Misogynist Myth for Today: “There are as many abusive women as abusive men. Abused men are invisible because they are ashamed to tell.”
Nov 24th, 2008 by admin
One of the best, most feminist, most woman-centered books I have ever read is the book Why Does He Do That? Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men, by Lundy Bancroft (who is a man). Bancroft has worked with abusive men for over two decades and this book is one result. His book is dedicated to the “thousands of courageous women, many of them survivors of abuse themselves, who have created and sustained the movement against the abuse of women, and to the many men who have joined this struggle as allies.”
The myth that there are “as many abusive women as abusive men,” and that men are just “afraid or ashamed to tell” is just that, a myth. It is sheer, misogynist nonsense, but very destructive nonsense. I thought what Bancroft writes about this myth is so good that I would post it here. I’m going to be posting other excerpts as well in the days to come.
There certainly are some women who treat their male partners badly, berating them, calling them names, attempting to control them. The negative impact on these men’s lives can be considerable. But do we see men whose self-esteem is gradually destroyed through this process? Do we see men whose progress in school or in their careers grinds to a halt because of the constant criticism and undermining? Where are the men whose partners are forcing them to have unwanted sex? Where are the men who are fleeing to shelters in fear for their lives? How about the ones who try to get to a phone to call for help but the women block their way or cut the line? The reason we don’t see these men is simple: They’re rare.
I don’t question how embarrassing it would be for a man to come forward and admit that a woman is abusing him. But don’t underestimate how humiliated a woman feels when she reveals abuse; women crave dignity just as much as men do. If shame stopped people from coming forward, no one would tell.
Even if abused men didn’t want to come forward, they would have been discovered by now. Neighbors don’t turn a deaf ear to abuse the way they might have ten or twenty years ago. Now, when people hear screaming, objects smashing against walls, loud slaps landing on skin, they call the police. Among my physically abusive clients, nearly one third have been arrested as a result of a call to police that came from someone other than the abused woman. If there were millions of cowed, trembling men out there, the police would be finding them. Abusive men commonly like to play the role of victim, and most men who claim to be “battered men” are actually the perpetrators of violence, not the victims.
In their efforts to adopt victim status, my clients try to exaggerate their partners’ verbal power. “Sure, I can win a physical fight, but she is much better with her mouth than I am so it balances out.” (One very violent man said in his group session, “She stabs me through the heart with her words,” to justify the fact that he had stabbed his partner in the chest with a knife.) But abuse is not a battle you win by being better at expressing yourself. You win it by being better at sarcasm, put downs, twisting everything around backwards, and using other tactics of control– an arena in which my clients win hands down over their partners, just as they do in a violent altercation. Who can beat an abuser at his own game?
I hear and see, still, the pervading myth that women who are beaten by their husbands drove them to it, in some way or other. She deserved it. Had it coming. Any man would have done the same. Justified.
I also doubt men are taking the beatings to protect their children, the way women do, putting her body between the physically abusive man and the child until she can find some way out. If she can find some way out.
Usually, I would say the majority of the time, words are all she has, even in these so-called enlightened times.
OT Heart: have you watched Antonia’s line yet? In that movie, Antonia, the matriarch, delivers a curse against men who rape. You want to hear it.
Sis, Antonia’s Line is among my all-time favorite movies EVER and I keep intending to buy it.
I posted part of Antonia’s curse in a post here a while back about the Colorado gunman who broke into a high school classroom and sexually assaulted and killed the girl students:
“If I had it in me to kill someone
I would kill you.
Instead, I’ll curse you.
And my curse will haunt you forever.
If you ever return, my curse will savage you to death.
If you return,
my hate will destroy you.
For the rape of a child.”
Brings tears to my eyes, just reposting it.
Thanks Heart for this snippet.
Somehow loses a lot when not delivered by a shotgun toting Antonia, eyes narrowed, teeth clenched, with the lengthy and colourful curse spat out at the rapist in her guttural Dutch dialect. The director Gorris is brilliant with this film. I have watched it over and over to see what she is doing. It is the definitive radical feminist film statement.
I wish this curse could be Youtubed. I predict women would send it out millions of times. I would like to see the idea of curse rejeuvenated, especially, for abused women.
Libraries have this film. But hey, it might be available on Freecycle too!
Yes I too have lost count of the innumerable times misogynistic myth is told or written which claims ‘women are equally as violent as men towards their partners.’ Despite decades of evidence clearly showing this is a myth still society believes this myth. Only recently whilst watching a BBC television report on male terrorism against female partners (only it was called domestic violence) the reporter claimed men were abused in equal numbers by their female partners. The reporter did not state where this claim originated instead he treated it as fact!
Perhaps the BBC reporter and management need to read Lundy Bancoft’s book but I doubt this would make any difference. Patriarchy is determined to promote myth of men being abused in equal or near equal numbers as fact. Even when we demand evidence this is met with claims ‘but men are too afraid to report their abuse because they feel such shame at not having prevented female partner from abusing them.’
Yet as Bancroft rightly states I do not read or hear evidence of innumerable numbers or men claiming their self-esteem has been destroyed or they are totally ground down by having to endure innumerable physical, psychological and sexual attacks made by their female partners. Instead what I do constantly hear are excuses, denials and justifications for men’s violence against women. I constantly hear ’she provoked me;’ ’she nagged me, so I snapped;’ ’she was unfaithful so I snapped and doing so I accidentally killed (nee murdered) her.’ Oh the power of women to undermine men’s self-esteem’ men’s rationality and men’s supposed superior intelligence is mind-numbing because it is categorically not true. Men abuse female partners in differing ways but what is never asked is how these men all learn such tactics. Bundy has the answer and it is all about male ideas of privilege and power over women.
Bundy is right - ‘who can beat a (male) abuser at his game?’ Answer is we can’t and yet women are still expected to placate and submit to male terrorism because that is supposedly their role - sacrifice their well-being, health and even lives for the greater ‘good’ of men!
The greatest disinformation every told by misogynistic Christendom is that we’re supposed to “love our enemies,” forgive the unforgivable and bless those that hurt us. Unless Jesus was a sadist promoting a social program for masochists, it cannot be true, but is only part of the patriarchs’ social control of us. (Some of the 20th century scholarship on the Greek and Latin manuscripts underlying the published gospels suggest the disinformation. Plus, you know in your bones what’s a lie when you’ve broken sufficiently free of the brainwashing.)
Instead, the rant-and-rave parts of the gospel record show Jesus cursing hypocrites and bad guys generally (”woe” to them). It gives me righteous fury to consider the ways man-made religion has been used all over the planet to quell women’s natural rage and self-preservation when faced with male violence.
Here’s a re-visioned “Christ” approach for womankind: No forgiveness of abuse, but cursing, as Jesus did, and Love of our own lives.
This was an a-ha moment for me Heart! Got to read this book now!!!!!!!
Robert Lynn Asprin did a very funny standup routine at a Star Trek convention some years ago about the Klingon Diplomatic Corps. One line explained that the Klingons consider it an overt act of war whenever ships from any other force shoot BACK.
It’s funny, in the context of a Star Trek comedy routine. But I suspect that’s the notion underlying at least some of these statistical assertions: we’re expected to regard it as an equally heinous act of violence when a battered woman raises a hand IN HER OWN DEFENSE.
The YWCA in Canada has come out with a strong statement on violence toward women. Astounding to see the majority of the comments to the article are proponents of the myth as outlined above.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20081125.wviolence1125/BNStory/National/home
The ultimate taboo is for women to hit back!
Sis the fact many comments make all the same claim wherein men are supposedly suffering violence from female violence shows how determined many societies are in denying the truth. Remember the 11th commandment is ‘thou shalt not criticise men, their behaviours, their actions or their rights. Men are always right and this means if a man says the moon is made of green cheese then indeed the moon is made of green cheese.
In other words - denial denial, and yet more denials.
Hi Jennifer. Oh I see I forgot the ’sarcasm’ key shift when I posted that.
What was surprising to me was the firm statement from the YWCA, which is completely eclipsed in community awareness and funding by the YMCA, here. I don’t know the situation in the UK or the U.S. but here, the YW struggles, in shabby, run down old buildings, with skeletal staff and limited budget, while the YM flies high on corporate largesse and prominence.
On the myth of equivalent violence against males by females compared to males’ violence against women, it makes sense that the patriarchal reversal media machine would be in high gear to perpetrate the myth.
Myth-making about a non-existent problem deflects attention from the real violent acting out (danger, trauma, terror for women) which is being ratcheted up by patriarchal pornification’s online imagery — picture after picture after picture worth thousands of words — of woman-hating available to every man with an internet connection and 30 seconds to “surf.”
I am not speaking rhetorically or theoretically, because I spent the past few minutes confirming — something I survey periodically as time proceeds — that the free online dominance-submission porn (95%, and the most violent of the violence, targeted at women by men with a few gay men and transsexuals thrown in to the data base) is becoming:
(1) more and more violent (red candle wax on tender body parts as if spattered blood, appalling machinery used for torture, pain-causing apparatus I’d never have imagined possible doing to bodies what seems impossible),
(2) more and more insulting (surely it must be physically injurious in the long term despite the written “over 18″ narrative and smiling photos of the targets added as if after the photo-shoot torture), and
(3) more and more dehumanizing of all women as if we are inherently insatiable pain junkies for traumatic rapism because that’s the proper role for our wayward flesh (modern upping the ante of male sadism against “daughters of Eve, downfall of man”).
My brief survey of online porn subjectively showed me that it is worse (more violent, insulting and dehumanizing) than it was 6 months ago, which was worse than the 6 months prior, etc. I don’t save the files to have an objective comparison because they’re too disgusting — and sad — for me to want them in my computer. But it makes me realize, from subjective assessment, that there’s a likelihood that any man who interacts with any one of us is seeing our faces and bodies as mental porn targets from a scene he’s seen depicted online.
And it explains the sadism women are experiencing at work. Recently a man who should have considered himself a professional peer of mine emailed me, “come here.” No “hi,” or “please,” or “let’s discuss.” No names except what were on the email addresses. No reference to the work project. Peremptory, cold, imperious. Like a porn master. Ick. I stopped working with him. But not all women have economic options when faced with porn-generated disdain from males at work They have to “take it,” just like men are being falsely taught women want to take it in porn.
In the online survey tonight, there was also at least one so-called “Christian” marriage site proposing BDSM for dominator husbands against wives as the natural extension of biblical Ephesians (Paulinism). I didn’t have the heart to see how prevalent this anti-Christ message masquerading as Christianity might be online. It sickened me.
What does this mean? For one thing, men who didn’t start out their adult lives hating women are being trained by porn images to do so, and to believe that women should be grateful for the abuse. I am working spiritually with my own consciousness to cast out the misogyny that is the porn industry, in prayer to bring it to an end, and to replace it with loving, creative evolution. Join me if you’d like.
I’m also renewing my plan to have as little to do with men as possible because of the global porn culture. How can they possibly be friends to us when they go online for hours on end to see what I just saw in horror for a few minutes? It’s marketed for “fun” and for “free” to the men being taught to loathe and hurt womankind in the name of porn sport.
My mid-life decision to spend as little time as possible in the company of men (made into misogynists by porn-guzzling if they didn’t start out that way) fits for me. I don’t have any other way to deal with what I know in social context — and I’ve started being thankfully surprised whenever I encounter a man without a self-serving motive who isn’t disdainful or disparaging in general to women.
More importantly, I’m grateful whenever we as women can speak what’s on our minds, agree to disagree as needed, and continue telling the truth for a better tomorrow.
Happy Thanksgiving. If I didn’t experience a spiritual reality greater than the present patriarchy, I wouldn’t enjoy the cranberries nearly so much. Cheers.
Judy Best in Post # 12 — Thanks for your very wise words! Despite your dreadful discoveries of the escalation of violent anti-woman porn online, I think you have come to a reasonable understanding of how women can turn the tables.
The pornified man becomes more easily recognized daily, and where once this was confined to the weirdness of the gay male world, now it is everywhere.
Women do need to step back from the male worlds, so that they can really see the world in a woman-identified way.
The denial in patriarchal society that men are the main agents of violence is lost is the passive voice. Men are uncomfortable when I bring up the subject of THEM being terrorists worldwide, and that war is a male issue. They run from this commentary, and they have no proof that women cause such human disaster.
The denial must be huge for women worldwide. I’ve been solidly against pornography ever since it was presented in a feminist slide show back in 1980 or so. I never forgot the shock of it.
Thanks Judy for putting the case out there so clearly, and for pointing out how pornified men let this stuff seep into the work place.
It will come to a point where women will really have to reject men entirely, and boycotte the “brand.” As long as women continue to support, marry and live with men, as long as they continue to work too closely with them, we really won’t get out of this mess.
Satsuma, for your words of affirmation, thank you. I wish there were easy answers to the dilemma women face vis a vis men. As a committed celibate (at least for now), it’s easy for me to take a detached point of view about intimate relationships that aren’t pornographic but involve clothes coming off in a compassionate way.
Example: Thanksgiving celebrants talked me into seeing the movie, Australia, today with them, and at many levels it lived up to its theme (from the Nicole Kidman character) of depicting both how the world is and how it should be. She was fantastic and gorgeous of ultimate spiritedness; so was Hugh Jackman. But it was a movie. As the art of film, it made me wonder anew if we could in global community embrace individualistic freedom beyond gender and race (reminiscent of Andrea Dworkin’s hopes) … particularly for my younger women friends who are committed to sexual attraction to the Hughs of the world (of any color).
Unless we evolve to one gendered female species with benefits and parthenogenesis, the dilemma of sexual attraction is likely to keep many women in the mode of wanting men in their lives. My daughter is among that number, so it makes the issue very complicated for me. Her beloved seems to be a good man. I only hope it’s true, because it should be.
The dilemma of mothers who have birthed and loved sons, also a huge dynamic among women on this planet. Two of my close friends are in that group. They see the evils of patriarchy, but they harbor hopes that their sons will remain different, loving, a beacon of change.
Today my brain needed a rest — I imagined a world where good wins, as it does in some movies like the one I experienced.
I lived in the magic of indigenous people close to the magical land, even if the male director did not explain how the first people of Australia began with women weaving the dreaming and the magic, only to have women’s aboriginal ways invaded by male dominance modeled upon the invading WASP male imperialists.
Rest, my sisters, and dream, sing and make magic to one another that we might know Love’s victory.
This is a fascinating thread! Thank you to all of the informed and interesting women who have contributed to it.I will admit to being a bit of a forensics junkie, and I learned something relevant to this discussion while watching the ID Discovery channel this weekend. One of the shows, which is hosted by a forensic psychiatrist from Columbia University, gave the statistic that 93% of all murders are committed by men (this does not include killing in war). A scientist who is studying brain mapping said that there is a region in the back of the brain that receives sensations to evaluate whether there is a threat or not, and then this area relays the information to the prefrontal cortex for action or non-action. The prefrontal cortex allows one to process the information and refine the response based on moral presumptions, cultural knowledge, compassion, and other higher functioning of behavior. In women this area is quite large; it is small in men. The scientist said that the brains of men and women are pretty much identical except for this difference, which probably accounts for the fact that men are much, much more likely to respond to perceived threats with physical agression than women are. He even said that the difference in the size of the prefrontal cortex is so marked that it almost looks like the observer is looking at two different species!
This sort of information should be made more public so that young males realize their reactions to situations are likely to be harmful and out of proportion. If they were taught this early enough, along with coping mechanisms, perhaps they could rein in their physical agression better in adulthood.
***This sort of information should be made more public so that young males realize their reactions to situations are likely to be harmful and out of proportion. If they were taught this early enough, along with coping mechanisms, perhaps they could rein in their physical agression better in adulthood.***
Nice thought, Level Best, but I think the information would be more likely to be used by them as an excuse than anything else.
Judy Best and Level Best — you are the bestest women!
Thanks Level Best for the forensics report. I have often wondered about this, because many times, I’ve seen males overreact to situations that they perceived to be highly threatening, when I didn’t feel threatened. I wondered at how we could have such a different feeling about the world.
Call me naieve, but I usually see the world as beneficial and kind. No matter where I’ve traveled in the world, I seem to connect with very good people. It goes beyond language or race.
However, I have noticed that men don’t see the world this way at all. They are the ones who seem to freak out at terrorism or get caught up in insane nationalism. These are largely the fears of men.
As for men hiding the abuse they’ve suffered out of shame or whatever, I do feel there is a grain of truth to this. Gay men in particular have shared horrifying tales of being raped by male relatives or strangers, or they reported being sexually abused as children. Straight men never admit much of anything ever, and seem incapable of that kind of conversation. If 93% of the murders are committed by men, then this statistic needs to be trumpeted out there. This adds extra urgency to creating more and more spaces where men are not allowed to be at all.
If aggression is their primary reason for being, then it stands to reason that they find feminism and the freedom of women the ultimate threat.
Although, on the other hand, I tend to think that women are conditioned NOT to fight back or not to strike quickly. It’s why early feminism put so much emphasis on self-defense for women, because we did see men as a threat to women.
Men will not face the crimes the commit, or they will not admit to what that 93% really means for the world. To me, it means men should not be in positions of power at all, until they become fully aware of this conditioning or brain function.
If women can become adept at a kooky business world that men made, then men can learn how to have proper private and interpersonal relationships that don’t result in the abuse and murder of women. Men, in my book ultimately, are simply lazy, unwilling to change or learn. Women enable them, but if women just said we’ve had enough of this violent species, and men were left alone for a decade or so, then maybe we’d see some real change.
Yes Branjor, any excuse for not taking full responsibility is the male way of life it seems.
The thing is, even if it’s true that men are more predisposed to violence, why wouldn’t it make sense that this was an adaptation that resulted from men practicing violence over millennia? And that this would change to the degree that men stopped being violent.
Although findings like this are always interesting, as Branjor says, invariably they are also always used against women to prove that we are “essentially” something or other and the same with men. And, it’s usually men who “discover” that men are “naturally” predisposed to violence or rape or whatever because discoveries like that tend to shore up gender stereotypes that, in the end, invariably benefit men.
P.S. I just ordered Lundy Bancroft’s book. Thanks for recommending it Heart. It will probably be very scary, but at least some men are holding men accountable for their violence and evil in the world AS MEN.
This backs admin’s point of view.
The Brain That Changes Itself
http://www.cbc.ca/documentaries/natureofthings/2008/brainchangesitself/
Interesting, Sis! And Branjor and Heart–yes, you’re right, misogynists would use this concept just like they use everything else to their advantage, sigh. . .
In a short segment in his book he talks about how p*rn and B**M rewire the brain to kick off sexual arousal to that. Violence too I think. You create pleasure wirings which take over from the normal wirings. Detour/deviance.
That p*rn and B**M rewire the brain makes complete sense to me. I’ve always thought that the brain was the biggest sex organ and part of what we enjoy about sex is the idea of sex; what we associate with sex becomes sexy. I think this is in part how heteronormativity works as well - we have sex and enjoy the sex, in part because, well, duh, we’re having sex even though we might not really be enjoying the physical act we’re doing. We enjoy the (society’s) idea of sex.
I think it makes sense that as an off-shoot of that, the brain becomes wired in particular ways (orgasms being the biggest bio-feedback there is!). I’ve always suspected that with the brain, form follows function. Scientists keep seeing these differences in the brain but they keep thinking that the source of those differences is biological, rather than us merely seeing the biological effects of what is the source: social conditioning from an early age - function, if you will. For example, girls are swamped with pressure to think and behave in certain ways from birth: be nice, be nurturing, think about others first. And boys are encouraged to be aggressive, be strong, be selfish, and to not cry. Consequently it doesn’t surprise me at all that male and female brains look different to the scientists, and that the section of the brain that deals with deciding to not follow those impulses, think before acting, repress violent responses, etc is shrunken in men - they use it less! They’ve been taught to virtually ignore it even, thinking about the messages that the cult of masculinity teaches boys and men.
And I think it’s really important to remember that 80% of the brain’s development occurs between birth and age 5 or 6. 80%. It’s gets most of it’s shape, form, wiring during childhood development. And when do we suffer from the most extreme and rigid gender role-modeling? During childhood.
Anyways, it’s nice to see some scientific backing to this idea.
Your theory sounded good, until you got to the part about orgasm: most women don’t orgasm vaginally. Children who are sexually abused likely don’t orgasm.
You might have to take a peek at the book. Any bookstore. It’s hot.