Maryland Commission for Men's Health Report on Domestic Violence (2010)

MenAreGood

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>.

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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

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

tgolden@tgolden

October 02, 2025

Father Custody: The Solution to Injustices Against Men?

In this conversation, I sit down with Stephen Baskerville and Rick Bradford to explore a provocative idea: could father custody be the key to addressing many of the injustices men face? Both men are leading experts in this area, and together they examine some fascinating angles. One insight is that the legal contract of marriage doesn’t just unite two people — it’s also the mechanism that legally creates fathers. Yet when that contract is dissolved through divorce, the law often strips fathers of their rights, reducing them to mere “visitors” in their children’s lives. This and much more is unpacked in our discussion.

We also point to Rick’s and Stephen’s books (linked below) and to AI tools that allow you to interact with their work directly. (also linked below)

If you’ve ever wondered why custody is such a defining issue — not just for fathers but for the future of men’s rights and well-being — this dialogue offers insights you won’t want to miss.

Men are good, as are you.

Books...

01:18:10

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.

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.

JuanGoodman@JuanGoodman

December 06, 2025

This video does a convincing job of connecting the lie of women’s weakness is a continuation from Victorian times.

JuanGoodman@JuanGoodman

November 30, 2025

She is a Dr Urologist. But her take and advice is better than anything the mental health industry has shown me so far. Every boy man young and old should see this. A 10 out of 10!!!

JuanGoodman@JuanGoodman

November 19, 2025

This guy is really laying it out. Great stuff.

tgolden@tgolden

1 hour ago

Changing the Norms to fit the Narrative: CMNI

Bias Against Men and Boys in Psychological Research

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.

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tgolden@tgolden

December 08, 2025

Is the UN the Global Amplifier of Gynocentrism?

For decades the United Nations has described gender equality as one of its core missions. But when you look closely at where the money goes, what the campaigns say, and who the programs serve, a simple pattern appears:

“Gender equality” at the UN means women’s advancement—not equality for both sexes.

A structure built for one side

The UN has an entire agency, UN Women, whose mandate is “the empowerment of women and girls.”
There is no equivalent body for men and boys—no UN Men, no program for male mental health, no dedicated fund for fathers, male victims of violence, or boys falling behind in school.

The budget lines and organizational charts make that bias plain:

The UN Trust Fund to End Violence Against Women describes itself as “the only global grant mechanism exclusively focused on ending violence against women and girls.”
There is no parallel trust fund for male victims.
UN Women’s “UNiTE” campaign calls for ending digital violence against women and girls.
Men’s victimization online—equally common according to Pew Research—doesn’t exist in that narrative.
UNDP’s Gender Equality Strategy reports success by counting “nearly 300 million women reached” and by helping nations “stop violence against women.”
Men and boys appear only as partners to help women.
UNICEF’s Gender Policy 2021–2030 centers “the empowerment of girls and women.”
Men and boys are mentioned mainly as positive role models in families, not as potential victims.

Across the system, the beneficiaries are female; the helpers are male.

Where men are finally noticed

There are small exceptions—almost all in war zones.

UN reports on conflict-related sexual violence acknowledge that “men and boys have also been victims.” The Children and Armed Conflict office has even published a piece titled “Hidden Victims: Sexual Violence Against Boys and Men in Conflict.” But those admissions stay confined to the battlefield. They never migrate into the UN’s global gender architecture, where billions in aid and advocacy focus on women alone.

Why that matters

When one of the world’s leading moral authority treats one sex’s suffering as routine and the other’s as invisible, the effects cascade downward:

Governments model their own policies on UN frameworks.
Media outlets echo UN language when reporting violence or inequality.
NGOs compete for funding by aligning with “safe” causes—those that serve women and girls.

The result is an institutional feedback loop of gynocentrism—a worldview that instinctively prioritizes women’s welfare and treats male hardship as either self-inflicted or irrelevant.

What real equality would look like

If the UN truly meant gender equality, it would:

Collect sex-disaggregated data on all victims of violence and harassment.
Fund services for male victims alongside female ones.
Acknowledge boys’ educational decline as a global crisis, not a footnote.
Retire one-sex language (“women and girls”) from documents that claim to speak for gender equality.
Create a UN Office for Men and Boys to parallel UN Women.

Those steps wouldn’t reduce concern for women—they’d complete it. Because equality that only travels one way isn’t equality at all.

Conclusion

What we see here isn’t an accident or an oversight. It’s the inevitable outcome of a worldview that equates “gender” with “female.” Every policy, campaign, and funding stream reinforces the same moral reflex: women deserve compassion and resources, men deserve correction and silence. The UN’s gender architecture has become a mirror of our cultural blind spot—a system that praises itself for “equality” while institutionalizing exclusion. The language may sound noble, but the practice reveals something else entirely. The UN has become the global amplifier of gynocentrism—broadcasting a one-sided empathy that shapes governments, media, and public consciousness around the world. Until that changes, “gender equality” will remain a slogan that hides a profound inequality.

I want to commend the work of Ed Bartlett’s DAVIA on the issue of the UN’s failure (links to over 50 press releases about the UN’s misandry) to address the needs of boys and men and promoting the 12 Global Disparities faced by men and boys. Jim Nuzzo has also done some great work on this issue. Examples are here and here.

Sources: UN Women Strategic Plan 2022–2025; UNDP Gender Equality Strategy 2022–2025; UNICEF Gender Policy 2021–2030; UN Trust Fund Annual Reports 2022–2024; UN reports on conflict-related sexual violence (OHCHR, CAAC).

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tgolden@tgolden

December 06, 2025

Reproductive Coercion and Research Omissions

4 – Bias Against Men and Boys in Psychological Research

This post is the second in a three-part series that followed How Feminist Researchers Lied. Although these pieces were written some time ago, they remain just as relevant today.

The study examined here focuses on “reproductive coercion” — and it’s a striking example of how researchers can deliberately mislead. Incredibly, it makes the preposterous claim that men are the ones “poking holes in condoms.” Despite its weak foundation, the study received massive coverage in the mainstream media and has undoubtedly shaped public perception, reinforcing yet another false narrative about men.

Read on to see how they managed to spin this.
______________________________________________

I was browsing on the web and happened to read an article about a study on “Reproductive Coercion.” As I read it I was amazed at the sorts of statistics that the study was quoting. One article said that 53% of women surveyed had experienced violence in her relationships. “Wow” I thought, thatʼs over half of the respondents. Thatʼs quite a few. I read on and other stats were quoted that were equally shocking. I began to wonder about how they got such alarming statistics.

My interest was stimulated and I started searching for articles on this research. There were plenty. One from Newsweek, one from Science News Daily, one from Medical News Today, one from EScience News, one from the LA Times and others. They all made similar claims about this study and often used the same quotes and the same statistics. I kept looking for more articles thinking that with statistics as strong as these that there must be something unusual here. I wondered if their sample was biased in some way or perhaps the way they had defined their terms had inflated the numbers. About the tenth article I found was one from the college newspaper of the lead researcher in the study. The publication was called “The Aggie” and was the student paper for the University of California, Davis. That article included something that the others had omitted. The Aggie article said that the survey was done on an “impoverished” population of African American and Hispanic females. It went on to say that the study should not be generalized:

“The five clinics surveyed were in impoverished neighborhoods with Latinas and African Americans comprising two-thirds of the respondents.

The results are expected to be applicable to reproductive health clinics in demographically poor areas. Researchers cannot estimate if surveys at private gynecologists would produce similar results.”

Suddenly the results started to make more sense. We know that lower socio-economic levels tend to show much higher levels of interpersonal violence (IPV). One DOJ report shows that women with lower income levels are almost three times more likely to experience relationship violence than those with higher incomes. We know that women in rental housing are also three times more likely to experience IPV than those in homes that they own. By studying a sample that was impoverished it dramatically increased the likelihood of finding higher rates of IPV.

Then I started to wonder. How was it that all of the national media articles which had obviously been seen by millions of people had missed the sample being of impoverished African American and Hispanic females? I started to think that the media was simply not doing their homework and that their readers were getting fed misinformation as a result.

I decided at that point to obtain a copy of the study. I went to the online site for the Journal Contraception which had published the original article and purchased a copy. I read it. By the end I was shocked. There was no mention in the journal article of the socio-economic status of the sample that had been surveyed. No mention of whether they were rich or poor. I had to catch myself because I had earlier assumed that it was the media not doing their homework and simply not reading the journal article. But now it was a completely different situation. The information had been omitted from the journal article. How could that be? This was an article that had 7 researchers named as co-authors. It had to have been read and edited over and over again. How could it be that something so basic would have been left out?

I decided to write to the lead researcher Dr Elizabeth Miller. I sent her an email and asked about the sample. I told her that I had read the article in the Aggie that had mentioned that the sample was “impoverished” African American and Hispanic females and I was interested to know if this was correct or if the Aggie had made a mistake. She wrote me back a very pleasant email in several days apologizing for taking so long to get back to me and saying that yes, the Aggie was correct that the sample was largely disadvantaged African American and Hispanic females. I wrote her back very quickly and asked why that information had not been mentioned in the journal article. I also asked if she was concerned about the national media articles that never mentioned the fact that the sample was impoverished and seemed to be erroneously implying that the study could generalize to the population at large. She wrote me back once but has never offered any answers to those questions.

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At that point I contacted Gabrielle Grow, the author of the Aggie article and congratulated her on a job well done. I asked her how she had found out about the sample being “impoverished.” She told me that it was just one of the questions that she had asked the researchers in the interview. I wrote her back and congratulated her again and explained to her that all of the national articles including Newsweek, LA Times, Science News Daily, EScience News, Medical News Today and others had all missed that important bit of information. Ms Grow was the only reporter that asked the important question.

But why did the national news media not ask the same question? This is an important question and we really donʼt know the answer at this point. What we do know is the study issued a press release about the research findings and never mentioned the sample being largely a poor population. They also made no mention of the fact which is referenced in their study that this sort of population has higher reports of IPV thus creating inflated responses when compared to the general population. It made no mention that the study should be applicable only to other poor neighborhoods. Reading the press release one might easily assume that the study applied to everyone.

Here are just a few of the points the press release made:

1. Men use coercion and birth control sabotage to cause their partners to become pregnant against their wills.

2. Young women and teenage girls often face efforts by male partners to sabotage their birth control or coerce or pressure them to become pregnant – including by damaging condoms and destroying contraceptives.

3. Fifty-three percent of respondents said they had experienced physical or sexual violence from an intimate partner.

4. Male partners actively attempt to promote pregnancy against the will of their female partners.

With no mention in the press release that the studyʼs sample was largely indigent African American and Hispanic females one could get the impression from reading it that the study might apply to the general population. Even though the researchers when asked by Ms Grow, admitted that the study should only be applied to the poor. One can only assume that the researchers failed not only to mention this important information in the press release but also didnʼt offer this to the media in any of the interviews. Actually there was very little information offered that might have discouraged the media from playing this as a study about men and women in general.

This is obvious when you look at the headlines and quotes from various news articles. Here is a sampling:

NEWSWEEK

“What we’re seeing is that, in the larger scheme of violence against women and girls, it is another way to maintain control,” says Miller.”
“The man is taking away a woman’s power to decide she’s not going to have a child.”

LA Times

“Reproductive coercion is a factor in unintended pregnancies”
“Young women even report that their boyfriends sabotage birth control to get them pregnant.”

ScienceDaily

“Over half the respondents — 53 percent — said they had experienced physical or sexual violence from an intimate partner.”
“The study also highlights the importance of working with young men to prevent both violence against female partners and coercion around pregnancy.”

Physorg

“Approximately one in five young women said they experienced pregnancy coercion”

ESCIENCE NEWS

“Young women and teenage girls often face efforts by male partners to sabotage birth control or coerce pregnancy — including damaging condoms and destroying contraceptives”

INSCIENCES

“This study highlights an under-recognized phenomenon where male partners actively attempt to promote pregnancy against the will of their female partners,” said lead study author Elizabeth Miller, a

Medical News Today

Headline – Physical or Sexual Violence Often Accompanies Reproductive Coercion

End Abuse . org

“It finds that young women and teenage girls often face efforts by male partners to sabotage their birth control or coerce or pressure them to become pregnant – including by damaging condoms and destroying contraceptives.”

What do these quotes and headlines have in common? They all sound as if the study in question applies to the general population of men and women, boys and girls. The circulation of Newsweek is 2.7 million so just from that source alone a great many people have been given the impression that men in general will tend to coerce women in general to get pregnant.

The first level is the research paper itself. The Contraception Journal was obviously read by many, especially other researchers. Then the next level is the national media that wrote stories about the study. We saw above some of the sorts of misrepresentations that were common from the national media articles. But things go even further. Once the journal article is published and then the media articles follow there is a third wave that hits: the blogs. When end users hear this sort of thing they take it a step farther. Here are just a few examples of what happens:

Hereʼs a headline from a blog:

Crazy, Condom-Puncturing Control Freaks Are Often Men

So we have gone from omitting the nature of the sample to the printing of articles in the national media that implicate men in general and once this happens the end users at the blogs take that information and exaggerate it much farther. Hereʼs another example:

There is a new study which discusses a horribly prevalent but rarely discussed form of intimate partner violence: reproductive coercion.

So we have gone from low income Black and Hispanic females claiming to be coerced to making global pronouncements about reproductive coercion being “horribly prevalent.” Right. Those crazy condom puncturing control freaks are part of a horribly prevalent pattern.

It doesnʼt take much imagination to see the next step of a dinner table discussion of this issue. The daughter announces at the table that it is men who puncture condoms and force women into pregnancy. Mom tells her that that couldnʼt be and the daughter pulls up a link to the blog and then to the Newsweek article. Dad is still unimpressed until she pulls up a link to the study which partially verifies her false claim. All at the table are convinced now it is the men in general who are coercing women into pregnancy.

This is the way memes get started. A “research” article tells half the story and the partial data is misinterpreted unknowingly by the media who then pass on the half story as truth to unwitting millions who hear the medias version and their claim that it is research driven and the public is sold. It must be true! This is of course what happened with domestic violence. Early feminist researchers only told half the story, that women were victims of domestic violence and men were perpetrators. The media simply passed on the story to millions and the rest is history. We have a general public who is convinced that it is only women who are victims of domestic violence.

The scientific method is very clear. You create a hypothesis and find a way to test it. You then carefully sift though the test data and account for the data that affirms your hypothesis and importantly account for the data that conflicts with your hypothesis. What has happened over and over from feminist researchers is simply ignoring the data that conflicts with your hypothesis (male victims) and focusing solely on that data that confirms your ideology (female victims). Interestingly in this study the researchers failed to ask the subjects if they had also coerced their male partners. They only asked the questions that would provide them with the “acceptable” answers.

In the study examined in this article the researchers seem to have “forgotten” to remind the media of the limitations of their sample. In a similar fashion to the first study, the press release seems to have been used to steer the data. One could assume that leaving out the nature of the sample was an honest mistake. If so, I would have expected Dr Miller to respond to my email asking about the omission of the nature of the sample. But she did not. This leaves us not knowing if the mistake was or was not intentional.

Perhaps we will never know. I know what my guess is. Whatʼs yours?

Men Are Good

The Research https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20227548/

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