when not invited. What compounds this problem for men is that their gender is blamed for the original problem.

We have learned from Maryland State Police statistics that men comprise about 25% of the victims of domestic violence in Maryland.23 What we don’t know is the percentage of males seeking treatment as victims of domestic violence.  In checking with a number of Maryland Domestic Violence agencies, they often say that the number of male victims is very small.  Some of the treatment centers claim that men are only 4% of their clients.  If the State Police count men as 25% of the 20,000 victims of domestic violence recorded annually in Maryland and the agencies that offer treatment for domestic violence say that men are only 4% of the victims that request treatment, that seems to leave a huge number of men who are untreated victims.  It seems likely that a large percentage of the 5000+ men who are reported by State Police as victims of domestic violence in Maryland are falling through the cracks and not getting the help they need and are entitled to as citizens and residents.

What once started as a righteous cause to help battered women has evolved over the years to be something that seems to help battered women but also seems to neglect the needs of violent women and battered men and ignores the imperatives that the fundamental demands our tradition of justice holds dear.  Both the media and academia seem to focus solely on female victims of domestic violence, with a much smaller focus or none at all on male victims.  Researchers doing peer-reviewed research have consistently found evidence that men and women are both victims of domestic violence, but this finding has not been translated to changing the treatment that men receive in domestic violence agencies. Clinical groups such as the American Psychiatric Association are beginning to alert the public and clinicians that men are indeed a sizable percentage of domestic violence victims.  The courts have also started pointing out the discrimination that is present in many domestic violence agencies that treat men and women differently.
This report is not claiming that men are never served through domestic violence agencies in the state of Maryland.  It is however claiming that Maryland’s domestic violence services have traditionally been created for women only and this has a chilling effect on men’s usage of these facilities.

 

A Proposal For Practical Change

There is a domestic violence group named “Safe For All” that offers trainings nationwide and is particularly aware of the many issues around domestic violence, including those of male victims and of people in homosexual relationships, also an under-recognized and under-served group.   Their web address is http://safe4all.org/24 The National Family Law Legislative Resource Center, www.nfvlrc.org25 represents the nation’s leading authorties, clinicians, and researchers on domestic violence and could also offer trainings and consultations.26

Although calls to Maryland shelters and crisis lines to test for discriminatory handling of reports have at the present time not been conducted, there is no question such testing can be conducted and most likely will be conducted in order to support lawsuits similar to the successful ones used in the legal cases in California and West Virginia cited above. The results of such testing in Maryland would likely mirror these results: In a national poll by Clark University, female researchers studied 302 abused men who sought help. Their key findings were that 63.9% of men who called hotlines were told they only helped women, and 68.7% said the hotlines were not at all helpful. Of those that contacted a local domestic violence (shelter) program, 95.3% said the program gave the impression that they were biased against men, 78.3% said they don’t help male victims, and 63.9% suggested the male caller was the batterer. (See; http://clarku.edu/faculty/dhines/results.htm.27 )

Therefore, in order to avoid costly and time-consuming lawsuits, it behooves the State of Maryland to require all domestic violence service organizations that receive pass-through federal funding or state funding of any type to receive training in non-discriminatory but practical approaches and techniques for handling domestic violence cases and suspected or reported cases. Such training is available via the two organizations referenced above, and also from others.

Whether or not gay and heterosexual men represent a small minority, a large minority, or an equal number of such victims as compared to women in the population is immaterial. The State of Maryland  by its policies and procedures is obligated to encourage and support only those organizations that practice inclusion, diversity and non-discrimination. However, not even very large urban areas can financially support “separate but equal” domestic violence facilities and services for men and women. Not only is it not practical, but such a policy does little to combat discrimination and only encourages conflict over funding resources.  1. The purpose of this training is to provide guidance and directives in how to implement a non-discrimination policy in all service areas.  2. As part of this training program, a compliance coordination methodology shall be developed to assure that the non-discrimination policy is being carried out by agencies who participated in the training. 3. The training will provide cost-effective, implementable, and practical steps that each agency or organization can take to eliminate discrimination and incorporate gender and sexual orientation inclusive policies.

We respectfully request the Office of The Governor to immediately begin the implementation of such a training program.

 

 

REFERENCES

1 One example is the Allstate page <http://www.clicktoempower.org/> linked from the Maryland Network Against Domestic Violence (MNADV) web page that rightly claims that 3 women each day (actually it is closer to 4) die of domestic violence in the United States. They fail to mention that nearly 2 men die each day due to being murdered by their female partner. This is a glaring omission. In 2007 1640 women were murdered by their male intimates and 700 men were murdered by their female partners. http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/index.cfm?ty=tp&tid=971 Why are the male victims omitted?

2 “Prevalence, Incidence, and Consequences of Violence Against Women: Findings From the National Violence Against Women Survey | National Institute of Justice.” Office of Justice Programs. N.p., n.d. Web. 20 Dec. 2009. <http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/nij/pubs-sum/172837.htm>.

3 “Family Violence.” National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges . N.p., n.d. Web. 18 Dec. 2009. <www.ncjfcj.org/content/view/20/94/>.

4 “National Coalition Against Domestic Violence.” National Coalition Against Domestic Violence. N.p., n.d. Web. 20 Dec. 2009. <http://www.ncadv.org/learn/TheProblem.php>.

5 “Domestic Violence Facts: Maryland.” National Coalition Against Domestic Violence. N.p., n.d. Web. 18 Dec. 2009. <www.ncadv.org/files/Maryland.pdf>.

6 “Maryland Network Against Domestic Violence (MNADV).” Maryland Network Against Domestic Violence (MNADV). N.p., n.d. Web. 20 Dec. 2009. <http://mnadv.org/DV_Stats/ucr_stats.html>.

7  Whitaker, Daniel. “Differences in Frequency of Violence and Reported Injury Between Relationships With Reciprocal and Nonreciprocal Intimate Partner Violence.” Journal of Public Health 97.May (2007): 941-947. Print.

8  Ibid.

9  Ibid.

10 Pence E. Some thoughts on philosophy. In Shepard M and Pence E (eds.): Coordinating Community Responses to Domestic Violence: Lessons from Duluth and Beyond. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publishers, 1999, p. 30.

11  McNeely, R. L., Cook,  P. W. & Torres, J. B.  (2001).  Is domestic violence a gender issue or a human issue?  Journal of Human Behavior in the Social Environment, 4 (4), 227-251.

12  “Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) – Intimate partner violence.” Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) . N.p., n.d. Web. 12 Jan. 2010. <http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/index.cfm?ty=tp&tid=971>.

13 Paymar, Michael, and Ellen Pence. Education Groups for Men Who Batter: The Duluth Model. 1 ed. New York: Springer Publishing Company, 1993. Print.

14 Graves, Tom. Power and Response-ability: the human side of systems. London: Tetradian, 2008. Print.

15 Domestic Abuse Intervention Programs, Home of the Duluth Model.” Domestic Abuse Intervention Programs, Home of the Duluth Model. N.p., n.d. Web. 20 Dec. 2009. <http://www.theduluthmodel.org/wheelgallery.php>.

16 Gelles, Richard J., and Murray Straus. Behind Closed Doors: Violence in the American Family. New Ed ed. New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 2006. Print.

17 “Processes Explaining the Concealment and Distortion of Evidence on Gender Symetry in Partner Violence.” University of New Hampshire. N.p., n.d. Web.18 Dec. 2009. <pubpages.unh.edu/~mas2/V74-gender-symmetry-with-gramham-Kevan-Method%208-.pdf>.

18 Ibid.

19 “REFERENCES EXAMINING ASSAULTS BY WOMEN ON THEIR SPOUSES OR MALE PARTNERS: AN ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY.” California State University, Long Beach. N.p., n.d. Web. 20 Dec. 2009. <http://www.csulb.edu/~mfiebert/assault.htm>.

20 Arehart-Treichel, Joan. “Men Shouldn’t Be Overlooked as Victims of Partner Violence.” APA Psychiatric News 42.15 (2007): 31-33. Print.

21  “Appeals court decision supports battered men.” San Francisco Bay Area — News, Sports, Business, Entertainment, Classifieds: SFGate. N.p., n.d. Web. 20 Dec. 2009. <http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/10/15/BA3S13HOLS.DTL>.

22 Press, The Associated. “W.Va. domestic-violence program regulations voided  – News – The Charleston Gazette – West Virginia News and Sports.” – – The Charleston Gazette – West Virginia News and Sports. N.p., n.d. Web. 20 Dec. 2009. <http://www.wvgazette.com/News/200910080509>.

23 “Maryland Network Against Domestic Violence (MNADV).” Maryland Network Against Domestic Violence (MNADV). N.p., n.d. Web. 18 Dec. 2009. <http://www.mnadv.org/DV_Stats/ucr_stats.html>.

24 “Welcome!.” Stop Abuse for Everyone. N.p., n.d. Web. 18 Dec. 2009. <safe4all.org>.

25 Robinson, Michael. “National Family Violence Legislative Resource Center.” National Family Violence Legislative Resource Center. N.p., n.d. Web. 15 Jan. 2010. <http://www.nfvlrc.org/>.

26 Please consult with the Chairman or Vice-Chairman of the Maryland Commission for Men’s Health for more information on these organizations.

27 “Results from Study on Men’s Experiences of Partner Aggression.” Clark University | One of 40 “Colleges that Change Lives”. N.p., n.d. Web. 15 Jan. 2010. <http://clarku.edu/faculty/dhines/results.htm>.

 
community logo
Join the MenAreGood Community
To read more articles like this, sign up and join my community today
0
What else you may like…
Videos
Podcasts
Posts
Articles
tgolden@tgolden
3 hours ago
Bias Against Men and Boys in Mental Health Research

This video is a summary of the three studies we have examined the last three Saturdays. It’s a brief and relaxed look at the high points of those articles. Here’s a summary:

This video examines a pattern I’ve seen repeatedly in psychological research: when data complicates the familiar story of men as perpetrators and women as victims, the data about boys and men often disappears. Using three real studies—on teen dating violence, reproductive coercion, and “masculine norms”—I walk through how boys’ suffering is minimized, misrepresented, or erased as research moves from full reports to media headlines and public policy. What emerges is not just sloppy science, but a troubling bias that shapes how we see boys, men, and masculinity itself.

00:10:31
Reply
tgolden@tgolden
November 19, 2025
The Relentless War on Masculinity

Happy International Men's Day! It's a perfect day to acknowledge the relentless war on masculinity? Here we go!

In this video I sit down with four people I deeply respect to talk about a book I think is going to matter: The Relentless War on Masculinity: When Will It End? by David Maywald.

Joining me are:

Dr. Jim Nuzzo – health researcher from Perth and author of The Nuzzo Letter, who’s been quietly but steadily documenting how men’s health is sidelined.

Dr. Hannah Spier – an anti-feminist psychiatrist (yes, you heard that right) and creator of Psychobabble, who pulls no punches about female accountability and the mental-health system.

Lisa Britton – writer for Evie Magazine and other outlets, one of the few women bringing men’s issues into women’s media and mainstream conversation.

David Maywald – husband, father of a son and a daughter, long-time advocate for boys’ education and men’s wellbeing, and now author of The Relentless War on Masculinity.

We talk about why David wrote this book ...

01:05:19
Reply
tgolden@tgolden
November 17, 2025
Cancel Culture with a Vengeance

Universities and media love to brand themselves as champions of free speech and open debate. But what happens when those same institutions quietly use legal tools to gag and erase the very people who challenge their orthodoxies?

In this conversation, I’m joined by two of my favorite thinkers, Dr. Janice Fiamengo and Dr. Stephen Baskerville, to dig into a darker layer beneath “cancel culture.” We start from the case of Dr. James Nuzzo, whose FOIA request exposed a coordinated effort by colleagues and administrators to push him out rather than debate his research, and then go much deeper.

Stephen explains how non-disclosure agreements, non-disparagement clauses, and mandatory arbitration have become a hidden system of censorship in universities, Christian colleges, and even media outlets—silencing dissenters, shielding institutions from scrutiny, and quietly stripping people of their practical First Amendment rights. Janice adds her own experience with gag orders and human rights complaints, and ...

00:57:23
Reply
tgolden@tgolden
February 07, 2023
The Way Boys Play and the Biological Underpinnings

My apologies for the last empty post. My mistake. Let's hope this one works.

Tom takes a stab at using the podcast function. Let's see how it goes.

The Way Boys Play and the Biological Underpinnings
Reply
tgolden@tgolden
May 13, 2022
Boys and Rough Play

This is a short excerpt from Helping Mothers be Closer to their Sons. The book was meant for single mothers who really don't know much about boy's nature. They also don't have a man in the house who can stand up for the boy and his unique nature. It tries to give them some ideas about how boys and girls are different. This excerpt is about play behaviors.

Boys and Rough Play
Reply
JuanGoodman@JuanGoodman
12 hours ago

A Gay woman explaining women and its very insightful!

Reply
JuanGoodman@JuanGoodman
December 19, 2025

https://www.facebook.com/share/v/1FJbbqPRde/?mibextid=wwXIfr

It’s sad that it’s is this way. But she is right.

Reply
JuanGoodman@JuanGoodman
December 13, 2025

She is right and it’s going to happen

Reply
tgolden@tgolden
December 18, 2025
post photo preview
Men's Strengths Are Treated as Flaws
Why the Masculine Way Keeps Getting Misunderstood

 


Why the Masculine Way Keeps Getting Misunderstood

I’ve been thinking lately about men and the quiet burden they carry in today’s world.
Not just the obvious burdens — responsibility, provision, protection — but something deeper and harder to name.

It’s the burden of being misunderstood in the very places where men are strongest.

And I don’t mean misunderstood in a poetic way. I mean misinterpreted, pathologized, and often dismissed — simply because men do things differently than women.

You see this most clearly with emotions. Men have a distinct, consistent way of handling feelings. It’s not random, and it’s not a flaw — it’s a pattern rooted in biology, social roles, and testosterone. But rather than recognizing these differences, the modern lens tends to treat the male way as “deficient.”

Women talk to process.
Men act or withdraw to process.

Women regulate through expression.
Men regulate through doing.

Yet the male way is almost never acknowledged as legitimate. Instead, it’s measured against a female template — and found wanting.

And once you see this pattern, you start noticing it everywhere.

1. Emotional Life: Men as “Defective Women”

We tell men that their way of dealing with emotion is wrong. Not just different — wrong.

When men get quiet, we call it “shutting down.”
When they problem-solve as a way to soothe themselves, we call it “fixing instead of feeling.”
When they regulate through solitude, we call it “avoidance.”

In other words, men are told they’re unhealthy if they don’t process emotions like women.

The absurdity is breathtaking: the male way of processing emotion works — and has worked across millennia. But because it doesn’t resemble the female way, it’s treated as defective.

2. Fatherhood: The Strengths That No One Sees

The same pattern shows up in fatherhood.

Fathers do certain things instinctively:

  • Rough-and-tumble play

  • Boundary-setting

  • Encouraging independence

  • Pushing challenge and risk in manageable doses

All of these have strong empirical backing as enormously beneficial for children, especially boys.

But fathers rarely get credit. Instead, their natural strengths are reframed as:

  • Too rough

  • Too distant

  • Not nurturing enough

  • Not “tuned in”

  • Toxic

Meanwhile the mothering style — relational, verbal, protective — becomes the default standard, and fathering is viewed as a flawed version of mothering.

But fathering isn’t “mom minus something.”
It’s a different, vital system.

3. Communication: Male Directness Pathologized

Men tend to speak more directly.
Shorter sentences.
Less emotional detail.
More focus on solutions, hierarchy, and efficiency.

This is not inferior communication — it’s optimized communication for male social structure and cooperation.

But in mixed-sex environments it’s often framed as:

  • Cold

  • Abrupt

  • Lacking empathy

  • Emotionally immature

Men’s communication works beautifully in the settings it evolved for — teams, tasks, crisis response, collaboration. But again, the female style becomes the gold standard, and the male style becomes the pathology.

4. Stress Responses: Women “Tend and Befriend,” Men “Fight, Focus, and Fix”

Shelly Taylor described how women handle stress: connect, talk, seek support.

Men, however, tend to:

  • Narrow their focus

  • Move toward action

  • Systemize

  • Get quiet

  • Scan for solutions

This is not emotional deficiency — it’s biology. Testosterone, competition, and precarious manhood all channel men toward action in the face of stress.

And these responses are what make men effective in crisis-intensive fields: firefighting, military, surgery, rescue work, engineering, construction.

But instead of recognizing this, the male stress response is labeled as repression.

Again: men measured by a female template.

5. Moral Psychology: Duty Recast as Toxicity

Men have a moral framework built around:

  • Duty

  • Sacrifice

  • Responsibility

  • Endurance

  • Protection

These are profoundly other-focused values — the moral foundation that keeps families and communities standing.

And yet today, we reframe these as:

  • Stoicism = unhealthy

  • Duty = patriarchy

  • Provision = control

  • Protection = toxic chivalry

The very virtues that once held society together have become targets.

6. Male Social Structure: Hierarchies Seen as Oppression

Male friendship and bonding grow out of:

  • Shared tasks

  • Friendly competition

  • Banter

  • Hierarchies based on competence

  • Cooperative shoulder to shoulder action

These are healthy, functional systems.

But modern culture calls them:

  • Bullying

  • Toxic

  • Aggressive

  • Immature

  • Exclusionary

Even hierarchies — which men rely on to keep group conflict down — are reframed as power structures that must be dismantled.

7. Male Sexuality: Normalized for Women, Pathologized for Men

Women’s sexuality is described as relational, emotional, expressive.

Men’s is described as:

  • Dangerous

  • Primitive

  • Immature

  • Objectifying

Men’s sexual wiring — visual, compartmentalized, spontaneous — is treated as a moral failing rather than a normal biological pattern.

Once again, the female pattern is the normative human pattern.
The male pattern is a deviation from health.

The Pattern Underneath It All

Here’s the core insight:

Any domain where men differ from women is reinterpreted as a domain where men are deficient.

If women communicate one way, that becomes the “healthy” style.
If women grieve one way, that becomes the “healthy” style.
If women bond one way, that becomes the “healthy” style.
If women parent one way, that becomes the “healthy” style.

Men become defective humans rather than fully developed men.

This is gynocentrism at its quietest but most powerful: the female mode becomes the normative template for being a good person, a good partner, a good parent, even a good human.

And anything that lies outside that template is viewed as suspect.

Why This Matters

Because men internalize it.
They feel awkward, confused and even ashamed of the very strengths that once grounded them.

  • The father who plays rough feels judged.

  • The man who gets quiet under stress feels broken.

  • The husband who solves problems instead of emoting feels scolded.

  • The young boy who competes or wrestles is told he’s aggressive.

  • The man who expresses duty is told he’s part of a system of oppression.

The message is everywhere:

“Be less of yourself.”
“Do it the women’s way.”
“Your instincts are suspect.”
“Your strengths are flaws.”

And the result?
Men stop trusting their nature.
And when men distrust their nature, they lose their anchor.

And we all lose something essential.

But Here’s the Truth

Men’s ways are not just legitimate.
They are necessary.

For families.
For communities.
For society.
For children.
For order and safety.
For stability.
For love.

We don’t need men to be more like women.
We need men to be fully and unapologetically men — and to be recognized for the good they bring.

And that starts with saying clearly and without hesitation:

Men’s ways aren’t deficiencies.
They’re strengths — and we should honor them.

Men Are Good!

Read full Article
Reply
tgolden@tgolden
December 15, 2025
post photo preview
Did CNN Lie About Boys?
The Study That Was Twisted: How CNN Turned “Exposure” Into “Toxic Masculinity”


The Study That Was Twisted: How CNN Turned “Exposure” Into “Toxic Masculinity”

In October, 2025, CNN ran a commentary by communication professor Kara Alaimo claiming that boys exposed to “digital masculinity” online have lower self-esteem, are lonelier, and that such content fuels offline violence against women. The problem? None of that is what the data actually show.

Alaimo based her argument on a Common Sense Media survey titled “Boys in the Digital Wild: Online Culture, Identity, and Well-Being.” After reading both the CNN piece and the full 88-page report, the contrast couldn’t be sharper. What she presented as a story of crisis looks, in the actual data, like a story of ordinary adolescent life — with a few predictable patterns and a lot of healthy boys.

What the Survey Really Found

The 2025 report surveyed 1,017 boys ages 11–17 across the U.S., asking about their online habits, exposure to “masculinity-related” content (posts about fighting, fitness, dating, or making money), and indicators of well-being such as self-esteem and loneliness.

Here are the key numbers:

  • 86 % of boys with “high exposure” ​to masculine themed content had normal self-esteem. Only 14 % showed low self-esteem — a small minority.

  • Over half reported feeling belonging and liking who they are online.

  • 68 % said this content “just appeared” in their feeds; they weren’t seeking it.

  • “Boys still embrace caring behaviors, with 62% believing in being friendly even to those who are unfriendly to them, 55% putting others’ needs before their own, and 51% caring about others’ feelings more than their own.”

  • Strong offline mentorship predicted the healthiest outcomes.

  • Fathers ranked highest as the most admired and trusted role models — more than celebrities, influencers, or athletes — showing that boys still look to their dads for guidance and identity.


In short, the majority of boys are fine. A small group shows some struggles. The strongest predictor of resilience isn’t censorship or re-education — it’s healthy offline relationships.

What the Survey Didn’t Measur​e

This part matters most: The survey never asked whether boys believed or endorsed the content they saw. It only asked if they had encountered it. Exposure does not equal endorsement.

Seeing a video about boxing, entrepreneurship, or dating advice says nothing about whether a boy admires or rejects it. Yet Alaimo’s article blurs that crucial distinction. She assumes that viewing equals internalizing — that the algorithm shows, and the boy obeys. That’s not science; it’s projection.

How CNN Distorted the Findings

Alaimo’s piece takes mild statistical associations and turns them into moral certainties. Here’s how:

  • What the report actually said: 86 % of high-exposure boys did not have low self-esteem.

  • What CNN claimed: “Boys with higher exposure have lower self-esteem and are lonelier.”

  • Why that’s misleading: It turns a small correlation into a blanket statement.

Here’s the image from the survey:

 

Note that the study itself said most boys had healthy self-esteem, and that 14% of high-exposure boys reported low self-esteem—which means 86% did not. Alaimo’s claim would have been accurate if she had written that a slightly higher percentage of high-exposure boys reported low self-esteem compared to moderate- and low-exposure groups. But she didn’t. Instead, she stated flatly that high-exposure boys have lower self-esteem. That isn’t honest reporting—it’s a distortion that misleads readers into believing the data showed something it didn’t. Here’s the quote from the CNN article:

 

She did the same thing with the loneliness issue. The survey showed that 70% of high exposure boys were not shown to be lonely. But this didn’t keep Alaimo from claiming that higher exposure to masculine content made boys more lonely. Here’s the graphic from the survey:

 

In another part of the article Alaimo says the following:

 

When you follow the link she labels as “my research,” there’s no actual study showing that negative messages about women and girls cause offline violence. The link leads instead to another article summarizing her opinions on the topic. While she refers vaguely to a “wide body of research,” none of the studies she mentions establish a causal connection between online content and real-world violence against women. In fact, the evidence she cites is general research on media violence, not on misogyny or social media behavior.

Alaimo seems intent on frightening parents into believing that if their sons spend time online, they’ll absorb misogyny like secondhand smoke—emerging damaged, insecure, and primed for violence against women. It’s a manipulative narrative built on fear, not evidence. What parent wouldn’t feel alarmed by such a claim? And yet, that fear is precisely the tool being used to steer boys away from open spaces where they might think and speak freely.

Here are some more distortions:

• What the researchers cautioned: “The study cannot prove causation.”
→ What CNN implied: Digital masculinity causes low self-esteem—and even violence against women.
→ Why that’s misleading: It ignores the study’s explicit caveats.

• What the study measured: Exposure, not belief.
→ What CNN wrote: As though boys automatically absorbed misogynistic messages.
→ Why that’s misleading: It substitutes ideology for data.

• What the report also noted: Online spaces provide connection, belonging, and skill-building.
→ What CNN left out: The most positive findings.
→ Why that’s misleading: It works to create a one-sided moral panic.

What the Study Actually Emphasized

The Common Sense Media team didn’t call for censorship or surveillance. Their conclusion was strikingly balanced:

“With thoughtful intervention from parents, educators, policymakers, and industry, we can help boys navigate these digital environments while maintaining the human connections essential to their well-being.”

In other words, mentorship matters most. They recommend encouraging offline friendships, sports, robotics, and other group activities — spaces where boys can build confidence and identity without online distortion.

Alaimo’s takeaway? By the end of the article, she does encourage offline group activities—but the damage was already done. Readers were left with the clear impression that the manosphere is a dangerous place. This fits neatly with what appears to be her larger goal: to discourage parents from allowing boys to engage with those online spaces and to steer them back toward environments where the narrative is safely controlled.

A Pattern of Ideological Storytelling

This is not the first time feminist commentary has blurred the line between seeing and believing, between association and causation.

It’s part of a broader cultural reflex: assume that anything linked to masculinity must be toxic. When an adolescent boy shows interest in strength, competition, or success, the narrative pathologizes it as “hypermasculine.”

But strength, drive, and mastery are not dangerous traits. They are the same impulses that lead boys to protect, to build, and to grow — when guided by good mentors.

The Real Story: Boys Need Connection, Not Correction

What the data actually tell us is simple and deeply human:
Boys are online, yes. Some of what they see is rough, crude, or confusing. But most are fine. What they need most are adults — fathers, coaches, teachers, uncles, community leaders — who can talk with them about what they see, help them think critically, and model a balanced kind of strength.

When commentators like Kara Alaimo twist research into another attack on masculinity, they don’t protect boys — they alienate them further. They feed the very disconnection the data warn against.

Bottom Line

The Common Sense Media report offers a nuanced view of how boys navigate digital life. The CNN piece that claimed to summarize it turned that nuance into ideology.

The study: “Most boys are doing fine; let’s support them.”
The article: “Masculinity is toxic; it’s making boys and women unsafe.”

That’s not journalism. It’s advocacy in disguise — and it’s time readers started calling it what it is.

Why Feminist Commentators Fear the Manosphere

When CNN commentator Kara Alaimo warned that “digital masculinity” is harming boys, her real anxiety wasn’t about boys at all. It was about control.

The loss of gatekeeping power

For decades, feminist scholars and journalists held near-total control over how gender was discussed in mainstream culture. University departments, newsrooms, and social-media policy boards all spoke from the same script: masculinity is a problem to be corrected; feminism is the solution.

Then the internet happened. Podcasts, YouTube channels, Substack pages, and online forums created an uncontrolled space where men could speak to one another about purpose, rejection, fatherhood, meaning​ and a host of other topics that were forbidden in traditional places. Some of those voices are clumsy or angry, but many are thoughtful and compassionate—addressing needs the establishment had ignored.

To academics like Alaimo, that independence looks like rebellion. What she calls “the manosphere” isn’t a hate movement; it’s a marketplace of ideas she can’t supervise.

Shaming as a tool of control

When direct censorship fails, moral shaming becomes the fallback. The labels—toxic, dangerous, extremist—are meant to end the conversation before it starts.
Alaimo’s CNN piece is a textbook case: she takes a mild statistical correlation from a Common Sense Media survey and turns it into a moral warning that “masculinity online” makes boys lonely and violent.

This isn’t social science; it’s social conditioning. The goal is to make boys feel guilty for showing interest in strength, fitness, or ambition—traits that once defined healthy manhood. Curiosity becomes complicity. Click on a video about discipline, and you’re suddenly part of a “radicalization pipeline.” It also sends a message to parents that they need to control their boys online activity or face his loneliness, low self-esteem, and violence.

Projection and double standards

What often goes unnoticed is how these writers display the very hostility they accuse men of harboring. They generalize, moralize, and treat half the population as a threat in need of supervision. When men question feminist orthodoxy, it’s labeled hate. When women condemn men collectively, it’s celebrated as activism.

This double standard isn’t born of hatred so much as fear—the fear of losing moral authority. The manosphere’s unforgivable sin isn’t misogyny; it’s disobedience.

The real reason the manosphere exists

Men aren’t gathering online to plot against women. They’re doing it because they’ve been shut out of the cultural conversation. Schools tell them they’re privileged; therapy often tells them they’re defective; the media tells them they’re dangerous. The online world, for all its rough edges, at least lets them talk back.

The healthiest parts of that space offer something our institutions once did naturally: mentorship, brotherhood, challenge, and purpose. Those are not extremist ideas—they’re human needs.

What this panic reveals

When writers like Kara Alaimo insist that masculinity itself is the problem, they reveal more about their ideology than about boys. The panic over “digital masculinity” is the sound of a monopoly losing its grip. As soon as men can define themselves without approval from the establishment, the establishment cries harm.

But the truth is simpler: boys are searching for models of competence and belonging, and they have every right to look for them wherever they’re found.

The path forward

We don’t need another crusade against masculinity. We need more honest conversation—without the gatekeepers, without the shame, and without the moral panic. Let the data speak, let the boys speak, and let men continue the long-overdue work of reclaiming a healthy sense of who they are.

M​en and Boys are Good

Read full Article
Reply
tgolden@tgolden
December 13, 2025
post photo preview
Changing the Norms to fit the Narrative: CMNI
Bias Against Men and Boys in Psychological Research

(written in 2010) This is the final post in this series examining how science has been bent to serve a false narrative. According to ResearchGate, this particular article has been cited 299 times — placing it among the most frequently referenced works of its kind. In other words, it has helped spread a great deal of misleading propaganda about men under the guise of research. Keep that in mind as you read how it was constructed.

_________________________________________



Changing the Norms to fit the Narrative: CMNI


The last study we will examine in this series will be the Conformity to Masculine Norms Inventory (CMNI). (Development of the Conformity to Masculine Norms Inventory published in Psychology of Men & Masculinity, Vol 4(1), Jan 2003, 3-25.)7

This inventory purports to measure the conformity or lack of conformity to what it considers the masculine norms for this culture.

The first problem I see in this inventory is that the norms they have chosen as being masculine norms don’t seem like norms at all. Here’s a list of what this inventory considers masculine norms:

Power Over Women
Violence
Disdain for Homosexuals
Playboy
Winning
Emotional Control
Risk-Taking
Self-Reliance
Primacy of Work
Pursuit of Status
Dominance

It’s the first four that I find most off target, Power over Women, Violence, Disdain for Homosexuals, and Playboy. I just can’t see them as masculine norms for our culture. These four actually seem more like negative stereotypes which is hardly the sort of thing that will be effective in a professional inventory. My initial reaction was to think this inventory is painting masculinity in a very poor light. These “norms” are clearly negatively charged and not what one would expect. Why would any inventory choose such negatively charged words? Are they claiming these are generic masculine norms? The study clearly states that it is studying the reaction to the masculine norms of the dominant culture of the US. It says:

The inventory was constructed to assess the extent that an individual male conforms or does not conform to the actions, thoughts, and feelings that reflect masculinity norms in the dominant culture in US society. (page 5 Development of the Conformity to Masculine Norms Inventory)

This sounds very much like they are examining generic norms. The article also states:

Gender norms also operate when people observe what most men or women do in social situations, are told what is acceptable or unacceptable behavior for men or women, and observe how popular men or women act (page 3, Development of the Conformity to Masculine Norms Inventory).

So they are claiming that violence, power over women, disdain for homosexuals and being a playboy are all norms in the US and men are encouraged to act out these behaviors? That seems to be a very outlandish claim given that the norms for men are usually based on the ideas of provide and protect. Many normative messages received by males include things like “never hit a girl” or some other imperative that says the opposite to what this inventory is claiming are cultural masculine norms.

The CMNI is not claiming to study some arcane aspect to masculine norms but instead is stating they are interested in the basic masculine norms as described above. That is pretty straight forward but the researcher throws in another twist and claims that the norms the inventory wants to study are only the norms of white heterosexual middle and upper class males. The reasoning, according to this researcher, is that these white males are the “dominant” group and other males would be affected by this dominant group. So this inventory is not just about male norms for the United States, it is specifically about white heterosexual middle and upper class male norms. Here’s the explanation from the article:

“The construct was chosen because Mahalik (the researcher) posited the gender role norms from the most dominant or powerful group in a society affect the experiences of persons in that group, as well as persons in all other groups. Thus, the expectations of masculinity as constructed by Caucasian, middle- and upper-class heterosexuals should affect members of that group and every other male in U.S. society who is held up to those standards and experiences acceptance or rejection from the majority, in part, based on adherence to the powerful group’s masculinity norms.” (page 5-6 Development of the Conformity to Masculine Norms Inventory)

This inventory seems to assume that white heterosexual male middle class norms impact the rest of men in our culture. This seems a bit off to me when you look at the sorts of things that young men are looking up to and emulating. It seems to me that hip hop, word choices, language styles, and dress styles, and behaviors of black males are having a greater impact on young men then stuffy middle class and upper class whites. Furthermore, aren’t the rates of violent crimes much higher for blacks than whites? Aren’t the violent crime rates for lower socioeconomic groups much higher than the middle and upper class? If this is correct why are they ascribing violence as a prominent norms for middle and upper class white males? It doesn’t add up.

So this inventory clearly states that it is not attempting to gauge the norms of all men, it is looking to isolate the norms of a very specific group, the white heterosexual middle and upper class males of the US and then labels them in a very negative fashion. This is beginning to remind me of the way white males are isolated on TV as being recipients of bashing and shaming and sidesteps the problem of voicing any sort of negative comments about women, gays, blacks or other minority males.

Let’s have a look at the four categories that seem most ill placed in this inventory.

1. Violence

Is violence a masculine norm? I don’t think so. In 2008 99.82% of men in the United States were not arrested for a violent crime. That leaves about .18% who were. Very far from being a norm. Of the men you know how many are violent? How about your father, brother, nephews or other male relatives, are they violent? Probably not. And if they were, do you look up to their violent behavior? Do they model what you would like to be? Saying violence is a masculine norm in this culture shows a hateful attitude towards men and masculinity. In actuality, violence occurs when the role for men breaks down. Men’s roles have traditionally been to provide and protect. Are men sometimes violent while protecting others? Yes. But that is far from lumping all men into a norm of violence. Yes, some men can be violent, but no, violence is not a descriptor of men in general and to imply that violence is a norm for men goes beyond being anti-male and moves into being a hateful attitude toward men and masculinity.

Just imagine that we are creating a scale of norms for women. We know that women commit child abuse more often than men and that women initiate violence in intimate relationships more often than men.4 Knowing this, should we add to our norm scale that women are child and spouse abusers? Or that women are violent? Of course not, and anyone who tried to do this would be laughed at. Only a small percentage of women abuse children or initiate domestic violence. In 2001 243,000 women were labelled child abusers by HHS. Out of the population at the time of about 143 million women that comes out to about .17%. That is about the same percentage abusers per capita as there were males convicted of violent crimes and yet we wouldn’t dream of saying child abuse was a norm for women would we? Of course not. So why is it that no one objects when researchers try the same thing on men and even boys? This double standard, I suggest, is a strong indicator of misandry.

Disdain for Gay People

Some men and some women surely have disdain for gay people, but is this even close to being a defining characteristic of masculinity? Again, if this were about women, the offenders would be thought of as witless. The idea that most men have disdain for homosexuals is simply nutty. Implying or outright claiming that this sort of characteristic is representative of a birth group is again misandrist.

Power over Women

The norm of power over women is as perplexing as the previous two. Where is the data showing that most men have a tendency to want power over women or that that behavior is frequent enough to consider it a norm? I could find nothing to support this. This may indeed be the case in a tiny minority not unlike the female child abusers mentioned above, but hardly the frequency to call it normative. There are likely some men who do want power over women, just like there were indeed some men who were violent, but I see no reason to believe that most men do. Making a claim that one birth group wants power over the other birth group seems to be on very shaky ground. It seems to me that this is just another way to shame and stereotype men. Again, there is no evidence to support such a claim.

Playboy

Is playboy a norm for men? It seems like the same problem with this one as with all the others. Yes, some men are interested in continuous and multiple relationships and behave in a way that would be consonant with the playboy role but is that the norm for men? I don’t think it is even close.

I wrote to the creator of this inventory, James Mahalik, and asked him about these four “norms” and the reasons for their inclusion in this inventory. He referred me to the journal article being discussed here and claimed the article might explain this for me. I went back and re-read it. I was not surprised to see that the only reference to how these norms may have appeared was a list of articles dating from 1975-1995 that Mahalik claimed were used for his search of the literature. One of those he cited was a book by I. M. Harris written in 1995 and titled “Messages Men Hear: Constructing Masculinities.”9 I found this book and discovered that “Playboy” was one of the roles the book mentioned. It was one of four roles under the category of men’s ways of loving. The other three in that category were “breadwinner, faithful husband and nurturer.” Each of those sounded complimentary as opposed to playboy which seemed more judgmental. As I went through the book I found that the book’s author stated that the playboy role was only chosen by 1% of the men surveyed as their dominant role. This leaves us with the obvious question of why would Mahalik choose playboy as a norm when the source he claims to have used to find those norms listed playboy as a very infrequent choice for men? It just didn’t add up and it looks very suspicious.

These four “norms” violence, power over women, playboy, and disdain for homosexuality seemed to pass harsh judgment on men and boys and seemed much more like stereotypes than norms. But questions arose in my mind. Was I overreacting? More specifically, had no one done this before? Was naming norms of men as being very negative new or was it a continuation of earlier research? To answer this question I pulled together examples of words that had been used as norms for men during the period of 1974 to 2003 and the CMNI. The chart below offers examples of the terms that have been used to describe masculine norms.

men-bias chart
 

Notice that the norms that were used prior to 1990 seem to be neutral. Examples included competency, level headed, independence, aggressive, forceful, suppressing emotion, willing to take a stand, assertive, and self-contained. All of these could be seen as being close to neutral with some like “level headed” or “self-confident” seeming even a bit complimentary. Someone could have some of any of these qualities, like some aggressiveness, some forcefulness or some assertiveness and depending on the situation would be considered okay. Now think of having some violence. Nope, you can’t even have a little bit of that before you are judged harshly. Same thing with power over women, playboy or disdain for homosexuals. A little bit of any of those and you are sunk. These four categories from the CMNI seem quite different from all of those from 1970-1986.

The Shift in Thinking

Why would any academic psychological inventory be willing to place such negative labels on a birth group in this manner? In order to even partially answer that question we will need to momentarily divert our attention away from this inventory and take a quick look at the ideological shift that has occurred since the late 20th century in the academic psychological community.

Prior to the 1980’s the psychological community thought of sex roles in terms of traits. Men and women were seen as different but not seen in terms of one being better or worse then the other. The trait theory was in its heyday and different traits were assigned to each sex. Norms such as strong and aggressive went to the men’s column, norms such as nice and nurturing went into the women’s column. Very simple and obviously inadequate as a measure of both masculinity and femininity. After the 1980’s feminist writings started gaining influence in the academic study of men and masculinity. It’s not a big surprise that with this shift men/masculinity started being seen as “the problem.” Prior to this time men and masculinity had been seen as a group of traits, now this perception shifted and instead men and “masculinity” starts catching blame for the world’s ills. I know that is hard to believe but it is true. Feminism, which had found men to blame through “patriarchy” for many of women’s problems now was beginning to become dominant in the discourse about men and masculinity. One of the influential writers in the late 20th century was feminist R W Connell. It was in the mid 1980’s that Connell began writing about “hegemonic” masculinity. Connell’s book on Masculinities and specifically hegemonic masculinity came out in 1995 and was considered a top resource by academic psychologists on the study of masculinities. Since that time these ideas about hegemonic masculinity have become entrenched into academic psychology. But just what does Connell mean by hegemonic masculinity? According to an article in the Journal of Clinical Psychology in 2005 Connell defines hegemonic masculinity as “the dominant notion of masculinity in a particular context which serves as a standard upon which the “real man” is defined. Connell claims it is built on two legs, one being the domination of women and the other the hierarchy of intermale dominance. It is also shaped to a lesser extent by the stigmatization of homosexuality.”

Now in the academic psychology world masculinity through its perceived domination is seen as THE problem. We have gone from an overly simplistic trait view to an even more overly simplistic view of masculinity as being bad, as being responsible, as being the problem. It is amazing to me that so many educated people can take such a misandrist viewpoint. Masculinity is obviously very complex, there are multiple models pushing multiple norms, some violent, some peaceful, some yin and some yang. “Never hit a girl” or “girls first” were surely messages that most boys received loud and clear. But they were among many. It is very complex and to try and boil it down to men being bad seems incredibly simple minded. So many different voices it is preposterous to claim that only one very negative voice defines the masculinity that all other males will follow.

It is worthwhile noting that R W Connell changed sexes from male to female in 2006. He was Robert W Connell and then became Raewyn W Connell. I have heard that Connell went to a professional conference after this change and presented a paper as a woman, Raewyn Connell, without giving any sort of notification to many of his peers of his profound change. I understand there were more than a few dropped jaws at the professional meeting. Yes, what many academic psychologists believe about masculinity was drawn directly from the writing of someone who at best had an ambivalent perception of what it is to be a male. Someone who decided to cease being male. Hard to see this viewpoint as anything near fair and balanced.

Apparently academic psychologists in the U.S. have taken Connell’s theories of hegemonic masculinity and siphoned out the negative traits and distilled it down to what they now call “Toxic Masculinity” which is characterized by: ruthless competition, violent domination, inability to express emotions other than anger, unwillingness to admit weakness or dependency, devaluation of women and all feminine attributes in men, and homophobia.

It should be getting more clear about the origin of those four categories of the CMNI. (Violence, Power over women, Disdain for Homosexuality and Playboy) They are the basis to the ideas of hegemonic and/or toxic masculinity. It seems that Mahalik must have liked the idea of hegemonic masculinity and toxic masculinity and liked them so much that he just inserted those into his inventory as norms not because there was any research that backed up those choices, but because they were the foundation of the latest and hottest theory among his peers.

I can personally testify that the ideas of toxic masculinity are alive and well in the American Psychological Association’s one place to study men and masculinity, APA’s Division 51. It’s a hotbed of feminism and attachment to the ideas of toxic masculinity. I was on the mailing list for this group for some time (until I was unceremoniously tossed out) and was continually shocked at the adherence to these ideas. The basic unvarnished theory is that masculinity is the source of our problems and that men need to learn to be more mature which is “code” for men need to act more like women. One of the list members actually wrote a message where he stated just that. Men needed to be more mature like women and the world would immediately improve! This is the primitive feminist lens through which they see the world. They don’t even seem the least bit aware of the ideas and psychological theories around mature masculinity. Here is what the mission statement of the APA group that studies men and masculinity says:

“Acknowledges its historical debt to feminist-inspired scholarship on gender, and commits itself to the support of groups such as women, gays, lesbians and people of color that have been uniquely oppressed by the gender/class/race system.”

I don’t mind professionals being interested in this or that theory but what I do mind is when that theory becomes a sacred cow which limits open discussion. On the mailing list of Division 51 feminism was that sacred cow. It was highly discouraged to question anything about feminism. It was also not a good idea to make any references to possible biological factors in masculinity, or to consider men worthy of choice and compassion. None of those flew very well. Actually a man, a PhD, was banned from the list for bringing up male victims of domestic violence too many times. Hard to believe but in the wacky wonderland of the feminist Division 51 it is totally true.

During my time on this list I would receive emails from other list members who did not post to the list but wanted me to know that they appreciated my willingness to question the feminist ideas and stand up for boys and men. They all said the same thing. “I wish I could post to the list and support you but I fear for my professional career.” They were worried that the bullies on the list, which included a number of very prominent psychologists, would blackball them. This tells the story of this list. It is run by bullies who try and force messages to the list to conform to the feminist standard. Many list members are very aware of their power and simply lay low.

It is of critical importance that every person interested in the MHRM knows that our professional psychological community routinely blames men and boys and expects them to change and be more like women in order for the world to advance. Much of the research being done has this underlying attitude as do the “experts” that are called on by the mainstream media, and also many of those who are doing therapy with men and women. It will take a great effort to expose the misandry that is embedded in their ideas and related practices. The more these ideas can be challenged publicly the better. We need our helping professionals to have concern and love for both sexes, not just one.

Now that we have a better idea of the origins for these four categories let’s get back and take a look at more of the ways that misandry underlies this inventory.

The Focus Groups

How had Mahalik come up with these categories? Were variables such as “power over women” and ”violence” pulled out of thin air, from the ideas of toxic masculinity, or was there some other rationale behind their selection? Had there been any attempt to choose norms that fit with white heterosexual men of all age across the United States? The article states that the researcher first reviewed the professional literature on masculine norms and then started two focus groups to discuss and refine them.

The groups met for 90 minutes each week for 8 months with the researcher. The curious part of this is that of the nine people in these two focus groups, only 3 were white men! Five of the nine were women. Here is the demographic composition of each focus group: (Group 1) 1 Asian American man, 1 European American man, 2 European American women; (Group 2) 2 European American men, 2 European American women, 1 Haitian Canadian woman.

Notice that men are in the minority and that white men make up only 1/3 of those in these focus groups. Importantly, white men are in the minority even within each focus group. This is odd, to say the least, considering that the overtly claimed goal was to develop norms of European American men. Why include so many women? Why have the group that you want to study be the minority? I started to wonder if the researcher had some pre-conceived ideas that he wanted to propagate. I wondered if having too many men and especially too many white men, after all, might foil his attempt to plant the seeds of his favored ideology? Who knows but it is a gaping question why white males were so underrepresented.

To see the absurdity of having white males be only 1/3rd of the focus group participants let’s try an exercise. Imagine that the same researcher is studying African American norms. He puts together focus groups to try and refine these norms. He has 3 African Americans, 4 whites, 1 Korean, and 1 Hispanic. These nine people form two focus groups where the African Americans are in the minority of both groups. It’s simple to see how that could be considered racist and intentionally marginalizing African Americans. It’s simple to see that groups such as that would be less likely to come up with an accurate representation of norms for African Americans than a group that solely consisted of African Americans might be able to provide. I hope it is also simple to see the misandry of this researcher’s using a minority of white males in the focus groups.

It’s worth noting that these focus groups included only grad students in counseling psychology. According to an e-mail from Mahalik, moreover, all were in their mid-20s. In a nutshell, the groups lacked diversity in age. Hardly the sort of group one would want to make decisions about the norms for all ages of white American boys and men.

Inventing the CMNI, supposedly an academic enterprise, were young men and women who relied on their own moral and ideological judgments about masculine norms. A better name for the result would be the Conformity to Adolescent Masculine Norms Inventory. Some of the conclusions that it presupposes do make sense when applied to immature and adolescent boys. Middle school boys may exhibit similar sorts of immature behavior. In some ways that is normative for that age group. Perhaps the authors are simply unaware of and have little experience with the mature masculine? We simply don’t know that at this point. What we do know is that the inventory, whatever its origin, is misandrist.

Mahalik also created an inventory for women, the Conformity to Feminine Norms Inventory. It gives us a way to understand the CMNI more deeply by comparing it to the related CFNI. That is what we will do next.

CFNI Female Conformity to Norms Inventory

When I first saw the CNMI, I was a shocked at the misandrist content but wondered if that was merely a millennial shift for the 21st century toward examining the shadowy, unconscious aspects of life. That thought was dashed, though, when I saw the companion inventory for this the CFNI (Conformity to Femininity Norms Inventory), which the same researcher had created. I wondered if this version, for women, would contain similarly negative and judgmental “norms” for them. Would it refer to gossip, relational violence, the queen bee, or the gold digger as norms? What I found was that these norms were almost completely positive, all sugar and spice. Here is a list of them:

nice in relationships
thinness
modesty
domestic care for children
romantic relationship
sexual fidelity
investment in appearance.

All of these “norms” are either flattering to women or neutral. There is not a hint of judgment towards women in the naming of these feminine norms. All of them could be manifested robustly without causing harsh judgments. A woman could invest greatly in her appearance and be very concerned about her sexual fidelity or children or her modesty and she would be considered fine and dandy by our culture’s standards. Contrast this with the men’s “norms” such as violence where even a little of that “norm” is a horrible thing that deserves scorn and harsh judgment. I won’t argue if these feminine norms are right or wrong, only that they are distinctly different from the norms for the men and are much more positive and non threatening towards women.

It seemed to me that the researchers were reluctant or even afraid to make any negative claims about traditional feminine norms. Even more interesting was the way in which Mahalik established these norms for women. He created focus groups, as he had done for men, but this time he included students of only one sex, only women. These focus groups had a wider range of ages, moreover, and included middle-age women. The mean age was 32 with a standard deviation of 10 years. This means that most of the group members were likely between 18-46. Indeed, the women were asked to join not two but five focus groups. Several groups included mainly young women. Two included adult women from the community. Unlike the male focus groups, these represented more than the adolescent population. Somehow Mahalik switched gears and only chose women for the focus groups for the CFNI. I wonder what sort of reaction might have come if women were in the minority of each of the five focus groups?

Comparing the CMNI and CFNI

Both inventories used focus groups to refine the norms that would be used. In the masculine version (CMNI) the focus groups included many women. In its counterpart, the feminine version (CFNI), these groups included only women. One would think that if you wanted to get a clear idea of the norms of a group you would want members of the group under study to make those assessments. To create a group deliberately with most members coming from outside the group almost defies explanation. I e-mailed Mahalik about this. He never responded directly to my question.

Focus groups for the CFNI had a greater age range than those for the CMNI. It is easy to assume that the older women would have a markedly different perspective on feminine norms from that of the younger women. The younger men and women in focus groups on masculine norms would be likely to have a very similar perspective: that of an adolescent.

The two inventories contained remarkably different “norms,” with the masculine ones being negative and judgmental and the feminine ones either flattering (despite being, according to feminists, inconvenient) or neutral. Why didn’t the feminine norms include any negative stereotypes, just as the masculine ones did? I found a hint about the reasons behind this from Mahalik in a section of the journal article about the CFNI.

In addition, because the CFNI is intended to measure conformity to traditional norms of femininity in the U.S., we thought it should also relate to women’s development of a feminist identity. In describing women’s feminist identity development, Downing and Roush (1985) proposed a five-stage model in which the first stage, passive acceptance, reflects acceptance of traditional European American, North American, gender roles, beliefs that men are superior to women, and that these roles are advantageous. The second stage, revelation, is in response to a crisis or crises that lead women to question traditional gender roles and to have concomitant feelings of anger toward men. Sometimes women in this stage also feel guilty because of how they may have contributed to their own and other women’s oppression in the past. The third stage, embeddedness-emanation, reflects feelings of connection to other women, cautious interactions with men, and development of a more relativistic frame of life. The fourth stage, synthesis, is when women develop a positive feminist identity and are able to transcend traditional gender roles. (page 425 Conformity to Feminine Norms Inventory)

This quotation is very different from my earlier one about the culpability of white men. The women are described as developing a “feminist identity” and learning that they have been living in a world that oppresses them. This is the first time identity has been connected to social norms and is only found in the CFNI, not in the men’s CMNI. The women are told that men and their traditional roles are what has been holding them back because of the belief that women are inferior. It is clear that the researchers frame women as “good” and in need of space to grow while at the same time framing men as “not good” and needing to change. It is also worth noting that good is now conflated with victim in the CFNI. The assumption is that women are inherently good, and this goodness manifests more robustly when they can transcend the oppression they have suffered at the hands of males. This creates a picture of a good human being who is perpetually victimized by “the way things are.” It is this sort of characterization that allows feminists to paint women as good and also in need of protection and special services. Sadly these two inventories boil down to the creaky dichotomy between good women and evil men. Cartoons, in short, have made their way into academia. Let’s just look briefly at the norms chosen for women and the norms chosen for men and compare the two:

Screen Shot 2013-09-18 at 3.34.48 PM
 

I am going to avoid comparing these and will leave it to the reader to draw their own conclusions. I will say that the Nursery Rhyme for each seems to describe the contents fairly well. How far have we come since the days of Nursery Rhymes?

It was obvious to me that a part of the misandry of this inventory was in the choice of names for the different categories. But it dawned on me to examine whether the actual questions on the CMNI were connected to the names. The first one I thought of was disdain for homosexuality. I found myself wondering what questions you could ask in a questionnaire such as the CMNI that would allow you to determine if someone truly had disdain for homosexuals. I found the actual questions of the CMNI and guessed at which ones were related to the disdain for homosexuality category. You will see them below:
5. It is important to me that people think I am heterosexual
16. Being thought of as gay is not a bad thing
23. I make sure that people think I am heterosexual
37. I would be furious if someone thought I was gay
42. It would not bother me at all if someone thought I was gay
51. It would be awful if people thought I was gay
63. I like having gay friends
73. I would feel uncomfortable if someone thought I was gay
80. If someone thought I was gay, I would not argue with them about it
91. I try to avoid being perceived as gay

Each of those questions seems to ask about a man’s worry and fear over being seen as gay. Please note that none of them are remotely related to a man’s “disdain” for homosexuals. Disdain is defined as having to do with contempt, scorn, or some might even say hatred. But do those questions in any way evaluate the respondents contempt, scorn or hatred? I would say no, but somehow the researcher seems to ask that series of questions and then label those who answer that they are indeed fearful of being seen as gay that they have disdain for homosexuality. This is ridiculous. Someone can be afraid of tigers and not hate them. They can be afraid of lightning and not hate it. The two are very different and this is one more example of this inventory’s questionable construction. It seems to me that it would be like asking a group of people if they were afraid of bumblebees and then labeling them bumblebee haters if they answered that they were afraid.

Yet another questionable part of this inventory can be seen when we compare the questions of the CMNI with those of the CFNI. If we look at the questions for the Playboy section of the CMNI and compare it to the questions in the Sexual Fidelity portion of the CFNI we find that the two sections have almost identical questions. Here they are:

PLAYBOY - CMNI
3. If I could, I would frequently change sexual partners
13. An emotional bond with a partner is the best part of sex
28. If I could, I would date a lot of different people
33. I would only have sex if I was in a committed relationship
38. I only get romantically involved with one person
47. I would feel good if I had many sexual partners
58. Long term relationships are better than casual sexual encounters
66. Emotional involvement should be avoided when having sex
83. A person shouldn’t get tied down to dating just one person
90. I would only be satisfied with sex if there was an emotional bond

SEXUAL FIDELITY - CFNI
4. I would feel extremely ashamed if I had many sexual partners
21. I prefer long-term relationships to casual sexual ones
29. I would feel guilty if I had a one-night stand
39. It is not necessary to be in a committed relationship to have sex
47. I would feel comfortable having casual sex
50. Being in a romantic relationship is important
56. I frequently change sexual partners
65. I would only have sex with the person I love
67. When I have a romantic relationship, I enjoy focusing my energies on it
72. It would be enjoyable to date more than one person at a time
78. I would only have sex if I was in a committed relationship like marriage

Some of the questions are exactly the same and some are simply worded differently but are asking very similar sorts of things. But the titles are very different. Calling one of these categories sexual fidelity and the other playboy seems very suspect. Why not call them both what they are, an assessment of sexual fidelity? Either call them both sexual fidelity or change the female title to something that matches the playboy title. What is a female who has lots of relationships called? Well, a hussy or a slut. Name it sluts and playboys! I bet that would have gone over very big with the feminists but the playboy label doesn’t seem to draw much ire does it?

Conclusion

It seems clear that misandry is embedded in this inventory. When I wrote messages on the APA mailing list for men and masculinity that questioned this inventory and pointed out many of the things you have seen in this article I was told that there was no misandry. I think this article clearly shows their claims are indeed false. There is misandry in this inventory and it is clear for all to see. That these professionals were unable to admit to this is yet more proof of the academic psychological community being enablers of females and feminism in the worst sort of way. The problems started as feminist writing and thought started to influence the thinking of psychologists. This resulted in the adoption of feminist thinking about men which then resulted in rigid and misandrist attitudes about men and the resulting misandry we see placed in this inventory. I simply can’t see any other explanation for the willingness to lump an entire birth group into such negative categories. If this sort of thing were done to any other group of people, the result would be immediate negative reactions from the groups involved and the press with multiple calls for apologies. However, when it is done to men we hear nothing of the sort. The problem can be likened to an ideological infestation. It is not merely popular culture, which everyone likes to attack, but also elite culture—that of academics, lawyers, politicians, social workers—and psychologists. We need to move to a point where we can see both men and women, masculine and feminine as having positive and negative qualities and learn to value each individual. We have a long way to go. You can help things along by speaking out.

Final Word on This Series

The three research articles that have been discussed in this series have one thing in common. They all rely on an ideological assumption, which the researchers try to bolster and confirm. In the process, they ignore the needs of men and boys by heaping contempt, either implicitly or explicitly, on masculinity, maleness or both. In the first study, on teen dating violence the questionnaires offered convincing data that boys were victims. But the researchers ignored that. Instead, they relied on a preferred ideology, one that assumes the primacy of female victims and therefore (despite the non sequitur) the primacy of their need for more care than male victims (if, so goes the argument, there are any male victims at all). In the second study we examined on reproductive coercion, researchers relied on the ideological belief that women are victims and men perpetrators, and their study showed just that, but they used an impoverished population that in no way generalizes to the population at large. Even though the researchers were aware of this limitation, the press release and articles by journalists ignored this limitation and treated the study as if it were indeed generalized. This was a huge boon for those researchers who wanted to “spread the word” of their chosen ideology. I can hear them saying, “Well, it was not exactly portrayed correctly but, you know, it was for a good cause.” In other words, the end justifies the means. Then the third article on the CMNI showed distinct signs of misandry in psychological research. The researcher believes that masculinity, or at least the version of masculinity that he considers prevalent in our society, is to blame for our problems. Consequently, the CMNI becomes a way of promoting an ideology.

The problem is that these researchers are standing science on its head. Real science requires astute and unbiased observers, who are eager to find the truth wherever the search leads them. This stands in stark contrast to ideologically based “studies” that use science as a means to some political end. This is very dangerous, in my opinion, but not enough people are aware of what is happening. Confidence in scholarship must be earned, continually, by scholars themselves. Even my confidence in my own field has declined. Scholars must be vigilant and not allow those who grind political axes to promote their own ideologies in the name of scholarship. But that’s not all. Journalists, too, must wake up. In fact, everyone must participate in the renewal of intellectual and moral integrity in academe.

Men Are Good.

REFERENCES

One of the best summaries of the ways that misandry is found in current psychological research is found in Appendix Three of Nathanson’s and Young’s Legalizing Misandry. The title of that appendix is “Misleading the Public: Statistics Abuse”

1. Nathanson, Paul & Young, Katherine R. (2001), Spreading Misandry: The Teaching of Contempt for Men in Popular Culture, Harper Paperbacks, Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, ISBN 9780773530997
2. Nathanson, Paul & Young, Katherine R. (2006), Legalizing Misandry: From Public Shame to Systemic Discrimination against Men, Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, ISBN 9780773528628
3. Fiebert Bibliography which contains abstracts of over 150 studies many of which show that women initiate domestic violence at a greater rate than men
4. August 3, 2007 American Psychiatric Association article pointing out that among violent couples women were more often the aggressors. (See the image below)
5. Archer, J. (2000). Sex differences in aggression between heterosexual partners: A meta-analytic review. Psychological Bulletin, 126, 651-680. (Meta-analyses of sex differences in physical aggression indicate that women were more likely than men to “use one or more acts of physical aggression and to use such acts more frequently.” In terms of injuries, women were somewhat more likely to be injured, and analyses reveal that 62% of those injured were women.)
6. This page is a Montgomery County Maryland sponsored page which falsely claims that men are over 95% of the perpetrators of domestic violence. This page has recently been edited and moved. see the original image below.
7.Mahalik, J.R., Locke, B., Ludlow, L., Diemer, M., Scott, R.P.J., Gottfreid, M., Freitas, G. (2003). Development of the Conformity to Masculine Norms Inventory. Psychology of Men and Masculinity, 4, 3-25.
8. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services statistics on child abuse/murder, This page has been moved. Here is a jpg of the original chart.
9. Harris, Ian. Messages Men Hear: Constructing Masculinities (Gender, Change and Society)Taylor and Francis, 1995.

 
 
Read full Article
Reply
See More
Available on mobile and TV devices
google store google store app store app store
google store google store app tv store app tv store amazon store amazon store roku store roku store
Powered by Locals